Storm Front, chapters 22 and 23, in which Harry Dresden is just the best ever

(Content: misogyny. Fun content: all the salt you could ever need, plus bespoke character deconstructions.)

Storm Front

Chapter Twenty-Two: Introduction to Applied Balderdash

Dresden arrives back at his office and sprints up five floors with much aching and wheezing.  He finds his office door ajar, and conveniently hears only two sounds: a pained gasp from Murphy and the scuttling of the scorpion.

I clenched my jaw in sudden anger. Victor Sells's little beastie, whatever it was, had hurt my friend. Like hell I was going to stand out here and give it the run of my office.

These points where Dresden stops to inform us of his completely normal reactions to things really confuse me.  Last time it was his bafflement at experiencing sympathy for Monica; this time it's dashing frantically across the city to rescue Murphy just to stop outside to suddenly feel anger and reject any possibility that he might just, like, close the door and walk away now?  I feel like going grocery shopping with him would be an ordeal.  'Next item on the list: Cheerios.  I crumpled the paper in my hand, feeling the dry crackle of its pale fibers slide between my thumb and palm.  There was no way I would get this close to the Cheerios and just let them go now.  No way in hell.'

He storms into his office, rod and staff in hand, ready to do battle, and then stops to tell us about the table of free explanatory pamphlets at the door "with titles like Real Witches Don't Float So Good, and Magic in the Twenty-first Century".  Yes, the White Council is absolutely willing to murder people who learn about the truth of magic behind the masquerade, but why should that stop Dresden from handing out badly-xeroxed flyers to people who don't know any better?  I mean, PSA flyers would make some sense, like 'Running Away and Running Water: How to Survive a Demon Attack' or 'So You Think You Might be Dating a Vampire'.  Victor could have benefited from 'The Goggles Do Nothing: Why You Should Never Pursue the Third Sight Unsupervised'.  Things that normal people could actually have a use for.  I mean, maybe that information is in Dresden's pamphlets, but they sound more like heritage minutes about how wizards are actually way cooler and more practical than you silly commoners think.

Pictured: the secret formula to this blog: salt, salt, and even more salt.

Butcher actually lays out the whole office for us, the relative locations of chairs and filing cabinets and his desk by the corner and the overhead fricking fan before getting around to mentioning Murphy's presence curled up behind the desk, presumably because he has no idea how to maintain tension.  Dresden still hasn't seen the scorpion, but he kneels to help her and promises to call an ambulance.  By the description, she seems to have been stung in the shoulder?  Murphy, of course, groggily insists that Dresden set her up and handcuffs them together as soon as he hangs up the phone.

She twisted her head around, grimacing in pain, and squinted at me. "You should have talked to me this morning. Got you now, Dresden." She broke off in a panting gasp, and added, "You jerk." 

"You stubborn bitch from hell."

Quick recap: Dresden isn't actually withholding any information from Murphy, but he's decided for some reason to act like he is, and she in turn believes this (ironic), so she's decided they are Enemies and the only reason he warned her not to look in the drawer is so she would get attacked by his hell scorpion.  At which point he rushed over to the office to call for an ambulance, which she apparently thinks is just further evidence of his guilt.

Y'all know what's really compelling tension?  When two characters are fully aware of the facts but have drastically different ideas about the appropriate way to act upon them, and so are torn between their loyalty and their sense of reason.  Y'know what's not?  One character disregarding all logic and evidence to single-mindedly pursue the virtuous hero who has committed no crime, forcing our hero to insult and demean her even as he rescues her from her own terrible decisions, exampli gratia, fucking THIS.  This isn't even a Javert situation where Murphy is Lawful Neutral and intends to make Dresden pay for his crimes regardless of any other factors; he's done nothing illegal, but it lets Butcher drag the book out a little longer if she stands obstinately in his way.  See also: Morgan, who ignores all other circumstances and suspects in order to make Dresden's life harder whenever possible.  These aren't good guys or bad guys--they're just badly written.  Plot obstacles with dialogue, not characters.  If you want a reaction from me other than rolling my eyes all the way into the back of my skull, there should be at least some part of me that can see Murphy's side.  But no, she's just a "stubborn bitch from hell" and Dresden is a saint for trying to save her anyway.

(Though on further thought, Dresden is absolutely guilty of breaking/entering and assault at the Sells home, so I guess it's more accurate to say Murphy isn't accusing Dresden of anything he's actually done.  Also, why didn't he call the ambulance until now?  You'd think it'd be because he doesn't want to expose paramedics to the doom scorpion, but he's just called them in and still doesn't know where it is, so... yeah.)

The scorpion attacks from under the desk; now that it's been switched on, it's grown to the size of a terrier, blindingly fast and dripping acidic venom from its tail.  In his panic, Dresden kicks away his weapons and struggles to scurry after them since he's cuffed to Murphy, so he grabs the open desk drawer, yanks it out, and uses it as a shield/bludgeon, buying a few seconds.  Decent action sequence.

