Prologue Through to the End of the Epilogue--Full Book Discussion.

[EvelynneWeakley]

thanks Dfchang

[dfchang]

Thought this book was the worst  yet.  Pretty much every character is the same.

 

The book is just one big fight with every character pretty much doing the same thing.  Character X fights a trolloc and kills a few.  Next character 2 pages later does the same thing.  The only 'characters' that he even seemed like he tried to make them characters were Mat and Androl.  Mat gets praise about how great a general he is but all you ever see is Mat send an order here, send an order there and the characters are like, "Wow he's such a genius."  Or...I don't know about this Cauthon guy.  Demandrads thoughts, "I've gotta be fighting Lews Therin because no mortal of this Age could be so good!"

 

Ok, wonderful...but why does everyone merely think this?  All I ever saw was Tam shoots his bow and doesn't miss.  3 Pages of this and next PoV switches to Lan hacking people with his sword cuz he's so good and throw in some words about how tired he is because of all the fighting.  2 Pages later...next PoV...about as bland as can be.  Next PoV, same ol' thing except perhaps they're fighting some shara with strange axes and maybe in this PoV a message will fall out of the sky saying "go here and do this" and the characters like WoW, this general is so good!  Rinse and repeat this for pretty much the whole book.

 

What is Rand doing?  He pretty much does nothing except see mirror realities and has some tea with the dark one while Nynaeve and Moiraine just kinda chill.  Perrin?  He goes around in the wolf dream in the flesh, fights Slayer for a few pages here and there to fill chapters in the book while lanfear shows up sometimes to feed him information.  Perrin defeats slayer, hoorah.  It was SO exciting.

 

To sum up, this book was pretty much:  2-4 pages of a PoV of a character hacking away at a trolloc or some other enemy.  Switch to another PoV rinse and repeat.  Soo bland!  You can never really get into a character because all it is is the character fights a little for a few pages and switch to next one.  Very disapointed in this book.  VERY!  After the intial honeymoon wears off with people,  I think the criticism will come in droves for how generic it all comes off...stale.

 

I would have to respectfully disagree.  I think the book was very well written as far as it goes.

 

Sure events do move fast and you do get the sense of things being a bit too "crammed" in.  That's been a running criticism from many who have read the book.  But it is by no means stale or boring unless you simply dislike the characters or the series to begin with.

 

Mat is shown to be a VERY good general throughout the book.  He recognizes the traps set by Bryne and manages to mitigate the damage.  The reasoning behind his orders appear unclear initially to the people who he gives them to . . . but later on become apparent and shows his forethought.   A decision made in the beginning returns to make a critical difference at the very end.   He fights against OVERWHELMING forces hamstrung by the complete lack of any captains he can truly trust, against one of the greatest generals who has EVER lived and also dealing with a SPY in his own camp who feeds strategies to his enemy at every turn.

 

That Mat was able to turn this into a victory and the steps with which he took to achieve is one of the greatest things about this book in my opinion.

 

I think Rand, Nynaeve, and Moiraine's roll is critical and integral to the series.  The sequence has been foreshadowed for decades and thousands of pages, what did you expect?  That Rand and the Dark One would have a sword duel to settle this?  Moiraine and Nynaeve have already done enough in the earlier volumes.   Here, all they do is SAVE CREATION and help SEAL THE ALL EVIL AWAY.   I'm sorry if they didn't juggle balls while balancing on a unicycle while doing it. 

 

Sure some things were addressed too quickly almost as if there was a checklist that needed to be run through.  I get that.  But also understand that the PACE and RHYTHM of the Last Battle needed to be a certain fever pitch, it NEEDED to feel urgent, incredibly stressful, like the end of all things.  We can't AFFORD a leisurely relaxed pace as we saw earlier in the series.  Rand is locked in mortal combat with the Dark One himself, there is just no time.

 

That 180 page chapter left me drained like a rag doll and it ended beautifully.

 

Eucatharsis . . . a concept the great Tolkien came up with and executed to near perfection in this book.

