Or maybe replace the Dragon.

It's pondered in the past that the whole white tower couldn't have stopped Mashadar.  Would the Forsaken have fared any better?

*I seriously doubt this was considered, but it's neat to think about.

Well, from a biological point of view, nearly every primate that I'm aware of spends its life trying to break the menstrual cycle in one way or another.

And Shadar Haran, who was completely unutilized in anything that mattered, but surely deserves a mention for his "potential" danger.

I wonder if, on the topic of Perrin crafting Mjölnir, BS ever said he was thorry.

Fain probably deserves a mention.

Not for being the most skilled, but the topic says dangerous.

I thought Padan Fain was shaping up to be something interesting, then...  Nothing really happened with him.

He was brought to the final battle and killed by BS off out of a sense of obligation I suppose, but did he do anything that mattered in the last half of the series?

If Perrin had managed to kill him off in the Two Rivers would that have been a better ending for him?

And does anybody disagree, and think that Blackwind Faindeith learning about vaccines was a fitting end for the 14 book long buildup?

But was there even enough non-Perrin stuff to believe he'd still have existed?

My memory's a bit hazy on the Slayer matter but I can't think of anything he did that had to happen for the story to progress (at least, nothing that couldn't have happened slightly differently).

Without the Wolf, the Wolfkiller wouldn't have been created.

Good call with the Rand/Lanfear thing.

I think it would've been interesting if that had been presented as something that actually went somewhere instead of just something to trigger her downfall.

Sure was a lot of payoff with that one, right?

Halima and Delena.

It matched the raw, believable passion of the other romances, and was burned out of existence with balefire, setting an example that the others can only aspire to.

...Sorry, but you covered the only tolerable ones.  Even Rand/Min was a bit out there.  "Well, I guess I'm going to love him anyway so I should probably just love him."

Mat and Tuon may not cause a lot of swooning, but at least they interacted in some significant manner before magically being in love.

On 9/21/2018 at 9:27 PM, Fulseman said:

Wait for the molten arc to get near the ground and then open the second gate of water to cool the mile long iron bar you just created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_explosion

" A steam explosion is an explosion caused by violent boiling or flashing of water into steam, occurring when water is ... heated by the interaction of molten metals "

You might wanna stand back a bit.

On 9/21/2018 at 10:02 PM, Urielle said:

strong female or nonbinary protagonists

This makes me think immediately of the Soul Rider series.  If "nonbinary protagonists" is a factor I'd definitely recommend it.

I was a bit young when I read it so I can't really give an intellectual, worldly review of it but I enjoyed it.  The magic system was fairly unique and it's got gender fluidity in spades.  I think it would be easy to read certain excerpts and assume it's sexist in various ways but I seem to recall the takeaway being more like "hypersexualized nymph is just as valid an orientation as any other permutation", and it goes over quite a few of the permutations.

(non-referer link, don't buy here, but it says "free with audible trial" so maybe you'll be interested - https://www.amazon.ca/Spirits-Flux-Anchor-Soul-Rider/dp/B071Z5H6HR/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537887015&sr=8-1&keywords=flux+and+anchor  )

Probably your best bet is to find a copy in a library.

If anybody else is familiar with the series I'd appreciate hearing their thoughts on it too.

1.  Bela

2.  Bela

3.  Bela

1.  The Bela Rising

2.  The Gathering Bela

3.  A Memory of Bela

Obviously nobody has considered the fact that the dead are still walking the earth.

Rand merely needed to realize that his pipe was lit because it was in actuality aflame on the funeral pyre with his corpse.

Yeah, it's pretty conclusive.  Purple is the colour of people's faces.

"The first time Thom returned-with a second purple bruise on the other cheek"

"his eyes were closed and a bloody gash on the side of his head was coming up in a purple lump."

"Her hair was all in disarray, her head scarf gone, and a purple lump marred her cheek."

"A purple lump the size of a hen's egg stood out beside Juilin's eye"

"Areina was the youngest of the three, with steady blue eyes in a face bruised purple"

"Shaidar Haran turned its attention back to the woman twitching in its fist.  Her face was beginning to go purple"

"Slowly Nynaeve's face turned purple"

Edit:  This is now my thing that I've noticed about Randland.

Edit 2:  Master Gill's cat is orange-and-white.

There, the Emond's Glory flower is purple.

...Probably named after Emond's face.

Ah yes, the majestic colour purple....  Truly one of nature's most beau...