"Sometimes, Murph," I panted, "you make things just a little harder than they need to be. Anyone ever tell you that?" [....] 

"My ex-husbands."

Strong woman too stubborn for keep man in life.  Never heard that one before.  Murphy's stubbornness is quickly justified by the poison debilitating her mind, because it has been pages since the last time Dresden had to protect a drugged woman from a magical monster while she actively impeded him.  (Faith and begorrah, how great would it be if we dropped Dresden entirely and this series was just about Murphy and Susan being pals and trying to figure out what the hell is going on as irresponsible arrogant wizards spread havoc in their city?)

Murphy announces that she's gone blind, and Dresden informs us that while the common brown spider is about as poisonous as a bumblebee, the sheer dosage could be fatal.  (Also, uh, it's magical?  Is that not a concern?  Dresden knows the relative venom strengths of scorpions and bees, but he also thinks it's normal for venom to burn skin on contact?)  Dresden hauls her out of his office and kicks the door shut while the scorpion is still struggling to pull its stinger out of the wooden drawer.  The scorpion breaks through while he and Murphy (now unconscious) wait for the elevator, but Dresden knocks it back with his bulletproof forcefield (suddenly much harder to use than it was a couple of chapters ago) and makes it inside.

Dresden monologues at us about how this monster is obviously not a real live scorpion but a magical construct (you don't say) that will keep growing larger and smarter the longer it's left.  And then--miracle of miracles--Dresden's techbane actually kicks in at a bad moment and kills the elevator before it can reach the ground floor.  The scorpion breaks into the elevator shaft and begins tearing through the ceiling, and Dresden talks to us for a while about how unfocused his evocation magic is without his rod in his hand, how trying to torch it now would be as indiscriminate as a grenade.  This chapter is honestly the best we've seen magic handled in a while, with clear limitations set on everything he does (the shield takes time and concentration to form, fire needs a filter, elevators can't make it five floors with Dresden onboard).  Too bad it's tangled up with the ruination of Murphy's character.

At the last moment, Dresden flips his plans entirely and, rather than throw fire upwards, calls wind from below, forcing the elevator to rocket up the shaft in a gale, finally crushing the scorpion at the top.  Then, in the moments before it plummets back down (brakes destroyed too) he wraps himself and Murphy in several layers of shield to cushion their impact again.  Again, full marks for magic.  For once, we see Butcher treating spells as a toolbox from which solutions can be constructed, rather than a plot-shoving force with no clear rules.

It's tough to write wizards, I get that.  How can you make magic both mysterious and comprehensible, or let your characters use it to solve a problem without letting them laugh off any challenge that comes their way?  That's tricky, and there's more than one solution.  Brandon Sanderson has spoken at length about his preference, making lots and lots of rules for magic and then sticking to them, which cuts back on the mystery but drastically ramps up the problem-solving.  JK Rowling takes a little of both by emphasising that there's a lot of mysterious magic out there and our heroes just aren't informed enough to understand it, so they mostly stick to the simple point-and-click stuff.  JRR Tolkien chortles a bit and tells us we're asking the wrong question, but we don't know that's what he said because he is speaking a language he invented himself this morning over tea and toast.  So there are lots of solutions.  Butcher's approach in this chapter is pretty sustainable (although I'm not sure why he didn't call his wind staff to his hand with wind magic, as is explicitly in his skillset).  But the approach we see here--where Dresden actually has a very specific and device-dependent set of skills--is oddly out of tone with the rest of the book, where Dresden casually grabs fistfuls of sunshine and performs binding spells off the cuff with a stick and a slice of bread.  Is there a reason that he couldn't have bound the scorpion with a circle, or block the door with one?  (Or a reason that he didn't have a circle already in his office to put things like possible magic talismans inside to keep their owners from animating them into acid-venom Terminators?)

I'm just saying that this book mostly only makes sense when you forget everything that happened more than ten pages ago, which is not a criticism I've ever seen levelled at it.  We can rest assured that all of these nitpicks are addressed in Book Twelve--but can you imagine if someone tried to make that kind of case in defence of Twilight?

Anyway, the paramedics are there and waiting when Dresden and Murphy safely crash back to ground level, and he cackles for a while about how awesome he is (which is irritating and questionable but, I cannot deny, precisely in character) before he steps out into the rain, reminding us that Dresden has now lost the talisman option, his shield bangle has burnt out, and the storm is here to help Victor kill him.  Whatever shall our hero do now.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Intermediate Methods in Being Better Than Everybody Else

I'm just saying this is the perfect moment for Victor to strike, blowing up Dresden's heart right there on the street, only for Murphy to regain her senses, realise that he wasn't the killer after all, and take on the mantle of protagonist hereafter.  It's not too late.  (It has always been too late.)

