This time around, we’re talking about New Spring. Honestly, I didn’t have high expectations going in: it’s the shortest book in the series and it’s a prequel, that didn’t really bode well in my mind, but I’m actually really pleasantly surprised: New Spring is a great book!
As usual, I need to warn you that this critique heavily spoils the book. If you haven’t read New Spring yet, stop reading here and go read it first. Moreover, I read New Spring in publish order, so it’s possible that I’ve spoiled something here from The Eye of the World through Crossroads of Twilight. The discussion definitely focuses on New Spring, but if you’re reading New Spring earlier in the series and are worried about spoilers, your safest option would be to come back to this later, after you’ve finished Crossroads of Twilight.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the summary.
Contents
Summary
Our main characters in New Spring are Moiraine, Lan, and Siuan. The book starts right around the time that Rand is born (and thus also around the same time as Mat and Perrin, as they were born within weeks of Rand.) This is also the end of the Aiel War, and nearly twenty years before The Eye of the World. In New Spring, Lan is about 25 while Moiraine and Siuan are in their early 20s. Moiraine and Siuan have been at the Tower for six years – three as Novices and three as Accepted – and are nearly ready for the shawl when the book begins. They entered the novice book on the same day and became Accepted on the same day: the two are extremely close. Lan travels with Bukama, his oldest friend and one of the men who carried him as an infant from Malkier, but Lan asserts that he does not lead anyone from Malkier: Bukama rides alongside him, but does not follow him. At least, this is how Lan chooses to see it.
- New Spring does not begin with the usual preamble about this being a beginning but not the beginning, but it does start with a wind blowing.
- When we first see him, Lan leads about 300 men, camped near Tar Valon, as part of the “Grand Coalition,” in what some refer to as the Aiel War. Lan receives a message from Lord Emares that he must ride his men to The Hook and form an anvil on the ridge for Emares to hammer a group of five to six hundred Aiel against. Lan’s forces make it in time, only to discover that Emares’ count was off: more than two thousand Aiel are present. Emares himself never shows. Just as it seems that Lan’s men will meet their end, they hear the sound of a great many trumpets. The Aiel shout “Aan’allein.” Lan doesn’t yet know that “One Man Alone refers to him. The Aiel leave without fighting; it seems that they’ve accomplished their mission of putting King Laman to justice.
- When we first see Moiraine and Siuan, they’re standing in the Amyrlin’s sitting room. Tamra Ospenya is the Amyrlin Seat and Gitara Moroso is her Keeper. Tamra and Gitara anxiously work on a letter. Suddenly, they hear the sound of hundreds of trumpets making a sustained blast. Gitara Foretells the birth of the Dragon Reborn on Dragonmount: it’s either happening right at that moment or in the near future. Tamra commands Moiraine and Siuan to keep the Foretelling a secret, even if they must lie to a Sister. “Gitara died without speaking.”
- Throughout the book, we’re given a good look at what life is like in the Tower, particularly for Accepted. Siuan and Moiraine are preparing for the test for the shawl: they will need to complete 100 weaves, in order, while a group of Aes Sedai distract them.
- Moiraine notes that the Tower is slowly dying, as the population of Novices, Accepted, and Aes Sedai are all dwindling.
- Siuan and Moiraine discuss the Dragon Reborn. They worry that the Reds might not leave him alone to play his role in giving the world a chance to win Tarmon Gai’don.
- Tamra announces a gift of 100 gold crowns to every woman who’s given birth in the region since the war came near Tar Valon, in gratitude for the hardships suffered in defending the White Tower. To collect the bounty, Accepted are sent out to take down the details of each birth. Moiraine and Siuan recognize this as a way to secretly find the Dragon Reborn.
- Siuan and Moiraine spend the first day collecting information for the bounty, like the other Accepted, but when they return Moiraine is summoned to Merean – the Mistress of Novices’ – study. Merean informs Moiraine that Laman and his brothers – Moiraine’s uncles – are dead. Moiraine doesn’t feel much at this news, as she wasn’t close to them and they were intensely unlikable people, even within the Damodred family. Merean believes that Moiraine is in shock and wants her to spend some time recovering. Moiraine gives herself a private penance – kneeling in prayer for her uncles’ souls – because she didn’t have an appropriate response to news of death in her family.
- Both Moiraine and Siuan are too focused on nightmares of the Dragon Reborn, having seen some of the outcome of the war first-hand, and in preparation for their test to have much emotion left to spare. The Dragon Reborn dominates their thoughts with nightmares of a man calling lightning from the sky as cities burn. They are terrified that even if he’s found, nobody can stop Tarmon Gai’don now. All they can do is find the boy, train him, and guide him towards the right decisions.
- Moiraine is held back from leaving the Tower, so she can process her uncles’ deaths, and Siuan gets caught in it too. The two of them are given the task of copying down the names collected more legibly. It’s tedious work, but it gives them the opportunity to make their own secret copy of any names that could indicate the Dragon Reborn.
- Moiraine realizes that the Aes Sedai plan to make her Queen of Cairhien. She knows that every other attempt to make an Aes Sedai queen has failed spectacularly and she wants no part of it, but she can’t see any way to avoid it. Anxious, she hides this realization even from Siuan: the first lie she ever tells her.
- Moiraine and Siuan learn that Tamra is sending out a number of Sisters to find the Dragon Reborn in secret. She specifically sends Sisters with a reputation for strict adherence to the law. Despite Tamra’s reputation for being particularly impartial among the Ajahs, she does not include any Red Sisters. Tamra raises Aeldra Najah as her new Keeper.
- Elaida “helps” Moiraine and Siuan practice for the test, emphasizing that they must be serene no matter what happens. She’s extremely brutal, but states that she “wants them to pass.” Merean puts a stop to it, but specifies that if Elaida is guilty of anything, it’s in helping them cheat, not in abusing them. Siuan ominously says “If she ever tries to harm me again, I’ll make her pay.”
