He lives in Windhoek. And thinks nothing of driving 5 hours to spend a weekend camping and watching wildlife.

My brother lives in Namibia. Next country over, lol. I hope they have a cute anteater wander across the screen. And herds of oryx.

I'm still trying to figure out what a Dark Lord is, to be honest. But Fain's end worked for me -- he thought he was incredibly important, but he was actually just a bit of a d*ck.

Don't get me wrong -- I enjoyed AMoL and its two predecessors. Most of the Last Battle played really well. I didn't even mind the Sharans showing up out of nowhere or Padan Fain meeting a sudden and ignominious end. He sort of ran out of things to do anyway. I thought Rand's battle with the Dark One was interesting, though I was amused that the Last Battle was actually about moral philosophy more than anything else. At the time I read it, I'd just finished watching The Good Place and I saw them as making oddly similar arguments about what it means to be human. The Good Place shows us that almost no humans cannot get to the Good Place in the afterlife because every single decision we make or thing we do ripples out, and it will have consequences somewhere that will be negative -- to other people, the environment, etc. So a bit of chaos theory as well. When our protagonists visit the Good Place for themselves, they find that everyone there is stupid and vacuous and boring. They conclude that humans can never be wholly good or live perfect lives (so therefore the concept of having a Good and a Bad Place is flawed, because everyone will go to the Bad Place), and when they are, they become weirdly postive hollow shells. When humans have freedom of choice, they make stupid or even harmful decisions or actions, but taking that ability, that freedom away so people can only do good and have no choice, causes greater harm to the very nature of humanity. In AMoL, the Dark One shows Rand a vision of the world where Rand wins, and he/she/it is not in it (characterizing a non-human, non-corporeal being as male is an interesting choice of Jordan's...nevermind). All Rand's friends are stupid, vacuous, and boring; they are hollow shells of positivity but not themselves. Rand concludes that people need 'the Dark,' they need the freedom to make bad decisions in order to be fully actualized humans. You see the link? I did anyway. You can obviously query the metaphysics: why do we need some vague non-human, non-corporeal but sentient entity floating around in the Blight in order to facilitate humans having moral freedom of choice, and if you get rid of that being, they will no longer have it. But it's probably best not to. The bits I didn't like: Demandred's sword fighting. That felt like Sanderson saying, "I had an idea! Wouldn't it be cool to have Demandred fight Gawyn, Galad, and Lan." I mean, why on earth would he put himself at that kind of risk when he could just blast these guys into bits with a fireball? Sanderson's prose never convinced me that his ego was that big or that he was that stupid. It just felt like something the author fancied writing because it would be fun and would give Lan something Heroic to do. Rand's ending. The body switch had me going, "Huh?" Okay, best never to question too many mechanics or the laws of physics in WoT world. But then him saying "F*ck it, peace out," and riding off into the sunset, leaving his wives and friends and father to grieve, just felt out of character. I can appreciate why one would do that, but it didn't feel right for him, after getting to know him for 14 novels. I'm also not sure how you'd write that scene: "Hey, I know I look like one of the Forsaken, but honestly, it's me!" But I'm sure you'd work it out.

One can live in hope. They haven't achieved that in the last 5000 years of domestication.

Finn definitely can.

You've definitely met some different horses. 🙂 My gelding had a serious meltdown today at someone wrapping up a tree in a plastic tarp in their front yard. You'd think he'd seen a Myddraal. Oy.

And it will be repeated so long as we have TV, movies, and literature. There's something powerful and addictive to writers about the plot device that makes the character seem as if they are in mortal danger, even though the viewer/readers knows, at a logical level, that they are not because the show/book would not continue without them.

Yes, that's a great point. True of every TV show and movie and book (including WOT), ever. How many times has the Bad Guy had James Bond tied to a chair, a gun pointed at his head, then spent ten minutes explaining his world domination plans, giving James enough time to formulate a clever escape plan and free himself? You'd think they'd learn by now.

Or Seinfeld. But that's what Jerry Seinfeld himself said he was deliberately writing in order to make it funny -- have these dysfunctional people living in New York, being dysfunctional, and never figuring their sh*t out. All great literature/TV/film has character arcs. I'd say Aragorn in the books isn't unchanging. He doesn't have the heavy-handed arc you see in the movies (and as much as I loved the films, the whole falling-off-a-cliff and being saved by the horse subplot was stupid), but he becomes more 'kingly,' more of a responsible leader as the books progress.

