On 6/3/2018 at 5:46 PM, Sabio said:

The Aiel are suppose to be the police/judges.  But there are plenty of ways wars can still happen.   Shaido and Shara aren't part of the peace and fair game.  In some vision it was mentioned an aiel with a new rifle on way to Shara (or maybe coming back) for peacekeeping operations there.  Also the world not done with battle can also mean the Seanchan taking back their homeland. I guess there is nothing stopping a civil war or saying you have to run to help (unless can be proven maybe another nation is the one stirring up the trouble).

 

Also there is now a lot of unclaimed land.  Look at the blight, will nations run to claim that or will new nations appear there.  I think it's safe Malkier will rise again and the borderlands will try to reclaim land lost from the blight.  But there is a lot of vacant space there.  So if new nations do form, they won't be bound to the Dragon's peace.  Will someone try to take over Shara, etc.  So plenty of areas for conflict to occur.

I don't remember any vision like that, an Aiel with a rifle? Where in the books did that happen?

Reading this thread all the way through has made me want to create another discussion.

 

Mods, if you would be so kind, I would like a thread on the ways we as fans would change channeling to make this story better. Maybe call it "fixing channeling" or something more creative if that isn't enough for you.

 

I know people won't like to hear it, but channeling and the one power, one of the most integral parts of the series, turns into IMO one of the biggest weaknesses of the series at the end. It is simply too strong, too much.

 

Channeling being weaker, having fewer channelers, or having major restrictions on what individual channelers could do would have majorly helped WOT.

I think it would have been ok if only the numbers were consistent. Same numbers on both sides, and ready to go. Channelers being nearly godlike is key to the series, if you ruin them there is no WoT anymore. What makes no sense is 400 Ayyad and a few Asha'man Dreadlords beating the 3000+ channelers of the Light there should have been plus a hundred dragons.

I kept waiting for Demandred to open Gateways into outerspace around his attacking forces, sucking them out into nothingness.

 

Nothing says Forsaken more than using your advanced understanding of the world against a bunch of medieval rubes!

 

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Also, couldn't Androl have just dumped lava onto the Shadowspawn/Demmy from a horizontal altitude gateway?

Good point! I mean, even if we forget the fact that they dont use this tactic at all at the Last Battle without reason, why doesnt he use a horizontal gateway when they show up at Cairhien to save Elayne's Army? I remember there is some vague explanation and it is implied that the gate has to to be vertical here, but that didnt seem a to be a problem when he saved Logain or flushed the Dreadlords back at the Black Tower.

 

I really tried not to put too much attention to the battle plans. I know its hard, since half the book is pure war, but if you try to analize them you find yourself feeling cold with a book you are supposed to enjoy and wishing RJ was alive every 2-3 pages.

 

Now that I finished, I can think of so many flaws that I have to come here and cry out, I'm sorry you have to listen to me ;)

 

 

1. Androl and the super lava waygate. WTF? I mean, its a great idea for the Cairhien battle. Just one question. Why the hell dont they do the same at the last battle?!?

 

Because Androl's talent is being able to make Gates without having to have been there, and there's only one of him. 

 

 

>>>4. The Seanchan Army part. Mat is a great general. I really want to believe it. But, why in the hell would he keep 1/4 of his army and 1000 damane to the very end of the battle???? Worst of all, why would he let HIS people die like meat, and preserve until the end the twisted society Seanchan is, letting them just finish the battle with a last sweep? At least use the damane, man!!!! Couldnt they have at least relieved the Aes Sedai when they were exhausted???

 

It's the element of surprise. He explained the strategy earlier with his card analogy. You can lose 99 hands in a row, but when the last hand comes up and you go all in you can win right there. Sending the Seanchan away would trick Demandred into over-extending his forces for the crushing blow. Once he's over-extended then you bring in the Seanchan. This sort of thing happens all the time in battles--it's called a reserve force, and is something that's pretty important to have. 

