Been away from these boards since forever, but this is one topic that really burned me. The problem isn't with Perrin himself (even though he is written rather stupidly) but the fact that the entire plot is one big, big Idiot Plot. I'd have been happy to read much more of Perrin, even his pointless side-show, if it was written in a fashion that made sense. I love these books, don't get me wrong-I don't mean to be overly critical. But this side plot should never have been written.

 

To recap:

 

It really starts when Queen Alliandre of Ghealdan writes Rand a letter, asking him to come and deal with the Prophet, and she's willing to swear fealty to his cause if he can help restore a bit of order to her country. It's a completely legitimate request, too, since the Prophet is a person who knows Rand personally, and all the people who are rioting and creating this chaos are people who ostensibly call themselves his followers. That's not to say they're necessarily all that interested in following, or that it's his fault the country is in chaos, but since she's willing to swear fealty in exchange for helping him solve a problem that is related to him, it's a very fair deal.

 

So what is Rand's solution to this? Remember, he's shown himself completely willing to occupy Tear, Illian (later), Cairhein, and Caemlyn at this point (though he's not personally attempting to rule Andor in general, just hold it and restore order for a while). Rand may not like the idea of taking Asha'Man into a volatile situation, but then, he's already crossed that bridge repeatedly. We're never given a reason he doesn't take himself with a dozen Asha'Man, a few of his loyal Aes Sedai, and a portion of his army to deal with this. All he really needed to do was show up and speak to Alliandre-that's essentially all Perrin did before she swore fealty to HIM-and then tell Masema that it was time to go. Obviously it's problematic for Rand himself to risk walking through areas where there's perhaps active rioting, but that's hardly crazier than some stuff he's already done sucessfully, and the fact that some Aes Sedai have sworn oaths of obedience, and the fact that he has Asha'Man willing to obey his orders should be enough to protect him. Dealing with a rioting crowd instead of an army of Aiel should be fairly simple. If they're willing to follow him, he'd be smart to divide them up so they can cause fewer issues, and send them to be trained into an army as he's done with other segments of his followers.

 

But okay, perhaps he thinks it would take too much time and he has other important things to be doing (we'll ignore the fact that, in the same book, he spends several days literally moping about in his room doing nothing). So he sends Perrin, along with a few loyal Aes Sedai and a couple of Asha'Man, along with a force sufficient to subdue any rioting, should it come to it. I might be misremebering the strength of Perrin's forces, but really, two Asha'Man ought to be able to cut a swath through these people if necessary. For some reason that still makes no sense to me, they stage a fight in order to hide Perrin's purpose. To this day, I've never understood why this was a big secret. He was fully willing to have Perrin openly lead his armies attacking Illian to use him as a diversion; perhaps he was afraid of Sammael attacking Perrin if he turned up someplace else while doing work for Rand. Again, this makes no sense in context with other actions-he let Mat march his band without any channeler support quite openly while moving to meet up with the rest of his army, practically begging for HIM to be attacked. And naturally, Sammael did attack, but, being a big fat idiot like the rest of the Forsaken, instead of squashing Mat's tent by ripping open the earth and crushing, he instead launched a very survivable surprise attack using Aiel. So I'm still not sold on that being Rand's motive.

 

Regardless, Perrin actuallly underook this secret mission while openly displaying banners that said, "Hey, Perrin Aybara is right here!" and succeeded. He pretty much had accomplished his mission. Masema, of course, refused to use the OP to Travel, but he agrees that he will go to meet Rand. At this point, Faile is captured by the Shaido. The next bits are perfectly reasonable, if you give Perrrin a pass for panicking and making stupid mistakes as a result of panicking. He doesn't know the strength of the Shaido, so he thinks he can intercept them and catch up with Faile and rescue her. If they'd caught the raiding party itself before it hooked back up with the Shaido, it's quite likely, since they had no channelers. But he screws this up, and ends up taking quite a while before catching up with her. I'll give him a pass for this-people screw up, it makes for good literature. Also, he's still essentially following Rand's directions, since he was sent specifically to secure Queen Alliandre's allegiance, and she ended up kidnapped along with Faile, so rescuing her is an acceptable part of this mission. If we accept the premise of Perrin's mission, we're quite, quite fine with everything that happens in his side plot through Winter's Heart.

 

Then came Crossroads of Twilight. This is where good plotting went to die. The entire plot hinges on Perrin's inability to quickly resolve a problem in order for the rest of the plot to work, so in a world where you can instantly Travel from anywhere to anywhere else, we're forced to endure filler. This is so full of stupid crap I can barely tolerate it. Perrin no longer gets a pass for being stupid since he's no longer panicking or behaving irrationally. It's almost as if RJ knows how idiotic Perrin is being and seeks to drive this home, despite the fact that Perrin has no excuse anymore. Perrin finds the Shaido encampment, he sees that it's way too big and well defended to defeat, and he learns that there's something like 200 channelers in the town. He's literally thinking about how he's ever supposed to defeat this force when an image of Rand is shoved into his brain. It's like an epiphany is trying to shove itself down his throat. At this point, there's no reason he's not saying, "Hey, I should get Rand's help-as soon as he's finished with what sounds like a very dangerous task, as it's creeping out all the channelers I have with me." He doesn't though. I guess he's still under whatever secret oath of secrecy he took, or something, but honestly, there's four major reasons he should be seeking Rand here.

