Welcome back to my re-read, recap, and reaction to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. This post will only have spoilers through the current chapter.
You can find my previous chapter recaps HERE.
Chapter 49: To Boannda
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Nynaeve al’Meara
Nynaeve forces Captain Agni Neres of the Riverserpent to take all of the refugees on the docks aboard his ship. She pays him what she thinks is a reasonable fare for their passage. Nynaeve and Elayne take over the captain’s tiny cabin. Elyane is upset because Neres is a smuggler, but Nynaeve points out they have used similar men in the past. Elayne blackmails Neres into throwing much of his cargo in the river to give the refugees room in the hold.
They begin making good time down the river with the sails full. Nynaeve finally accuses Elayne of channeling wind the way she learned from the Sea Folk Windfinder. Over the next days the tension between Nynaeve, Elayne, and Birgitte finally begins to fade since they can’t vent on the ship with everyone watching and listening. Nynaeve heals the wounded Shienarans but does so carefully so no one knows she channeled.
Nynaeve becomes close with several women on the boat. Nicola, who lost her future husband to the prophet; Marigan, with two sons that don’t speak; and Areina. A comment Nynaeve makes to Elayne makes Birgitte aware the Elayne really is the Daughter-heir of Andor. They reach Boannda the third day where most of the refugees depart. Nicola, Marigan, and Areina stay on, though. After they leave the city, Nynaeve tells Neres the next destination is Salidar. Nynaeve goes to sleep with the dream ring ter’angreal, hoping to meet Egwene in Tel’aran’rhiod, but she doesn’t show up.
Elayne and Nynaeve begin going to Tel’aran’rhiod together, with Elayne using a ter’angreal taken from Liandrin’s group of Black Sisters in Tear. The two gather information from the White Tower, try to learn more about Tel’aran’rhiod, and occasionally have a bit of fun. They meet Egwene and Amys, who are surprised to find both women there at the same time. Nynaeve keeps trying to ask about the messages Egwene passed to her in her dreams but Egwene keeps interrupting her to change the topic. Egwene was not supposed to do that unsupervised so she is trying to avoid the Wise Ones finding out. After the meeting ends, Elayne and Nynaeve meet Egwene in Sheriam‘s study, where she dresses them down for not keeping secret what they were told to keep secret. After five days of travel on the river they reach the vicinity of Salidar and everyone is rowed ashore.
REACTION:
This chapter is *really* long – like two medium sized chapters combined. I don’t understand why Jordan didn’t break it into two. There was a clear narrative break. They reach a dock and let most of the refugees off at the halfway point. The second half of the chapter is primarily in the World of Dreams. Maybe they couldn’t come up with a good name for the second half of the chapter, so they just combined them.
I spent a while trying to come up with Jordan’s inspiration for the place name, “Boannda” and came up empty. It sounds like it should have an inspiration, though, right? Bow and a..rrow? If you have a better idea, let me now. Nothing really happens there though so maybe it doesn’t matter. (It definitely doesn’t.)
The chapter begins with another reminder of why I am not a fan of Elayne. Nynaeve takes charge of getting the refugees out of Samara and away to safety and Elayne jibes her about spending the coin to do it. If someone is doing something really noble, and you know that it’s hard for that person to do it (giving away the coin they themselves might need later,) why give her a hard time?
“Women cost a man money, they fought like alley cats, and they cause trouble.”
It was really funny that Jordan has a smuggler with something that sounds like a modern day men’s rights worldview, because a lot of the surrounding text seems to support that view. I mean… it’s just factual that Nynaeve and Elayne violently commandeered his vessel, bickered and fought constantly with each other and other women, unapologetically told him where to sail, threatened him with violence via their friends, and then threw his cargo overboard without repayment. It’s also funny that Jordan implies that the thing that brings women together amicably is hiding their pattern of behavior from the man who notices these things about them. Was Jordan a couple decades early to the “men’s rights” movement? Now remember that Jordan’s wife was his editor. What was that relationship like?
In any case, they bit their tongues, and smiled outwardly, until it became true inwardly. It’s odd how that can happen.
On that point of character bickering, I wonder. We’ve seen that a Forsaken in a location can impact the mood of a place (Illian, Tear, Caemlyn.) Was more going on with all the bickering in the circus than we know?
Elayne channels aboard the ship to make it go faster (a weave that is by its nature large and visible), without consulting Nynaeve, knowing full well that Moggy and a bunch of Black Ajah sisters are on their heels. They both probably gave themselves away back in Samara during the riot, but if that didn’t do it, then this surely does. Nynaeve herself thinks Moggy might have been able to feel the weather weave from Samara. She guesses that the Forsaken couldn’t have been able to know from where it was done, though. What are the odds a channeler from the Age of Legends could figure it out? Those odds are good.
Nynaeve is not a lot better, though. She channels too, though much less audaciously, to heal the injured on the ship. She also does so without consulting Elayne – which is probably why Elayne started messing with the weather. (I think we’re supposed to be sympathetic with the ship’s captain.)
Jordan introduces some new characters in this chapter: Nicola, Marigan (an herbal healer who has two kids who are frightened of everything – including her,) and Areina (won’t say where she’s from and is dressed oddly – like Birgitte.) The three women have backstories which remind Nynaeve of her own life. What are the odds of that? Zero. There are no such things as coincidences. They all also refuse to get off the ship in Boannda with the other Samaran refugees. Then they insist on going with them to Salidar, too. Someone who knows Nynaeve very well seems to have planted some people around her and the only someone who would do that is Moghedien, right? I guess “the Pattern” could have done it, too, though I don’t know why it would.
Birgitte finally learns Elayne wasn’t lying about being Daughter Heir of Andor. Not much happened other than a private conversation “off screen.” This was kind of a missed opportunity, I thought, since Jordan had set her disbelief up so well.
After half a chapter of resetting the group’s bickering tone, Nynaeve cries herself ragged to Elayne and Birgitte about her tiredness of being afraid and how she believes herself to be a coward. Birgitte forcefully sets her right on this. The funny thing is that Nynaeve would see this herself, it the situation were reversed with anyone else. The best part of her character is how much higher the standard she sets for herself is, than for anyone else.
We get a tiny World of Dreams based Perrin shout-out! “Someone” is building a huge house in Emond’s Field. There is also a war memorial on the Village Green…. because of course their is. There are also now two banners flying over Emond’s Field – one a wolf and another a red eagle. (Elayne is probably quietly furiously – for once I wish I was in her POV.) Perrin is learning how to be a ruler, it seems. (Thanks Faile.)
They finally meet up with Egwene and the Wise Ones again. They’re both still too thick to figure out that Egwene is breaking rules set by the Wise Ones when she meets with them privately.
This book has sort of set-up an eventual relationship between Egwene and Gawyn, but here we get Egwene conveying continued interest in Galad, too. He has certainly conveyed more interest in her than Gawyn has. Maybe Jordan hasn’t decided yet who her Rand Rebound is going to be?
If you’re a long-time reader, you know I think Jordan has very, very subtly been presenting a rivalry between Elayne and Egwene, sincethe two met each other. Their friendship is surface-level, at best, in my opinion. Elayne making a catty remark in this chapter about Egwene not being pretty in Aiel clothes adds fuel to my theory’s fire.
I’m guessing that Nynaeve’s belief that they will be received warmly by the Aes Sedai in Salidar is… wildly incorrect. They’re bringing Gareth Brynne some Shienaran soldiers for his army, but they’re also bringing one of the seals to the Dark One’s prison, and they’re probably bringing a spy for the Forsaken – if not Moghedien herself in disguise. I’d guess their arrival will be explosive at any rate.
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