Whew just finished! That took longer than I thought, but I wanted to read it properly. I don't quite know how I feel right now...

Yeah I've always liked Perrin, and in general I think it was his overly drawn-out Shaido arc that irked most people more than his actual character. Though some people did think he was too emo about the wolf thing, but if he'd been doing more interesting stuff while he was at it, they mightn't have minded so much.

But what you have to give Perrin is this, imo: while other WoT characters can be relied upon to do things that you know will end badly and you just want to beat them for, Perrin tends to be pretty smart. He never really pisses anyone off, and he never really makes big mistakes. It can be kinda refreshing when you've just finished reading about Rand or Egwene being stupid again.

Have to disagree with the OP about one thing though; I think Faile has given him some pretty valuable advice about leadership.

Agreed; her treatment of Nynaeve was what got to me. It was just so annoyingly realistic that I really do think a lot of people tend to interchange Egwene in their heads with every self-righteous annoyance they ever met. Or maybe that's just me

Rand in TGH: "Moiraine hasn't even looked at me in weeks, and now she's given me bloody fine new clothes to die in!" Don't know why, just gets me. Back in preDarkRand days, I used to find him hilarious when he started freaking out.

I found the personality shift disturbing too.

I am trying to explain it away in my own mind as a young man suddenly becoming old with the wisdom that experience brings.

I believe that we all have personality changes (usually subtle) as we grow older. I am trying to believe that adding, who knows for sure, how many years of experience to his present in a nearly instantaneous fashion would be a shock and some of those personalities will wear through those memories.

I agree, and I didn't have a problem with the basic personality changes at all. I was very much looking forward to Rand being calmer and wiser and more compassionate again, and he was all those things. But it's like... A comedian could tell a good joke simply, and it could be hilarious. Or he could tell that same joke in a really exaggerated ridiculous way and ruin it. To me, that's sort of what it seemed like to read Rand in ToM.

You know, I somehow doubt that's his inner most thoughts. He never let slip in one way or another to anybody else that he intentionally went to WT with the purpose of angering Egwene and getting her to gather all the monarchs for example. It just seems he's far more honest and open about things that really serves no point in being kept secret, like any normal person would do, if they weren't born in the WOT universe :p

Actually he did admit to someone, don't remember who, that he had 'poured hot oil into the white tower and it would be boiling soon' or something. But yeah mostly he kept his plans schtum, because that's important to the plot. Doesn't explain why he decides to share with Siuan, a woman he's met once, that he thinks seeing Egwene again might hurt. I thought he was trying to act crazy, but that sort of thing just kept happening. And you said it yourself:

like any normal person would do, if they weren't born in the WOT universe

He;s trying to clear the decks and apologise and explain his actions to everyone who's fought for him. He knows he's going to die and he wants to go with a clean conscience. The most obvious pointer to that is, his asking for Hurin. By analogy with AA, he's doing a 12-Step programme.

No see I get the apologies. To the Aiel, to Ituralde, to his father, etc. What I don't get is why he'd start discussing his innermost thoughts and feelings with, you know, anyone who'll listen. I just don't think there would have been a need for it if BS had been writing from Rand's PoV. Along with a lot of the other over the top stuff.

(Warning: if you find writing process/character construction stuff boring, then this ain't for you...)

I recently reread ToM, and I gotta say Zen Rand was far...stranger second time round. And he was strange enough the first time.

Now don't get me wrong; he had his moments (Rand Sedai and his talk with the Borderlanders, for example) but I spent a fair amount of the chapters he was in just thinking 'this isn't Rand'. I just had to cringe at the amount of monologuing he did about himself. Wearing his heart on his sleeve in front of randommers like Ituralde or Siuan, for example? Extremely unRandlike, and kind of weird to boot.

It was obviously to be expected after Veins of Gold that Rand would be wiser, calmer, more mature, etc, but I found it very hard to believe that he was supposed to be this different. What would be the point of building up a main character for twelve books, only to turn him into a completely different person for the finale?

But then it occurred to me that Zen Rand could be a total consequence of what was originally supposed to be one final book getting split into three. The whole reason for Rand's lack of PoVs was that Brandon Sanderson couldn't give away too much before the end. However he couldn't just leave Rand out of the book either and he obviously had to try and fill us in on what happened to Rand after VoG.

So what was the result? Loads of sappy monologuing and Rand acting in a really exaggerated zen way to make up for the fact that we weren't able to see his thoughts. Which were probably originally intended by RJ to be very important at this juncture. It makes me hold out hope that Rand will be much less strange to read in AMoL, because his one PoV in the epilogue was actually good imo.

So what you think? Was Zen Rand intentional or a sort of mistake?

The Lord of the Evening referred to in the dark prophecy at the end of ToM, is that the DO or Moridin? Or is it unclear? Can't remember if that title's been used before anywhere.