The Name of the Wind, chapter one, in which Will is charmed by a Science Hero

Howdy folks.  Sunday updates are back!  The long drought is once again over and we have a new project, decided by my need to resolve an apparent contradiction.  On the one hand, I have heard that The Name of the Wind is the most archetypal of male wish-fulfillment fantasy; on the other hand, I've seen women recently talking about how much they love Rothfuss, in the comments of a video of him talking at a con about proper diversity of representation in fiction.

He also posted this, presumably on July 5th:

Pictured: a status update about letting his young son wear eyeshadow and lipstick on a night out, because, quote, "Fuck it" and "Freedom".

So already I feel like I'm dealing with a much higher calibre of human being than the aw-shucks misogynist Butcher or the frothing hatemonger Card.  Male wish fulfillment and a philosophy of inclusion and free expression--these things don't have to conflict, but they are definitely an unusual combination.  Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.

No further delays.  Are you excited?  I'm excited.

(Content: referenced animal death. Fun content: chimney history, Viola Davis' poker face.)

The Name of the Wind: p. 1--

Prologue: A Silence of Three Parts

The title page informs me that this book is "The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One", which is even more amazing than your typical 'Book One of the Interminability Cycle'.  A single day.  I assume this due to flashbacks, but suddenly I wonder why no one's tried to do the dragons-and-wizards version of 24 yet.

There is of course a map, labelled "The Four Corners of Civilization" which conveniently ends all along the right edge of the page with the practically-vertical Stormwall Mountains.  Nothing civilised anywhere else, I guess?  These people are terrible explorers or huge narcissists, but--to be clear--I am fully expecting this book to be unabashedly pretentious stereotypical fantasy, and I will not hold that against it any more than I condemned Wheel of Time for being a by-the-numbers Tolkien ripoff.  (Bad example?)  Until and unless Rothfuss earns my ire with offensive handling of actual characters, my exclamations will probably all translate to 'that is terrible I love it'.

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

SEE PREVIOUS STATEMENT.

The first part of the silence is absence: no wind, no drinking crowd, no music.  There are a couple of guys drinking intently, whose lack of conversation "added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one".  The third silence is an excuse to describe the scenery:

If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar [....] in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire [....] in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.

He has "true-red" hair, so I assume he's a main character.  He owns the bar, and the poetic third silence: "It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die."  That's the entire prologue.  I have no idea what it means but, again, it is shamelessly over-the-top and I love it.

Chapter One: A Place for Demons

Same inn, different night?  A stock character named Old Cob is telling a quartet of young men a story of wandering hero Taborlin the Great, disarmed and imprisoned in a tower where the flames had turned blue, which the smith's apprentice correctly identifies as a sign of the Chandrian (bad guys of some type, clearly).  They pause for Medieval Fantasy Dinner, "five bowls of stew and two warm, round loaves of bread", which is some nice baking service--and then back to the story, where Taborlin turns out to be Superman levels of overpowered, because he "knew the names of all things, and so all things were to his command".  He commands the stone wall of his cell to fall apart, jumps out the hole, and "he knew the name of the wind" [DRINK!] so it caught him on his way down.  He doesn't even have the stab wound from his captors, thanks to his new magic amulet that they somehow failed to take from him.

The men start arguing over the precise rhyming scheme about being kind to tinkers (such as the one who gifted Taborlin this Amulet of Gamebreaking), and the innkeeper, Kote, interrupts for basically the first time since he moved to town a year ago:

A tinker's debt is always paid:/Once for any simple trade./Twice for freely given aid./Thrice for any insult made.

I had been thinking that the innkeeper was the protagonist, but he's got a name now, whereas the narrative has paused twice now to tell us that the smith's teenage apprentice is still always called "boy", which I find Suspicious.  Old Cob specifies that the amulet would protect Taborlin from evil, "demons and such", causing Shep to grumble about needing it himself.  Implications follow that Shep's farm may have been hit by demons last week and everyone is too polite to ask about it while sober.  I hope it was demons.  I would give a lot to see a fantasy novel written from the perspective of ordinary villagers just trying to get on with life in a world where apocalyptic devil-gods and prophesied heroes and monster hordes are as common as rainy days.

Another disagreement arises about whether the Chandrian are demons or, as Jake insists, "They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu's choice of the path", et cetera.  On the plus side, rather than everyone having a weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of their mytho-history, they seem to have various competing stories and can't agree what's what.  Already we're doing better than Wheel of Time.