Dresden's first priority, of course, is getting unshackled from the unconscious Murphy, and the ectoplasm from the spider hasn't dematerialised yet, providing lubrication to slip the cuff off Murphy's wrist.

My own hands were too broad, but Murphy had delicate little lady's hands, except where practice with her gun and her martial arts staff routines had left calluses. If she had heard me thinking that, and had been conscious, she would have punched me in the mouth for being a chauvinist pig.

I include the above garbage not because it's in any way vital to the plot, but because it's such a perfect encapsulation of the book's specific type of misogyny: women may do tough things, but they are still ultimately dainty little creature, buuuut you must never acknowledge this truth publicly because it will enrage their overwhelming emotions and they will respond with animalistic rage.  Murphy being a woman isn't a character trait, it's a running gag.

Dresden quickly informs the EMTs of Murphy's situation ("massive dose of brown scorpion venom [....] don't ask") and then lambastes himself for a moment for withholding information (no he didn't) that forced her to act against him, and if he'd been more honest this might not have happened (correct).

I didn't want to walk away from her. I didn't want to turn my back on her again and leave her behind me, alone. But I did.

Y'know: we keep getting these moments where Dresden is forced (for a given value of force) to do something that appears heartless on the surface but is arguably necessary (he has to go fight Victor before the storm reaches the lakehouse) and he wallows in self-loathing for it.  Which is a functional way of getting some angst into a story with a virtuous hero who doesn't have better flaws to actually angst over.  But Dresden does have actual flaws to criticise himself for, and he keeps skating right over those in favour of attacking himself for doing relatively harmless things.  Y'all know what'd be more interesting than another 'old-fashioned' sexist hero?  A self-aware guy who was raised in sexist environments (his dad who idolised his dead mother and dismissed all other women, his mentor who thought 'women's lib' was a stupid fad, that kind of thing) but has since realised that those lessons were wrong, that women are actually capable people with real skills and talents and value, and works steadily to undo his prejudices even as they undermine him (step one: Monica is the actual crimelord wizard villain and Victor is her dupe).

Harry spends half a page telling us how tired he is and how much that doesn't matter because he's so angry.  I particularly like this paragraph about the pain in his leg, completely removed from context:

It was like a fire in my thoughts, my concentration, burning ever more brightly, more pure, refining my anger, my hate, into something steel-hard, steel-sharp. I could feel it burning, and reached for it eagerly, shoving the pain inside to fuel my incandescent anger.

Because out of context that sounds like something from Bad Romance Novel Quotes, but in context it mostly makes me think of Kylo Ren in the final battle from The Force Awakens, punching himself in his bleeding side to draw focus and power from pain and anger.  I use the specific example illustratively, but I think in general we should be able to agree that 'refining my hate' is a questionable move for any hero to make.  That does hypothetically keep it in line with Harry's much-vaunted Dark Depths, but nothing much else about his characterisation has so far--his earlier quip about being the wizard equivalent of a computer geek seems far more appropriate (especially given the chauvinism and arrogance classic of men in tech).

Dresden goes to McAnally's again, I pass my saving throw to keep a straight face, and he finds that it's packed.  We now get Dresden's breakdown of the pub crowd here:

They were the have-nots of the magical community. Hedge magi without enough innate talent, motivation, or strength to be true wizards. Innately gifted people who knew what they were and tried to make as little of it as possible. Dabblers, herbalists, holistic healers, kitchen witches, troubled youngsters just touching their abilities and wondering what to do about it.

I'm trying to parse the phrase 'make as little of it as possible'.  Is it purely descriptive (they don't want to make magic a big part of their life, causing me to wonder why they would hang out at a magic bar), or is Dresden snipping at their lack of motivation and vision?  Because I know a literal kitchen witch, and while I don't believe she can perform magic, I do believe that she could drop Dresden and Victor in the time it took her souffle to rise.  And 'troubled youngsters', apart from being obvious YA protagonists, sound spectacularly dangerous to me, given that Victor apparently so little innate power that he didn't notice it until middle age but he's now nearly overlord of the city.  Surely a scared teenager (in a setting where magic is explicitly fueled by emotion) is a stupendous danger on several levels?

What even is a dabbler in this situation?  Dresden has just said that he's used more magic in the last day than most wizards can in a week, which by my count includes a tracking spell, a single fireball, using his forcefield three times, and a mighty wind (and maybe the couple of times he's intentionally blown out electronics with his techbane aura).  If that's the upper limits of a top-tier wizard, could a dabbler only cast one of those spells per week?  Say, a single tracking spell that will flawlessly locate a specific individual across any distance?  Because I'm pretty sure that alone is an incredibly valuable skill, especially if you're too small-time for the White Council to be permanently up in your business.  Hell, that's more tracking magic than Dresden planned to use to find Victor to begin with.

