Man the middle of this book… I am getting some Elayne chapters, and I am getting them good and hard. Just terrible. The last one she basically took a bath. And then talked to a Sea Folk person - can’t even be bothered to remember the name. Zaida? The problem with the Elayne chapters is that it isn’t just Andoran Succession boredom - it’s that most of the other tedious storylines are included here, too. The Sea Folk “bargain” fallout. The Kin. The royal guard. And they’re still going. I’ve spent three chapters in Andor - 10-12 - and Chapter 13 is still more Elayne. Gotta say, unlike my misremembering of Crown, POD, and WH - which are all quite a bit better than I remembered - my recollection of Crossroads was spot on. Just terrible. It really says something that the Faile captivity bits are the interesting part so far.

One Faile chapter. It’s fine. Slow. Not much happens. Some of the wise ones notice the cleansing. K. Whatever. Then an Elayne chapter where she thinks about being pregnant and how much she wants a drink. Elayne seems to spend a lot of time thinking about being pregnant and missing booze. Is she a closet alcoholic? She and Avi notice the cleansing. K. Whatever. Up next another Elayne chapter. The good news is, thanks to the insanely long and meandering prologue I nearly halfway through this slog of a book already.

The Perrin chapters. Slow. I’d forgotten the darkhound thing. I also can’t remember if it mattered at all. They find Shaido. And the aqueduct. It’s all very slow. But at least it’s not Elayne. And the channelers become aware of Rand/Nyn starting the cleansing. At least there is something happening. Albeit really slowly. I remembered this book as the one where everyone just sits around and talks. Ok - on to some Faile chapters?

Well, here we go. My re-read has arrived at Crossroads. I hated this book when I first read it. But my hope is that, much like Crown, POD, and WH, I am misremembering some good stuff and if I hit Crossroads with a running start (meaning I’ve got at least 10% of the rando Aes Sedai and other bit players straight in my head) it will be better. The Prologue. EIGHTY PAGES and I don’t care about a single thing happening here. We start with Rodele Iterlude parleying with other leaders in Arad Domon. Don’t care. Not gonna care. Then we’ve got Eamon Valda doing… Whitecloak things. Don’t care. Not gonna care. Next up Logain who bonded two Aes Sedai. He’s having sex with one of them. I like Logain, but I don’t care about this. Then some Aes Sedai names Yukiri is walking around the White Tower. There is much sniffing and crossing of arms beneath breasts and smoothing of skirts and just general cat fighting among many sisters I’m not gonna bother naming. Gah this is terrible don’t care / not gonna care. Ov my lord, we’re back to Gawyn next. He’s sooo in love with Egwene. He does nothing notable. Per usual. Davram Bashere - who I like - basically sits on his horse and talks about nothing important. Then his wife is attacked. But lives. Ok? And finally another Aes Sedai in Cairhien, again not really doing anything. At least Loial makes an appearance. He closed the way gates. Ok. Then somebody tries assassinate Dobraine! K that’s at least a little exciting. We’re not off to a good start. But then we get a few Mat chapters which are slow but generally ok. Basically a flashback to their escape from Ebou Dar. Even though they’re hunkering down with Valan Luca’s circus. Remember from Fires of Heaven? This is still a thing. There is at least a genuinely funny moment when Tuon is throwing things at Mat and she grabs the chamber pot and Setalle is like “we need that - here use this cup we have plenty of these.” And then we get one of the worst chapters of the whole dang series about a Seanchan general thinking about Tuon’s doll. Not great, Bob. Not great. But plowing ahead.

The cleansing! One of the single best chapters in the whole series. I love how matter of fact Rand is when he leaves Far Madding. “K, now I’m gonna cleanse Saidin” lol. I love that Nynaeve is working with Rand instead of against him. I wish the mechanics of the cleansing were a bit better explained… basically using Mashadar as a siphon? And with that I’m onto Crossroads. Just like with Crown and POD, I think I way misremembered and unfairly maligned Winters Heart. I thought this book was mostly Perrin/Faile with the Cleansing at the end. In truth, the Faile chapters weren’t that bad, the Mat chapters in Ebou Dar dragged a bit but had a satisfying payoff, and there’s quite a bit of Rand between the awesome cleansing and Far Madding. The downside of this book wasn’t Faile - it was the terrible Elayne chapters.