- Just one week (ten days) after Gitara’s Foretelling, Moiraine and Siuan are summoned for their tests. It takes place in the oval ter’angreal deep in the Tower and is surrounded by ritual. We see a part of Moiraine’s test directly. As expected, they must perform 100 specific weaves in a row while being distracted, but the distraction is far more involved than they could have guessed. 100 times, she steps through an arch into a new setting. In each setting, she must walk – not run – towards a six-pointed star, then perform the weave without losing her composure. Each time, something tries to stop her. The specific challenges differ wildly, from a beautiful man kissing her to an army of trollocs attacking her. In the final stage, her father asks her to see her mother before she dies and Moiraine must ignore him. Moiraine realizes that this last test, in particular, must have come from Elaida, who is part of the test. Both Siuan and Moiraine pass. They spend their last night as Accepted trying to put mice in Elaida’s bed, then getting caught and punished. The next day, Moiraine and Siuan take the three oaths as one, even giving their answers together when they can. They both choose the Blue Ajah and are welcomed home.
- They quickly find that they have more to learn now, as Aes Sedai, than they’ve covered as Novices and Accepted. The first lesson is that Aes Sedai hierarchy is determined by strength in the One Power. Interference outside the Tower is generally not acceptable, and the Tower can place someone above another for a specific purpose, but Aes Sedai are generally expected to defer to more powerful Aes Sedai and the degree of that deference is proportional to the difference in power, similar to ranks in nobility.
- Siuan is quickly put to work for Cetalia, who heads the Blue’s eyes-and-ears. Moiraine’s first job is to take charge of the bounty and, implicitly, to cooperate with the Tower’s goal to make her queen of Cairhien.
- With the war ended, Lan wants to return to his private war in the Blight. “And no encounters with Aes Sedai.”
- Moiraine starts plotting to flee the Tower, having a number of dresses made to disguise herself as a lesser Cairhienin noble.
- Tamra is found dead, supposedly in her sleep. Moiraine is crushed by this. Sierin Vayu is raised from the Gray Ajah. One of her first orders is to fire every man working in the Tower. Sierin’s rule is harsh on the Aes Sedai as well, with severe punishments handed out relatively often. Sierin chooses Amira and Duhara, both Red Ajah, as her new Keeper and Mistress of Novices.
- Moiraine flees Tar Valon, hoping to find the Dragon Reborn and stay away long enough to ruin the Tower’s plans to make her Queen of Cairhien. On the way out, she spots a man following her. He matches the description of a man who had tried to inspect her finances earlier.
- Back to Lan, traveling back to the Blight with Bukama. When we return to his perspective, he’s traveling through Kandor and into Canluum. Lan learns that rumors of his death in the war preceded him here. Moreover, Edeyn Arrel, his carneira, has been trying to rally support to lead an army into the Blight to revive Malkier. Malkier custom gives a great deal of power to a man’s carneira, or first lover. Edeyn took him when he was 15 and she was in her 30s, and his thoughts on her now are as conflicted as his thoughts on reviving Malkier. He wants Malkier to be remembered and its customs upheld, but he will not lead an army to their useless deaths in the Blight.
- Six armed men approach Lan and Bukama. Bukama had taken an oath not to draw his sword, so Lan commands him – his first true command to Bukama – to get to safety while Lan handles the group alone. Despite lampshading that “Only in stories did one man face six and survive,” Lan wins the fight. The men were supporters of Malkier and Edeyn. With Lan dead, Edeyn would be able to lead Malkier and Lan suspects that she sent the men to kill him. He won’t say a bad word about her out loud, but he knows that he must confront her and choose to either put a stop to her ambition for Malkier or take up the leadership himself. Ryne, another Malkieri, will join Lan and Bukama on their journey to Chachin to face Edeyn.
- Moiraine has been out of the Tower for three months and is in Kandor at the same time as Lan. She’s been finding names from her list, but it’s slow going. In Kandor, she encounters a number of Aes Sedai and takes care to hide herself, yet Larelle and Merean spot her. Cadsuane is there as well. She comments on the dwindling Tower and on the reckless risk Moiraine is taking, traveling with no Warder and no experience. She orders Larelle and Merean to accompany her to Chachin. Moiraine is suspicious of Cadsuane.
- Siuan finds Moiraine in Kandor. She’s distraught, weeping, having run to find Moiraine when she learned that all of Tamra’s searchers for the Dragon Reborn had been killed. Each murder was hidden as an accident, but Siuan knows that Meilyn did not die in her bed in her sleep, but was murdered by the One Power. The only possible explanation is that the Black Ajah is real and they have been murdering the searchers, and likely Tamra as well. “They don’t want the boy found, not alive. They don’t want the Dragon Reborn at the Last Battle.” The two suspect that Cadsuane is Black Ajah as well and that they need to escape. Siuan leaves first, heading to Chachin. Moiraine waits for the next morning, as that will give her more hours to get away before anyone notices that she hasn’t returned to her room.
- Moiraine leaves first thing in the morning, at the same time as Lan. Moiraine spotted Ryne talking with the Aes Sedai and wants to learn what connection they have, so she tails them. The men camp and Moiraine sneaks in to find Lan alone. She tries to take his sword and he tosses her into a nearby pond. Lan is very polite to “Alys,” other than the pond-throwing, but he makes an offhand comment about the Aes Sedai that causes Moiraine to snap, channeling to throw the water of the pond at him.
- Lan doesn’t really believe that Alys is Aes Sedai, having seen the impish look in her face when she threw the water at him and the childish pout when he failed to give her the reaction she wanted. Moiraine claims the right of a woman alone, asking the men to protect her on the road to Chachin, and Bukama accepts, though Lan wants no part of it. On the road, Moiraine continually torments Lan, hoping to get a rise out of him, but he makes every effort to appear unaffected (despite being internally furious.) Of the three men, Moiraine thinks to herself that she fancies Ryne the most, as he’s very attractive, but her thoughts linger more often on Lan.
- Arriving in Chachin, Lan is happy to finally be free of Alys and they split up. Lan heads to the Aesdaishar Palace, where he plays a careful political game with Edeyn, trying not to give her the upper hand, but he isn’t very successful. Edeyn outplays him politically, in public, and leverages her power over him as his carneira to dominate him in private. She plans for Lan to marry her daughter, Iselle, and to take up the title of King of Malkier.
- Lan meets with Prince Brys, Ethenielle’s Swordbearer and consort, as well as his youngest son, Diryk, who recently found a bit of unusual luck in surviving a fall, which Brys attributes to Lan’s presence, as he considers Lan very lucky for having survived in the Blight as he has. Lan, too, believes in luck.
- Moiraine finds Siuan in Chachin. They want to meet with Ines Demain, who is on their list, but she’s staying in the Aesdaishar Palace. They could likely gain access if they present themselves as Aes Sedai, but that would be very dangerous. Siuan notes that a blacksmith died under suspicious circumstances, possibly killed with the One Power, and fears that the Black Ajah are present. The two struggle to decide whether they’re being paranoid or merely cautious, now that they know the Black Ajah is real.