But the point of this chapter, in case we didn't notice, was that this final showdown is, once again, a thing that Dresden must do Alone Solo By Himself because no one else is awesome enough.  These people all know Dresden on sight and avert their gazes as he storms in, because they know that there's magic murder going on in town and they are hiding in a relatively protected location until it's over.  Dresden isn't here for their help.  He's here to borrow Mac's car.

Morgan arrives as well, with dramatic timing against the lightning, to declare that he's figured out 'Dresden's' scheme (storm magic to blow people up) and he intends to keep Dresden stuck in the bar at swordpoint until the storm passes.  He tries, once, to say that he knows who the real killer is (why does he not say the name; isn't knowing someone's real name also power over them?) but Morgan is plot-mandated to be bad at his job, so Dresden (exhausted, injured, non-athlete Dresden) sighs, grabs the nearest chair, and floors Morgan (rested, ready, experienced mage-killer Morgan) with a one-two combo.

Why is Morgan a Warden?  The character as presented has no qualifications.  He's a bad detective, a bad judge of character, he holds vindictive grudges that overwhelm his reasoning, and he's so useless in a fight that he can be taken down by a burnt-out geek with furniture in three seconds.  I know the council supposedly likes him because he's so loyal, but surely there are a non-zero number of competent people in the world who would love to be the attack dog for the wizard Illuminati?

Because everyone in the bar knows who Dresden is and his whole troubled backstory, he acknowledges that he appears to have just confirmed that he is "a rogue wizard fleeing justice", but embraces his stupid action hero nature and declares aloud "I haven't got time for this".  Mac calmly retrieves his car keys and hands them to Dresden again, because Mac is a designated good guy and thus apparently isn't remotely suspicious of Dresden no matter what happens, ever.  Who in blazes is Mac?  Why is he so much more certain of Harry's innocence than Murphy or Morgan?  I feel like this is the point when a properly suspicious detective (Sam Vimes, say) would wonder who would be so calm when a fugitive beats down a cop in his bar.  Might think that a hypothetical accomplice of Victor Sells (an accomplice who knows every wizard in town, who is so unnoticed that he's practically scenery, who hangs around a bad part of town and has an ideal location to do hidden business) would be very happy to see one suspected murderer go chase down the other, because when the dust settles, whoever dies, he knows that everyone will believe the perpetrator has been brought to justice and no one needs to go snooping around any more to find out who else might have profited from the ThreeEye trade.

This book claims to be noir and yet Our Hero's mysterious and most trusted ally apparently has no ulterior motives whatsoever.  I mean, this should be obvious.

Next time: four chapters to go; the final showdown begins as Harry wrestles with the Dark Side to remind us all that he's actually not such a bad dude after all.  Objectively.  Shh.  Objectively.

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*I suppose I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.

The Eye of the World, chapters 34, 35, and 36, in which Rand is literally the centre of the universe

I LIIIIIIIIIVVVVE.

Quick explanation of the last two months: my antidepressants are letting me down, I am tired all the time and I feel lucky if I get six hours' sleep, and there was a three-week break between my first and second therapy sessions because I picked a bad time to start.  Thus, not so much with the energy and willpower to create blogposts, or write much of anything.  But I am by nature a writer and rambler and ranter, and it was long ago foretold that I would eventually be compelled to return.  Fortunately, the blogqueen also saw fit to establish a new posting regimen and nudge me as needed to get material ready in time.  Victory.

Let us now return to that rock of stability: the directionless meandering of Egwene And Her Amazing Pals towards an actual plot development.  Wait.  Dammit, Egwene isn't in this week's chapters.  Instead it's another Randathon as they finally reach Caemlyn without befalling any plot events that would actually engage me in this story.

The Eye of the World: p. 512--556

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Last Village

The eponymous village is Carysford, over the river Cary, and it looks normal enough to Our Weary Heroes, by which I mean it's got a bridge and no other discernible features.  They end up sleeping in haystacks again:

Heroes in the stories never had to sleep in haystacks, or under hedges.

I only have so much patience for characters in books thinking about how their lives aren't like books to begin with--it was probably clever the first time someone did it, back in the Triassic, but it's pure cliché now at the best of times.  At the worst times, like this, when people start thinking 'heroes in stories are never uncomfortable' I just start wondering what kind of unspeakably bland literary traditions this world has been saddled with*.

In the morning they join a slow parade of young men and token girls who are all apparently on their way to see the False Dragon in Caemlyn.  There's an encounter with an angry speeding merchant and a mounted guard that I don't fully understand, in which someone appears to call Rand 'Darkfriend' in a way that they intend to convey 'jackass'.  On the one hand, this makes some sense for people who haven't seen much in the way of apocalyptic cultists for many generations; on the other hand, it also seems linguistically uncreative, and this is a usage that we haven't seen in the previous 500 pages.

