In WOT, We see a great deal of Healing focused on wounds, fatigue and One Power based ailments. Are there mentions of more general healing discussed? Could diabetes be Healed, gout, cancer heart disease? Or is there a limit to what is able to be done on a general age related spectrum? Please forgive me if this was discussed before or commen knowledge. I have only done one complete read thru so this may have been answered. Dan

For myself, once you understand the tainting of the male aspect of the One Power that leads to the breaking of the world, the gender divisions we see in WOT are put into a context that makes sense for that world. There were , in fact, horrible real life consequences based in gender followed by 3000 years of female channelers holding a position of great power and men still going mad and causing harm. This did not have to do with a belief system or discrimination, it was a fact. This is why the tension between genders we see play out in WOT don't bother me as a reader, rhey are a logical outgrowth of the world RJ created. And there is enough nuance in WOT, that it does not cross over into being beaten over the head by an author with an agenda. RJ just wrote a decent story. I really don't know his stance on gender and that comes thru in his writing, that I still don't know. I find that refreshing.

Hi There is a theroy that for a short time after the Big Bang, conditions in the very early universe allowed for the fundamental forces of nature were unified. Gravity uncoupled from the other forces first, followed by the other forces. Although I am a bit of a science nerd, I am not an expert in this area , but I have heard this discussion among theoretical and astrophysicists..

IMO - Rand's new abilities are a result of a " super force of all three of the powers acting as one. This could be somewhat analogous to the state of the early universe in the real world when, for a brief time, gravity, electromagtism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces were essentially one. (In theory anyway)

Perhaps in our current age, a select community has knowledge of the one power but has made a choice to keep it hidden. Somewhat like the magical community in Harry Potter keeping their existence a secret from us Muggles.

Here are some of mine - Teal'c from Stargate The Doctor Garek from Star Trek DS9 Ahsoka Tano

"Any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be Magic." We know from WOT that much of the technology discovered from the Age Of Legonds is not understood even by expert channelers And even in the Age of Legonds only a small percentage of the population was able to channel the one power. Based on this it seems that the magical system in WOT is much closer to the Stargate franchise where a few individuals can interface with Anchent tech than something like Harry Potter which is more focused on the specific elements and organic components like the type of wood a wand is made from. So, can WOT Channeling be considered Magic on its face value or more a very technology based system being described by unreliable narration by those in the Third Age?

You raise very good points about oxygen in the atmosphere not being combustible. Typically, I would have not thought along this line except for the magical system in place for WOT. Certainly there are metaphysics in play that are not real world Interestingly, as you probably know, there was some concern during the Manhattan Project about igniting a chain reaction of all the hydrogen in the atmosphere. Instead of being of the specific element, weaves might be based on the real world effect they have. We know there is technology left over from the age of Legonds, so perhaps it is similar to the Stargate franchise concept where a very few individuals have a gene allowing them to interface with Anchent Tech. It is clear in WOT that a significant amount of knowledge has been lost and experiments with this tech can and have proven dangerous.

I might be overthinking this but regarding fireballs, would a weave of fire transfer enough heat/ energy to ignite the oxygen directly above a channelers hand that is able to form plasma? Or is a fireball a particularly energetic type of weave of fire in and of itself? Of course this leads to rhe other question of how a weave is maintained in a very local ares while still moving from point A to point B. Is the weave that creates a fireball tied off like other weaves and what is its range limit? With other weaves they seem to flow from a channeler until tied off, but fireballs seem to operate differently, more like a thrown baseball. In my head I visualize some type of plasma, basically an organically created form of the Romulan weapon from Star Trek or maybe a photon torpedo.

Both in fiction and real life, often there seems to be little to no choice in choosing the circumstances one finds themself in. Free will is the ability to choose your response to those circumstances. Based on the choices one makes, their situation may improve, or , at the very least, allow for a different internal response. And this is where things can become complex, as many of our responses and habits are so ingrained that it can be very difficult to alter one's trajectory thru life. We see many examples of this in WOT. One that comes to mind is Rand's innate resistance to putting a woman in danger, even when that action could be seen as disrespectful from the woman's point of view. Even after being told that he is being disrespectful on several occasions and even beaten by the Maidens over this issue, Rand continued to struggle with this almost to the very end. In a sense, Rand attempted to remove the Maidens free will and impose his own will and belief systems while thy attempted to retain their ability to live according to their own code of values.

Sorry about the poll, It is a bit on the clunky side. I am not sure this was intentional on RJs part but in some ways the cleansing of the Source, that under most circumstances would be a breath-taking achievement, occurs at such a chaotic time that even those people who the cleansing would have the most impact on had to treat it as just another thing on their plate. Nobody really had their balance and that came thru for me in the narrative. The Shaido arc with Perrin/Faile did take too long to resolve and Perrin almost being murdered by his most devoted companion was not explored as much as it deserved.

In my first read thru of WOT, and desperately working to avoid spoilers, I noticed some fans commenting that books nine and ten were somehow not as well written and a "slog" to get thru. I did not delve into this at the time due to my spoiler concern but when I got to book ten, it did not seem as bad as I thought it might be. Certainly, the tone was a bit different and book 11 on were amazing but I did not see so much a drop in quality , rather, a lot of set up for what was to come. Admittedly, not having to wait for the next book to be released probably helped as I was not taking an enforced break waiting for the story to continue. Your thoughts?

Personality , I enjoyed the ending. I tend to not like endings that are too clean or don't show the sacrifices made to reach the goal. To not have loss of life, freedom and emotional stress would have taken me out of the story. Also, the exploration of free will of both individuals and nations and not an imposed , unbreakable peace is much more dynamic than "happily ever after " and leads to a further exploration and theories regarding what happens next. I remained hooked to the very last page.