It wasn't a list on merit 🙂 Mehmet is something of a hero to me. I was a huge fan of Alan Savage as a young man (a pseudonym of Christophe Nicole iirc) with such titles as Ottoman, the Eight Banners and Moghul, and while his books centre on English imports into the narrative I think they are fairly historically accurate. Don't think I have Ottoman in my collection (was a library kid) but have picked up a few since. And I'm sure there is a whole bunch of interesting historical figures I haven't touched on. My brain was obviously busy with Japan if you look at my examples. Not that there is anything wrong with that, the Sedoku Jidai is a fascinating period of history, but there are many many many such eras around the world. Sadly. When you think about it.

Hawking is one of the many many Arthur references. Based on a lot. Caesar still was instrumental in the creation of the Principet. So his legacy lived on, not least in the Kaiser, Tsar, etc. Alexander's empire collapsed, thanks a great deal to Alexander allegedly (to the strongest). So that rings true here. But there are many. Sun Tzu. Takeda Shingen. Oda Nobunaga. Charlemagne, Alphonso of Portugal, Mehmed II of the Ottomans, Tokugawa Ieyesu, the Zulu commanders Napoleon, etc.

I have never heard of him, the poor bloke.

There is also Perrin's guilt and horror at him killing the whitecloaks. He fears the violence that beckons, mirroring his struggle with being bigger and stronger than everyone else in Emond's Field and the ease with which he could accidently hurt people. Perrin is willing to make sacrifices to keep others safe from himself. (A theme we also see in his reasoning to travel to the Two Rivers). An aside, but wolf packs are not hierarchical, they are based on family ties to the breeding pair. They are large cooperative families. The thing about alpha wolves comes from studying unrelated wolves in captivity forced to share living space. The dude that coined the phrase in the seventies has literally spent the rest of his life trying to undo the impact of his mistake research (assuming that wolves in the wild act as those in captivity do) and he has had little effect on popular culture and the concept of the alpha wolf.

Because she didn't want to tell them she had given them a tracking device without telling them. But certainly it would have been useful to tell them later, but this could be seen as another example of Aes Sedai scheming bites them - she is so used to hiding her motivations and manipulations that hurts her own mission.

The steam engines are already travelling from Cairhien to Tear before the Final Battle. Something of a pet peeve of mine. That isn't how these things work, that you have an industrial revolution because someone just thinks up an invention. You need a whole bunch of prerequisites. An evolution of ideas and circumstances. Near unique circumstances to make each step worth taking on the road to industrialisation. It isn't down to British genius that it happened there, but geography and geology and rudimentary patent system and a few other factors. Not one guy inventing an efficient steam engine on his own - and mass producing it - that can immediately be put on unprepared roads for hundreds of leagues without incident. Bah. It gets me annoyed just thinking about it. But however incredulous it is, it is questionable how desirable industrialisation would be in a world with the One Power, or whether it could combine with the One Power to make something better (like I think the lack of pollution is mentioned in story by the One Power being able to deal with waste on a molecular level). Do they need to develop new ways of transport with Travelling available? Would they put up with children and workers being chewed up by machinery in horrible factories (sunken screws were invented due to the occurrence of screws catching on clothing and dragging workers into the machinery, including child workers). Personally I think it was a conceit to include the invention of the steam engine due to Rand's largess. To big an advance not properly thought through. Same with cannons being invented immediately as devasting weapons instead of being an evolution from useful but limited weapons gaining in lethality over time. But the Final Battle marks the End of the Age. The cannons and steam engines, along with non-insane male channelers point to how the Age will shape up, without giving much clarity on the details.