Sweet Eru Iluvatar, this is a slog.  I mean, I started this post half an hour ago thinking 'it's been forever; I am totally ready to dive back into the Generic Fantasy Adventures of WOT', but this is truly inedible word-paste.  (And let me add that I wrote this paragraph and then failed to get any further on this post for another two weeks.  Yesterday I climbed 26 flights of stairs for the hell of it, and I have an active World of Warcraft subscription, but Wheel of Time is a grind too far.)

Skim skim skim.  I don't know to what extent Robert Jordan popularised this method of characterisation, but as is my standard operating procedure, I hold him fully accountable for his contributions of human suffering: when Jordan wants to quickly make someone sympathetic and 'deep' even though we're never going to get to know them personally, he gives them a catchphrase and makes them ramble.  Rand and Mat overhear someone looking for them (big bounty on their heads) and then hop a ride with a guy who infodumps at us for a couple of pages, constantly repeating the phrase "I'm a good Queen's man" to shore up his credibility.  I threw the torrent of verbal meandering into the centrifuge and here's what came out:

• This country strictly has ruling queens, but is not called a queendom, I guess because that's the sort of thing a crazy feminist would do?
• Tradition states that the crown princess (or "Daughter-Heir" in WOT speak, because that's so much smoother) studies with the Aes Sedai and the eldest son studies with the Warders.
• This got the last prince killed and the princess disappeared before her coronation, leading to civil war a few decades ago.
• Queen Morgase also has an Aes Sedai grand vizier advisor whom many people suspect of Scheming.
• Robert Jordan thought it was reasonable to write "a queen is twice a woman, wed to a man, wed to the land" and no one stopped him.

The quantity of rambling done by minor characters in this book is amazing, and it irritates me, because it doesn't make them seem more realistic--it makes them seem like information nodes where our heroes just Press A To Talk at worst, and naive, scatterbrained inferiors at best.  The protagonists are far too wise to prattle on like that, and when they talk, they say important things, while extra after extra keeps jabbering, to the vexation of smart listeners like Rand and Mat.  The only positive I can spot is that Jordan has white guys doing this, not just women and brown people, but that would also require him to have more women and brown people, and in case you didn't notice he already has three women in this book and a queen who is like two women so obviously we're pretty close to capacity already.

Chapter Thirty-Five: Caemlyn

Our Heroes have finally arrived at the vast gated community metropolis, a fortress-city protected by fifty-foot walls of white stone and silver, the beacon of civilisation in dangerous lands and dangerous times: GondorCAEMLYN I meant--I meant--to say Caemlyn.  It is very unfathomably big and crammed full of people. I note that amongst all the many things about the city and its crowds that startle Rand, he doesn't talk about varied dress or skin tone, which makes me wonder if Caemlyn is a great big homogeneous blob or if it actually allows foreign people inside.

To remind us who's the real protagonist, Mat despairs how they can ever hide with so many people around, and Rand has to point out that they'll be impossible to find among so many people.  I assume this is meant to be Mat's evil dagger making him grouchy and hopeless, but how are they still alive, and is there any good reason that we had the details of their convenient journey chronicled for us for so many pages rather than montaged?  Mat keeps despairing for a few pages, but Rand is determined to find an inn called The Queen's Blessing that the gleeman mentioned before he died to show that the situation was serious.  Seeing that the local fashion involves sword hilts and scabbards wrapped in cloth, Rand finally strikes upon the incredible genius move to cover up the herons on his signature weaponry, although of course this takes two full pages to occur rather than getting summarised in a sentence so we can move on to actual action.  They finally find the inn, where the innkeeper is friendly and cautious and refuses to believe Thom is dead but otherwise accepts their story.

They're warned not to talk too badly of Aes Sedai (lest they draw the attention of royal guards) nor too positively (lest they get mobbed by Whitecloaks) and not to mention Thom, who PLOT TWIST used to be the queen's personal bard and possibly lover right after she was widowed.  Then Thom got tangled up in undefined business and spoke rudely enough to the queen to get a warrant on his head, because "he said some words, all right [...] words you don't say to any woman with Morgase's spirit. [....] And the Queen never forgets anything. You ever know a woman who did?"

Would any lady readers like to comment on this constant stream of WOMEN AMIRITE as compared to Tolkien's unyielding manscape in terms of women in classic high fantasy?  This is an atrocious choice: don't exist, or exist as caricatures and showpieces that explore the variety and complexity of women with all the nuance of open mic night at Judd Apatow's comedy club.