Most horses in the books and show seemed surprisingly tolerant of Trollocs. In the books, they all went into the Ways without asking too many questions. I reread Eye of the World not that long ago, and thought, nope. My point is that Wheel of Time is one of hundreds of shows/books which uses them like fuzzy cars. There's a blog where a guy who's a warfare historian goes into depth on the accuracy (or mainly lack thereof) of the seige-style warfare depicted on various shows like LOTR, Game of Thrones, etc. It's very good. He has a couple entries on the use of elephants in war. Hannibal and a few other generals tried it. The primary battlefield advantage of elephants isn't that they run over everyone and send people flying, and people shoot arrows off their backs, like you see in Return of the King. It's that they cause complete chaos amongst your opponent's cavalry. Unless all those horses have been desensitized to elephants (unlikely, depending on who you're fighting), they will freak out when they see them and become pretty uncontrollable. By that logic, the Seanchan should have been an even more formidable force because they could fly their Drakhar over Randland cavalries, and carnage would have ensued with horses bolting everywhere.

It's just like horses in every movie, TV show, and book (including WOT) who act like furry cars that neigh a lot but don't act like, well, horses. I had this thought the other day when my young mare got concerned by some guys on a 12ft high ladder painting a fence on the side of the road. Horse crossed the road, then stopped and stared at the fence. The 'freeze' is pretty SOP when a horse is worried by something. Oncoming traffic appeared while she was thinking about life choices, stopped for a second, then the first car in the line started rolling towards us, as if she could nudge us off the road. Horse started to jog forwards but would not cross the road, back towards the scary thing. Obviously! Idiot driver continued trying to push me out of their way, and I somehow wrestled the horse to the side, but it was a closer call than I would have liked. I was raging. The point of this anecdote? I thought about it as I was reading A Crown of Swords and later watching something on tele. If the driver's only exposure to horses are books and film, it probably did not occur to them that they are spooky flight animals who get scared by dumb stuff, like a guy on a giant ladder. They are not like cars or bikes that go where you tell them. The person probably didn't have a clue why I was in the middle of the road. In 14 books, do Robert Jordan's horses ever freeze, then spin and tank off in the opposite direction when their riders really want to get them through a Gateway? No, no they do not. Would horses actually walk through a slash of silver light that opened a portal to another place in a relatively undramatic, straightforward manner. LOL. Do better, writers and film directors. /soapbox

As a kind of related digression to what you're saying, the way the show portrays different channelers' strengths is subtle and cool. Moiraine and Alanna and the other Aes Sedai -- including Egwene and Elayne -- seem to be working hard at channeling, concentrating and sweating and making lots of hand gestures. Whereas the Forsaken and Rand (the latter primarily in the last episode) are super casual about it. They shrug their shoulders, flick a couple fingers, and sh1t explodes. It stood out for me when Rand took out Turok. I think it showed a glimpse of the power he was capable of. He kind of went, "eh," and knocked out half a dozen elite soldiers (with the last guy killing himself) in a second. Much like the Forsaken. Both Ishamael and Lanfear channel in a very low effort way. Rand can't do as much as they can -- not yet anyway -- being untrained, but he still makes it look effortless when he does. The body language that all the actors show when they're channeling conveys a lot. And I think it's deliberate on the part of the cast and the directors.

If you fire a missile or a cannon ball or the One Power at a manned ship, with the goal of sinking it, I don't think it's a valid argument that you didn't intend to cause harm to the people on it. Exactly no one in the entire history of naval warfare has ever thought that. You know or should have known that sinking a ship will potentially cause the injury or deaths of its crew. Agree with LTL. The only way I see Moiraine's attack as fitting within the rules (or Jordan's rules anyway) of the Three Oaths was if she knew Rand was being shielded by those damane and sunk the ships in defense of his life. I may have to rewatch the episode. I'm now vaguely recollecting that there was indeed a line where she said she sensed them shielding a male channeler. If I'm now remembering rightly, that just about justifies the whole scene, LOL. The collar thing was also a bit baffling now that you got me thinking about it. Perhaps more so than Moiraine's fiery assault on the ships. As per the show's own rules -- the whole thing with the water jug -- Egwene surely should not have been able to pick up the other damane's collar, much less place it on Renna.