No dark night in a tavern is complete without someone stumbling in on death's door, so here comes Carter, smeared with blood.  (Aside: the surname 'Walker' and the locative name 'Rannish' suggest to me that we're in an era in which surnames are relatively new, but apparently the occupational name 'Carter' has already made the jump to forename.  Reminds me of a couple of weeks ago when I asked my GM about an NPC named Christopher in a fantasy setting without Christianity.  He politely ignored my musings, which is probably for the best.  This is why I have trouble connecting with people.)  Carter is clutching a blanket that looks "as if it were wrapped around a tangle of kindling sticks" and, a paragraph later, clunks onto a table "as if it were full of stones".  I'm sure it's nothing creepy like a bunch of bones.  Carter is "crisscrossed with long, straight cuts" but insists that he's fine, although his horse didn't make it.  He is reprimanded for travelling alone when there are brigands around, until he dramatically tugs open the blanket roll to reveal a giant dead spider.

Kote casually identifies it as a scrael, then quickly insists he's never seen one before but only heard about them from travelling merchants.  He quickly sets to sciencing it as best he can--its body is stone, feet razor-sharp, no eyes, no mouth, and when he finally manages to snap it open, it's full of homogenous grey sponge "like a mushroom".  Kote is terrible at being an undercover hero, but after Dresden's tremendous disinterest in learning anything more about anything than he has to, I am all over a character whose response to monsters is to start making notes and running tests.

Everyone is deeply upset and confused by the prospect of an actual demon corpse in the bar--they don't doubt demons exist, but they're supposed to be far-off mythical things, like kings and gods.  Kote just shrugs and says they can test with iron or fire.  Graham, in the audience, helpfully specifies that demons "fear three things: cold iron, clean fire, and the holy name of God."

Kote gives him this face...

Pictured: Viola Davis, unimpressed.

...and moves on to finding iron--pure iron, not alloyed steel.  He eventually locates an appropriately pure penny (a shim--we get names for all the coin types, which is pretty good flavour without breaking our stride too much) and presses it to the scrael's stone body.  A moment later, it burns through to the table underneath.  Kote wipes his hands on his apron and asks what they should do now.  SCIENCE HERO!

Another silent scene, this time of Kote alone in his bar, cleaning everything.  It's super clean.  So clean to begin with that even after cleaning for an hour, his cleaning bucket water is still clean enough "for a lady to wash her hands".  I'm not sure if this is characterisation or what.  Is Kote obsessive or does he not sleep ever?  The narrative notes that 'Kote' is a chosen name for him, one of many (his student calls him Reshi), and implies that he's actually much older than the twentysomething he looks.  When he finally does return to his room, he's greeted by a new character, Bast, who makes me vaguely uncomfortable given that he's the first dark-skinned person we've met and is seemingly a servant, bringing food.  At least, he's described as "dark and charming, with a quick smile and cunning eyes".  'Dark' in these cases sometimes just means hair, but overall it sounds to me like a stock description of a Mildly Foreign Person whom we're meant to like but also not be sure whether to trust.  We're also in Jacob-and-Carter country, so Bast is probably meant to sound exotic (though it's a decent abbreviation of Sebastian, and apparently also a German surname).  I'm going to go ahead and picture him as mixed north African/west Asian.

But he's not just a servant, at least.  He's Kote's apprentice, by the sound of it studying magic or alchemy.  Buuuut he's also super promiscuous, as they banter and Bast admits that he didn't get any reading done today because he took his book outside and immediately got entangled with a pretty girl.  Again.  He's a big fan of all the women under thirty in this place, apparently.  So, our first POC is vaguely subservient, scholastically under-motivated, and extra sexual.  This is all discussed jovially and without any chastising from Kote, so we're probably not supposed to think less of him for this, but I become immediately suspicious when these sorts of traits line up.  (Also, we've had half a dozen named men and one Significantly Unnamed boy and the only named female character thus far is the dead horse.  Don't think I'm not noticing these things just because I am pleased with Kote's I-wonder-what-happens-if-I-do-this curiosity.)

Kote explains about the scrael, to Bast's immediate concern, but Kote reassures him that it was properly dead and he subtly made sure they disposed of it properly, with a rowan wood fire and a sufficiently deep hole and such arcane precautions.  He also mentions giving Carter about fifty stitches, and instructs Bast to tell anyone gossipy a specific backstory about learning from his father the a caravan guard.  They have further Significant Conversation that we don't fully understand, about how "they thought it was a demon" that that was probably for the best (but nothing about what it really is, ominous chord), and everyone's going to be stocking up on pure iron to fight demons and Kote wouldn't blame Bast if he wanted to leave now.  Is this implying that Bast is also not human?  I have a suspicious eye on you, Rothfuss.  (Bast says he would never leave, since Kote's his only possible teacher.)  The Bast-is-a-demon-or-something theory intensifies when the banter proceeds to Kote jokingly trying to banish him with various incantations in ancient language, to which Bast laughs through fake scowls.