- Moiraine enters the palace as Moiraine Damodred, not as Moiraine Sedai. Siuan follows as her maid, Suki. They learn that Ines is in seclusion, mourning her husband, and isn’t taking visitors. The only option Moiraine sees is to announce herself as Aes Sedai, while Siuan thinks she can seduce her way in.
- Moiraine spots Ryne and Bukama practicing swords, then she learns that Lan has the right to the title of King of Malkier. She wants to meet with Lan, but runs into Merean first, who explains that Larelle went south. Her disguised ruined, Moiraine puts on her Great Serpent Ring and bursts into Lan’s apartments. She demands that he honor the pledge that Malkier made to the White Tower. He angrily demands the answer to a question first: why did the White Tower not send aid to Malkier when it fell? Though the answer is sealed to the Tower, Moiraine tells him: the Tower did try to send aid, but they were too late, and simply failed to help. The Aes Sedai don’t admit faults, so they gave no explanation publicly. Lan begrudgingly agrees to help by having Bukama spy on Merean.
- Iselle doesn’t want to marry Lan and begs Moiraine to take her to Tar Valon to become Aes Sedai. Moiraine ignores her, the girl is exceedingly arrogant and foolish.
- Moiraine learns that Merean spent all day with Brys without going near Ines. Whether she’s Black Ajah or one of Tamra’s chosen, this doesn’t make sense to her, but she can’t figure out what she’s missing.
- Lan continues to agonize over what he should do. He wants to simply run away, but that would be abandoning Bukama’s dream.
- Out of nowhere, someone tries to kill Lan with the One Power. At about the same time, someone stabs Bukama to death. Lan confronts Moiraine, suspecting her. Moiraine puts it all together and asks where Brys would go to be alone. The two run to find him.
- Upon arrival, they find that Merean is holding up Brys and Diryk with the One Power. Ryne is there too, assisting Merean. Moiraine tires to shield Merean, but she’s too weak. Merean orders Ryne to kill Lan while she kills Diryk and Brys. Moiraine can’t win using saidar, but she kills Merean using a knife. Lan, similarly, wins his duel with Ryne only because Ryne thought he had won and let his guard down. Sadly, Moiraine just barely fails to catch Iselle. With no proof that Merean was Black Ajah, Moiraine burns her body.
- With Iselle dead, Edeyn ends her ambitions, planing to retire from the world.
- Siuan learns that Ines’s son was born in a farmhouse two miles from Dragonmount, so he’s not the Dragon Reborn. Moiraine explains what happened with Merean. They solve the mystery: the Black Ajah knows that the Dragon was Reborn, but they didn’t learn when or where. They’re simply killing any men who they believe could have the ability to channel, even if they’re merely unusually lucky. Merean wasn’t after Ines’s son, she was after Diyrk and Lan, for having uncommon luck.
- Though they want to stay together, Siuan and Moiraine know that their search won’t be any faster with the two of them on the road, and Siuan could do more for their cause by returning to the Tower to work with the Blue’s eyes-and-ears.
- Moiraine finds Lan and asks him to be her Warder. She explains that they’re fighting the same war, telling him everything about her quest to find the Dragon Reborn. It’s the same war, but he actually has a chance to win this way. He agrees, becoming her Warder.
What is New Spring about?
Alright, so, with the summary out of the way, let’s get into it. New Spring feels very different from the rest of The Wheel of Time, not just in content, but in structure. Almost all of the book is in either Moiraine or Lan’s perspective, and even between those two the balance leans hard towards Moiraine. Siuan is also a major character, but between her and Moiraine, we are mostly put in Moiraine’s position rather than Siuan’s. The book is, overall, much less “epic” and complicated than the rest of the series, but it has a fairly similar tone. Though New Spring is, in many ways, a coming-of-age story, it doesn’t feel like a YA spin-off to me.
As a whole, New Spring is about how Moiraine, Siuan, and Lan began their quest to find, protect, train, and guide the Dragon Reborn, and ultimately win Tarmon Gai’don. But, we pretty much know that before the book starts. New Spring also serves as a way to show us more about life in the White Tower and how the Aes Sedai work, as what we see of the Aes Sedai from Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve, and Min’s perspective isn’t really the norm. We also get a glimpse into the sort of people that Moiraine, Siuan, and Lan are. Specifically, who they were before spending nearly half their lives on a secret quest to save the world from the imminent cataclysm that only they, and their enemies, know has already begun.
We’ll talk about all of that – it’s good stuff! – but that’s all just talking about New Spring as an entry in the series. first, let’s talk about New Spring as its own book.
In itself, we can break New Spring into two separate – but related – stories. For Lan, New Spring examines Lan’s conflicting thoughts on rebuilding Malkier. What does it mean to remember Malkier? Does he have a choice in whether he becomes king? For Moiraine and Siuan, New Spring is a coming of age yuri romance.
Lan
The Lan we see in New Spring is, in many ways, the same person we see in The Eye of the World. He adheres to Malkieri culture, he fights a life-long battle against the Shadow, he’s an expert swordsman, and he’s stoic. The major difference is that, in New Spring, he’s conflicted. Well, and he’s not a Warder.
Throughout the book, Lan continually notes the signs of both the forgetting and remembrance of Malkier. He’s sad to see Malkier men leaving the hadori to take on new fashion trends, but when he first hears a young man say “Tai’shar Malkier! I stand ready, Majesty” Lan only sees a foolish boy. Lan continually asserts that he’s not a king and no Malkieri follow him.
Which isn’t really true, is it? Lan can say that Bukama rides with him, but when Lan gives him a command – the first command he’s ever given him – Bukama obeys. Lan may not mean to command, but that doesn’t mean that men aren’t waiting on his command.
I love how Lan’s conflicted thoughts here are conveyed. Throughout the series, Lan has always been very distant. We know that he’s deadly, but the closest we come to seeing him act like a human is when he comes to like Rand a bit, when he’s crushed by Moiraine’s death, and when he finds comfort in Nynaeve. Those things mark him as human, but only in the most superficial sense. He’s capable of affection, despair, and love. Okay? His only ambition seemed to be to obey Moiraine. When she dies, he’s magically compelled to find another woman to follow.
