What a suprise the threads been derailed already and turned into the existing demandred thread where not one bit of proper discussion can happen without attacks on sandersons writing.

"Remember he's in a circle of 72 with sakarnen!"

You set a higher standard for a fan fiction forum thread than the actual author bothered to adhere to haha

Gawyn sneak attack succeeding (very realistic given he had on 3 RINGS) or Lan gets near him via stealth...Demandred attacks with the Power and is shocked and gets stabbed through the heart by Lan.

 

Not realistic that he would have one-on-one fights with 3 bladeamasters, like some anime movie or that he would be an insanely great bladeamaster. Blademastery in AoL was merely a sport, Demandred may have killed a few dozen with a Power wrought blade during the 10 year War of Power.  

 

One Power fight would have been futile, unless it was Rand+Callandor.  With the 2nd most powerful sa'angreal+72 channeler, almost LTT, even Fain with Mashadar would have lost. Mashadar was nowhere near as vast as Shadar Logoth. 

 

 

"Realistically" of course, given Demandred's sa'angreal+72 channelers and abilites/almost LTT, he would have wrecked the Light armies, gone to SG and finish the Light armies there, kill the distracted Rand et al, finish off Fain. The series ends. The series ends like a horror movie, that would have been cool.  Only thing that could stop Demandred was Rand+Callandor (no buffer)...but such a struggle would have depleted Rand or burned him out...

 

The entire problem boils down to this: Demandred was build up for so long and given his tools, even RJ would have trouble imo.

agreed - the obvious solution is don't write yourself into a corner by giving him a hugely powerful sa'angreal and a huge circle - neither of those things existed before amol

Battles were horrible not just in this book but all of the final books.

 

I get that the great captains were doing slightly stupid tactics to lose without being obvious due to compulsion, but the entire setup of the last books for the final battle was incredibly weak. A group of posters from this site could have been history's greatest military minds in Randland because apparently nobody knew wtf they were doing for the final battle.

 

Why were there so few channelers around? Aside from the obvious killing power, massive amounts of channelers on both sides should have made the final battle span the entire area of the series due to travelling. Leave the stupid Trollocs up north and have that be 1 front, they can't Travel anyway and it was already established that few channelers would be needed to stop them regardless and quite frankly, who cares about Trollocs anymore? It's the last book, every major character has gone from freaking out about Trollocs to casually wiping them from the world.

 

If the light side has Wise Ones, Sea Folk, Aes Sedai, Damane, and Ashaman, their armies should be all over the place. Leaving everything stupidly fractured was just a way to fragment the final battle and reduce the power that all of the Light factions showed throughout the series. Let us see what a relatively unified Light side could do against a unified Dark side, which should obviously had been led by Demandred's Shara.

 

Speaking of Shara, terrible lead in to what should have been the defining military adversary. Let the Trollocs be lame up north, let Shara's channelers have the mobility that the Light side has. Let the final battle span countries. Let us actually know wtf is going on in Shara instead of tiny pieces here and there throughout the books, spend some time building them up in the previous 2 books. Afterall, RJ wanted the final book to be 1 massive book before BS split it into 3. He spent 3 books to give us that failure of a last battle? Really?

 

You want to picture yourself there, to be immersed, but the entire battle was just so dumb it killed it. Telling us about Mat's genius doesn't quite do it... Having Demandred compliment Mat throughout the fight was just terrible, almost as bad as Demandred's death... The battle of Cairhien was superior in every way, from strategy to characters.

 

First reading the book I was just excited to be at the end, finally after years. But the more I thought about it the more the last book was a let down. The greatest military commander of the Shadow vs the greatest military commander the Light has ever seen and we got this? Pathetic.

Let's be friends

Forgive the butchered quote, this is from memory:

'If you have a sword, and an Aiel has his hands and feet, its an even fight. If you're good.'

 

 

As already stated the numbers for many contingents felt a bit off.

 

The Aiel for example seemed to have only a fraction of the numbers of both fighters and channelers that we ahve seen before.

 

Also aside from the Andorrans and the Borderlanders the rest of the nations seem to take little part.

 

As for the battle descriptions themselves BS follows the RJ path of overpowering missile weapons (crossbows as powerful as breech loading rifles, 'dragons' that seem superior to Napoleonic era artillery), overstating the mobility of cavalry and adds no conception of distance (read again how far it is from Caemlyn to those woods where the ambush is waiting).

 

Not only did the Aiel numbers seem off, but so did their value as fighters. Throughout the series they were held up as these super-soldiers who could fight well in all situations. Yet they are treated as if they are only good as skirmishers/irregularsin aMoL.

That is true as well, but perhaps that is BS bringing a note of realism to the battle scenarios. The Aiel are tough fighters and highly mobile, but to compare with their historical counterparts who would you prefer to make up your main force Zulus or Swiss pikemen?.

 

Despite his other flaws as a writer of battles he does seem to appreciate the importance of armour.

i don't disagree with the point, as adding more realism is a reasonable argument, i would counter only with - is that the issue? the rules of the world have been set up in which the aiel are amazing fighters that mounted guys in armour fear. changing that creates a dissonance within the bounds of the story.

I agree with the general sentiment I'm seeing in the earlier posts in this thread. Reading about the War of Power, or even the Trolloc Wars (shattering the Compact of Ten Nations), the "Last Battle" seemed much more local and relatively tame. People who stayed behind in Tear, Illian, Tarabon, Arad Doman, etc., may not even have realized it was going on.

Haha that is pure gold, sums up my reaction. The last battle was a tiff that got out of hand