More Elayne chapters. Oh she’s pregnant now. Dragon stuff must be potent. So now we get to hear at least 15 times about “she must protect her babe!” She must. So apparently pretending that her creep of a Guard Captain is the daddy… why? Oh, but then she’s traipsing off to meet the borderland armies. Still not sure any of these morons decided to bring half their armies off the border to… look for Rand?? Elayne then masterfully “manipulates” them into using their armies to help her secure her claim - where have we heard this plot line before? - and the borderlanders tell Elayne “we know exactly what you’re doing, and we’re cool with that.” And now we’re back to Mat. Who is being “hunted” by the most incompetent gholam in history given that Mat’s not exactly hard to find. But the rescue plot finally provides a decent payoff to the Ebou Dar storyline. This might be a controversial opinion, but I’m anti- a’dam so it’s always nice to see some damane freeing. Then we’re back to Rand in Far Madding. I’m not complaining per se - look this is 1000x more interesting than… literally anything involving Elayne or Egwene - but “Blue Carp Street” is kinda weird, right? First, Nynaeve literally knows the Guardian can detect channeling, and she does it anyway?? Just to lift two dudes into a roof? Find a ladder. And then… Fain is back. Teamed up with Toram for some reason? And Fain can now conjure images from the recent past or something? At least Cadsuane does something useful and rescues Rand in less than one chapter. That’s about the time it took Perrin to put his boots on before heading after Faile. Almost makes you wonder how motivated Perrin really is…

Ummm… maybe. Can you give me a few examples of changes he made to Book 1 / Season 1 in order to condense things in future seasons? It seems like he added a lot of stuff.

The first couple Far Madding chapters are interesting. I had forgotten most of the details here. Nice to see Lan and Rand teaming up again, sort of. And while RJ gives a few mentions to Far Madding in earlier books - I think basically as Cadsuane’s home town - I don’t think it is ever revealed until mid-way through WH that you can’t channel there! That’s a pretty cool reveal, and sets up some interesting drama. Luc/Isam is back. And one of the Forsaken has hired him as a hitman to pop into Far Madding using his ability to step in and out of TAR - which evidently doesn’t require channeling. Clever. Also apparently he’s the guy who killed the gray man in the WT all the way back in TGH. Not that that’s a mystery that was exactly begging to be solved. And why use the gray man to take a shot at the Super Girlz when you could have just used Slayer? Odd. And he also killed a couple of Aes Sedai in the Stone? I don’t even remember that happening. Anyway… now I’m back to Cadsuane and… the dang Sea Folk. And the Sea Folk are pissed and scheming again. And by again I mean always. What a surprise. I think I would have cut them completely out of my show adaptation - they do almost nothing useful and just waste pages.

Man these Mat Ebou Dar chapters stink. They just drag and drag. I had forgotten. I thought all the Ebou Dar stuff ended in Crown of Swords, but here we are in WH and it’s just chapter after chapter of Mat, Tylin, Tuon. Bleh. Mat trying to rescue a damane and Aes Sedai is kind of interesting. But the things with Tuon, and Eaganin/Bayle, and the Seeker… sigh. Not great. But now comes some Rand chapters.

There is a big difference between cutting things and just making stuff up or dramatically changing things. I was a big proponent of cutting things and changing some things that, in my opinion, seriously bogged down the latter half of the series. I would have axed Valan Luca’s circus, shortened the Faile captivity (and that would not have hurt Perrin’s character - it would have freed him to do more interesting things), WAY shortened the Andoran succession plot, and probably have axed “Seanchan Part 3” / Tuon completely. I also would have cleaned up Rand’s love quadrangle by painting Elayne as the high school infatuation that is was - not real love. The problem is that Rafe changed so many things at the beginning, when the series was much tighter / better. The decision to plot Season 1 as a “who is the Dragon mystery” including females was a DISASTER from which the show never really recovered. So was putting too much focus, too soon, on too many Aes Sedai. Book 1 was the easiest adaptation and almost reads like a screen play at times. Relatively little internal monologue - most of the foundational lore and magic system is set out in easily digestible spoken narrative. And Rafe just mangled it so so badly.

