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.
Prologue
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Demandred
Demandred arrives at Shayol Ghul in response to a summons from the Great Lord of the Dark. Constructs are making new blades for Myrddraal, but it requires a human victim for each, and they do not have many victims available. A Myrddraal much taller than normal addresses Demandred and calls itself Shaidar Haran which means Hand of the Dark. Inside the mountain is a point where a thinness in the pattern allows him to sense his master. Demandred passes on the information he has which is that Rahvin is dead, Lanfear has vanished and Moghedien did not meet with Graendal as planned. The Great Lord is aware that Asmodean is now dead, branded by him a traitor. Demandred receives his orders.
Point of view: Nynaeve al’Meara
Nynaeve is examining Siuan and Leane to see if she can figure out what needs to be healed to reverse their stilling. Normally Nynaeve can’t channel unless angry. Today she is using the a’dam which links her to Moghedien, allowing her to use the Forsaken‘s channeling ability. In Salidar, Moghedien is known as Marigan, a widow with two young children, but that is just a pretense. Siuan is very pessimistic about the possibility of being Healed and believes the effort is a waste of time.
Elayne enters and is furious because an embassy is being sent to Rand in Caemlyn but she isn’t allowed to go. Siuan reveals that nine Aes Sedai are being sent as an emissary to Rand. Elayne also refuses to believe that her mother is dead, even though there aren’t any rumors that she is alive or trying to regain her throne. Min gets to go, which irks Elayne since both of them are in love with Rand.
By rights, Moghedien should be turned over to the Aes Sedai, followed shortly by a trial and execution. But Elayne and Nynaeve are learning things from the Age of Legends that they believe are worth the delay. Moghedien claims the unnatural heat across the land is the Dark One’s work.
Point of view: Elayne Trakand
Elayne decides she needs to find Min so they can have a talk about Rand. She is stopped in the street by Janya and Anaiya who praise her for the discoveries she is making with the One Power. With the exception of Elayne’s ability to make ter’angreal, all their discoveries have come from Moghedien, but Janya and Anaiya don’t know that.
Min was worried that getting the chance to go to Rand might change the friendship between her and Elayne. Elayne assures her that won’t happen. They talk for a while as friends until Min needs to leave.
Point of view: Faile Bashere
Faile is holding court in the greatroom of her new house and is vexed that Perrin is avoiding the duty, again. The Two Rivers is changing, with many refugees from Almoth Plain and Tarabon crossing the Mountains of Mist, bringing new skills to the region. Faile settles a number of issues and begins to adjourn when the four Two Rivers Wisdoms arrive. Daise Congar tells Faile that Ewin Finngar, Elam Dowtry, and Dav Ayellin have run off to see the world after hearing Perrin’s stories. The unnatural weather worries the Wisdoms and they don’t know how to reassure the people that look to them for answers. Faile just tells them to go on as Two Rivers people have always gone on when troubles come along.
Faile tries to remind Perrin he has a duty to the Two Rivers people and needs to act more like a lord. He agrees about duty, but mentions he feels Rand’s ta’veren nature tugging at him. Perrin plans to slip away quietly while Faile decides she will go with him and have a proper escort too.
Point of view: Gawyn Trakand
Gawyn is reviewing the defensive positions of the Younglings under his command in advance of a meeting between Aes Sedai and Shaido Wise Ones. The Aes Sedai Gawyn escorts are going to Cairhien to request that the Dragon Reborn return with them to Tar Valon. A traveling peddler comes along and Gawyn asks him for news, then almost strangles him when he learns that Rand has taken Caemlyn and Morgase is dead―at Rand’s hands, rumor has it. If the rumors are true, then he intends to kill Rand.
Point of view: Katerine Alruddin
Katerine is contemptuous of Sevanna and the Shaido Aiel as they conclude a treaty. Sevanna wants to see Rand after he is captured, though, before it is final. Katerine wonders if the Shaido can be used to eliminate Gawyn and the Younglings since they are a bit too independent for Elaida. She chats with Galina Casban, the head of the Red Ajah and also a fellow member with her in the Black Ajah.
Point of view: Sevanna
Sevanna leads the Shaido as the widow of the last two clan chiefs. She has also managed to be declared a Wise One even though she has not had the training. She plans to lead the Shaido in conquest over all of the wetlanders. Key to her plans is to have Rand chained at her feet. She met with an unknown man who gave her some type of device that a Wise One that can channel can activate, to use when they have captured Rand.