Chapter Thirty-Six: Web of the Pattern

The innkeeper predictably supplies them with the minimum necessary food and shelter and mentions the plague of rats lately, which Rand ties to being the devil's spies.  The maid gives Rand level five giggly eyelash batting, but he is too shy to say anything and she can't talk because she's set dressing.  Oh, no, she does finally talk when Rand asks for a private dining room, and she directs him to the library, where he meets an Ogier for the first time, which looks almost exactly like a trolloc, apparently.  The ogier, Loial, is very polite and very old (but still immature by his standards) and I'm beginning to think they're the elves of the setting--if so, ten points to Jordan for making them 'ugly' by human standards?  He's been hiding in the inn for four days after people tried to mob him in the streets, and there's a lot of the type of hard-to-parse dialogue that comes up whenever Jordan is trying to worldbuild subtly, but by the sound of it Loial ran away from home because official processes to let him set out at the tender age of ninety were taking too long.  He just wanted to see the world, and the Great Trees and you must shape the vision to the land and not the land to the vision et cetera et cetera.

Ogiers apparently built most of the cities for humans after we broke the world.  Nice of them.  Not clear on why.  They can't leave their home steddings for long, also not clear on why, and thus they're content to leave the majority of the planet to humans. Which: this is very convenient for a writer who wants to have non-human characters but still wants basically everywhere to be Humanville, and it's also kind of uncomfortably similar to the way a lot of white people seem to think of people of colour: sure,they're fine, as long as they stick to their enclaves and don't show up too often in our gated communities walled cities.  And yes, clearly we're supposed to like Loial, but so far he's the model minority.  He fully agrees that it's good and right that ogiers are bound to their stedding, he is willing to stay out of sight rather than make people uncomfortable by walking around in the street as if he's normal, and he's just a little bit more 'human' than the other ogiers--he got all hasty and ran away rather than wait years to get permission.

I eagerly wait to see if any of my expectations here steer me wrong.

Rand and Loial bond, and Rand ends up spilling the whole truth to the dude, who sums it up by declaring that Rand is ta'veren.  Y'all, this is the best thing.  Check it:

"...sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on. That first bending to make the Web, that is ta'veren, and there is nothing you can do to change it [....] Artur Hawkwing was ta'veren. So was Lews Therin Kinslayer, for that matter, I suppose."

LOIAL HAS IDENTIFIED RAND AS PLOT-RELEVANT.  Rand is very literally and metaphysically a main character and everyone else really is a background character swept up in the course of his fate.  I had heard rumours about this but I did not realise how blatant it would be.

In true RPG fashion, Loial immediately declares that he wants to travel with Rand, but Rand refuses because Loial is ten feet tall and less than stealthy, but they agree to hang out as long as they're both in Caemlyn, and hope to meet up again in Tar Valon.

And that's as far as I can make it this week, but come back next Wednesday for the blogqueen's next post, and tune in again in two weeks to catch up at last with Nynaeve.

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*There was some book I read around age 10 with kids going camping and getting into a competition with their girl-nemeses culminating in some kind of capture-the-flag battle, and the clearest thing I remember about it is near the end, when the protagonist and his buddies are drenched and muddy, in a standoff with their opponents, and he thinks to himself how silly it is to try to look like some grand champion in such a state.  Even as child-me read that, I thought Yes, that is how a champion looks: exhausted, battered, reaching for the pinnacle of the thing that is so difficult everyone would have thought it was impossible.  There's a quote from George Bernard Shaw:

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap"

...Which isn't for everyone, obviously, but is something that's always resonated with me.  I learned this last week that my great-grandfather was Shaw's bartender.  Neat.

The Eye of the World, chapters 21, 22, and 23, in which girls get put in their places a lot

In an unexpected twist this week, we get three straight chapters with no Rand at all.  It turns out Perrin is not an improvement.

The Eye of the World: p. 314--347

Chapter Twenty-One: Listen to the Wind

For our second perspective swap, we wake up in Nynaeve's head, giving us our first opportunity to see how Jordan thinks woman work on the inside.  She didn't meet up with any of the rest of Our Heroes in their frantic dash out of the city of murder-fog, so she awakens sitting up against a tree when the sunlight stirs her sleeping horse and it shakes the reins in her hand.  I would like to note again that the last time Our Heroes slept properly was that first night in Baerlon, and that was also their first rest in like a week, so everyone is hella sleep deprived, but she still curses herself for falling asleep at all, and for thinking the others might not have survived.

Not even Winternight, or the battle before Shadar Logoth, had prepared her for last night, for that thing, Mashadar. All that frantic galloping, wondering if anyone else was still alive, wondering when she was going to come face-to-face with a Fade, or Trollocs.

