I must say, I don't know what to make of the book. Honestly. I feel somewhat unsatisfied with the ending even though I understand the motivation, but I'll get to that in a bit...Fair warning: this is a rant....I gather that is the nature of this thread...so, it might be "TL;DR"
<rant>
As a military man, I liked the battle scenes, especially the detail put forth in the planning and execution. The gods-eye-view gateways? Brilliant! Androl's use of gateways to fight? Innovative and astounding. Interestingly, I was upset with Gawyn's death...until Egwene sacrificed herself. In my mind, that made sense: in one move, we see a near-exact echo of her Manetheren roots as well as a pseudo-antithesis to the origination of Dragonmount, in the shadow of which stands the White Tower and the Flame of Tar Valon. Interesting choice of plot device, but not at all disappointing. At one point, however, (about when we thought Lan had died) I started chuckling, wondering if Brandon was trying to compete with G.R.R. Martin in terms of how many characters he could kill off in one book.
I've read a couple of folks mentioning the slap-dash pace of the book. Eh. I didn't mind it. Even though the chapters bounced around (which destroyed my ability to guess what the chapter was about my interpreting the graphic under the number....) it reflected the pace, chaos, and uncertainty of war. While I generally do not like books written that way, I feel that it was appropriate for this telling.
Demandred? Here I start drifting. Every prophecy known to every person in every book says that Rand will be directly fighting the DO. So...yeah...you marching around the field screaming for him...that's gonna do alot. After all the books set up the Forsaken as scheming, manipulative, contentious, evil entities with various, but explicit, interpretations about the prophecies, Demandred's character was flattened into a glossed-up fool blowing stuff up on the battlefield, yelling for someone that he SHOULD know isn't there. There is an implication, from the POV of M'Hael (*cough* useless *cough*) that something was "wrong" with Demandred, but that's it. I think that Demandred was a predictable and boring plot element.
Logain? I start drifting more. Did anyone else see dark-angsty-early-Rand v2.0? Really? Are we going to do this...again? We get some explaination that the attempted Turning had done something to him...and we get some resolution before he breaks the seals. But the "I'm going to do what I THINK is good by getting revenge on how I was wronged" horse was dead, beaten, and finally buried with Rand on the top of Dragonmount. We don't need to exhume the corpse and continue whacking it with a stick.
I was back on-board with the rest of the battle, though I would've liked to have known more back-story with Fain. While his appearance, and method of doing so, made sense, it came out of nowhere.
Defeating the DO? Exquisite! Realizing that "good" without the choice between good and evil is meaningless and that the DO isn't merely an embodiment of evil in the moral sense, but also the antithesis of everything that is human: love, hope, free will...Spot on! To have love, you must have an understanding of loss. To have hope, you must have dispair.
Ending.......As a father of a young child, I hated it. We spend how many books explaining that Rand's Two Rivers roots raised him as a stubborn, but fundamentally good and responsible man? Only at the end, to have him be like "Yay I'm alive! Which one of the MOTHERS OF MY CHILDREN will follow me!!! HAHAHA ROFL TTYL CYA!" Um dude, you have like...6 kids on the way. After all of your b******* about "not having a real father" and "not knowing where you belong" sack up, grow a pair, and take responsibility. I know that he can't let his shadow (not Shadow) influence the world, but galavanting off as a wanderer? not cool dude.....