Wasn't that a ter'angreal or a talent though? I don't quite remember. Cadsuane I think had a ter'angreal so possibly so did Nynaeve her Paralis-net. And didn't Moggie teach them something that sort of worked but really just gave them a splitting headache? Hmm. Certainly comes up more often than I first remembered but it doesn't seem to be a native ability - not like the goosebumps men get when women are holding the power. Though maybe I'm still misremembering some of it. I think the Chosen involved were Sammael and Rahvin, Sammael always willing to strike first and Rahvin being the cautious politician, the moment help define their characters as well as indicate the dangers of the Chosen interacting with each other.

Not in the books as far as I know. Obviously there is the implication that the Seventh Age ends with something so apocalyptic that it sends us back to the Stone Age with no trace whatsoever of the preceding Ages. I don't know if any companion literature or answers from Jordan deals with this, I haven't read all of that.

As far as I remember, women cannot sense saidin or its weaves or if a man is holding the power. I think the only things I can remember is them reacting to knowing that Rand was channeling, not that they could feel it. I think this was pretty clearly set in canon at Elayne and Egwene's training session with Rand in Tear. So I don't think that this has anything to do with anything fundamental about the Power.

You mean aside from the rule of cool? Myrdraal are magical beings. It isn't really discussed how. Not in the books at least. We are told that they have their own powers - which Warders are shielded from by the bond - but only the weakest Aes Sedai would be unable to match them. This comment is never explained at all, and indeed we see non-Warders deal with them all the time with no evidence of any powers at all. We so know that Aginor theorized they were partially on another plane of existance (how they can travel between shadows) and could account for such things as their preternatural speed and their cloaks which are somehiw affected by their life force. IR could make sense by how they see, but we don't see that they can see body heat or are blinded by fire or hot objects. I don't think there is anything I. The books that even hints at anything else.

A staff could easily beat an unarmoured man. Whether it would survive against heavier polearms (such as an axe), I couldn't say, possibly part of the technique would be to make sure you deflect your opponents blows rather than letting directly strike the staff. A "war" quarterstaff would likely be reinforced such as spears were with steel. Armour would likely negate much of a lighter staff's effectiveness. Then you would be more looking at variations of halberds and bills which were specifically developed to deal with heavily armoured soldiers. A staff would also need a lot of room to operate so not very useful in formation, and I'm not sure it would fare well against other long reach weapons such as a zweihander sword. Iron isn't superior to bronze. It has different properties, but the main feature was the abundance of iron ore. High grade steel is a superior metal, but ancient civilisations did not have that technology. Even in the middle ages, the technique for mild steel was closely guarded and apparently lost. Milanese armour in the 14th century was mild steel, in the 15th it was simple iron, iirc. We tend to assume that iron was better than bronze because we believe in progression and technology, but the real reason bronze fell out of use was the scarcity of tin and I believe it is very labour intensive to work. In short it was expensive and rare.

Actually if I remember right, the version I heard (from my Dad, this kind of thing was right up his alley) was about legs. Which would make more sense for cannibalism. So maybe your version isn't quite as gruesome @Caelan Arendor, lol.

Yes I think the strength of the story is its scale and width. And I think Jordan was a master at artful handwaving to suggest even more depth and detail, while leaving everything vague enough most of that detail comes from the reader. Given how expansive the books are that is quite an achievement. Like Elgee says, the magic system feels real. The place feels real, the characters feel real in a way that excessive attention to detail wouldn't manage. Jordan was a master story-teller in my opinion.

Yes, Mat's isn't too bad. That is interesting. But I didn't like that we didn't see what happened to Rand, when that was so important for the motivations for the "main" character, which I think pushed Rand into the background except the "soap opera" aspects of his life. And I think also as learn more about the Age of Legends that it gets a bit silly, that everything is being done due to Foretelling, the Eye, Rhuidean, everything is set up by prophecy, which is a self fulfilling one. There seems to be very few bits that happen organically, or at least, a lot less than it appears at first. But that is just one of my pet peeves.

Are these from your notes about all characters? While I admit, I am terrible with names, I don't remember anything about Jurad Accan at all.