Kote is left to eat in silence, and I contemplate why I enjoy the return to pretentious pseudo-poetry in the narrative here, even as it tries to quietly inform me of how special Kote is.  He reflects on his slight pride in engineering a fireplace into the middle of the room--

(I did some quick research here to try to figure out if/when this was a new creation, and discovered a book that argues that the invention of the chimney was the single greatest factor in the development of class segregation in Europe.  The world is a font of endless wonders and this sustains me through times of trouble.)

--and then spends a lot of time looking everywhere in the room except towards a particular wooden chest, "the same way you avoid meeting the eye of an old lover at a formal dinner, or that of an old enemy sitting across the room in a crowded alehouse late at night".  (I note that Rothfuss is pretty good about not gendering his hypotheticals; I feel confident Dresden would have made it very clear that the 'old lover' was a white woman as beautiful as she was cold, et cetera.)

The chest is made of roah, fantasy wood worth its weight in gold: "a chest made of it went far beyond extravagance".  I had enough of this with Trillionaire Ender Wiggin to last me a lifetime, thanks.  The chest has three locks: one iron, one copper, "and a lock that could not be seen".  DO YOU REALISE YET HOW IMPORTANT THIS BOX IS?  I'm mostly expecting it to have a weapon inside, e.g., the sword that he Swore He Would Never Wield Again, but I'm hopeful that I'll be wrong there.  He eventually locks eyes with the box, looks all weary again, and goes to bed.

Next day, the bar crowd is nervous, although not too nervous to throw us some more worldbuilding tidbits: the Penitent King is trying to suppress a rebellion in far-off Resavek, and everyone's expecting a third round of taxes this year, which will be bearable for most of the farmers except those already struggling, and "Crazy Martin", who planted barley instead of the beans that armies live on.  Travelling merchants have fewer and fewer luxuries as well.  I actually kinda like this sequence, far more than a Wheel-of-Time-y scenario where everyone's chipper but there are Grim Rumours in The East that they Foolishly Dismiss.  Not least because it only takes a couple of paragraphs for Rothfuss to sketch us a sense of village life and how they adapt to the times and economics of their world, and we aren't subject to a deluge of vaguely-rustic down-home slang.  The village is also full of gossip, since Carter is half made of stitches now, although no one really takes the claims of demonic invasion seriously.

Trying to convince folk would only make them a laughingstock, like Crazy Martin, who had been trying to dig a well inside his own house for years now.

A brief investigation has not provided me with any insight as to why people wouldn't want an indoor well.  I mean, I know wells run dry, but if you're building a house and you have a private well, is there any particular reason not to build the house around the well?  (These are the questions I ask that, four years later, cause someone to look at me bug-eyed and say 'Why do you know that?'  Funsies, my friends.  Funsies.)  Still, as Kote predicted, everyone in town finds time to drop by the blacksmith and buy a length of iron, just in case some hellspawn needs smiting.

By the end of the chapter, it has begun to drag a bit, particularly once it gets around to how "they reminisced that three years ago no one would have even thought of locking their doors at night, let alone barring them".  Pepperridge Farm remembers.  The evening's drinking stumbles to end at a slow and low point, ending the chapter, which if nothing else tells us how confident Rothfuss is that we are firmly in the grip of his narrative tension.

Still not one named human woman, but also a lack of outright misogyny or even 'benign' sexism, so this is one of those times where a score of zero is actually an improvement over most of the books you've had the joy to experience with me.  I confess I hold actual hope for this story yet.  (I can't tell if Kote and Bast are close enough in age for me to ship them yet, but I assume you're all prepared for that to start happening soon.)

Next week: a secondary protagonist named Chronicler (amazing) gets politely robbed and Kote starts to reveal his Seeeeecret Paaaast!

The Eye of the World, chapters 43, 44, and 45, in which Our Heroes meander through the infinite void

We're close enough to the end of this book that I, ever eager, have begun to look to what we'll be investigating next.  Suffice to say it will not be Wheel of Time Book Two unless something absolutely gobsmackingly unexpected happens in the next 150 pages.  I'm currently leaning towards The Way of Kings, book one in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive mega-series.  My reasons are manifold: I actually like Sanderson's work, but I have yet to read anything of his that didn't still have some substantial issues with women at the least, with some options on implied racism as well.  (He has identified a handful of characters as lesbian/gay, but no one's confirmed in text yet.  Apparently Ranette will be explicit about it in the next Mistborn novel.)  I've also been plagued by friends to read Way of Kings since it came out, but I haven't been able to summon the energy because the first thing that drew me to Sanderson's books was his ability to write fantasy that wasn't a ten-part doorstopper, and Stormlight Archive is his ten-part doorstopper.  So with any luck, a series on Way of Kings will be less painful than Eye of the World, will still give us some issues worth talking about, and might go a bit faster, like Ender's Shadow versus Ender's Game.

