Let's see, he's a blacksmith, so that's a start. Then he's Goldeneyed. He confesses to having a Tin Ear. We've seen him in action as Perrin the Silver Tongued, and for those who know what Chrysostom means, Golden Mouthed as well. Even his wife concedes he has a Heart of Gold, though sometimes a Head of Lead. What else can we add?

Yes, you just have to wathc out for those Jaws that bite, those Claws that catch ... very well done!

I'm wondering if anyone's yet composed melodies to go along with the songs in the Wheel of Time? I've found myself at times thinking such-and-such a melody would fit Mat's lyrics in TLoC, though I haven't got around to doing anything with my musings. And likewise, humming a melody to the plainchant spear songs of the Aiel - I learnt one Maori chant - Te Tau o Matatua - when I was learning the Maori language in the 1980s. And the Aiel battle songs seem quite like the Maori chant. |That is, it wouldn't have a wide range, and would be very rhythmic, and so on.

While reading that hilarious scene of Mat trying to make sense of the Aes Sedai at Salidar celebrating Egwene's ascent to the Amyrlin Seat, I read that bit about Mat anti-Power angreal going chilly after dancing with Halima and wandering on, and I thought, of all the things Halima is most likely to try, it's Compulsion. He's ta'veren, he's got the ear of the Dragon Reborn, he's clearly one of the linchpins of the resistance to the Dark One, and taking him out of the play and making use of him is going to get Halima major kudos from the Dark One and Chosen cohorts. What do people think?

A romantic meeting between Semirhage and Shaidar Haran. (It doesn't bear thinking about .... 🙂 )

In FoH, when we finally reach Samara on the Ghealdan side of the river, we see the animals Valan Luca has in his menagerie. RJ's slipped it in, so quietly you'd never notice, but I am re-reading the series, and this leaped out at me: I've seen them in Tidbinbilla in ACT. They're koalas. I suppose RJ may have had a visit or two to Australia, and perhaps visited Taronga Park Zoo in Sydney, or so.

Getting back to the topic, I think the characterisation of Lanfear as evil is somewhat lacking because she doesn't twirl her moustache ... Seriously, I thought RJ made Byar a monomaniac,which fitted his purpose in the series reasonably well. However, where he slipped up was failing to bring out the reason, unlike Muadh, whose one-line characterisation gives an excellent reason why he should hate Darkfriends. I suspect Byar's just one in a long line of fanatics, but it would've been better to have had some more detail.

I don't know if anyone's remarked on this before, but re-reading tDR, I realized that Padan Fain had used "Great Lord" in front of Pedron Niall, and Pedron Niall hadn't noticed. Admittedly he was using it as a term of address for Pedron Niall himself, but it leaped out at me that Padan Fain had betrayed himself, and the person he was speaking to, hadn't noticed. What do people think of this?

It isn't sequential. RJ uses the flashback technique at least twice, and we only get back into sequential narrative when they get to Caemlyn. I hadn't thought of it in connection to the stress they were under, with Mat steadily losing ground to the Shadar Logoth dagger, and Rand experiencing the after-effects of touching the One Power. But it does make sense.

I'm doing a re-read of the WoT, and am getting stuck into tEotW, tacking our dynamic duo Rand and Mat all the way into Caemlyn. In Ch 39, Weaving of the Web, Rand thinks "Hyam Kinch had talked about strange shapes, and surely enough there had been a Fade back there." Except that I've gone through all the mentions of Hyam Kinch in tEotW, and he never mentions strange shapes, The Fade they almost run into, is in the last town before Caemlyn, talking to an innkeeper called Raimun Holdwin, before Almen Bunt talks to Rand and offers them a ride during the night, all the way to Caemlyn. And he mentions strange shapes in the night. "Things creeping about in the night. [...] Fellows around like that friend of Holdwin, scaring people." I don't know if it's been mentioned before, but this is one case where Homer nods.

And then there's the reaction to the Myrdraal following them on the Quarry road in the first chapter. Then we get an explanation later either from Moiraine: Which we see later, when Lan charges down the stairs after feeling a Myrdraal nearby, threatening Rand.

apostrophes irritate me no end when I encounter them with no explanation. In Michael Moorcock's books they are a constant presence, thus we meet up with Saxif D’an, an interesting character, though hardly one you'd enjoy a meal with, who encounters Elric, prince of Ruins, on his way to R’lin K’Ren A’a, the origin city of the Melniboneans, now abandoned for ages since the Melniboneans sided with Chaos instead of Law and moved to Imryrr to force into being the Bright Empire which lasted ten thousand years. I figure that if they come between two vowels, they should be treated as glo''al stops; if between two consonants, as indicating that both consonants are haspirated; between a consonant and vowel, as indicating the consonant is followed by a glo''al stop; if between a vowel and a consonant, as indicating that the vowel is heavily haspirated. YMMV, those are my working rules. (Although, if the writer indicates they are clicks as in the Choi-san and some Bantu languages eg Xhosa, as Tad Williams does in the Memory Sorrow and Thorn four-book trilogy, I endeavour to click them as adequately as I can.)

I think it would've been interesting, to say the least, to have had Tam al'Thor meet up with some of his old comrades from his days as a cog in the machinery of Illian's army. After Rand had become the King of Illian, natch.

I've just finished a re-read of the first three books. I do that every now and then. I've also watched the first movie time and again, trying to work out why it's so dreadful and yet so enjoyable. Likewise for the SyFy channel adaption of it. I haven't enjoyed the posthumous books at all. Some were positively dreadful, and some were just tolerable. I think that Dreadful Duo should've left Frank Herbert's legacy alone.

Godley and Creme's Consequences, of course: Godley and Creme did this song in the late 70s and I spent most of the following years asking people whose song it was. They'd been in 10cc, and had split to make for themselves a duo career.