 

Speaking as someone who has been invested in this story from almost the very beginning (21 years ago) I honestly have to say that this was a worthy and satisfying ending to the journey for me.  Perfect?  No.  Could it have been better?  Of course.  But overall, nitpicks and gripes about some of the details and prophecies and endings aside, I was happy.   Can't ask for more than that considering this series outlived both its author and its cover artist.

[fionwe1987]

I am wondering what the GRRM moment was.  Sure a lot of people died but they pretty much all went out in blazes of glory, which is not at all GRRM.  The Great Captains would be my buest guess but that still does not sit right with me.

 

Overall though I am still processing my thoughts on this.  Everything just felt so rushed and too much just happened and felt forced, with no explanation, just to move on to resolve the next thread.  Even things that were great twists, like the Great Captains were shoved down our throats at breakneck pace.  It happens to all four of them with no warning at the exact same time with the exact same results in a matter of pages.  Four major armies of the light devestated instantly.  Those four fights, with everything else going on, could have supplied enough material for a great book.  Instead, if you blinked, you would have missed it.  This was the case for much of what happened. 

 

Everything was rushed.. and how else could it be? I agree we could have gotten more character moments, but the rapid pace is needed to convey the immensity and near hopelessness of the Last Battle.

 

As for the GRRM moment, it was obviously Birgette. Beheaded in a swift stroke. What was glorious about that? Same with Siuan. She decides her life doesn't matter, compared to Mat's. Then she dies, and we don't even see how exactly it goes down.

[Cassi Hume]

I've been thinking about the fate of the Aiel post LB, particularly in regards to their new role as Peacekeepers for the Dragon's Peace. Seeing as how WOT world has ages that repeat as the wheel turns in a more or less similar manner, and I've seen discussion earlier in the thread in regards to how Egwene may have created the weakness to be discovered and bored into later in the Wheel's cycle. Perhaps it is the failure of the Aiel to maintain the peace when this age/event comes back around that is the original sin and failure that sent the Aiel to the Waste in the first place. I don't have the books handy right now but I seem to remember one of the visions the WO and clan chiefs saw when they went through the terangreal in Rhuidan was one of the Aiel carrying swords in some sort of peace keeping or law enforcement role? I could be wrong but anyway it was just a though : p

[dfchang]

 

I am wondering what the GRRM moment was.  Sure a lot of people died but they pretty much all went out in blazes of glory, which is not at all GRRM.  The Great Captains would be my buest guess but that still does not sit right with me.

 

Overall though I am still processing my thoughts on this.  Everything just felt so rushed and too much just happened and felt forced, with no explanation, just to move on to resolve the next thread.  Even things that were great twists, like the Great Captains were shoved down our throats at breakneck pace.  It happens to all four of them with no warning at the exact same time with the exact same results in a matter of pages.  Four major armies of the light devestated instantly.  Those four fights, with everything else going on, could have supplied enough material for a great book.  Instead, if you blinked, you would have missed it.  This was the case for much of what happened. 

 

Everything was rushed.. and how else could it be? I agree we could have gotten more character moments, but the rapid pace is needed to convey the immensity and near hopelessness of the Last Battle.

 

As for the GRRM moment, it was obviously Birgette. Beheaded in a swift stroke. What was glorious about that? Same with Siuan. She decides her life doesn't matter, compared to Mat's. Then she dies, and we don't even see how exactly it goes down.

 

I kind of wished that Siuan had at least done SOMETHING to  make a difference for Mat.  I guess she saves Min who then saves Tuon so there's that??

 

She's blown up by a fireball that took out one side of the command center tent as far as I remember. 

[Alleluia_Cone]

I disagree with the review above as well. The books is by no means terrible. It's clearly the best of the books written by Sanderson or any of the last four Jordan books. Is it truly great? No, definitely not. It doesn't even deserve comparison to The Shadow Rising (or any of the earlier books for that matter). But to label it an abject failure seems a little much. 

[meeker]

 

I am wondering what the GRRM moment was.  Sure a lot of people died but they pretty much all went out in blazes of glory, which is not at all GRRM.  The Great Captains would be my buest guess but that still does not sit right with me.