Agree it was the length of the Faile captivity that was the problem. It ain’t bad so far I just know I’m in for a super long slog. The Rand chapters… ugh. Some things are growing on me during the re-read. Some are getting worse. The Rand love quadrangle is definitely the latter. This whole thing is so stupid and cringe. “I love all of you!” And “That’s totally awesome we love you too and… each other! Now you and Elayne go bang it out and we’ll just get to know each other.” Oh and Avi is gonna have quadruplets. Hope they’ve got a good neonatal intensive care unit in that day and age. At least Nynaeve is not being a pill. And I had forgotten the setup for Cleansing which was cool. Also Rand and Nyn are actually sharing information about the Aes Sedai, but frustratingly little. I realize that Elayne and Egwene and Rand needed to work independently for outward appearances, but it’s inexcusable that they weren’t coordinating more behind the scenes. Even the forsaken are having monthly staff meetings and they’re totally incompetent. Good little sub chapter on that, btw. The Cadsuane stuff is boring. Back to too many names I can’t keep up with. Alright on to Mat…

Here we go. Ten chapters in or so. Honestly, the Perrin stuff so far has been ok. I’d say at least mildly interesting. Faile’s intro to gai’shain life, Galina’s machinations, Perrin starting the hunt. Not as bad as I remembered. Then the Elayne chapters. Sigh… I’m just not ever gonna find this interesting. So. Many. Names. Rando Kin, Wavefinders, Aes Sedai. This is worse than the Salidar plotline. But all in all this is not as bad as I remember and I just got to a Rand chapter!

Don’t get me wrong, I actually kind of like Nynaeve’s character… mostly. But Elayne just sucks so bad, and Egwene gets worse and worse. And especially putting them all together… GAH! Anyway, during my re-read I think I’ve now identified the point at which my feelings for the Super Girlz shifted from annoyance to outright dislike. It’s the point in Lord of Chaos where Rand dispatches Mat and his Band to Salidar to escort Elayne to Caemlyn to effectively quash two budding civil wars by assuming the thrones of Andor and Caihien, which would have saved countless lives and allowed the Dragon Reborn to focus his attention and resources elsewhere, and instead the Super Girlz be like “Nah. Elayne needs to go to Ebou Dar - even though there’s nothing that makes Elayne particularly necessary to that mission, and we’ll send Mat with her mainly so we can hijack his army for our “siege” on the Tar Valon.” Maybe this is why I feel like Crown of Swords was such a drop off from the first six books. Chapter after chapter about Ebou freaking Dar.

Imagine you get to a free hand and unlimited resources and a clean slate to adapt the books to the screen. What are the BIG changes you would have made from the books? I just finished my reread of Fires of Heaven (and I had forgotten how good this book was, btw). Here is my list off top of my head… - Book 1 = Season 1 and I would have been super faithful. Including the prologue. - The Super Girlz just figuring stuff out by intuition makes ZERO sense. At least with Ran he’s the DR so there’s a reason. I’d have them learn most of their stuff in the tower. - Elayne sucks. Sorry not sorry. I wouldn’t cut her character. And I’d still have her be “in love” with Rand. But that doesn’t mean Rand has to love her back. This whole “love story” makes sense as teenage infatuation but not actual love, and I’d depict it as such with the expected outcome. In fact, I’d probably make her character even more annoying in the show. Basically she’d be like Sansa, like how book readers would be like “ok, Sansa sucks but she’s as bad in the books. She still sucks but not as bad as the show.” - Give the Forsaken interesting backstories, make them more dangerous, and don’t reincarnate half of them. Ugh. - The Elayne and Nynaeve join the circus storyline is tedious and dumb. Cut. - Bowl of the Winds gone. - Elayne Andor/Cairhien succession waaaay abbreviated. - Perrin/Faile captivity story waaay abbreviated. And the Shaido are obliterated after Dumai’s Wells. - Taim is Demandred. Or at least Demandred is somewhere way less contrived than in the books. I’m sure I’ll think of more as I get further into the reread, but that’s what I can think of for now.