I love it when we get to the trolley problem! I enjoyed the whole season and the finale but shared some of the questions about Moiraine's attack on the ships violating her Oaths. That was the one part that made me think, "Eh?" You can try to twist your way around it, but can you really? Western legal systems account for some of these issues -- the difference between first degree murder and criminally negligent homicide and/or manslaughter in some US states, for instance. If I shoot balefire straight at you, and it's not in self-defence or in defence of anyone else, then I've violated the Second Oath. That's first-degree murder, in the statutes of most US states. There's no doubts about my intent (you can't accidentally weave it) or of the lethality of balefire. However, if I channel and create a whirlpool in the river that happens to be next to your boat, and your boat happens to sink, then it gets fuzzier. Arguably, it's criminally negligent homicide or manslaughter. I didn't cause your death directly, like shooting balefire or fireballs at you would, but I knew or should have known that my whirlpool would cause your boat to sink, thereby putting you at significant risk of death. Offhand, I can't remember any scene in the books where an Aes Sedai tries to get around the Oaths by effectively committing CNH or manslaughter, but I'm terrible at remembering those sorts of details. What I do remember, however, is that they can't attack people pre-emptively. There were a few battles where they had to put themselves at risk, in the midst of the chaos, in order to channel fireballs and lightning at their enemies. If your friends and allies are in the middle of a battle, and you're on the outskirts as a sort of long-range artillery, then you know that if they lose, bad things will happen to them and possibly to you. But that didn't seem to be enough to let the Aes Sedai blow stuff up without putting themselves directly in the line of fire. Where does that leave us with Moiraine? If you set a ship on fire, your intent is pretty clear. And it's not like she was futzing around with some weird new ter'angreal and accidentally set the ships alight (whoops). It was all very, very deliberate. Same as if you deliberately set a car or building on fire when you knew there were people in it. That's second or first-degree murder, my friends. 'I didn't think anyone would die when I blew the sh1t out of their ship' does not fly. I'm not sure that the Three Oaths are quite that post-structuralist, where any 'fact' that an Aes Sedai convinces herself to be true (whether it is or not) gets her around them, or where any and all percieved danger allows her to use the Power as a weapon. 'I thought he might at some point kill me/Rand/my warder.' I think it has to be actual and imminent risk-to-life, like firing balefire across the room at someone. So was she channeling fire at those ships because Rand was in danger, and she can use violence to protect herself, her warder, and another Aes Sedai? He's obviously none of those things, but he's the Dragon Reborn, so fair enough. But did she know that the Seanchan were shielding him and intended to gentle him? Er, probably not. Could she see their weaves at that distance? Or did she just guess that those ships were up to no good? A bit of dodgy ground, I think, given the Aes Sedai in the battles could actually see their friends and allies getting killed and injured, and they still had to walk into the middle of the Trollocs. I think the writers did it because it looked cool and let Moiraine do something important in those final scenes, but they played fast and loose with the Three Oaths and the One Power. Ach well.

That is a very good question. I read the Eye of the World when I was in the 8th grade, circa 1996. Read the next three or four quickly afterwards, totally hooked. It defined my writing, and it defined myself as a teenager. I loved it. My parents still have a pile of hardbacks in their house because I would get them as soon as they appeared. However, I got as far as Crossroads of Twilight, published while I was at uni, and then lost the will to keep reading somewhere in the middle of it. Life happened, and I lost the Wheel of Time for a while, but I actually didn't. It was always there. It was always in my own work. Those first ten books found their way into my own writing, too much because I have to work hard on paring down descriptions. A wee bit. Years later, during lockdown, a pal told me that the Sanderson novels finishing the series were actually quite good (I know! People on this forum have views!), so I read a bunch of online cliff notes to catch up again, then downloaded them on Kindle. My love for WOT was rekindled. I finished the series, reread Crossroads (still an endless series of meetings, but after doing a PhD, I can speed read like a demon through tedious crap I don't care about), read Knife of Dreams (fewer meetings than Crossroads but still.....) and then restarted the whole thing at The Eye of the World. I can see all the flaws in the writing and narrative pacing, but when Jordan is good, he's on fire, and I still love it, and I love the characters, despite its quirky, and, at times, wildly repetitive prose and flagrant misogyny. It's so good that I can shrug that stuff off, to some extent. It's the weird, out-there friend you've been close to for many years, who's just going to be weird, and you love them anyway. You could connect to Jordan's characters and his world in such a deep way, despite and also because of his prose and narrative.

Perfection is the enemy of good. I could have revised forever ('that word is wrong!') but ultimately there was a f*ck it moment, and I got the thing published. I'm working on my third novel the now. Still hammering out the first draft, which is basically a sketch, and I expect to rewrite it at least 30 times.

Isn't that how most people write novels? 🙂 It's how I do it anyway. My first thought was, only half a dozen revisions?? Yeesh. That's efficient. I lost count how many revisions I did on my last novel, and don't ask me how many times I rewrote the last 50 pages. Like completely rewrote, making completely different things happen.