Quote

"Act your age," Bran added. "And for once remember you're a member of the Council."
Cenn's wrinkled face grew darker with every word from Tam and the Mayor, until it was almost purple.

Huh.  Well, lots of things are purple, surely there must be something pret....

Quote

"That young woman wants a husband," Cenn Buie growled, bouncing on his toes. His face was purple, and getting darker.

Maybe it's just Cenn giving purple a bad name, there have got to be other pur...

Quote

Byar's face went deathly white as the grandfatherly man spoke; by contrast, the two spots in his hollow cheeks deepended from red to purple.

I give up.  Purple is the colour of flustered man-face.

No real point to this but maybe some people find things like this interesting.

https://www.textfixer.com/tools/online-word-counter.php

I copied the text of tSR there (no specific reason, just the only eBook I had handy at the moment) and let it run for 20 minutes.  This is what it spit out.

Words of frequency less than 5 have been removed due to size limits of attachments here.

Rand was used 1,024 times, Perrin 990, Mat 516

Surprisingly, "plump" was only used 24 times.

Braid(s) was used 80 times.

tsr-frequency.txt

Nobody else in the entire series struggles with literacy.  There are books in the Two Rivers inn and it's implied that everybody reads.  Everyone knows the legends of Jain Farstrider, from the books.

That's Mat, the village boy.

How many times does he explain that he read his battle tactics in a book?  His other lives wrote the books.

None come to mind, but I'd expect it wouldn't be difficult to find instances of Mat reading without a struggle.

Showing Mat's letter written in such a way immediately makes him the least literate character in an epic tale spanning 14 books, all so we can share a laugh at uneducated little VillageBoy-Mat.

I'm just starting the final book and we're introduced to the "not-quite Aiel" with mysterious powers.  If I have to guess, I'd assume the Aiel's practice of sending their male channelers alone to attack the dark one's place of power has been ill-advised, but we'll find out.

More importantly, why the hell would anybody file down their teeth into points?

Sure, it's threatening, but imagine living like that.  Unless they leave a few molars unfiled, then maybe I could see adapting to it.

But really, even smiling would hurt like hell with all the cold air rushing over the exposed tooth.  And forget about ever eating ice cream again.

Do they have super toothpastes to reduce sensitivity?

How often do the tiny little toothpoints snap off?  Especially if you try to bite a person/trolloc/steak with them.

Can they pronounce a "th" sound or does it come out all weird?

I've still got a few pages left which I expect to finish on the bus home from work in an hour, but I can at least partially answer your question now.

I enjoyed it overall.  It had some quirks/growing pains, but it feels very Jordanesque now.

Rand's pretty much stopped being interesting as a character for the moment.  Omnipotent messiah, his enemies go mad and destroy themselves just by basking in his presense, yawn.  But the story doesn't really seem to be about him anymore, so life goes on.

Mat has returned to being an acceptable character by the end.  He's not "Jordan's Mat", but he's actually enjoyable to read again instead of cringe-worthy.

Obviously it's too early to tell what Taim's up to, but it bothers me that he left a "logain resistance" alive at all in his tower.  If he's evil, and converting people to evil (I expect this is that "13 myrdraal can turn a channeler" thing that was never brought up again from the early books) then he should just do it.  What's with the pussyfooting around?  He should have an evil assembly line going, not be cherry picking students.

And what's up with the dreamspike?  Does he not expect it to draw just the tiniest smidgen of attention?  A smidgen?

"Oh, that.  I thought it was for keeping away mosquitos."

Edit:  But those complaints are just standard for any form of entertainment.  Obviously any villain has to be wildly inept in some manner.

Almost done ToM now.  He seems to be far more restrained with the silliness.

I was a little worried when the badger made an appearance, but crisis mostly averted.

I can definitely appreciate the difficulties of trying to pick up where somebody left off.  If anything, the fact that Mat's the only one that my brain rejected should be a compliment on how well everything else turned out.

Hey, if there's more to the character yet to come, or at least more light shed on her brief time with us, great.  That could easily explain our vastly different viewpoints.

I just assumed it was the end of her storyline based on balefire being the big shiny rod of "I'M NEVER WRITING ABOUT THIS CHARACTER AGAIN" from the Creator himself.

To summarize my thoughts, if that's what RJ had wanted to do with the character all along, weird, but fine.

It just seems extremely odd to spend all that time creating a character that was basically superfluous.  She really should've had some epic storyline that concluded around book 37, but it seems to have been pruned before it was allowed to bloom.