Point of view: Morgase Trakand
Morgase is meeting with the king of Amadicia, Ailron, looking for aid in regaining her throne from Gaebril. After Ailron leaves her, Tallanvor suggests they should have gone to Ghealdan instead of Amadicia. Morgase tries to put him in his place as a guard of the queen, but he ignores the supposed difference in their positions. Basel Gill and Lamgwin guard the door to her rooms. Inside Lini gives advice to Morgase while Breane listens.
Pedron Niall enters with just a bare knock on the door. He says he is not here to arrest her which reminds Morgase that even though she is very weak and rarely successful at channeling, it is still against the law in Amadicia. Niall tells her that Ailron will never give her the aid she seeks, but the Children of the Light have the resources to help her. He also tells her that the False Dragon, Rand al’Thor, has killed Gaebril and now holds Caemlyn. Niall believes that Rand is a false dragon and that Aes Sedai do his channeling.
A young man brings in some cold punch. He is Paitr Conel and offers to help Morgase escape from the Whitecloaks. His uncle Jen Conel will think up a way to get her away.
Point of view: Pedron Niall
Niall doesn’t believe in the Dragon Reborn, and not really even in the Dark One and expects the Last Battle to just be a fight with many Trollocs and other Shadowspawn. He intends to unite the nations of the West against Rand al’Thor so that they are ready for the next Trolloc invasion. Jaichim Carridin is waiting for an audience and they enter his office. They discuss the Aes Sedai in Salidar, but Niall has decided to leave them alone. Carridin will be sent to Altara, but not to Salidar.
Point of view: Mesaana
Mesaana and Semirhage are waiting for Demandred to arrive with a message from the Great Lord. Mesaana is building a tower out of dominoes and Semirhage is knitting. Demandred finally arrives, then Graendal right after but Sammael refuses to come. Demandred says that their strongholds are well-suited to the Great Lord’s current purposes. Demandred’s message from the Great Lord was in part to “Let the Lord of Chaos Rule.”
Point of view: Osan’gar
Osan’gar is amazed that he is awake, even if he must use a different name than he used before. Aran’gar is in a similar situation but she seems irritated and is pacing the room. Shaidar Haran arrives in the room to give them their instructions. They were both Chosen that were killed and brought back by the Great Lord. They are given missions and sent out to fulfill them.
REACTION:
“The lions sing and the hills take flight
The moon by day and the sun by night
Blind woman, deaf man, jackdaw fool
Let the Lord of Chaos rule”
This is one of the Wheel of Time book epitaphs that I remember best. It set the mood well for the prologue that followed.
Before I adjusting the speed to something faster than 1.0 on my audio reading, this prologue was FOUR AND A HALF HOURS LONG. Blood and bloody ashes! Even after speeding it up, it was over three hours. (My reaction section will reflect that as there is a lot to which I must react.) One of the workarounds Jordan came up with, for his ridiculously sprawling story, was to include increasingly enormous prologues. This is where we’d usually get a short POV glimpse into the important characters who are not usually POV characters. Or we get a glimpse into someone we see occasionally, but whose story needs kind of an update / reset going into the current book. I don’t know if there’s a perfect plan for telling a 14 volume, 2500 character epic, but on the whole this works well unless you’re trying to review or recap it.
There was a lot of work to do with this prologue because of the significant events that ended the previous book. With Lanfear, Rahvin, and Asmodean all gone, Ishamael gone previously, and Moghedien captured, we kind of need to re-introduce the bad guys and set a direction for the story as a whole. What is an epic without an adversary? So in the intro, we hang out with Demandred, a Fade named Shaidar haran, Graendal, Semirhage, and Mesaana. It seems like the story is going to shift to those members of the Forsaken that we’ve largely not seen on the page so far.
On that front, the prologue was very effective. The sequence of Demandred, just outside the Pit of Doom, watching the non-human sword forgers was particularly effective. It might feel like Rand is winning… but he’s actually a LONG way from winning.
If you’re going to raise the feeling of threat posed from the bad guys, then the good guys need to have an opportunity to “power up” and we get that with the capture of Moghedien. Just like Rand had a Forsaken teacher, now Nynaeve and the others do, too.