However!  I'm always open to other suggestions for reading materials that you, my dear and clever readers, think would be worth a dissection (keeping in mind that I will have to somehow acquire a copy of anything terrible that we carve up, and I have moral objections to giving money to terrible people).  The first alternative that comes to mind is H.P. Lovecraft, whose works are public domain and famously brimming with every possible kind of bigotry.  I loves me some sothothic horror, and it's best to do so with an understanding of how fucked up its great propagator was.  (I prefer instead to reference Robert Chambers' prior masterwork, The King in Yellow, which is hardly progressive but at least isn't gross.)

But before we can move on to such business, we have to finish up this rollicking epic timeless exceptional memorable adequate published book second draft.

The Eye of the World: p. 646--687

Chapter Forty-Three: Decisions and Apparitions

We left off last time with fearful discussion of the safety of the Ways, and open now with Loial and Moiraine taking a couple of pages to spit out that the Ways were a gift from not-yet-fully-broken male Aes Sedai to the ogiers that gave them sanctuary, and they let a person tunnel through time and space to hop across the world.  There's a lot of talk about aspects of ogier culture and magic--the Exile, the Long Wandering, the Longing--all of which are capitalised and none of which are explained.  You might at this point be thinking "Make up your mind, Will, do you want things to be brief or do you want them to explain what every term means?", and the answer is that if you don't have time to explain what a term means, there had better be a good excuse for dropping it into the conversation six times.  If you can use a term that much without having to explain what it means, maybe it's not actually relevant to the topic at hand and you're just bragging about how many things you've capitalised today.

Although the Ways survived the Breaking, they were still apparently tainted by Dude Magic and so began to rot a millennium ago, thus Loial's conviction that they're all going to die.  Moiraine counters, with shocking savviness, that they've heard far too many warnings about the Eye of the World and thus their best move now is to drag the ta'veren there and just let a big ol' destiny pile-up happen.

I'm trying to move at a pace now, but Rand and Egwene haven't seen each other in chapters and they've about to plunge into peril, so their brief scene together is worth a closer look, because oh my gods and monsters.  Rand tells Egwene that she's not predestined and she should take the safe route, not with them, and she tells him he's very sweet but she is plot-relevant thankyouverymuch and she's going anyway.  With her strength and importance thus duly noted, she asks again who this hot Elayne girl is.

For a minute he stared at her, then told the simple truth. "She's the Daughter-Heir to the throne of Andor." 

Her eyes seemed to catch fire. "If you can't be serious for more than a minute, Rand al'Thor, I do not want to talk to you."

Rand mentioned Elayne during his explanation about meeting the queen, but obviously meeting the princess is a heartless fiction meant only to toy with Egwene's emotions and cover up... actually, I can't even imagine what Egwene thinks he's lying about.  Some random girl Rand hooked up with at an inn along the way and decided to spontaneously namedrop in the middle of rambling about meeting their monarch?  This exchange is 100% pure not-from-concentrate Oh Those Hysterical Ladyfolk.  Faith and begorrah.

We get another (final? please?) dream sequence, which Rand recognises as a dream.  He focuses all his energy on thinking about how much he denies the devil, who takes the opportunity to exposit at us: time repeats itself, this is the jillionth time they've faced off and Rand's choices are always to die or to become the Vader to the devil's Emperor, and by the way the Black Ajah (secret devil-worshipping Aes Sedai) are totes real.  Is it just me, or do secret societies get a lot of their effectiveness from their secrecy?  Why confirm one?  If anything, this ought to be a ruse wherein the devil is trying to set the Aes Sedai on an internal witch hunt in order to weaken and distract them.

Apart from that, it's a pretty good creepy atmosphere, but it's still just a dream sequence, so wevs.  Rand awakens to find Mat is still asleep in the other bed and muttering constant devil-denials.  There's still a giant splinter in Rand's palm from the dream, which vanishes when he pulls it out, but the wound remains.  Like I said, decently creepy if we weren't supposed to be in the third act rush to the climax.  Fortunately, Moiraine arrives to insta-mend his palm and tell them to get moving already.