 

Overall though I am still processing my thoughts on this.  Everything just felt so rushed and too much just happened and felt forced, with no explanation, just to move on to resolve the next thread.  Even things that were great twists, like the Great Captains were shoved down our throats at breakneck pace.  It happens to all four of them with no warning at the exact same time with the exact same results in a matter of pages.  Four major armies of the light devestated instantly.  Those four fights, with everything else going on, could have supplied enough material for a great book.  Instead, if you blinked, you would have missed it.  This was the case for much of what happened. 

 

Everything was rushed.. and how else could it be? I agree we could have gotten more character moments, but the rapid pace is needed to convey the immensity and near hopelessness of the Last Battle.

 

As for the GRRM moment, it was obviously Birgette. Beheaded in a swift stroke. What was glorious about that? Same with Siuan. She decides her life doesn't matter, compared to Mat's. Then she dies, and we don't even see how exactly it goes down.

 

 

The rapid pace does the opposite.  There is no time to feel like anything is going wrong because there is no build up or suspense.  You do not have time to get invested in anyone one plot as they are over before you realize they began.  It hardly felt hopeless as everything happened so fast by the time you realized you were supposed to be sad it was over.  Take Siuan for example.  Min tells her that being apart from Bryne means they will both die.  Then she dies what must have been 30 seconds later.  That was it.  Siuan's death is something that I would have been sad about if it wasn't almost funny.

 

As to Birgette we obviously disagree about what a GRRM moment is.  Just because she was beheaded it does not make it similar.  She got beheaded during a battle, by a known enemy.  There was no betrayal and while you were not expecting it at that moment there was no overall surprise that Mellar would behead her.  That being said her death was one of the ones that I cared about the most, until she reappeared about 30 seconds later when the horn was blown.  That ruined that moment.

[Guest PiotrekS]

I disagree with the review above as well. The books is by no means terrible. It's clearly the best of the books written by Sanderson or any of the last four Jordan books. Is it truly great? No, definitely not. It doesn't even deserve comparison to The Shadow Rising (or any of the earlier books for that matter). But to label it an abject failure seems a little much. 

 

If it truly is better than Knife of Dreams, then it's great news. I doubt I will see it that way, as I have trouble appreciating Brandon's prose, but there is some small hope.

 

The idea for the fight between Rand and the DO sounds great. A really good writer could pull off a mighty scene with that concept of fighting on higher, metaphorical and philospohical level. How would you lucky people  who've read it already say it's written? 

 

Deaths of Siuan and Bela made me really angry. Siuan dies in an off-handed way while Egwene by her death saves the day. Of course.

[ScoundreltheToy]

You wanna know what the worst thing about the book was?  Everything with Valan Luca was left unresolved.  I mean the character wasn't even mentioned!

[Datakim]

In ToM, Rand does bizarre things such as growing the apples and channeling in a way that drives darkfriends in the vicinity mad.

What was that all about?

[Axon]

I disagree with the review above as well. The books is by no means terrible. It's clearly the best of the books written by Sanderson or any of the last four Jordan books. Is it truly great? No, definitely not. It doesn't even deserve comparison to The Shadow Rising (or any of the earlier books for that matter). But to label it an abject failure seems a little much. 

 

I agree, but in my opinion, a book set up like this one - literally nothing more than the last fight where the good guys are pretty clearly going to win (no matter how much jeopardy they were in, I never doubted for a second) - can't possibly be as good as the "initial discovery" books.  The best part of any story is the rising of the hero, at least IMO.   

 

Personal opinion on the books is that Shadow Rising is the best, and I know I'm not alone there.  I will return to that volume to re-read my favorite parts, as I have many times before.  I will also return to Lord of Chaos (which includes my favorite line in the series), The Gathering Storm, and A Memory of Light.  I loved Rand vs. DO.  I thought it was fantastic.   

[Axon]

double post, my bad

[Alleluia_Cone]

 

I disagree with the review above as well. The books is by no means terrible. It's clearly the best of the books written by Sanderson or any of the last four Jordan books. Is it truly great? No, definitely not. It doesn't even deserve comparison to The Shadow Rising (or any of the earlier books for that matter). But to label it an abject failure seems a little much. 