Jordan lays it on relatively thick in this prologue that Nynaeve wants to heal Stilling. So… consider that foreshadowing. The interesting thing – and something that likely did not exist during the Age of Legends – is that she gets to study the severing using stilled women and the a’dam. The fact that they (Siuan and Leane) can sense Moggy, but cannot channel, proves there is still a link both have with the One Power. If there is, as Nyn says, then it stands to reason that it can be rebuilt. Something is there to be healed. This is what you might call setting up either Nyn’s plot arc for this book, or maybe for the next few books.
Note: It’s absurd that Elayne is not shuffled off to take the throne immediately, with at least two or three Aes Sedai handlers to oversee teaching her. Risking a civil war and an entire country’s peaceful succession so that she can do her training is silly, and the people forcing her to continue her training do not believe that they can even properly raise her to Aes Sedai (and raising her first is their argument for why she has to wait.) So they are planning to wait what might be multiple years.
However, maybe the exiles are concerned that if left alone on the throne, the Tower Aes Sedai might take the opportunity to kidnap her. If that’s the real concern though, why not relocate their entire rebellion to Caemlyn? With Elayne, they could. It also makes sense to use her to forge a link with Rand. That would have made *much* more sense than sending 9 sisters to negotiate (??) with him. So… this plot doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe the Black Ajah in Salidar is arguing to keep her Salidar instead of doing what makes sense.
At least Min is going to reunite with Rand. That hopefully means more Min POV chapters. She’s the most likeable female character in the series and it’s not close. Nynaeve is my *favorite* female character, but Min is the most likeable. On the topic of Min, Rand, and Elayne… Elayne’s furious jealousy and simultaneous acceptance of sharing Rand is just odd. I think Jordan is aiming for “impetuous, naive, but clever Victorian princess” but sometimes he lands on someone who feels like she might have a spectrum disorder or some type of unclarified mental illness. I think the character would make a lot more sense, given her behavior, if she was a few years younger than Eggy. But that would make the romance arc she has with Rand either impossible or creepy.
Okay, I feel like I need to defend my feelings about Elayne (to myself):
- Despite her friendship with Egwene, she was oblivious to Eggy’s feelings and aggressive in her pursuit of Rand even doing it in Egwene’s face. The obliviousness, especially for someone who was raised in and trained in court politics, seems unlikely without something that might account for it.
- Despite meeting Rand for all of about 30 minutes, she *aggressively* pursues him to his girlfriend’s face, for the first three books, until the girlfriend who recently underwent significant torture (Eggy in particular with the bait intended to bring Rand’s presence – twice) finally relents him to her. Why? it would make sense if she was more of a Margaery Tyrell type character, but she’s not written that way.
- For essentially no reason at all, she writes a letter telling Rand off when they part in Tear. She knows it was insane pretty soon after. She also starts flirting with Thom almost immediately after they parted, too. This is explicable from a 14 year old, but from a 20 year old?
- She’s brave beyond the point of insanity and occasionally that manifests in ridiculous ways. When their group was attacked in Tanchico, she started shouting “forward the White Lion!” until Egeanin saved them. Spoiler alert on this point, but this behavior ratchets up from here.
- She’s also the most likely to just burst out bawling over her emotions – as she does here in the prologue.
- The level of ownership she feels over Western Andor outpaces (by far) the way other royal and nobles we’ve met act about those things. Morgase is wry and practical about the Two Rivers, when she meets Rand and then Mat. We don’t spend time in her head, but she doesn’t act as Elayne does, who thinks Western Andorans should already know their place as her subjects. So Elayne is power hungry / greedy, but in a self-oblivious and somewhat delusional way. It’s hard to explain.
There are other things, too, but those are what jump out. I dunno. Something just feels off with her.
Faile! It’s not a common feeling among the fanbase, but I am a huge fan of this character. She saved the Two Rivers and she’s largely responsible for Perrin’s successes as a leader while giving him the credit for those successes. She taught him how to rule, how to organize military defenses (along with Tam), how to manage disputes as the person in charge, she encouraged him to accept his role as a leader, etc. She knows how to honor him and when to ignore his orders. She also knows how to do those things in a way that benefits him and his people the most.
One anecdote from the prologue that seems pretty funny. When Perrin found out Faile was getting herself involved in the Taren Ferry mayoral election… he got so angry that she barricaded herself into a room until he cooled off. I guess we have to keep in mind that Perrin has absolutely no qualms *SPANKING* Faile in front of a crowd when he’s mad at her. He did that in Book 4. I love Faile. I love Hopper. I love most of Perrin’s POV chapters. But do I actually like Perrin? I dunno. He gets by with a lot of help from his friends.