The pipe? It was amusing, but frustratingly so. An unnecessary, and I think childish, cliffhanger element, like you'd see at the end of a TV episode. It actually reminded me of the end of X-men 3 (I think), where we see the "defeated" Magneto sitting at the chess board and *gasp* he makes the chess piece wiggle!!!! DUN DUN DUN!!!! Except unlike the movie, we KNOW that there isn't going to be another book...so after answering SO many questions (either satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, depending on your own reading) why the last-minute element? *shakes head*
The "OMG I just finished!" Thread
in Wheel of Time Books
Posted · Edited by Kalloran
I must say, I don't know what to make of the book. Honestly. I feel somewhat unsatisfied with the ending even though I understand the motivation, but I'll get to that in a bit...Fair warning: this is a rant....I gather that is the nature of this thread...so, it might be "TL;DR"
<rant>
As a military man, I liked the battle scenes, especially the detail put forth in the planning and execution. The gods-eye-view gateways? Brilliant! Androl's use of gateways to fight? Innovative and astounding. Interestingly, I was upset with Gawyn's death...until Egwene sacrificed herself. In my mind, that made sense: in one move, we see a near-exact echo of her Manetheren roots as well as a pseudo-antithesis to the origination of Dragonmount, in the shadow of which stands the White Tower and the Flame of Tar Valon. Interesting choice of plot device, but not at all disappointing. At one point, however, (about when we thought Lan had died) I started chuckling, wondering if Brandon was trying to compete with G.R.R. Martin in terms of how many characters he could kill off in one book.
I've read a couple of folks mentioning the slap-dash pace of the book. Eh. I didn't mind it. Even though the chapters bounced around (which destroyed my ability to guess what the chapter was about my interpreting the graphic under the number....) it reflected the pace, chaos, and uncertainty of war. While I generally do not like books written that way, I feel that it was appropriate for this telling.
Demandred? Here I start drifting. Every prophecy known to every person in every book says that Rand will be directly fighting the DO. So...yeah...you marching around the field screaming for him...that's gonna do alot. After all the books set up the Forsaken as scheming, manipulative, contentious, evil entities with various, but explicit, interpretations about the prophecies, Demandred's character was flattened into a glossed-up fool blowing stuff up on the battlefield, yelling for someone that he SHOULD know isn't there. There is an implication, from the POV of M'Hael (*cough* useless *cough*) that something was "wrong" with Demandred, but that's it. I think that Demandred was a predictable and boring plot element.
Logain? I start drifting more. Did anyone else see dark-angsty-early-Rand v2.0? Really? Are we going to do this...again? We get some explaination that the attempted Turning had done something to him...and we get some resolution before he breaks the seals. But the "I'm going to do what I THINK is good by getting revenge on how I was wronged" horse was dead, beaten, and finally buried with Rand on the top of Dragonmount. We don't need to exhume the corpse and continue whacking it with a stick.
I was back on-board with the rest of the battle, though I would've liked to have known more back-story with Fain. While his appearance, and method of doing so, made sense, it came out of nowhere.
Defeating the DO? Exquisite! Realizing that "good" without the choice between good and evil is meaningless and that the DO isn't merely an embodiment of evil in the moral sense, but also the antithesis of everything that is human: love, hope, free will...Spot on! To have love, you must have an understanding of loss. To have hope, you must have dispair.
Ending.......As a father of a young child, I hated it. We spend how many books explaining that Rand's Two Rivers roots raised him as a stubborn, but fundamentally good and responsible man? Only at the end, to have him be like "Yay I'm alive! Which one of the MOTHERS OF MY CHILDREN will follow me!!! HAHAHA ROFL TTYL CYA!" Um dude, you have like...6 kids on the way. After all of your b******* about "not having a real father" and "not knowing where you belong" sack up, grow a pair, and take responsibility. I know that he can't let his shadow (not Shadow) influence the world, but galavanting off as a wanderer? not cool dude.....
The pipe? It was amusing, but frustratingly so. An unnecessary, and I think childish, cliffhanger element, like you'd see at the end of a TV episode. It actually reminded me of the end of X-men 3 (I think), where we see the "defeated" Magneto sitting at the chess board and *gasp* he makes the chess piece wiggle!!!! DUN DUN DUN!!!! Except unlike the movie, we KNOW that there isn't going to be another book...so after answering SO many questions (either satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, depending on your own reading) why the last-minute element? *shakes head*
</rant>