In New Spring, we see that there’s more depth to Lan here than merely following Moiraine or retaining his sense of honor. His thoughts are actually pretty complicated. I think we can discuss them in two ways.
What is Malkier?
First, Lan isn’t sure what Malkier really is. Is it a culture, a collection of people, the holding of a king, or a place?
If it’s a culture, then it didn’t really die when Malkier fell to the Blight: it’s dying now, around him, as he sees the Malkieri slowly integrate into different cultures. The Malkieri people are moving on with their lives. No one his age or younger even remembers Malkier as it was. That’s something to really note: Lan may adhere to what he’s learned of Malkier, but he has no first-hand knowledge of living in Malkier before it fell. What he does know was mostly taught to him by particularly loyal soldiers, so he’s getting a pretty limited view. Even people old enough to remember Malkier have spent the last 25 years building new lives. Is being Malkieri as simple as wearing the hadori and upholding a code of honor?
Of course not, it was a culture, and one that its former residents are necessarily taking with them, in some form, even as they assimilate. Even the story of Malkier’s fall has become a part of the Malkier culture. It’s a matter of perspective whether the Malkier culture is “dying” or merely changing. I don’t mean to gloss over the sadness of this here, there are plenty of examples of real cultures who have been displaced and then struggled to maintain a sense of identity. Though, as Malkier appears to have shared its language and many of its values with the other Borderland countries, I don’t think we can directly compare this to, say, Native American tribes. The Malkieri people are adapting other cultures of their own volition: we don’t see any evidence of an intentional genocide of Malkieri people or culture.
Of course, Lan isn’t thinking about Malkier in terms of real world societies, he’s thinking about it personally. He was raised to think of things like the hadori as an integral part of Malkieri culture, so when he sees people like Ryne abandoning it, he feels as though the culture is dying.
If Malkier is a collection of people, then Malkier is still very much alive. Sure, many people were killed when it fell, but many people survived too. Lan may be sad to see Malkieri move on with their lives, but they are still alive. If rebuilding Malkier requires sacrificing Malkieri lives, then is it actually saving Malkier, or just killing the remaining Malkieri people? You can’t remember something if you’re dead.
If Malkier is the holding of a king or a mere place, then does that even matter to Lan? He doesn’t seem to have much personal interest in becoming king. He feels the constant pull towards the Blight, but is this really a pull towards Malkier… or towards the Blight and a war with the Shadow?
The reality is that there are aspects of Malkier that remain and there are aspects of Malkier that have already been lost forever. Even if Lan rebuilds Malkier, it won’t bring back what once was. You can’t enter the same river twice. He could build New Malkier, but in that case, does it even matter whether it’s in the same location? If Lan simply wanted to be a king, why not gather the Malkieri people and claim some land outside of the Blight?
Lan is also forced to confront the fact that the reasons people have for wanting to rebuild Malkier don’t necessarily have anything to do with remembering or honoring it. Edeyn is clearly driven by ambition. Perhaps she also loves Malkier, but this is also a way for her to make her daughter a queen and build a legacy for herself. Some of the people who would answer the call would be doing so simply for the chance to build a better life. Again, it’s been 25 years: how many of the Malkieri have already built new lives, lives they love? How many people would want to abandon the homes they’ve built with the families to move to a place they either never knew or haven’t seen in decades? Of the people who would want to remake Malkier, how many would only be doing so because their lives didn’t turn out the way they wanted? Lan doesn’t know the term, but that young man saying “Tai’shar Malkier” kind of felt like a LARPer to me. That’s not to say that there aren’t certainly a number of true Malkieri patriots who are willing to die for even the chance to rebuild their ancestral home, but Lan’s wise enough to see that this honorable wish can be bent towards selfish and fruitless ends.
For the most part, Lan deflects these tricky questions by focusing on the more practical issue that retaking Malkier might not even be feasible, and it will certainly carry an enormous cost in blood. Lan learns at the “Battle of the Shining Walls” – know to those who were there as the “Blood Snow” – what it is to lead men to their deaths. Yet, beneath this practical concern, I think we can see Lan making a cost-benefit analysis. Is retaking Malkier worth the cost and the risk? Lan will lead men to their deaths if the cause is justified, but he’s hesitant to make this decision regarding his ancestral homeland.
Even fighting off the Aiel seems to have left a bad taste in his mouth. As we see when Lan orders Bukama to hide, Lan doesn’t have much stomach for ordering other men to their deaths. Lan wasn’t raised by a Malkieri king, he was raised by loyal Malkieri soldiers. They tried to groom him for leadership, but in a real sense, Lan’s fathers were loyal soldiers, willing to die for a cause. Is it really a surprise that a group of honorable knights trying to raise Lan to be the best man they could make him produced an honorable knight, rather than a king? When Lan thinks of a male figure to model himself after, does he think of his biological father, or of Bukama? If Lan could die to rebuild Malkier, he would do it without hesitation. Hell, he’s fully prepared to die trying, even if he knows there’s no chance of success. In a sense, this already makes him a good king: he loves his people too much to sacrifice them.
What does Lan want?
The other side of Lan’s dilemma is more personal and selfish: what does he actually want to do? Lan is very good at fighting and at surviving, even in the Blight. The Lan we meet in The Eye of the World is in his element: he’s among the very best at what he does and what he’s doing is important. The Lan we meet in New Spring isn’t as certain about himself, but he clearly wants to fight the Shadow. He feels the constant pull towards his home… but is his home Malkier, or is it the Blight?
Is home where you grew up? Is it where you’re most comfortable? Is it where you’re at your best? By most definitions, Lan’s home is wherever the fight against Shai’tan is thickest. Could Lan ever be truly satisfied living in a palace, sitting on a throne, ordering other men about? After the Aiel War, Lan anxiously yearns to return to the Blight, worried that his time fighting the Aiel made him soft. Even a month spent in rest puts him on edge.
Yet, Lan is also the only person who can remake Malkier. People like Bukama, who gave their lives to protect and prepare him, sacrificed their lives for the dream of Lan rebuilding Malkier. Wouldn’t abandoning their sacrifices be the same as running away? Lan isn’t a selfish man: he would never abandon the crown simply because it would make him unhappy.
“Running would end Edeyn’s schemes of marriage. If he avoided her long enough, she would find another husband for Iselle. Running would end Edeyn’s dream of reclaiming Malkier; her support would fade like mist under a noon sun once people learned he was gone. Running would end many dreams. The man who had carried an infant tied to his back had a right to dream, though. Duty was a mountain, but it had to be carried.”
