Egwene... she was one of the Aes Sedai, wasn't she?

 

 

 

All in all, Egwene was a character that annoyed me throughout most of the series.  Don't get me wrong, I could understand where she was coming from, and thought she was well-written, and I enjoyed parts of her overall story arc... I think what always irked me is that she often acted like a teenager throughout the series (which is appropriate, because she was), very convinced of her role and her power, discussing how the Dragon needs her guidance, how the Aes Sedai need her guidance and leadership... but unlike others in the story who acted similar, she never got called to task for this line of thinking.  Whereas other characters came face to face with their own limitations and were forced to say "Huh, maybe I don't have things as together as I thought," Egwene was ultimately a character that had things fall in place for her.  This doesn't mean it was easy (being made damane, being beaten in the White Tower, etc), but even in those negative situations, she found a way to turn them positive, without ever having to really learn humility.

Yeah, I got the same impression - and I think Egwene's arrogant refusal to ever bow down was part of the reason the authors offed her. All characters had to learn a bit of humility - even Galad! But not Egwene. She died guns blazing. She sort of had to, being Aes Sedai and all.

Don't get me wrong, Egwene was all right...

I think a lot of the 'arcade feel' has to do with the generic nature of the armies, there were always sooo many soldiers that even with hundreds dying from channelers every minute it just didn't impact the overall feel.

I agree... And I think this happened because from the perspective of the reader, the nameless generic armies mean nothing. They are just cannon fodder. We only feel the impact of the battle when a named character/city falls. In that sense the Light's casualties felt almost trivial, because only Egwene and Caemlyn were major WoT entities. Moreover, only a few secondary entities, such as Gawyn, Siuan, and the Borderlands, were destroyed. So from our perspective, the Shadow lost everything in the Last Battle, while the Light lost 10% of its forces, tops. The whole thing always felt like a cakewalk rather than like a desperate last stand against overwhelming forces.

Perhaps this is for the best, because an indiscriminate slaughter of the good guys would have also jarred with the general WoT framework. In the WoT, good guys live forever... With a few exceptions.

Anyone else really in shock now that it's over? I don't think it really hit me that this is the end until the day after I finished. I've been reading and following these books for so long that the thought of there never being any more is hard to get my mind around. 

Some people do report shock. I feel pretty awesome. Been reading this thing for 12 years, and it's finally over. Was a good trip. I'll miss the theorizing and the anticipation, but other than that, there's nothing to stop me from rereading the series if I want to go back to the old favorite characters. Meanwhile, we still have aSoFaI, which is likely to last for at least 6-7 more years, if Martin finishes it at all.

We might also see a high-quality animated WoT TV series eventually, so there's that to look forward to.

As has been said, the DO wanted Rand at SG, so it wasn't well defended.

OK, but then why did the Shadow try to retake Shayol Ghul? I guess the logic is that they wanted to draw Rand out, and then catch him with his pants down. But then why didn't Demandred use the Sharan army to capture SG? He surely knew thatt he forces of the Light are mounting a desperate defense there. I mean Graendal could have spared 5 seconds to teleport to Demandred to tell him Rand's up at SG. If not Graendal, then some Dreadlord. Or the DO himself in ALL CAPS.

Makes no sense. But then, so many things in the WoT make no sense I guess it doesn't really matter.

You guys make very good points... I enjoyed reading about the battles, but there was plenty one can critisize.

1) From the "role-playing" perspective, with regard to the WoT rules, channelers felt incredibly weak. Regular forces have never fared well around channelers in WoT world (re: Dumai's Wells; various Trolloc massacres; the Seanchan vs the West or Randworld). The Aiel, Seanchan, Asha'man, and Kin felt, as they say, "underpowered." More generally, the Last Battle felt like a battle from the Napoleonic Era, rather than an all out Modern War - when, given the OP with its gateways (= super-mobility plus near-instant communication) and nukes, and the Seanchan's airforce, it should have been the latter.

2) Both sides' strategies were absurd. As many people have remarked, given the forces of the Light's mobility, numerical inferiority, and nuclear OP capability, the good guys should never have divided across four fronts. They should have adopted a teleport & nuke strategy.

Balefire and gateways open major plot holes on the part of the Shadow's strategy. The Dreadlords could have simply made a few very large circles, and the proceeded to balefire the major cities of the world. That would have meant that even after Rand's vicory at Shayol Ghul, the world would have been broken.

