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.

After reading Warrior of the Altaii and reading Harriet's comment on a rushed draft of his for a romance novel which in the end he wasn't asked to write, I feel the greatest thing missing in all these romances, is the duck. (He'd written a draft love scene where a duck featured, for reasons best known to him. Ergo, if there's no duck, there's no romance.) That said, and the duck safely stuffed and roasted, I too felt the Thom - Moiraine romance was so threadbare neither could use it for a cloak of any kind. Elayne was too annoying for me to take seriously. Aviendha had more promise = she was in training to be a leader of her people, after all, and she'd had to do some serious growing up in the process, something which Rand didn't do until the very end. While Min was solid and reliable, and had a touch of humour and temper which the others didn't have, and that made her real to me. I never felt Tylin and Mat had any kind of romance, or perhaps only in the eyes of the duck. She was using him, treating a foreign emissary as her toyboy; he was hanging on, following orders, and trying to break free. Not enough balance between the pair to make it a romance. As far as Mat and Tuon - well, that's a strange case. She's trying to fit him into the rigidity of her society; he's realized she's the mysterious Daughter of the Nine Moons - fertility title - which he's been told he's to marry, and he's trying to work out who the heck she is, and in the process, tying himself in knots for her, falling so deeply in love with her he'll do anything to make her smile. While she's in the same predicament, though she's less willing to admit it.

Time to dust off your inner Lovecraft? With knuckle-dusters? In The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, in the chapter Many Partings, we have Gandalf asking Treebeard: Ergo, the use of the correct word is vital. In The Wheel of Time, The Eye of the World, in the chapter Web of the Pattern, we find Rand al-Thor in this predicament: Now, what if it had actually read: What kind of a world would that be? What sort of people gibber when you expect them to giggle? The challenge is to come up with a believable world where that would happen, making a story from the two sentences quoted. Dust off your inner Lovecraft with your best knuckle-dusters, put on your best dancing trousers and get down to the utter king of rock and rool, Criff Lichyard!!! And show us what you can do!

Now I understand! The Prof McGonigall of Hogwarts! For a moment there I thought you meant William McGonigall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McGonagall who is a poet to chew one's legs off to, during a reading of his poetry, particularly if one is a President of the Galactic Arts Nobbling Council.

Sorry, just had to quote this: From Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban. Mentioning horny teenage boys always brings that poem to mind. And the relevance to Rand and his three wives? I suppose you could say they aren't left widows; that they still are "married" to him after he "dies". In relation to spirfire4000's point about the lineages, it's also about the post-Last Battle balance of power. Andor allied to the peacekeeping force through a common lineage, the common father of the most prestigious Aiel and Andorian lineages, provides a balance to all other powers in Randland. While Min's foresight will give both an edge during the difficult transition period. (Transition periods are the most difficult times in politics. Just ask your local friendly ogre politician.)

I've looked at both the Companion and the World of RJ's WOT. The Companion: The World of RJ's WOT: Still, they must be fed, and the articles say nothing to disprove that they regularly ate whoever was unlucky enough to not be eaten immediately by the raiding male trollocs.

For me it's the female trollocs ... once you have them tied up in weaves of air, they don't even realize it's a Dreadlord and not a male trolloc who's turned up ... would I lie to you? 😉 Speaking facetiously, I think what really caught my attention the first time I read a book in the series was the way everything was plotted. I opened the series at book 6, Lord of Chaos, and had no idea of who the characters were. Mat amused me; Perrin puzzled me; I did worry that Rand was going to be another Thomas Covenant-type character, without the peculiar type of language that Stephen Donaldson used (sign of a bilingual who isn't completely at home in his official primary language). I had no idea who the Aiel were, not a clue who the supergirls were, and Nynaeve started off by grating me. It was the way the rescue mission was plotted that dragged me in. Everything was worked out that everything that happened, was set up for apparently different ends, except for the rescuers setting out from Cairhien. And once that had me hooked, I went out and bought the Eye of the World, and every following book, because I had to know how the Wheel of Time had been set up, and why these characters did these things and said these things, etc.