Chapter Forty-Four: The Dark Along The Ways

I've skimmed ahead far enough to know that it's going to take us two solid chapters to complete the 'dimensional tunnelling' adventure.  Let's keep things brisk.  Several pages detail Our Heroes acquiring their horses from the infinitely helpful innkeeper and creeping through the shadowy streets to find the Waygate, which is (all these centuries later) now part of someone's basement.  Conveniently enough, there's an external cellar door big enough to fit their horses, and Moiraine prepared knock this morning.  An intricately leaf-carved wall opens up to reveal a stargate shiny portal surface.  On the other side, everything turns out to be total darkness apart from the lantern glow and an old, broken stone path to follow.

Left to right: Rand, Lan, Egwene, and Loial bond* fraternise on their interdimensional journey.

(*I only just discovered what 'bonding' means in this series, thanks to some wiki'ing, and I'm slightly creeped out.  No, in order to consider someone an honorary sibling I don't actually need to experience a mental pseudo-womb with them, thanks.)

This chapter does not feature plot developments, and is thoroughly devoted to convincing us of how creepy the atmosphere of the darkened Ways is: they move along the road to Islands connected by bridges, where engraved stones called Guidings give directions in Ogier.  (Although according to Loial, it's not enough just to speak Ogier to understand them?)  Rand resolutely refuses to believe that they could have left one Island by a long curving upward slope and arrived on a second Island that is directly above the first one.  I truly and honestly cannot comprehend why he's convinced that's impossible, but he's quite definitive about it.

Everyone is always on horseback in here as well, apart from maybe whomever is leading their giant packhorse, which I'd like to point out is also a mistake.  Humans are vastly better endurance runners than basically any other animal.  Don't get me wrong, horses are pretty good, but the real advantage of horse-based travel is their carrying capacity and the fact that a person in a hurry can switch horses periodically to maintain top speed.  If you're just going to plod slowly along the Ways for a couple of days, there's literally no reason to ride instead of walking.  Walking is the only thing humans excel at.  Our Heroes are just lazily throwing the burden onto the horses who have done nothing wrong and frankly Bela deserves a medal for not kicking anyone to death yet.  Trollocs?  Bela didn't sign up for trollocs.

I know that the slowness of their plodding is supposed to help with the creepy atmosphere, but honestly at this point in the story we desperately need some urgency, and I especially think that racing around through interdimensional voids at top speed could tap into some readers' lingering nightmares:

For film producers' consideration, I submit "Mad Max: Rainbow Road".

The chapter ends when they come to a broken bridge.  Le gasp.

Chapter Forty-Five: What Follows in Shadow

Loial is pretty sure he can still get them to Fal Dara, but they'll have to take the scenic route.  Our Heroes take the opportunity when they stop for the evening to tease Rand and Egwene about all of the reasons they might be jealous of each other: Mat brings up psychic waif Min's crush on Rand, Perrin counters with Egwene's vigorous dancing with Aram, Mat references Else the farmers' daughter, and Rand and Egwene both pointedly and embarrassedly go to bed at each other.  This is definitely the gripping interlude we need right now to remind us that these characters are deeply in love and deserve our attention.

This chapter is also mostly boring, so I'd like to detail again: Rand and Egwene are not in love.  The book tells us they are, but they don't actually like each other.  They have a good neighbourly protective attitude at times and they both kind of want in the other's pants, and that's it.  The only conversations we've seen them have in the last, what, 400 pages have been 1) I'm glad you're not dead, 2) are girls real people, yes/no, and 3) stop being attracted to anyone but me.  That's a truly godawful foundation for a relationship.  (Out of morbid curiosity, I just wiki'd who Rand's actual love interest is.  He basically marries three different women, and by the end of the series at least one bears his children.  Twins.  What.)

Also, Moiraine informs the party that's she's pretty sure Thom Merrilin isn't dead, because he's too plot-relevant.  I am in no way exaggerating.

"And Thom is a part of the Pattern that weaves itself around you three. Too important a part, I believe, to be cut off yet."

If it's possible to survive by being plot-relevant how is anyone in danger?  The hell.  I mean, her corroborating evidence is that no one in Whitebridge had mentioned a dead gleeman--I don't remember when Moiraine passed through Whitebridge, but I question the circumstances in which she heard about a gleeman but didn't specifically get to ask 'oh, when was that and where did he go?'  Is there a good reason I'm forgetting?  I'm not even sure which chapter to check.

They realise the next day that they're being followed, but brush it off as less relevant than pressing on ahead.  Literally three minutes later they find one of the guidestones has been carved up with trolloc runes, proving that the Fades have found their way into the Ways and have been using them to transport trollocs across the country, which is how they were able to build up such a huge army around Caemlyn so stealthily.