 

If it truly is better than Knife of Dreams, then it's great news. I doubt I will see it that way, as I have trouble appreciating Brandon's prose, but there is some small hope.

 

The idea for the fight between Rand and the DO sounds great. A really good writer could pull off a mighty scene with that concept of fighting on higher, metaphorical and philospohical level. How would you lucky people  who've read it already say it's written? 

 

Deaths of Siuan and Bela made me really angry. Siuan dies in an off-handed way while Egwene by her death saves the day. Of course.

 

If you simply do not like the way Sanderson writes then there is little that can be done on that score. I prefer Jordan as well, especially when it comes to writing a story that is his, but, regardless of the quality of his prose, books eight through ten in the series were absolutely horrible. Knife of Dreams was a decided improvement, I grant you that, but even if it is better written than A Memory of Light (and it very well might be), the material of that book is decidely slight in comparison to the current one. It simple isn't as exiciting and its set pieces are not altogether that grand in vision. As such, I am pretty comfortable saying that A Memory of Light is the better book.

[fionwe1987]

By the way, I wanted to state here that the planning for the initial four theaters was pure nonsense. Send all the Aes Sedai to simply keep in the Trollocs at Kandor? Send a pitiful few to Tarwin's Gap? Send none with Elayne at Caemlyn? None of these are sensible ideas. Elayne's plan was to torch Caemlyn anyway. So why not send 200 Aes Sedai, form many circles, and simply destroy the city with the Trollocs inside? Why not have some Aes Sedai head off to Tarwin's Gap, so that the anti-Dreadlord operations there could have some actual teeth? And what under the Light most holy were the Aes Sedai thinking, when they didn't form huge circles fighting Trollocs? What's the need for individual channelers when there are no enemy channelers to molest you?

 

And where were the thousands of Wise One channelers? Some went to Shayol Ghul, but hardly all did. Where were the Asha'man who had gathered at Merrilor? Barring a few that went to the Gap, we hear nothing of them. And what about Sea Folk Windfinders? I can understand a hundred or so rotating with the Bowl of the Wind. Maybe a few more to protect them. Where were the rest? Where were the Kinswomen too weak to do anything, but who could link to provide enormous Gateways?

 

The Aes Sedai and the Asha'man acquitted themselves well enough, but the tactics were so stupid. I understand that the Light was supposed to be reeling after their defeat at the 4 theaters. But the entire setup is lazy. If there had been channelers aplenty on all four fronts, that would have meant channelers from the Shadow had to arrive too (Taim's toadies, the BA, the Aiel Turned). Instead, the Shadow channelers were almost nonexistent, and the Sharan contingent was used to bulk up numbers.

 

As it stood, the Shadow still probably could match the Light, channeler wise. And if the battles had been written better, they'd have been more logical and even more spectacular. I'm really miffed at the stupidity on display by the characters here. Its very unrealistic, and not even in character for many of them.

[XXX]

Just finished.Have to say the ending made no sense to me especially about the fact that Rand cannot channel... Er but he can just think fire and fire happens.So he is now God? WTF!!

[fyodor]

 

Agreed, this was one of my major problems with the book. The Dark One does not equal free will. How can he, when there is still free will while he can't touch the Pattern? How does his existence outside the Pattern grant people free will? It's definitely borrowed from Christian philosophy, and I suspect this is a pure Brandon addition. Partly because the first time killing the Dark One was mentioned was in TGS, and partly because of Rand's comment about his third question, which gives the impression that RJ didn't leave notes for the third question and Brandon felt the need to make something up to explain why Rand didn't just ask how to seal the Bore. But I could be wrong. Either way, I don't like it.

 

It's interesting-I didn't like this ending when it was described in the threads but found it more or less acceptable the way it was written. I read it as being that the DO's destruction actually removed people's capacity for evil. They weren't slaves as such, but human nature was irrevocably altered and screwed up when the DO was destroyed as opposed to merely being sealed away.