Dude, they spend half the book talking about how important it is for the Aes Sedai not to lose their position against the Ayyad, but he leaves them there to rot even if they are exhausted. Couldnt at least he use the damane to relieve them? That wouldnt be risking the Seanchan Army. Or the Wise Ones for that matter. If there were 400 Shaido Wise Ones who could channel, even if the other ELEVEN clans were much much smaller in size, shouldnt have their 2k+ Wise Ones made a difference? Nop, they're nowhere to be seen. 400 Ayyad and a few rogue Asha'man are enough to beat all the channelers of the Light. Where are the "around one thousand WindFinders" that were previously gathered in Tear after the Seanchan invasion? All of them taking turns with the Bowl of the Winds?

And about the lava Gate, Androl is one, but he can link with up to 72 other channelers. That is lava for a while, I would say. He doesnt even have to be close to the battle, where he could draw attention from Demandred. He can just open the it from say Caemlyn into the battlefield. No risk to hit anything but trollocs if you open it back enough, in such a big field.

I really tried not to put too much attention to the battle plans. I know its hard, since half the book is pure war, but if you try to analize them you find yourself feeling cold with a book you are supposed to enjoy and wishing RJ was alive every 2-3 pages.

Now that I finished, I can think of so many flaws that I have to come here and cry out, I'm sorry you have to listen to me ;)

1. Androl and the super lava waygate. WTF? I mean, its a great idea for the Cairhien battle. Just one question. Why the hell dont they do the same at the last battle?!?

2. Numbers. I find it so disappointing that BS didnt even bother to give us a few figures. Worse than that, that he didnt bother to make those numbers he doesnt really give us (but are implied) consistent with the previous numbers that RJ had actually given us. Many posts in this thread are about suppositions on this matter, but facts that I can remember from previous books talk about 800 Aes Sedai (after the Black Ajah purge), a huge number of Wise Ones (only Shaido there were 400, but, in this book, we only hear about Amys and Sorilea at Shayol Ghul, not one of the 2000+ there should have been make it to the Merrilor's battle), like 1000 damane (some of them, Shaido wise ones), close to 1000 Windfinders and like 400 Asha'Man even if Taim took a good share of them. I also remember words from other RJ books of "about 400.000" Aiel camped outside Caemlyn and Cairhien, and those were just a few clans. What the hell happened to them??

Suddenly, 400 hundred Ayyad (the only number we get at all) come and almost win the battle.

3. Plans are good just because we are told so. Demandred is a good general just because we are told so. But... Why the hell would he risk a battle like Merrilor's when he has the numbers to just swarm the continent with trollocs in a way that the Light's Forces could never take care of them before the Dark One breaks free? Because he wanted to fight Lews Therin? Well then, bro, you are a genius. Great plan to leave Shayol Gull unprotected and expect him to come to you against a million trollocs (again a guess, we cant know).

4. The Seanchan Army part. Mat is a great general. I really want to believe it. But, why in the hell would he keep 1/4 of his army and 1000 damane to the very end of the battle???? Worst of all, why would he let HIS people die like meat, and preserve until the end the twisted society Seanchan is, letting them just finish the battle with a last sweep? At least use the damane, man!!!! Couldnt they have at least relieved the Aes Sedai when they were exhausted???

To sum up, no way I can buy this battle.

 

I did find her death a redemption in some ways. I hadn't got very far in my planned re-read of the books, and prior to reading AMoL I was at the part where Egwene is a damane. She was one of my favourite characters then, and this was a part of her arc which made me empathise with her like no other characters. Reading AMoL after the early books, its actually very jarring how differently her character is written.

I agree. You could expect a character's personality to get developed through such a long saga, but the feeling I get is Brandon Sanderson could have done better, specially with Egwene and Elayne. They were both two of my favourite characters until Knife of Dreams, then they suddenly became a weird half-hero half-brat mixture hard to figure out.

He got the best out of Egwene in TGS, but her role in AMoL...

Also, I should say, of all the bets I made before reading AMoL, Light, Egwene was not in any of the possible deathlists I imagined. She seemed to have such a bright future healing the White Tower... I thought it would be Perrin or Rand the ones that had to pay the mandatory butchers bill. It shocked me when she died, even after Gawyn's dead. To be honest, the boy had it coming, both RJ and BS had been trying to make readers hate him for too long. What I didnt expect was his dead to be as pointless as it was stupid (lol).