Y'all know what?  This is the best plot development yet.  It involves characters actually taking advantage of a feature of their fantastical world and making intelligent use of it instead of just treating it like a curious museum piece.  The devil's power apparently suffuses the Ways at this point, so why wouldn't he use it as a troop transport?  Praise be to Eru Iluvatar, we now have two cases in a single post wherein people make intelligent decisions based on their knowledge of the structure of the world.

Lan investigates and finds that the closest bridge to Tar Valon is a total mess of melted stone and mutilated trollocs--Moiraine concludes that the wizard men who built the Ways also incorporated anti-monster traps, thus quickly removing the tension that the scene had accidentally started to develop.  Some hours later, a different random threat gets thrown at them instead, as Rand notices a slight breeze in the supposedly wind-free void, which Loial identifies as the Black Wind.  You can tell it's evil because it's black, as is traditional.

(One of the many story notions bouncing around in my head has to do with a universe that has largely been overrun by sothothic horrors, and the remnants of civilisation live their lives in space stations that are basically submarines permanently running silent.  For such people, 'black' means not giving off any signals, light or otherwise, that might draw the attention of monsters, and is thus also a colloquial term for 'safe and secure', and consequently for good things in general.  "Everything all black in here?"  "Yeah, we're doing fine."  Creating good slang is one of the hardest things to do in speculative fiction, but every once in a while I find something I really enjoy.)

Our Heroes make a breakneck sprint for the door, which is missing its keystone, but Moiraine turns her staff into a cutting torch, burns through a large arc, and Lan's horse shoulder-checks it out, breaking open an escape route, and Moiraine wards off the approaching wind with her flamethrower while everyone slips through.  In the last moments, Rand can hear the wind muttering, and ten points to Robert Jordan: it's creepy as hell, talking about carving flesh and braiding it back together.  Mind you, it's still just yet another random threat tossed at the protagonists to force them to end a chapter in a sprint.  Maybe in some future book it'll become relevant again?  I would prefer to read a book without feeling like I had to read a further dozen in order to get any kind of narrative payoff.  It has become eminently clear to me that this is the wrong series for that.

Next week: Lan's mysterious backstory becomes slightly less mysterious and possibly slightly Asian?  (I guess that would help explain why he's got a kabuto on the cover.  Maybe not justify it, but explain.)

Eye of the World, chapter 37 and 38, in which Egwene is best at everything

Apologies for the delayed post; it was my country's birthday and I had a torrential rainstorm to get caught in.

The Eye of the World: p. 557--581

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Long Chase

The long chase?  Really?  I've been struck by a prophetic vision that this chapter will include lots of running around to create the illusion of plot development.

I have also formed a hypothesis there's some kind of rule every chapter must start with four pages that don't do anything to advance the plot or reveal character in any way.  Nynaeve, Moiraine, and Lan continue on Perrin's magic trail (not that they know which farmboy they're after) and eventually find the Whitecloak camp where we left him and Egwene.  Nynaeve snarks at Lan for implicitly impugning her willingness to face peril to save a neighbour, or her knowledge of wolf behaviours, which is presumably supposed to be a reminder of what a capable and courageous Lady Heroine Woman she is.  Personally, I think it'd have played better if Lan had been all 'You're a village Wisdom despite your youth and you've stuck with us this far, so obviously you're a colossal badass, here's what I need you to do'.  In fact, why hasn't Lan internalised that yet?  He's bonded with Moiraine; he knows better than to underestimate someone just because they're a woman or small enough to fit in his backpack.  Do better, Lan.

"There are two guards on that side of the camp, beyond the picket-lines, but if you are half as good as I think you are, they'll never see you." 

She swallowed hard. Stalking rabbits was one thing; guards, though, with spears and swords... So he thinks I'm good, does he? "I'll do it."

There's something ironic that the one skill of hers he is willing to notice is her ability to not be noticed.  Also, hasn't Nynaeve been fighting trollocs?  A few unwary guards don't strike me as unusual threat for her these days.  But she still freaks out a bit as she creeps in, dodges patrols, and starts cutting the ropes to loose the horses for purposes of distraction.  She almost runs after she's cut four out of five, and thinks for a moment about how Lan wouldn't judge her for running away now (given that she's just a little mortal), but Nynaeve is struck by a vision that if she leaves any horses secure, some of Our Heroes will die in the escape, and so cuts them loose too.  (The possibility that she just got an actual prophecy further freaks her out, because Nynaeve was trained to use magic but she didn't think it was Capital Letters Magic, I guess?)  The final group includes faithful horse Bela and another friendly one, and Nynaeve flees into the night with them as Moiraine starts fulminating the camp with a rain of lightning (go Moiraine), and wolves join in the fight, confusion, running, et cetera.