Have we ever seen him go fully into screaming Obi Wan mode over his love of democracy at any point in this story let alone at his beloved wife? I feel like that anecdote requires some kind of foundation.
The biggest takeaway from the Faile portion of the prologue is that the Two Rivers we have seen to this point no longer exists. It has grown into something else. The heart of it remains, but it’s different in key ways. They have their Aybara nobles now. The population has grown. Construction is booming. It has a military. The new people have brought new trades, introduced new clothes, etc.
Gawyn hears that Rand killed his mom. I hope that this won’t turn into a tedious-to-read misunderstanding that drags out for the next several books.
The prologue sets up an uneasy alliance between the Shaido and the White Tower Aes Sedai, with the latter believing they will take Rand to the Tower. I can forgive the plan on Elaida’s end, given that this is actually a Black Ajah plan. But how does this make sense for the Black? Well… from their POV, no force on earth (except maybe the Seanchan) can hinder a bunch of Aes Sedai if it comes to a fight. Hubris by the Black makes sense. On the Shaido side… they think they’ll eventually win the tug of war with the White Tower for Rand because they have the vastly stronger military and *many* channelers of their own. Between the two, the Shaido seem more realistic.
The Shaido are working with one of the Forsaken, though they don’t know it. The White Tower operation is being led by the Blacks. So probably the whole thing, which will definitely create chaos, is a larger Black / Dark One plot.
Morgase is alive and with the Whitecloaks. Her plan to have them re-conquer Andor seems foolish in the extreme. I understand not having any allies, but how was this supposed to work? Everything we’ve seen about Andor through five books implied every noble house would unite to expel them and hang her. And now that Rand is in charge in Andor… the Children of the Light would have even less chance to win militarily. She at least didn’t know the Rand deal until after this was in motion.
One other thing from this section I’d kind of forgotten about from the previous book… Tallanvor is openly lusting after her. But that’s not how you write about it because Tallanvor is a good guy. When the person lusting is someone the readers are supposed to like, you write – as Jordan does here – about the “stark desire” or the “smoldering gaze” on his face.
This little section ends with a known Darkfriend, from Book 1, showing up to offer help for Morgase and their group escape… no plan yet, though.
Niall is supposed to be incredibly bright, and one of the “great captains,” but his self-delusion about Rand not being able to channel is significant. He doesn’t think Rand can even channel at all? That’s absurd, especially for someone with a spy network all over the continent who could say otherwise. “Aes Sedai were always there too” is just such a thin branch to stand on. It’s not like he denies that Logain could channel. However, he spent time with Fain so his brain is screwed up. Same thing happened to Elaida, too.
The Forsaken meeting at the end of the chapter is kind of a wrap-up of the Demandred-led intro. If he was the 2nd greatest man of is own age, behind only Lews Therin, why was Ishamael their leader? Curious. I like that Mesaana speculates that The Dark One has a plan of its own beneath the message to “let the Lord of Chaos rule.” The highest ranking minions, for the most part, don’t actually want that. They just want immortality and a change of leadership over to themselves. Their leadership requires a new order, not a lack of one.
The very, very last part of the prologue reintroduces two dead Forsaken. None of the other Forsaken know, but Balthamel and Aginor are now Aran’gar and Osan’gar, returned from the dead and with new names. The Dark One can bring back his minions, so long as they don’t die via balefire. From this we can infer that we’ll see Ishamael again. If Lanfear died, we’ll see her again, too. Will Asmodean return or be allowed to return? Unclear.
Why did the Dark One name the returnees after a dueling game from the Age of Legends where both participants died? That feels too era-specific to be chosen by an ageless force of nature that lives outside of the Pattern . That feels like a human named them.
Final thought and it’s actually a big one from a temporary cultural perspective standpoint. Balthamel returns in a woman’s body. “He” still channels saidin (the male half of the True Source) – which is apparently linked to the soul and not the body. The character has had some significance within / for the Wheel of Time’s transgender fan community, but I don’t know that it’s entirely positive.
Shaidar Haran: “You will adapt. The body bends to the soul but the mind bends to the body. You are adapting already. Soon it will be as if you had never had any other.”
We’ll get into that more as the character progresses. But we’ll have to now keep an eye out for these two and see if we can see where they show up. A woman channeling saidin could go undetected among other female channelers in doing so, if “she” was cautious.
All done with the prologue. I am tired. I’ll see you for Chapter 1.
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