Chapter 26, When to Surrender
For most of New Spring, these two questions have Lan paralyzed. He knows that he must confront Edeyn and make a decision one way or the other, but he doesn’t know what to do. When he and Bukama are attacked, he gives his first command – as King – and Bukama obeys. Lan gets just a little taste of being a king here… but, Lan didn’t really expect to win that fight. It seems that Lan is only willing to be the King of Malkier if it means he can die.
Lan’s ambition
This is how we see Lan at the end of the book, just before he becomes a Warder. Shortly after explaining to Moiraine that “You only surrender after you’re dead,” Moiraine finds Lan preparing to travel back to the Blight alone, where he would certainly die. Lan can really see no other alternative. Edeyn is retiring from the world and he has no wish to lead men to fruitless deaths in the Blight, but he can’t move on either.
Then, Moiraine gives him a choice. “It’s the same war as you, against the Shadow.”
What Lan truly wants to to fight against Shai’tan. I don’t even think it’s about vengeance, I think it’s just what he’s best at and where he feels at home. It gives him a purpose and it gives him something to focus on. Lan was raised to be a warrior since he was a very young child, I don’t think he could truly be happy as anything but a warrior, but his sense of honor and his sense of empathy and wisdom prevent him from simply becoming a mercenary or fighting in a meaningless war. He was willing to turn his attention from the Blight to fight against the Aiel, but even this seems to have left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth.
So, when Moiraine explains that she’s actually fighting the same war against the Shadow, but with a real chance to win, Lan agrees. After spending the entire book thinking that he would never want to deal with a Cairhienin or an Aes Sedai, he agrees. Early in the book, Lan has the thought that the men he’s known who became Warders came to the decisions unnaturally quickly. He suspects that the bond isn’t truly consensual. At least in Lan’s case, it really is something that he agrees to because it’s what he actually wants. More than Bukama or Edeyn, Moirain offers him a free choice to be who he wants to be.
I really liked seeing this. Throughout The Wheel of Time, Lan has often felt like nothing more than Moiraine’s dog, or a fighter who simply wants someone to direct him at a cause. In New Spring, Lan is given some real agency. It paints scenes like his training sessions with Rand in a more nuanced light.
As a side note, I also like how this is kind of a spin on Aragorn’s arc from The Lord of the Rings. When we first meet Strider, he’s been running from his responsibility as king for a long time. Unlike Lan, Aragorn is mostly concerned with whether he can live up to what’s expected to him. After seeing the faith that people like Boromir have in him, Aragorn eventually comes to accept the burden and take up the crown.
Lan’s arc is kind of the opposite of this, and frankly, it’s actually a lot more interesting to me. Lan’s not uncertain of his own ability to lead, he’s not sure whether anyone should, and he’s not sure that it’s the cause he wants to dedicate himself to. Whereas Aragorn’s choice was between cowardice and glory, Lan’s choice is far more nuanced. In the end, the Lan we meet in The Eye of the World seems superficially similar to Strider, but his motivation couldn’t be more different. Lan gave up glory to pursue a mission. He chose to preserve the lives of the Malkieri even if it means allowing the memory to fade. Rather than simply carving his kingdom back from the Blight, he’ll help scour the Blight from the world altogether. Perhaps, when Tarmon Gai’don is finished, someone can rebuild Malkier – maybe it’ll even be Lan – but destroying the Shadow comes first.
Moiraine and Siuan
Alright, I think that covers Lan – let’s move on to Moiraine and Siuan. I mentioned before that I consider their story to be a “yuri romance,” and I’ll get into that in just a bit, but first, I think I need to briefly touch on the notion of free play in literature.
Free Play
I’m kind of using “Free Play” as a way to summarize a bunch of related ideas in literary theory, and I’ve dedicated a whole series of written blog posts to the topic of literary theory that I might turn into videos some day, but for now, I just want to quickly touch on what it means to interpret literature.
When we experience literature (really, any form of art, but let’s keep it to literature) you need to interpret it. Text is filled with ambiguity and colored by context, so there really isn’t just one correct interpretation. The work itself is comprised of more than simply the words on the page: there’s the culture of the time and place it was published, the medium you experienced it through, what you know about the author, etc. You’ve probably heard of debates over the “death of the author,” but even that is a simplification. It’s not as simple as either accepting or rejecting things stated by the author in interviews, but also in what you know – or can infer – about the author, their identity, and their culture.
I’ve speculated before, for example, that Robert Jordan’s experience in the Vietnam War probably influenced some scenes, but I doubt that his experience as a helicopter gunner is what prepared him to discuss the finer points of feeding a pre-industrial army. Just a few minutes ago, while talking about Lan, I referenced Aragorn, as Robert Jordan was certainly aware of Tolkien and he knew that his readers would be as well. When discussing the Aes Sedai, we’ve discussed everything from Dune to the patriarchy. Mat’s clearly a reference to Odin, perhaps even meant to literally be Odin – our concept of mythological Odin – in a different turning of the wheel. It’s not just a matter of finding the inspiration, it’s all context to help make sense of the text. Context helps us fill in gaps, resolve ambiguity, and bring more depth to our understanding.
What do the Seanchan sound like? Do we consider where Robert Jordan is from? Do we check for any statement in an interview? Do we ignore Robert Jordan and simply look at the description and the names used by the Seanchan to try to figure out the most likely accent solely from the text, ignoring the author? Do all Seanchan sound the same, or are there dialects within the Seanchan? Maybe you don’t even have a specific concept of what the Seanchan sound like. That’s okay too! Part of the reason why so many people are always upset by film adaptations is because they didn’t actually have a definite image in mind and the adaptation collapses the ambiguous idea of the character into one, specific image, which is necessarily limited when compared to a nebulous cloud of possible interpretations that exists solely within one person’s mind. Rather than feeling like one version of the character was created, it feels like an infinite possibility was destroyed. This is part of why I’m trying not to see anything from the television adaptation of The Wheel of Time: I haven’t really decided what a few characters look like yet, and I don’t want to see a version that will erase all of the ones I might imagine otherwise.
That really gets to the amazing value of interpretation: the most important factor in creating your interpretation is your unique perspective.
But, when talking with other people, we do need to have some understanding that although our interpretations are all valid, there is a spectrum of “objectivity” in analysis. The text, for example, is generally considered to be objective (though multiple editions, translations, and the changing meaning of words complicates even this.) Even here, there’s nothing wrong with changing things, but there’s an expectation that other people might not agree. Fanfiction is a great way to express this.