Well, that chapter wasn't nearly as prolonged as I expected it to be.  It helps, of course, that on my first read I accidentally skipped about a third of it and didn't notice.  Which is a reasonable measure of the breakneck crawl we're proceeding at.  Let's savour this opportunity to talk about Nynaeve, because she's one of my favourite characters so far.

We're more than 550 pages into the book, and Nynaeve's motivations are starkly few.  She chased after Our Heroes because she had no patience to sit around and wait for a Manly Decision, and she's stuck with them because it's her job to protect her neighbours.  That takes a hell of a lot of dedication.  She's been told that she has incredible potential to wield earthshakingly powerful magic, but she doesn't appear at all tempted by the prospect.  Admittedly, she doesn't have great reasons not to trust Aes Sedai, but tell the average person 'By the way, I can teach you to perform miracles' and see if that doesn't shake their convictions even a little.  Nynaeve doesn't even know that she's plot-relevant; she's just here because she knows who she is (or who she wants to be) and that person won't let her neighbour brats run off to get murdered on their own.

And somehow the main gorram character of this book still isn't her, but the brat who thinks it's insufficiently heroic that he has to sleep in haystacks while everyone tells him how incredibly important he is (quarry of the Darkfriends, warper of the Pattern of reality, first-name-basis with the fricking devil who hangs out in his dreams).

Rand al'Thor might be (shpoilersh) the Dragon Reborn, but as far as I'm concerned he's a case study in mediocre men inexplicably drawing attention away from extraordinary women.  I'm sure he's going to get 'character development', but I'm not at all convinced that said development will consist of him actually gaining sympathetic qualities to compare with Nynaeve's fierce loyalty, courage, and conviction.

Anyway, let's get back to Nynaeve and Moiraine saving the day.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Rescue

Perrin

FIGHT ME ROBERT JORDAN.

Perrin shifted as best he could with his wrists bound behind him and finally gave up with a sigh.

Do y'all know why this book is precisely seven hundred million pages long?  Because Jordan thinks that it's quality storytelling to give us an unnecessarily long depiction of rescuers catching up with hostages, making plans, enacting plans to save the hostages, and then leaping backwards in time to show us yet more of what things were like for the hostages before they got rescued.  Surely we could just have Egwene recap for Moiraine what their captivity was like afterwards?  (If we get all this description and then a recap as well, I will burn down the sun.)

General advice: if you can timeskip something in a story and not leave the reader confused about how you got there, there's a good chance you should timeskip it.  More specific advice: if you can timeskip something in a story, for the love of gay shipping, please don't pretend to timeskip it and then go back to explain.  This is like episodes of TV shows that start with a Dramatic Scene, go to opening credits, and then come back with Three Days Earlier... which never fails to annoy me.  (Not least because it's used to set up shocking swerves like Why Are These Two Bros Pointing Guns At Each Other and then forty minutes later we discover they were both actually aiming at ambushers behind each other.)

Uuuuugh.

BUT BACK TO PERRIN.  He's spent the last few days walking tied to a horse and getting regular updates from Byar about the inventive ways the Questioners will torture him into confessing when they get to Amador.  They're also in a rush to Caemlyn, though, and one day Byar shows up, tosses him a sharp rock, and says it'd be much more convenient if Perrin somehow managed to cut himself loose and vanish into the night.  Perrin rolls just well enough to realise that there's something fishy about this generosity, but not quite enough to realise that if he makes a getaway they'd have ample reason to just kill him on the spot and wrap matters up that way.  He gets a telepathic ping from Dapple that there's a rescue coming, and stalls long enough for Lan to arrive and karate the guards into submission.

Lan, Egwene, and Perrin meet up with Moiraine, who reports that she's lost track of Nynaeve, whom she fears has "done something foolish".  Hey, why hasn't Moiraine given the rest of the party those tracker coins like she did the boys?  Can she only maintain three of that charm at once?  It's not like they haven't had time for her to make more.  Anyway, Lan turns and almost charges back to find Nynaeve, but Moiraine tries to stop him:

"Some things are more important than others. You know that. [....] Remember your oaths, al'Lan Mandragoran, Lord of the Seven Towers! What of the oath of a Diademed Battle Lord of the Malkieri?" 

Perrin blinked. Lan was all of that?