Yes, that's what I got out of it. "The university ethics committee wouldn't let me do my study so I turned to the Dark One." Having spent far too much time in universities (and no longer in academia), I always thought it was very funny that most of the Forsaken were high-up academics frustrated with their career progression. Sounds about right. I'm pretty sure I had one of them as my first PhD supervisor.

That's fair. So long as there's kinda in-universe logic to it, I'm happy. I also wondered if Logain was the best person to teach Rand, given he can't show Rand any weaves. But I guess beggars can't be choosers, and he's better than nothing. Who else is going to teach him? Ishamael? It would be awesome if Asmodean shows his face and gets an arc. I liked him -- his character was starting to get interesting -- and was bummed when RJ summarily offed him without a whole lot of, well, anything. Barely a sentence in subsequent books. Poor guy. Maybe the writers can do better by him. One can live in hope, right?

I didn't mind Lan's detective work. My quibble, however, is with Logain. How is he able to see weaves? I didn't think gentled/stilled people could see weaves anymore, but I might not be remembering that rightly from the books. Can they?

A few of them did try to kill him in the early books, though, but just in drips and drabs. Aginor. Balthamel. Be'lal, Rahvin, Asmodean. And, yes, Ishamael in the fight in Falme. They must have not got the memo. Some of it may be a symptom of RJ developing plot and characters and the world itself as he went, and discovering what motivates a Chosen, beyond just being a Bad Guy, later on.

Those questions are arguably true for the books as well. Why didn't the Forsaken turn him or kill him before he came into his full strength? He proved he could take out one or two at a time, but if everyone had linked, he would have been in trouble. It would also have been a short series. But more seriously -- and I think the show has hinted at this too -- Lanfear is hoping he will fall in love with her, like Lews Therin was, so she wants him alive. Ishamael told Mat flat-out that he wanted to end the cycle of reincarnation. Letting Rand grow into his power and having a confrontation with the Dark One sounds like a fun and nihilistic way to blow the world up. I don't recall this being that apparent in book 1-3 Ishamael, who didn't get much character development, but it's the primary motivation for Moridin/Ishamael. If you're writing for Fares Fares, you're going to write him as Moridin/Ishamael rather than some creepy dude with eyes of fire who doesn't say a whole lot (other than in the prologue). As book readers know, the Forsaken all hate each other's guts and are too busy playing Daes Dae'mar with one another to be effective. The show hasn't gone there, yet, but it reminds me of certain real life governments. I can answer that writer's other questions, mostly from within the show-world, though a little book knowledge helps. *The Seanchan are in Falme because it's a coastal city, the first place they invaded. They think that to win the Last Battle, the whole world must be united. Under them! Renna said this to Egwene in a pretty clear way. *The Aes Sedai haven't done anything about the Seanchan because so far, all they've heard is rumour, and they are so mired in their internecine politics that they could not organise a p*ss-up in a brewery (I suppose I know that from the books...perhaps it's not super clear in the show). *Rand has to be in Falme because prophecy says he should be. A few characters have mentioned this. That's how this world works. Everyone else is there because he has to be, and Ishamael pulled his Dark Friend strings to get the other Emond's Fielders to Falme along with him. *I'm sure Ishamael has a reason for hanging out with the Seanchan. All of the book-Forsaken set themselves up in powerful positions within various nation-states across Randland, whoever they thought would aid their personal agendas.

Yes, leading a riderless horse at speed, in the dark, isn't that easy. More so with completely strange horses. Not all ride and lead well. Moiraine could have used her sword to cut the girths and bridles, assuming Lanfear is unlikely to be good enough to ride bridleless and bareback on a random horse who isn't trained to work bridleless.

Have you been around many horses? Put a tarp where one shouldn't be, and you're playing with their fears. But they'd be outta there in seconds at the first inkling of Machin Shin. No doubt about that. More seriously, I don't think RJ knew horses, either. I laughed at all the passages in the books where they walked straight through gateways, or straight into the Ways, or didn't bolt into next week at the sight of a Myddraal (my gelding panics when umbrellas walk towards him). It's not like people spent hours practicing Ways-loading before they had to use them under desperate circumstances. I liked episode 5. Good TV, which is all I want out of it. I expect it to take diversions from the books because it has to condense a lot and make enough sense out of it all for non-book readers to follow. The only think I didn't like was Moiraine killing the horse. Come on, Moiraine. There had to be a better way to solve your problem.