To create an example, I don’t really think you could make an argument that the text of The Wheel of Time supports an interpretation where Rand is gay. But, if someone wants to identify with Rand and sees that as part of their identity, they can absolutely create this interpretation. What are you going to do, call the interpretation police? Maybe he just feels like he’s supposed to like Min, Elayne, and Aviendha in the same way that he always assumed that he would marry Egwene. Maybe he’s only hetero because of Lews Therin’s personality in his head. I think it would actually be really interesting to consider that Rand’s sexuality may be dominated by Lews Therin’s personality as he vies for control. I mean, we see that Lews Therin’s habit of rubbing his ear and humming at young women come through in Rand without him realizing it. As Rand struggles to assert his individuality against Lews Therin, I think you could actually write some really interesting fanfiction where Rand has to assert his own sexuality in the same way that he needs to assert his own memories. But, as a practical matter, it wouldn’t make sense to assume that all fans of The Wheel of Time are aware of this interpretation. The default assumption when talking with fans and criticizing the work must, as a practical concern, be rooted in what’s immediately available in the text and what was most likely meant by Robert Jordan. As an instance of representation, it would be disingenuous to claim that this interpretation of Rand as gay is an example of representation in media, as it really doesn’t seem like it was intended.
For some reason, this vivid image just popped into my head of Rand and Gawyn making out while Egwene just stands there like “really?” This doesn’t really have anything to do with what I’m talking about, I just felt that I had to share that.
Things get more muddled when considering other aspects of the work. If Robert Jordan says something in an interview, it’s debatable whether this makes it canon. He’s the author, but it wasn’t in the text, so does it matter? What about Sanderson? Can Sanderson weigh in on events from the books he worked on? Can he make comments on the books he didn’t work on? This is an inherently subjective question with no right answer, but a fan community may choose to make a call for their society. Ultimately, whether an interpretation is “correct” is more a practical matter of conversation than any sort of inherent truth.
The Star Wars Expanded Universe is a great example of this as a practical matter for a large fan community. Within the greater Star Wars community, explicit tiers of canon were defined. These rules didn’t govern individual interpretations, it just provided some social guidelines to make conversation and the creation of new works easier. Even Disney killing the EU is ultimately only as relevant to anyone’s personal interpretation as they want it to be. You might not be able to get something set in the old EU published, but nothing’s stopping you from writing it as fan fiction. Corporations can’t directly control our minds (yet.)
Free play – the notion that there is no objective basis for interpretation – can feel like a real problem when interpreting legal documents, scripture, or scientific papers, but when it comes to fiction, it’s fantastic. It’s what allows us to really crawl inside a book and live in there in a way that we can’t quite replicate with movies and video games. We make the story, the world, and the characters our own. Good writing leans into this, aiming to provide just enough description to give you something to work with. In a very real sense, more description can actually make an idea less powerful by taking away the potential in leaving it ambiguous.
There’s a balance to be struck in making characters relatable and allowing people to insert themselves into a character’s perspective. If you don’t provide any description of a character at all, then there’s nothing for readers to work with. If you want characters to feel different, you need to have some relative differences between them. We know that Rand is tall for the Two Rivers and Moiraine is short even for a Cairhienin. We know that many people in The Wheel of Time have dark skin, including several characters from the Two Rivers, but – unless I missed something – we really don’t know what Mat’s skin color is. I’ve been assuming that everyone in Emond’s Field had fairly dark skin as that’s part of what made Rand stand out, but maybe he stands out more because of his height and hair. Yet we know that at least some people from Emond’s Field have dark skin. Particularly for an identity that isn’t well represented in popular fiction, adding details that aren’t in the presumed default are important. If Robert Jordan never mentioned skin color at all, then many readers would have assumed that everyone was white. I mean, look at the book covers. Apparently even explicitly providing skin color wasn’t enough. On the other hand, if he had gone even further and mentioned the specific real-world ethnicity that he had in mind for each character, then it would have excluded interpretations of people who have dark skin but aren’t of that specific ethnicity.
Of course, this is also true for sexuality and gender identity. In some ways, leaving it ambiguous is great, because it allows for each reader to make their own decision, but it can also imply that everyone is cis/het/allo because that’s what the majority of fans will assume. It’s easy to say that an individual can simply imagine whatever they want, but it’s kind of hard to do that when literally all official merchandise and fan content follow the majority assumption. When writing a story, you don’t want to think of your characters as merely a way to hit a particular demographic spread as that would result in a very artificial story – something created by a marketing team rather than an artist – but you do want to consider how readers will engage with what you create and who they’ll relate with.
Alright, I could keep talking about this for a very long time. I mean, I haven’t even touched on what it means for someone to write characters that aren’t like them, which could be its own dedicated video. Hell, should I even be the one to make that video, or am I disqualified based on my own identity? Or maybe it needs to be someone with a degree in a relevant field? I think that’s enough for today.
Love Story
That all said, Siuan and Moiraine’s story in New Spring is obviously constructed as a yuri romance.
I mean, it’s set in an all-girls school. A noble girl and a fisherman’s daughter, from the top and bottom of society, but they join on the same day and become Accepted on the same day. They’re both orphans and they were both born with the spark, but Moiraine loves horses and Siuan hates them. Though Moiraine was trained to lead, Siuan tends to lead between the two. Society won’t punish them for being pillow-friends, but neither will it respect their relationship.
In the first act, as students, they can share everything with each other. As they approach their graduation, they see how the shawl puts up barriers between friends. As full Sisters, they’ll be expected to keep secrets. Will they even choose the same Ajah? Moiraine knows she’ll choose Blue, but thinks – perhaps fears – that Siuan will choose Green. Worse yet, what if one of them doesn’t pass?
Then, they attain the shawl! They choose the same Ajah and are welcomed into the Blue. Their new peers even thought to make their rooms adjacent. They’re actually even closer than they were before! Overjoyed that they managed to stay together, Siuan kisses Moiraine (with a fade to black that could be interpreted a couple of ways.)
