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 8: The Storm Gathers
NOTE: The following chapter summary comes from wot.fandom.com
Point of view: Nynaeve al’Meara
Elayne and Nynaeve discuss the previous evening and hope the Aes Sedai will take their warnings to heart in the future, but don’t really expect them to. Nynaeve is wearing the a’dam bracelet linking her to Moghedien, but Moghedien is washing laundry so Nynaeve can’t interrogate her more about the One Power. Nynaeve enters an inn where Logain is telling some Altaran nobles the story of how the Red Ajah helped him instead of stopping him before he declared himself the Dragon Reborn. She finally finds Siuan and insists she let her study her stilling to see if she can Heal it.
Nynaeve senses a storm coming, but the weather is clear and very warm. The Yellow Ajah sisters tell her to forget about trying to Heal stilling but she refuses to comply. Theodrin comes up to her and they talk about the blocks on channeling. Nynaeve is still blocked and Theodrin is tasked to help her break it down. Nynaeve has been avoiding the attempts but now Theodrin insists they try every day. Moghedien finally arrives and tries to teach Nynaeve a complicated weave to detect men channeling.
Elayne enters and announces an emissary from Elaida has arrived. Tarna Feir is talking to the Hall of the Tower and they wonder what is being said.
REACTION:
This is an extremely long chapter, and not a lot actually happens to progress the plot. But in a story this size, it feels like a necessary attempt to re-settle and re-familiarize the reader into the increasingly sprawling epic. This is Lelaine and her personality. This is Myrelle and her personality. This is Theodrin… etc. It makes sense to include a chapter like this, but the necessity of it is also why these books are getting increasingly longer and longer, despite the per-book plot not actually getting longer or more complex in a one to one sense.
Nynaeve’s internal comments on Elayne’s refusal to acknowledge her own bravery was an excellent use of irony, on Jordan’s part. Nobody refuses to acknowledge her own bravery more than Nynaeve does. That’s endearing. She sees it in others and not herself. Elayne’s likeability would benefit from more time reflecting on how great others are, too.
The Wisdom notes that someone who looked like Rand was on the scene when the nightmare happened that nearly killed all the Aes Sedai. If it was Rand, then his presence might have caused the situation via being ta’veren. If it wasn’t Rand… then who was it? The only person we’ve met in the series who looks like Rand is Luc. So maybe Luc/Isam caused it. He almost certainly has that particular skill.
I really liked the brief Lelaine conversation with Nynaeve, wherein she (Lelaine) brings up the “remarkable” coincidence of so many world-changing people all coming out of the same small village. As a reader, we don’t always have a world-accurate feel for how crazy that coincidence is, but we begin to get a feel for it as the story expands and progresses, and “the Emond’s Field Five” feels like it should be a bigger part of the story’s in-world conversation. It’s like finding out that a future U.S. President, a 5 star general, an A-list Hollywood actor, a Nobel Prize winning scientist, and a future Roman Catholic Pope all graduated from the same High School class in a small town in South Carolina.
Given the incredible number of “impossible” discoveries that Nynaeve and Elayne have already made, it used to bother me that Nynaeve met so much resistance from the Yellow Ajah re: healing stilling. But as I have become older and wiser, I’ve learned that Jordan got that reaction exactly right. Sometimes, when events change and shake one’s core beliefs about something, that someone digs his/her heels in even harder as it becomes increasingly obvious that doing so doesn’t make any sense.
There’s an old saying that it’s easier to fool someone than to convince someone he has been fooled. It’s often true. If a person has made a thing that they believe (however they arrived at that belief) a core part of his/her identity, a big percentage of those types of people are going down with the ship regardless of the evidence.
Imagine (hypothetically) that we find out via government documents, someday, that the moon landing really was faked. What happens to the people who spent decades doggedly defending the reality of that event? Most of them will convince themselves that the new documents are part of a lie. They will *have* to do that.
This chapter brings up Myrelle several times. She seems to have taken a personal interest in giving Nynaeve a hard time (from Nynaeve’s perspective.) Why? Well, as we know, she is the person to whom Lan’s bond passed when Moiraine died. We also saw in the previous chapter that she had 3 daggers she wore, with a 4th that flickered in and out. Those represent her Warders, almost certainly. Myrelle probably has concerns over Lan (has he reached her yet?) and also frustration that she has to eventually give/pass him to Nynaeve? (That is my guess as to the arrangement Moiraine made with her.)
Moggy teaches Nynaeve a weave to detect a man’s channeling. She’s unable to do it and it gives Nynaeve a headache. Something about that seems like a lie on the part of the Spider. Does this give her a headache ten times worse or is this a workaround she has come up with? It seems like the latter, particularly with her giving a feeling of satisfaction through the a’dam.
2 thoughts on “Lord of Chaos (Chapter 8): The Storm Gathers”