Lan was all of those things that we don't understand and have no context for and therefore I don't care about?  ASTONISHING.  (Also, I see Jordan is one of those authors who thinks that bemusement is best identified by a character's blinking, which strikes me as particularly weird in this high-tension high-action scene where presumably they're running around a lot and blinking away sweat or dust from one's eyes might be expected rather a lot.  Suggestion: if a character's shock is so understated that it can best be expressed through blinking while they flee homicidal religious zealots, maybe you're not dealing with as dramatic a moment as you'd like to think.  Shout something gaspworthy, at least.)

Nynaeve returns with the horses and as she leaps off to embrace Egwene she gets intercepted by Lan who just grabs her arm for an intense second.  He wants to tap that, if we hadn't noticed yet.  He wants to tap that like he's sending a telegram.  Nynaeve has picked up on this, as highlighted by the way she gives "a low laugh" as she runs to hug Egwene, which Perrin figures doesn't have "anything to do with happiness at seeing them again".

Let us take a moment to contemplate the situation: our split party has just started to mend itself after eight thousand chapters of running around scattered, they're being hunted by religious zealots, and this is the moment that Jordan has decided to drop in a romantic subplot with all the grace and versimilitude of a new fanfic author.  We got none of this last chapter, when Lan was actually talking to Nynaeve about sending her into danger, but now they're reunited and there is Needful Tension.  Priorities, Jordan.  Lan is the male character I hate least, but that's such a low bar.  Try to remember you had a plot in here somewhere.

They make their getaway, and the wolves leave Perrin with a mental note that they are ordained to meet again someday.  The next day, Nynaeve tends their wounds, treating us to a scene in which she rubs ointments all over Perrin's bare chest--he's been gruesomely bruised, but his ribs were protected from breakage because he's so incredibly ripped.

If you unlock the secret ninth ab, you become fireproof.

Nynaeve's ointments basically heal his mangled torso instantaneously, which either means they have some really sweet herbs in this world or she should have realised she was a gorram sorcerer a long time ago.  Nynaeve notices Perrin's wolf eyes, but doesn't know what they are; Moiraine does, but doesn't say what it means; Nynaeve is upset that Moiraine won't 'heal' Perrin's eyes, but is weirdly uninterested in knowing what's actually going on.  Lan just hears the name Elyas MacWolferson and says he used to be a Warder until the Red Ajah came after him, and assures Perrin that communing with wolves isn't of itself satanic.  He does note how improbable it is that Perrin would have the ancient gift and meet someone who was capable of teaching him:

"The Pattern is forming a Great Web, what some call the Lace of Ages, and you lads are central to it. I don't think there is much chance left in your lives, now."

In fairness, if Jordan doesn't find a new word to capitalise every four pages, his keyboard will explode.  Lace of Ages?  Honestly, at this point I almost want to congratulate him on so thoroughly committing: he actually made it an emphatic plot point that incredibly convenient coincidences and contrivances swarm around our heroes.  That's so much more audacious than just trying to make the story feel plausible.

I also feel like this chapter highlights a certain weakness of prophecy: Lan claims that Perrin's life is basically already set in the world, but it's only thanks to Lan's intervention just now that Perrin's life wasn't a very brief sprint in the night or several long days of torturous dying at the hands of the inquisition.  So, Perrin has no choice in what happens to him next, but Lan apparently does, since he had the option of turning and running.  Or a lucky whitecloak could have murdered them all with a few quick sword strokes.  At what proximity to Our Heroes do people stop having choices?  If there are certain people who bend fate around themselves, shouldn't the Dark One's central plan be to stay the hell away from those people as much as possible and stick to working with the people who have no fates at all and therefore might be capable of anything?  Lan implies that the Dark One can manipulate events a little, but when he says the three boys are definitely super-prophesied for either good or evil, he doesn't make it clear whether he thinks that has been determined yet.

Basically, what I'm saying is that there are at least three kinds of prophecy and it matters a lot which kind we're dealing with.  There's contingent prophecy ("If/unless this happens, this other thing is guaranteed to happen"), total predestination (choice is an illusion and all future events are fixed), and fate in the ancient Greek style ("No matter what choices you make, sooner or later you're going to X").  Lan doesn't appear to believe in predestination, but his talk about the lack of chance in Perrin's life implies that fate is a thing, except that he obviously still thinks Rand and Mat can be and need to be saved from evil, which suggests that his non-predetermined actions still matter.

Jordan could have saved me a headache by dropping the vague prophecy talk and just saying "The universe has willed that the three of you are main characters, so please do better".

That's it for me; come back next Wednesday to see if I managed to convince Erika to watch Bring It On for her next post!