Yet, Moiraine knows that the Aes Sedai want to make her Queen of Cairhien. She believes that this would not only end in disaster for Cairhien and herself, but it would also likely keep her from Siuan. They also know that someone needs to find the Dragon Reborn and they want it to be them. They plan to leave the Tower as soon as they’re able, but quickly learn that, until they reach their full potential, most Sisters can give them orders, and Siuan is ordered to work in the Tower with the Blue’s eyes-and-ears. Moiraine must flee the Tower to avoid the plot in Cairhien. Yet, though they’re torn apart temporarily, they must only wait until they reach their potential, then they’ll have the freedom to go on an adventure together. Aes Sedai live long lives and it’ll only be a couple more years, surely they can wait that long.
Then, Siuan learns that Tamra’s searchers for the Dragon Reborn have all been killed. In a panic, she disobeys Cetalia to leave the Tower and find Moiraine. They find each other, and although they’ll both face serious punishment when they return to the Tower, for now, they’re on an adventure together. Their dreams as Novices and Accepted are coming true! It’s a lot more terrifying than they expected, but they have each other for support.
Finally, in the end, it’s not society that forces them apart, but their own ambition and sense of responsibility. The two of them won’t search any faster together than Moiraine can alone, and Siuan would be far more useful with access to the Blue Ajah’s eyes-and-ears. They’ll always love each other, but at least until the Dragon Reborn is found, they can’t be together.
I mean, this is just a classic coming-of-age tragic love story formula. The overall structure could fit any love story, but even apart from Moiraine and Siuan being women, this story feels specifically like a yuri story. Being set in an all-girls school is a common trope of the genre. The tragic ending, particularly the feeling that graduation might bring an end to something ephemeral, that can only exist in this liminal moment of youth, is also somewhat common.
I’m saying “yuri,” by the way, simply because that’s where I recognize this from. One of my degrees is in Japanese Language and Literature, and I haven’t read all that much western sapphic literature (the only thing that springs to mind is Carmilla.) I don’t really think that Robert Jordan was specifically working from yuri manga out of Japan, though I think it’s fair to note that New Spring was published years after the yuri genre had caught on. I mean, Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena both came out in the 90s. Class S is decades older. Gender and orientation representation certainly wasn’t as good in 2004 as it is in 2022, but New Spring is hardly the first or most explicit girls-love story.
Where it stands out, I think, is in having love between two women treated in a very “normal” way within this sort of epic fantasy. Moiraine and Siuan really aren’t defined, as characters, by their sexuality, and their relationship isn’t exaggerated or fetishized. Further, the overall style of The Wheel of Time, or even New Spring, isn’t comprised of googly eyes and an overabundance of pastels and flowers. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having a unique style, but it’s notable that I could read New Spring on a bus without feeling a little embarrassed.
Frankly, you’d have to try pretty hard not to see any signs of a romance between Moiraine and Siuan here. If the relationship itself isn’t enough, then I think we can see some real proof in the text in chapter 17, Arrival.
Merean shook her head with a smile. “Not troublesome, really. High-spirited. None of the tricks Moiraine played were mean, but they were plentiful. Novice and Accepted, she was sent to my study more often than any three other girls. Except for her pillow-friend Siuan. Of course, pillow-friends frequently get into tangles together, but with those two, one was never sent to me without the other. The last time the very night after passing for the shawl.” Her smile faded into a frown very much like the one she had worn that night. Not angry, but rather disbelieving of the mischief young women could get up to. And a touch amused by it. “Instead of spending the night in contemplation, they tried to sneak mice into a sister’s bed—Elaida a’Roihan—and were caught. I doubt any other women have been raised Aes Sedai while still too tender to sit from their last visit to the Mistress of Novices.”
Moiraine kept her face smooth, kept her hands from knotting into fists, but she could do nothing about burning cheeks. That ruefully amused frown, as if she were still Accepted. She needed seasoning, did she? Well, perhaps she did, some, but still. And spreading out all these intimacies!
“I think you know all of me that you need to know,” she told Cadsuane stiffly. How close she and Siuan had been was no one’s business but theirs.
Here, Merean explicitly calls Moiraine and Siuan pillow-friends. We’ve only heard that phrase a few times, but it’s pretty overtly a reference to romantic and/or sexual relationships between Aes Sedai (and Novices/Accepted.) Moiraine’s internal response isn’t to deny it or think that Merean is exaggerating, but to be angry that Merean was telling someone else how close she was with Siuan. She’s embarrassed, but doesn’t deny it in the least, even in her own thoughts. Note that Moiraine thinks in the past tense here, indicating – I think – that Moiraine is already unsure whether her relationship with Siuan will continue now that they’re full Sisters.
Where the notion of free play comes in here is in the specific nature of the relationship. We don’t see Siuan’s perspective very often, but we actually do see her express what I think we can interpret as physical attraction for Moiraine. “She was not a pretty little porcelain doll; she was a beautiful little porcelain doll.” It’s not entirely explicit, maybe this is purely an aesthetic observation, but in context, I think a queer reading is obvious even if it’s not the only valid reading. From Moiraine, we really don’t get much at all. Both of them express attraction for men on many occasions, both out-loud and in their thoughts. In the future, we also see that Siuan has a thing for Bryne.
It’s possible that we simply didn’t see any more sexual thoughts. Robert Jordan isn’t very consistent in how explicit his sex scenes are. Sometimes we just get kissing and a fade to black, sometimes we get Birgitte publicly experiencing the whole thing while Min live narrates how many children Elayne is getting pregnant with. I think that it’s perfectly valid to interpret Siuan kissing Moiraine as either the beginning of a sex scene or as just a moment of loving intimacy. To an individual finding representation in this scene, this distinction may matter quite a lot, but in my reading, the sexual aspect of the relationship really isn’t the point. What’s on full display here – what’s directly and unambiguously supported by the text – is the romance between them.
Also note that Siuan and Moiraine never really think of their relationship in sisterly terms, I really think that any reading that adheres to the text has to acknowledge the romantic aspect of the relationship, regardless of sexual activity. I mean, if Siuan and Moiraine’s relationship is meaningful to you because it reminds you of a relationship with a friend or sibling, then that’s great! Nobody can take that away from you. But, in a social setting, I really can’t imagine talking about New Spring without having the default assumption that Siuan and Moiraine are in love.