 

1) He's on the same side as Perrin and has a force indisputably strong enough to crack open the Shaido camp like an egg.

2) Rand had already expressed a desire to find the rest of the Shaido and stop them from causing more havoc.

3) Rand also told him specifically to bring back Masema, who is present and creating problems that Rand can readily solve with his mere presence.

4) Perrin cannot complete the mission Rand sent him on without defeating the Shaido, since Alliandre is a prisoner.

 

There are certainly a few problems for Perrin to overcome. That is, immediately after the battle at Shadar Logoth, Rand goes missing. Of course, three different factions, each searching for Rand, ALL managed to track him down by the end of this book (Logain, Bashere, and Loial/Karldin). If Perrin had had the decency to look for him, he'd probably have stumbled on the same method of tracking him down. He also has another advantage none of them had-a freaking psychic connection that allows him to see where Rand is and what he's doing. He has zero excuse for not trying, especially given his singular focus on rescuing Faile. The most obvious method to her salvation is completely ignored by him, as well as any responsibility he feels toward Rand's mission being thrown out the window-he jeopardizes it by leaving Alliandre in bondage longer than necessary.

 

It gets worse. He has the ability to travel anywhere in the known world to purchase grain. Instead of going to Tear, Illian, or Cairhien (remember how Tear had all this extra grain that they sent to Illian and Cairhein?) he travels to a small town nearby where the grain is completely infested with weevils. He ignores this obvious health hazard, refuses to allow anyone to try to help these townspeople, and continues on his way. RJ was toying with us by creating this So Harber sideplot (a sideplot of a sideplot) that screamed: OBVIOUS FILLER.

 

Perrin continued to be idiotic. He continues to get reminds of where Rand is and what he's doing, even learning that Rand loses a hand through his psychic connection, and never tries to contact him. He thinks that he'll make a deal with the Dark One himself if it will get Faile back. Better to make a deal with the Dark One than call your best friend, right? Also, Rand at this point stops obviously hiding from the whole world, which means Perrin might have a chance to find him. Perrin's clearly thinking about using some of his actual friends to help him out, since he sends Grady to the Two Rivers and brings Tam al'Thor with a legion of bowmen. Hey Tam, I know you'd like to see your son and all, and I know we can create magic holes in the air that can take you anywhere in the world, but sorry, we're not taking you to see your son. There's obviously no reason Perrin shoudln't have thought of this, and using his psychic connection to track him down. What he opts instead is to make an alliance with a second powerful force, one completely opposed to Rand, and making a proposition that will make them considerably stronger by consigning 200 women to slavery. He was upset about Rand mistreating the women who threw him in a box and tortured him, but he's completely okay with forcing slavery onto Aiel women. It gets disgusting at this point, since, despite making common cause with the Seanchan, he's still taking an ENORMOUS gamble because he's relying on his ability to poison the Aiel water supply. He just barely has enough strength to pull off his victory thanks to a great deal of luck, rather than taking the relatively easy method of asking his best friend for help.

 

So we've had two books full of idiot plot at this point just for the payoff, stuffed with filler. People might have started to forgive Perrin if his idiot plot had had the decency to die, at this point. It did not. It's gone on for two more books-he rescued Faile, but the Sideplot of Doom refuses to die. He's accomplished what Rand asked of him. He has too many people to logistically move at once since he has only two channelers who can create Gateways. Common sense dictates, since he's achieved what Rand asked of him and just needs to get back and report, he send someone to track down Rand, using a combination of his psychic connection, the ability to Travel anywhere instantly, and a tiny bit of detective work. Let's keep in mind that, while it's nice to point out that Gateways have some logistical problems with using them, the more pressing issue of how he's keeping 100,000 refugees (plus his own army) fed is tidily ignored. He can feel Rand pulling him to rejoin him, so he's marching slowly with this big press of refugees instead of trying to find him. The only reason for this contrivance is so that Tam al'Thor can avoid showing up until the end of the book.

 

The side plot didn't end there, but it should have. Perrin has all these refugees, keeping them fed has got to be a major pain, and he should have told Tam to ask Rand for some channelers to Travel his people, or he should have gone with Rand himself. He knows he needs to be reuniting with Rand. This side-plot continues to go on through Towers of Midnight, with no one from either Rand's or Perrin's camp attempting to contact the other, and Tam not asking Rand to send people to collect them (even though he has friends from the Two Rivers with Perrin).

 

Perrin is likeable. His sideplot is written so stupidly that it is not.

 

BEST. POST. EVER

Um if you remember Rand was busy Umm let me see..... BEING THE DRAGON REBORN, killing forsaken crap like that, and he was having an appeared falling out with perrin so yeay.

I like perrin, I mean come on guys he has a freaking power wrought hammer and kicks butt in the world of dreams. Oh and he kicked the shaido's butt.