I'm generally of the opinion that an author shouldn't need to tell us when one of his action scenes was way more intense than any of the other ones.  Did he realise how hard it was to take the creeping fog tendril seriously, compared to wraiths and beast-people appearing in the middle of the night to torch your whole village?  This is blatant shilling and it's not a good sign when you need to do that halfway through book one of fifteen.

I'm not clear on why Nynaeve was worried about getting caught by trollocs while asleep, since she also tells us how she ran into a pack of them last night, outside the city, and when they recognised her they turned and ran in another direction, since their mission is to capture the Important Boys.  Nynaeve sets out with her elite tracking skills and fails to find the boys' trails, but does locate Moiraine and Lan by the smell of their campfire.  She eavesdrops for a while--they are incredibly roundabout, but the point is Lan is worried the bad guys have regained the old Mass Teleport magic and are using it to move troops--before Moiraine calls her out of hiding.

Their new argument begins with a nonsensical rejoinder:

"No, I don't want any tea. I would not drink your tea if I was dying of thirst. You won't use any Emond's Field folk in your dirty Aes Sedai schemes." 

"You have very little room to talk, Wisdom [....] You can wield the One Power yourself, after a fashion."

I--wait, what?  'You're using my neighbours in your wizardly plots!' 'Well, you're a wizard too!'  That is not a convincing counterargument, Moiraine!  That looks like an admission of guilt!  Do better.  Nynaeve scoffs at the idea of her wizardry and Moiraine rants a bit about how she obviously is magic, and insists that's why she could detect Nynaeve's presence.  Nynaeve's too young to be such a good healer and wind-reader--"Oh, it has nothing to do with the wind, of course. It is of Air and Water", not that we're told how that's different--and then Moiraine speculates at Nynaeve's backstory, at some early incident in life when she accidentally used magic to save herself or a friend and then later felt shakes or numbness.  She also must have, I quote, "used the Power to Heal either Perrin or Egwene", because you can always sense people you once healed, and that was how she figured out so fast which inn they had stayed at in Baerlon.  You can tell it's magical because there are so many capitalisations.  If you think Healing is impressive, wait until you trying HeAlING.

(If the bond is that strong and long-lasting, why in blazes didn't Moiraine quickly Heal a bruise on the rest of the party so she'd be able to find them at will for the rest of forever?  That business with the silver coins was unnecessarily roundabout and fallible.)

Obviously, Nynaeve eventually is forced to admit that everything Moiraine said is true, including stories about other Wisdom girls dying with symptoms that match her description of people who don't learn how to safely touch the True Source and burn out instead.  She then completely falls for reverse psychology ('Well, I guess you won't be coming south with us', 'Oh, no, I'm headed south too, towards the sacred valley of FUCK YOU LAN') and they plan where to go next, with further sniping at Moiraine of the 'I know you're right but I'm petty and stubborn' variety.  Further points to Nynaeve, though: she wants to find Egwene quickly and make sure she's safe, while Moiraine is all 'Eh, wevs, she's probably fine'.

The complete decimation of her arguments pushes Nynaeve to tears, obviously, and when Lan's eyes widen in his blank face, she silently accuses him of mocking her and whirls away to wipe her cheeks.

There you have it, folks: we've had precisely two mentions of crying from Our Heroes so far, and they've been Egwene when she 'realised' she was in real danger instead of just an adventure, and Nynaeve when she 'realised' that she was wrong about everything and she had no choice but to do exactly what that witch said.  Is it too much to ask that a story that's supposedly setting out to say things about gender equality maybe try not to associate femininity with weakness and irrationality?  I realise Moiraine is a woman as well, but apart from having breasts and a pretty dress, she's been characterised mostly with the traits lauded in male heroes: brute force power and Doing Her Job and Making The Hard Decisions.  So far this feels about as progressive as hating Sansa Stark.  (Friends don't let friends hate on Sansa Stark.)

Chapter Twenty-Two: A Path Chosen

Now we're back to Perrin, who napped under some branches after losing Egwene crossing the river.  Perrin displays a unique gift for blankness by talking for several pages without actually revealing anything new about his personality, history, or desires.  I'm trying to remember which writer said never to have a character just 'read a newspaper': have them flip to the business section or personals or comics or fashion, anything to show the reader more about who they are.  Perrin is the embodiment of the generic newspaper.

He wanders until he finds horseshoe prints, specifically matching the design used by his teacher back home, and follows them to Egwene and Bela the horse in their own nook, warming themselves by the fire.  You know what this is reminding me of?  The latter half of Walking Dead season four, when every fricking episode was 'a couple more cast members find each other and despair and find the strength to keep going'.  That wasn't why I stopped watching TWD (that was the atrocious season finale), but it didn't help, either.

Perrin and Egwene discuss whether everyone else might be dead and where they can go,and especially whether they won't just walk into a pack of trollocs if they head for their supposed next destination (Whitebridge).  Perrin is constantly described as speaking "slowly", in case we forgot he's the Very Deliberate Thinker, and he lays out why every option they seem to have is a bad idea.