There was nothing to do with the Trollocs but just send them out en masse. However, the Trollocs didn't have to attack Merillor. They could simply have continued their invasion of Randland, killing as much as possible.

Apart from trying to destroy Randland rather than Randland's armies, the Shadow should have tried to prevent the formation of the coalition. In particular, they should have prevented the alliance with the Seanchan. Imagine Demandred had invaded Seanchan with the Sharans. Tuon would have had to go and fight there, breaking up the coalition.

And nevermind that Demandred could have simply nuked the Allied armies with his mega-circle.

3) Why did the Dark One leave his command center exposed? He always knew Rand would invade Shayol Ghul. So why not fortify the valley to the hilt. Stack up as many Dreadlords as possible, set up ambushes, etc.

4) The Asha'man and the Seanchan barely fought despite being in the coalition - and together, the two armies were probably as strong as the rest of the forces of the Light combined.

5) There were all sorts of problems with the battles as presented - for example the duels with Demandred - but whatever.

6) The True Power wielders failed to exploit their assassination cabilities. What could have stopped Graendal from TP-gatewaying to Egwene's tent masked as an Aes Sedai, and balefiring the whole joint? Why didn't Slayer (despite his idiotic orders) not teleport behind Mat with a bow in hand? Meh...

7) Finally, there were all sorts of weird high-fantasy type leftovers from the first 3 books, which fail to fit with the political/ role-playing-ruleset story that the WoT eventually became. Those were quietly muddled over at the end: Darkhounds, Last Hunt, Horn of Valere, whatever.

From a literary perspective, there were too many battle scenes in MoL. By now we've seen thousands of heroic charges and million of slain trollocs. And yet two-thirds of the book reads like this: "He was very tired, but pushed on to fight. He slew 24 trollocs with his sword. Everybody cheered. She was also very tired, but she sent a few fireballs at the Trollocs anyway. Everybody cheered." How about fewer battles and more melodrama. Lan meets Lorraine; Rand, Mat and Perrin get drunk together; Galad and Rand meet knowing they are brothers; Tuon cries knowing she is a Marathdamane; Lanfear actually has a plausible love interest; etc.

The problem with the battles is that Sanderson tried - with some success! - to produce a 500 page-long climax. But such a thing cannot be. The reader ends up skimming across random PoV battle scenes, looking for the next interesting event.

Still, as I say, given his writing style (influenced by comic books and even computer games, from what I see), and WoT's intrinsic One Power plot-holes, Sanderson has done a decent enough job.

Finished reading last night. The book was a satisfying finale to the series, but it suffered from the same problem the last two books had - Sanderson's pedestrian errand-list plot-development style. Don't get me wrong, I think Sanderson has done a reasonable job finishing the series - particularly given the amount of foreshadowing and prophecies Jordan left to him - but since so many events just had to happen, I got the impression that Sanderson just inserted those events the way you put groceries in your shopping bag. The effect was uninspiring.

For example, we knew for a long time that Mat, Thom and Noal would free Moiraine. That finally happened but very late in the game, and in the most direct way imaginable. The Tower of Ghenjei sequence was like a D&D dungeon. They go in, they free Moiraine, and of course Noal dies and later returns with the Heroes of the Horn. Then Moiraine does nothing in the last book and Mat ends up missing the bulk of the series' events by galivanting about with the circus and so on. Pedestrian.

Another example of pedestrian plot development involves the main theme of the classic Christian problem of evil. Why does the good God allow evil things to happen? Vaguely speaking, one can claim that evil occurs because of free will - if no evil exists, people can't really make moral choices, and if they can't choose good, they are not people but automatons. Rand eventually figures that out and just closes the Bore, letting the wheel turn again and so on. Fine - but very predictable and direct. That said, the problem of evil/ free will theme is always enjoyable.

In contrast, the Cleansing of Saidin back around book 9 had caught me unprepared. Then when I re-read the series, I found lots of foreshadowing. That was fun. With the last battle and the Tower of Ghenjei, I knew more or less exactly what would happen. Can't blame Sanderson for that, but perhaps he should have thrown in a few surprises.

One of the other major themes in the book was that of the land and the ordinary people doing their part in the Last Battle. In consequence, MoL features countless snippets of PoVs from tertiary characters. The idea was to give us the feeling of a whole world - but in effect, what happened instead was that a lot of major characters got very little time on stage, and some major plots were resolved off-hand - the most egregious example being the Shadar Logoth/ Padan Fain plot, which fizzled in about 4 pages.