 

While I didn't mind it so much on its own terms I do agree with you that it sounds suspiciously like something Sanderson* came up with. It seems like we get a lot of new cosmology dumped on us. 

 

* I like Brandon Sanderson's books a lot, but for reasons I will expound upon later I did not think he was a good fit for finishing up this series.

[XXX]

The good thing was the kick ass action from start till almost the very end.Ending sucked.Fight with DO sucked.Fight with Moridin sucked.The last 2 pages totally suck.If the ending was completely RJ, well he blew it.

 

Another good thing was the end of Egwene and her boy toy.Loved that.

 

Oh and a lot of dead bodies for a WOT book.However I would have killed some more characters off.

[XXX]

i felt it was a slow starter, the prologue, chapter 1,2 and 3 not really starting much off. as this was the last book i started to resent these chapters as not much was happening and it meant there less space for the rest. i suspose this is a consequence of them being pre release material, but it just seemd like a waste of words. a little less androl and a little more epilogue would have suited more.

 

i enjoyed fains death, but thought more would have been made of the 'different type of evil' that he encompassed, i thought his absence in the preceeding books combined with his lack of page time demeans him as a character.

 

moridin was a bit of a wet fish. worst naeblis ever...

 

possibly the worst name for a weave ever, 'flame of tar valon'.

 

im not sure how i feel about the ending. the books seem to present themselves as a contradiiction with regrds to the metaphysical elements. the pattern does not alow certain choices, but does others, the prophetic elements give an underlying impression of fate not choice etc.

 

if rand cant channel anymore, he cannot travel. randland is a big place if you only have a horse.

 

thought narishma would have bit more of a contribution.

 

happy overall, would have liked epilogue but i did not expect so many charcters to survive so even a couple of pges is nice. egwene needed to die to provide some amount of validity.

 

He does not need to channel.He is now Neo,he can just think of things and they happen!!

[Deroi]

So I just finished the book. I think it'll take some time for it to sink in but the best way I can sum it up is this: I liked the beginning, I was underwhelmed/disappointed in the middle, and I loved the end.

[XXX]

 

Except I really don't see how what she did as useless. Not to mention her use is in the full scope of her actions, not what she does in the last book. As Egwene said back in TOM, this is the woman who has defeated and captured a forsaken, the woman who helped cleanse the taint from Saidin. This is a woman who healed a madness that was thought uncurable, that restored the ability to channel when it was supposed to be impossible. She married the king of Malkier and she's going to go forward and restore an entire kingdom. That's not even counting that she's most likely going to end up another Cadsuane in terms of legend status. To demean her because in this one book her only major action is helping Ran stop the end of the universe is hardly fair.

 

I am just disappointed. Nyn is, by far, my favorite female character and she has been relegated to third or fourth tier status among the characters. Rand, from what I've read on here, apparently does absolutely nothing until the end of the book, so why is Nyn sitting around with her thumb up her butt? Hell, for that matter, why isn't Rand doing some fighting as well? Fionwe, on another board, stated that the only ones channeling consistently are Egwene and Aviendha, which means Rand and Nyn (and even Moiraine) are doing basically nothing while Egwene personally fights the Last Battle on her own. That makes no sense. Nyn is a strong channeler and, given a chance, she can kick some serious ass, but she isn't used at all in this book. So yeah, she has done some great things in past books but she serves no purpose in Tarmon Gai'don. While others are getting to become legends, she's not even window dressing because she's flat out invisible.

 

It also irks me that, apparently, Logain is shown to be nothing but a worthless sack of crap as well, and weak and wimpy on top of it. He gets captured by Taim, and has to be rescued, then gets the crap kicked out of him by Demandred. I suppose his glory is leading the BT while everyone laughs at him behind his back for being a huge wussy boy, lol. And there goes my second favorite male character down the tubes! Oh well, at least Rand survives. Too bad he's still bonded to all three of those damned women, though. He should have severed the bonds and run off with Min.

 

Rand is everywhere in the book.And he is doing a lot of fighting with the DO no less!! As a Rand fan you will have no major regrets.