"But every time we think we are free, Fades and Trollocs find us again.  I don't know if there is anyplace we could hide from them. I don't like it much, but we need Moiraine." 

"I don't understand then, Perrin.  Where do we go?" 

He blinked in surprise. She was waiting for his answer. Waiting for him to tell her what to do. Egwene never liked doing what someone else had planned out, and she never let anybody tell her what to do.

Faith and fucking begorrah, what am I reading?  Perrin basically says 'We can't do any of the things, so we have to do this thing', Egwene responds with 'I don't get it, what do you mean?' and he interprets that as proud stubborn Egwene asking him to lead her?  Are we supposed to think Perrin is thick as a post for his analysis?  Or are we supposed to take the narrative at face value and see this as Egwene, in her desperation, finally letting a man direct her?  Is there some reason Jordan thought it was important to introduce his female lead as an enthusiastic adventurer and then grind her down into despair right away?

They agree to go to Caemlyn, Perrin asks for more food and Egwene just says they need to ration it, and Perrin concludes that "there were limits to how much leadership she was willing to accept".  This is the only part of our fragmented party where there's any talk of 'leadership' and there are only two of them.  I hate everything.  Perrin gets ready to start walking (still damp), and puts out the fire, having decided that "If he was the leader, it was time to start leading".  Changed my mind again, Perrin is not too good for Mat; they're both useless.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Wolfbrother

With a title like that, I can only assume we're going to meet the Beorn ripoff in this chapter.  I immediately begin to pray we do, as the first page is Egwene being a Bitchy Feminist and Perrin literally putting her in her place.  They argue over who'll ride Bela: Egwene insists they share, Perrin says he's too big and he'd rather walk, Egwene says she's just as good at walking and he'll probably expect her to take care of him when he's ruined his feet from his stubborn marching, and she only relents and gets into the saddle after Perrin says she rides first or he'll heave her into it himself.

It's like Tolkien, but feminist!

They do some pretty typical implausible fantasy wilderness camping (they have time to locate rabbit runs and set snares in the area, and Perrin slings down a single "scrawny rabbit" and declares that they'll eat well that night).  Egwene clearly read last week's post and tries to use magic to start a fire, but Perrin freaks out and makes her promise not to.  They scavenge badly before the next few days, before finally creeping up on the smell of a cooking fire again, where predictably Perrin is silent but the man covered in furs knows he's there anyway, and has been watching them both starve for days.  Furry dude is named Elyas Machera, predictable professional loner who doesn't like cities and people, and the 'friends' he keeps mentioning who are on their way turn out to be a pack of wolves.  (Elyas has yellow eyes, just like the wolves, which raises further questions about narrative convenience and genetics.)  Apparently he used to be a normal village dude, and then one day wolves started showing up around him, normal people started avoiding him, and he moved out to hang with them.  The wolves are the ones with a gift for understanding him, not the other way around, which is at least a different take.  This is one of those chapters that's just fun fantasy, with much talk of how wolves speak in feelings and have names that can't be put into words because they're too complicated, and I hold some vague hope that Elyas won't just be a pointless cameo.

The wolves apparently have ancestral memory, back to the dawn of history when they used to hunt alongside wolves, and they say--oh, balls.  They say that you can't learn to communicate with wolves, you have to be born with the gift, and Egwene doesn't have it but Perrin does.  Heavens forfend we spend any length of time focused on the wizard girl without making sure the boys have badass magic powers too.  Perrin is boring, wolves!  Y'all can find a better packmate!

Egwene gives their cover story for how they ended up wandering the wilderness, which they've been prepping for days and Perrin thinks sounds brilliant, but of course "Dapple says she smelled Halfmen and Trollocs in your minds while were telling that fool story" and with a low howl they're surrounded.  Egwene of course looks to Perrin to save the day, and he instead tells the real story, which calms them more, although Elyas hates Aes Sedai and claims to have killed Warders to escape them.  There's one worldbuilding point:

"They don't like that either, Aes Sedai. Old things coming again. I'm not the onlyone. There are other things, other folk. Makes Aes Sedai nervous, makes them mutter about ancient barriers weakening. Things are breaking apart, they say."

I'll give this to Elyas: when he's talking, I do not hate this book.  He agrees to take them south, with the pack, and hunt any monsters they find along the way, because apparently wolves are the anti-crow and have an eternal feud with Trollocs and the like.  (I've skipped yet more snarking with Perrin telling Egwene off for making decisions without talking to him first, because it sucks and it gives us nothing, but it's important to note that it's still there because it's everywhere and we can't have nice things.)

Next week: Does anyone feel like it's been too long since we had a dream sequence?  Rand is here to solve the problem that we didn't have.