The author might be dead, but clearly his vision is not. Thank you, Jason, for the intimate and heartfelt message. For all of us who as children or adults have ridden bareback upon the winds of time, may he rest in peace.

Thought, of course, none of the rest of us will until we know what you know now...

I have been reading this series since I think around 1995, which is a pathetically small time to indicate what it has meant to me as a person, since I began reading it with my closest friends in jr. high and am still reading it with my nerdier colleagues as a professor of English Literature. I can only say this: great works of art are not things that we understand. I don't know if this is accurate, but I sense in some undefinable way that, in this book, something meaningful will be said. It would be a terrific shame if, for economic or social reasons, it became anything other than what it needs to be. For any reason.

Shout out to Alwayslurking. Don't know you, but you pretty much hit the Callandor question on the head. Personally, I think that, in the early days of writing WOT, RJ was looking for more archetypal symbols to play around with; hence Callandor--an immensely powerful sword and a traditional trope in English prose.

It seems to me that, when the question of the last battle comes up, everyone consistently forgets the Choeden Kal. I'm still waiting for Elayne to "discover" how to make a female ter'angreal that can access the second half of the Choeden Kal and hand it off to one of the women on this list (I tend to think it will be either Alivia or Mierin (with a potent backstory we haven't heard about yet) that will be the final person in the circle).

Final thought: is it possible that Jordan's use of the word "Mierin" is a pun on the Chinese "mei ren" (美人） or beautiful woman? I always wonder how much Jordan picked up in Vietnam and how much that has seeped into the world of the wheel.

All the best, everyone.