[Deroi]

Building on my past comments, there were some moments where I felt really jarred out of the story. When we see the new crown of Malkier, I had a sense that RJ would have described it in less than three words. When Tylee's men attack, the description of them was very...it didn't create the same mood of panicked warfare that Jordan did in Cairhien and Dumai's. And the resolution of the Hinderstrap upset me first because I went 'WTF, this is what it was building to?' and then it frustrated me because it's such a random thing to throw into the story.

 

At the same time, I loved the back-and-forth split POVs in the LB because...well, I mean it worked for me. It made me see the whole of the Wheel of Time, Raen/Ila's parts touched me as well. Olver's part...the way it was written was some very very powerful stuff, among the best of this book which is saying quite a bit, Perrin when he's searching for Faile.

 

Also, as a bit of a personal background, I was part of the old Wotmania crew in the mid 2000s and either my username or the signature on my username was 'The Man Dread'. Holy hell, I was hoping a lot from Demandred and dear god did he deliver. I mean when it takes almost the full forces of the light to defeat you and then only by the skin of their nails, job well done.

 

I think the best way I can describe the actual LB is that it worked wonderfully when it was from the point of view of individual people, when it dealt with their direct fighting, and at the end when he was describing chaos, and the motivation of each character. But it just did not come off when the actual mechanics of dealing with entire armies is at hand. I.E. the thing about the squads of archers and the individual fists. I mean unless fists and squads are stand-in terms for thousands, there is absolutely no way in hell that either side's highest of commands are going to focus on essentiall a few dozen or a few hundred of men. BS pulled off the individual pieces of each character in my opinion, but the strategy of it...well I can tell it's really not his forte. As an aside, everytime Palov's Heights was mentionned, did anyone else think of Pavlov's House at Stalingrad or the Battle of the Seelow Heights?

 

As for the resolution, I will admit that it is a very abrupt cutoff. But I have to say that it works for me, I mean...life goes on, that's basically the story isn't it? Life goes on. Also, the Dragon's Peace is, I would have liked if it wasn't sold as a cure to all conflict, but at least I can accept that all we'll see about it suggesting otherwise is what Birgitte said to Elayne and Moghedien's fate.

 

I felt the book really, really dragged at the start of the Last Battle(the actual battle), but it got better as it went on. Also, Rand's part, I found it enjoyable. Maybe I would have liked it to be better...actually I definitely would liked it to have been better, but I still enjoyed it.

 

A few questions come to mind and I'll ask them over time, but the first is...where the hell did 'Shaisam'(which I can't help but say as Shazzam! like Beyonce says in the last Austin Powers movie) come frm as a name, did it just get established or have I missed in ToM? Also, anyone else found the part with the 3 wives a bit...well did anyone go "damn it, act hurt and maybe fake-cry or something women!"? :P

[fionwe1987]

 Also, anyone else found the part with the 3 wives a bit...well did anyone go "damn it, act hurt and maybe fake-cry or something women!"? :P

They wouldn't even have to fake it. They all lost close friends, Avi killed Rhuarc, Elayne lost Birgette and Gawyn, Min lost Siuan and Egwene... it was weird that we didn't see them cry a bit.

 

And yes, the battle strategy was a mess. Forget the specifics. Just compare the way Mat thinks of battle up to KoD, and then read aMoL. Here, there's a ton of metaphors for battles, a ton of statements that sound clever, but very little actual cleverness and strategy. Same on Demandred's end.

 

That said, I think I'm happy Brandon simply didn't try this, with chapter 37, than try and come up with pure nonsense as he did early on (I'm fairly certain it was not RJ).

[fionwe1987]

By the way, did anyone notice that Egwene said something that makes it sound like she had bound Vora's wand to her, like Demandred had bonded his sa'angreal to him? Personal sa'angreal are critical to three important pieces of the finale. Curious...

[XXX]

So I just finished the book. I think it'll take some time for it to sink in but the best way I can sum it up is this: I liked the beginning, I was underwhelmed/disappointed in the middle, and I loved the end.

 

The end really? so abrupt.This is the ending we waited for 20 years?

[XXX]

Double post