Between attrition and recycling, the Forsaken were a sorry shadow of their former glory. Of the five Forsaken present at the Last Battle, two were recycle-jobs, one was totally broken, and one was a greenhorn. That forced Demandred to do the heavy lifting, and he was a lot of fun, but also incredibly dumb. At the point when everybody in the world knew that Rand was fighting the Dark One, Demandred kept thinking Rand is pretending to be Mat or something. Worse, Demandred kept botching his duels. He didn't finish off Gawyn. And afterwards, incredibly, he not only failed to kill Galad - he didn't even pick up the foxhead medalion! Which allowed Lan to kill him. Never mind that Demandred could simply have ordered his goons to kill both Galad and Lan. But nooo. I understand the Forsaken are arrogant and crazy, but Demandred comes off as a moron to boot :/.

Graendal's compulsion shenanegans were fun. Moghedien's role was laughable.

Turning Taim into a Forsaken was a great idea, but poorly realized, since it came too late into the series.

Lanfear, who is one of the most interesting characters in the series, was underused. It would have been really fun to see one of the forsaken - and why not Lanfear? - turn to the light, perhaps burning herself out in the process. But noo, she was killed in the dullest way imaginable.

Shaidar Haran could have been a major boss, but instead he was just thrown away.

Slayer was sort of interesting, but again, the most obvious thing happened - Perrin (who, annoyingly, became another superman because of the World of Dreams) had an epiphany and just went and killed Slayer and that was that.

Of the good guys, I think we could have used a few more epic sacrifices. Egwene's rampage was probably the highlight of the book. Gawyn's sneaking was also good. Egg and Gawyn were the only majors to die. Birgitte's death was a cop-out, since it actually benefited Birgitte - how lame. Elayne, tragically, was immune due to her kids, and so we had to suffer her to the end :( . Lan should have died in the aftermath of his duel. Maybe also Faile (too bad the Shaido didn't kill her, she's insufferable, Berelain is ten times better). Moiraine or Nynaeve? Even Matt. Because to win a Last Battle, you gotta break some eggs.

For that matter, the way Rand survived, and people's reactions to his apparent demise, were incredibly anti-climactic.

Logain's glory was another anti-climax. In the end Logain did nothing particularly interesting.

The Androl plotline was the best written one, though it could have been cut out with little to no consequence. Androl's link to Thevara was an excellent idea and worked wonderfully. Apparently Androl is Sanderson's "own" character. That's fair. The main problem I have with Androl is that he comes off as some kind of a superhero on par with the Ta'Veren and the girls. And that's incongruent with earlier developments. Moreover, the Black Tower arc never reached its promised apex. The Battle for the Black Tower was minor at best, as was the role of the Ashaman at Taimor Gai'dan.

Min "dominated" her scenes. She was always my favorite from Rand's harem, could have used a lot more of her in the series. The problem with Min is prophecy overload. I suppose that's why she had to stay out of stage most of the time.

The Aiel and the Seanchan were a bit underused. One could really see that at the very end of the Last Battle, when Sanderson felt compelled to write a few paragraphs about the Seanchan's beasts of war.

So in the end everything works out as anticipated. I think we could have used 100-200 pages of mop-up at the end. "And so Perrin became King of Manetheren, Rand's kids grew up to become this or that, Egwene's Column became a pilgrimage site, and the Wheel turned and so on." Perhaps with an epilogue in which characters from the Fifth Age reminsice of the Fourth Age, or something like that. After 20 years, a few million words, and thousands of pages, the available ending feels too abrupt.

There is more to be said, but in other threads. In sum, MoL is a satisfying, though imperfect, conclusion to the series. As we all know, Jordan dropped the ball somewhere around book 7. He should have contracted the Faile/Perrin/Shaido, Mat/Circus/Tuon, and Elayne/Andor plots, and completed the series in 11-12 books. Then he might have finished the job on time, and the end product would have been better. That said, the Wheel of TIme remains a solid work of stunning scope. I like it better than LotR, though LotR has the advantage of being much shorter (and hense more readable). So here's a toast to the Memory of Mr. Jordan! And a tip of the hat to Mr. Sanderson.

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Oh yeah, and Bela should have lived. Her death was definitely Mr Sanderson having morbid fun at our expense. But that's not a big deal. At least Gawyn got whacked, man was he annoying.