Well, it would probably help if you highlighted which parts you were unsure of, or what other interpretations could there be. I'll send you a PM about signing up - it should be pretty straightforward, and I have just been made the Assistant Mistress of Novices/Mistress at Arms. So it is kind of my problem if people cannot sign up.

But what is that interests you about their relationship? Mat is the anti-authority poster boy, and Moiraine even for an Aes Sedai is authority personified. They could have starred in their own spin-off called "the Odd Couple", lol. But your post reads like you are advertising the books rather than discussing them. What did you want to discuss?

Yes, but that is the foretelling/prophecy/TAR for you. She knows any future where Mat is shown it rather than asks to see it ends badly, so everything has to wait until he does. I'm not a big fan of story being driven by 100% ability to read the future. It feels a bit of a narrative cop out tbh.

They say you "lose a bit of your soul" if you enter TAR in the flesh. Though what that means, how they know, and if they are correct in that belief is never really expanded upon. And if it is right, nor does it ever discuss what that means for Rand, Egwene and Perrin who all do it, iirc. I guess you could hold up the Forsaken and Slayer and say "see?", but why would the Forsaken want to lose their souls? What is evil about losing your soul? Will you turn into a Grey Man? It is one of the hand-wavy moments that hints at a lot of things, has an effect on the story, but also doesn't actually stop anything happening. Good story telling, I guess.

I do not remember this. Which procedure is this exactly?

I think I remember this one. Not quite exactly. The hand is meant to be the surgeons. I don't remember why. Were they shipwrecked and ate each person's hand so they wouldn't starve and no one would lose too much? And the surgeon did the operations on the understanding he too would cut his hand off at a later date. Gentleman's agreement and all that. Not a lot of eating in a hand though and why were the people all at the same address and yet not expect the surgeon to turn up in person?... Maybe it was a botched surgery that lost someone a hand? Something involving a verbal agreement, presumably backed up by the threat of force. Anyway, that is why he bought the hand, why it was manicured and cleaned, and why the people threw it away. They only wanted to know the hand had been amputated, they didn't actually want it.

Experimental treatments are rapidly progressing for all sorts of diseases, but I don't think such "what if" scenarios are very comforting. I don't know how it would have been different, but it definitely would have been. Not to disparage Sanderson any, but there were many topics that Jordan left no notes about, and for all his skills I don't think Sanderson was able to conjure up the dead to discuss plot points. Characters like Androl would not have existed, and I personally doubt that all the shenanigans with Gateways would have either (I've not read any Sanderson outside of WoT, but that kind of playing with parameters seems to be completely in character, whereas Jordan had a more plausible structure plastered over with a pleasing hand-wave to remove any hard edges approach to magic). Not that it matters but I guess the biggest loss isn't the "true" ending, but everything else. The Seanchan trilogy, the years of questions and answers about the story. So much so sadly taken away from the world, and even that pales in comparison to what his loved ones lost.

Ah no. I mean at the final battle he is about to bale with his Asha'man but then some refugees are in danger (or something like that, I've not read the ending very often). He saves them and then finally receives the admiration and love that he thought would be his when he really thought he was the Dragon and was going to save the world. And if I recall correctly this something of a turning point for him as he was headed somewhere fueled by bitterness and this drastically changes his outlook. I hope I'm not misremembering too much.

You can find them if you look about online, such as on Etsy. Though the Sword is silver, the Dragon should be red and gold, but obviously you might not be talking about the Black Tower pins and the is of course up to you anyway. (I wear two steel Great Serpent rings, not one gold one, for example).

I think Logain is heading to a dark place and at first is only trying to survive the Black Tower. Is an interesting point of discussion about what place does simply human evil have in the story rather than the cosmic evil of the Dark One. He obviously resists the Shadow, yet isn't in a good place either. But the ending where he receives the admiration of the children I think is meant to mark his redemption. Personally I would have liked to see him square off against Taim but obviously that was not meant to be.