My personal reading here is that Siuan is bisexual, having both romantic and sexual feelings for both men and women, while Moiraine only has romantic feelings for Siuan. There’s a brief quote in The Great Hunt, in chapter 22 – Watchers: “Indeed, she had never thought of [Lan] as an object of jealousy, had never thought so of any man.” Perhaps I’m taking this too literally, but is there literally any scene where Moiraine expresses anything even approaching romantic interest in any man? What’s more, although we see Moiraine express an aesthetic appreciation for men, it always feels the same as when she appraises a horse or a dress. Siuan even taunts Moiraine, while they’re in the Aesdaishar Palace, saying “that one of these days “One of these days, you’re going to find yourself ready to do more than dream about some man, and I hope I’m there to see it!”
My reading is that Moiraine is actually asexual, with only an aesthetic attraction for men, and demiromantic, with feelings only for Siuan. But, given that Robert Jordan was writing this in 2004, I think it’s more likely that he simply meant for them to be bisexual. Cynically, I think there’s also a decent chance that he imagined this bisexuality as a college phase, but I don’t think that would be a popular reading today, and it’s not how I interpreted it, reading it in 2022.
New Spring as Book 0
Alright, that pretty much covers New Spring as a work in itself, so let’s get back to talking about The Wheel of Time.
De-aged characters
One thing that really stood out to me in New Spring is how believable Lan, Siuan, and Moiraine felt as de-aged versions of the characters we’ve seen before. Lan and Siuan both felt very similar to their confident and capable older selves, but a bit less certain and a lot less capable. I don’t think that Lan the Warder would have been too worried about fighting six stooges by himself, but young Lan fully expects to die fighting them.
I really like how New Spring adds a great deal of agency for Lan in a way that doesn’t feel like retconning. I kind of want to go reread his sections from the first few books, particularly the bits where he’s teaching Rand how to use a sword. In his relationship with Rand, Lan gets to become the sort of father-figure that he grew up with. Like Bukama, Lan is a loyal knight, yet he’s training a young man how to be a ruler. Like Bukama, Lan focuses more on teaching Rand how to use a sword than anything else. Like Lan, Rand finds that skill with a sword is surprisingly useful. Without that training, he couldn’t have defeated Turak or Ba’alzamon.
For Siuan, I think it’s interesting that we don’t really get to see how she thinks as Amyrlin Seat, but Siuan is, in a sense, de-aged when she’s stilled and loses the oaths. She looks much younger and I suspect that she might be acting a bit younger too. Not as young as in New Spring – I don’t really see Siuan putting in mice in Elaida’s bed in Knife of Dreams – but it’s interesting to consider.
But, Moiraine’s the character we see the most of, and her growth is much more visible. We really don’t get many perspective chapters for Moiraine in The Wheel of Time, and when we do, she kind of comes off as… well, I was imagining The Terminator.
Go re-read chapter 21 – Into the Heart – in The Shadow Rising. Moiraine spends nearly every moment of that chapter harshly appraising everything around her. Every single thing Rand does is carefully analyzed both in terms of its effects and on what it reveals about Rand. Egwene isn’t even Moiraine’s target – she’s focused on Rand – but Egwene still gets scanned and analyzed. “It was good to see Egwene had not yet grown sophisticated enough to see beneath the surface all the time. The girl was already far less malleable than she should have been for years yet. She needed to be shaped before she was hardened.” I can almost see the Terminator interface in Moiraine’s head.
In New Spring, we learn that this mode of observing everything and carefully analyzing it is something Moiraine does intentionally and it isn’t her only mode of thought. It’s a skill she learned in Cairhien and honed in Tar Valon, but she’s also a person. Reading “Into the Heart,” we see Moiraine struggling to keep her face neutral and her hands unclenched. She’s breaking her facade because of the extreme situation, but in New Spring, we see that young Moiraine breaks much more easily. She’s also far less secure in herself, often thinking that Siuan’s really the smart one.
It’s kind of sad to see the effect these twenty years have on Moiraine. I mean, for nearly half of her life Moiraine knows – for a fact – that Tarmon Gai’don will happen within her lifetime and that she’s one of only a handful of people who can do anything about it. Nearly everyone who knows that Tarmon Gai’don is coming is a Darkfriend: Moiraine cannot abandon this mission. I criticized her, in The Eye of the World, for being terrible at relating to the young men from Emond’s Field, but how could she, as hardened as she is? When she was about their age, she made the independent decision to stand against the end of the world. If she can do that, it really seems like Mat can just keep his hands in his pockets while they walk through Shadar Logoth.
Overall, I really felt that the younger versions of our characters felt really believable. I went into the book not really expecting to like it – prequels involving characters from the main series seem really hard to do right – but I’m happy to say that Robert Jordan really did a great job here.
References
One thing I didn’t really like in New Spring is just how many references to things we recognize there were. At times, it really felt like a bit much. There weren’t all that many Aes Sedai, so it makes sense that they’d at least be aware of, say, Elaida, but pulling pranks on her and being personally tormented by her sometimes felt like a bit much. After Elaida’s training session, Siuan says “I tell you, once I gain the shawl, if she ever tries to harm me again, I’ll make her pay.”
Maybe you could just read this as foreshadowing, but it felt like a bit much to me. It reminded me of the Star Wars prequels. Did Yoda really need to meet Chewbacca?
On the other hand, I really liked the bit where Moiraine comments on how little the Aiel War affects life in Tar Valon. “It was so…normal. No one appeared to notice the heavy smell of sour smoke that hung in the air. A battle outside Tar Valon could not alter what went on inside Tar Valon’s walls. Perhaps even a war could not.” If you read New Spring in publish order, then this is definitely relevant to Egwene’s siege of Tar Valon.
Ta’veren
Another thing I really liked was the little bit of ta’veren warping of probability that we see. Moiraine and Siuan notice that some strange things happen: some people survive falls that should have killed them while others die in the most ridiculous of accidents. A huge number of births happen at about the same time.
It was kind of funny to see Moiraine not understand why so many people would get pregnant during a war and have to have it explained to her. Yet, though a boom of births during a war is entirely common, it also feels like the sort of thing that happens wherever Rand goes. The accidents are even more obvious.
They’re not completely random, either. It’s clearly part of the pattern, even if Moiraine and Siuan can’t see it yet. If there hadn’t been so many births, then Rand wouldn’t have escaped the White Tower as an infant. If there had been no Foretelling at all, then Moiraine, Siuan, and Lan wouldn’t have been ready to protect the Emond’s Fielders when they needed it. If Diryk hadn’t survived that surprising fall, then Moiraine wouldn’t have likely learned that the Black Ajah is real. So many unlikely events came together to get the right people in the right state so they could act just when Rand, Perrin, and Mat need them to. The Pattern doesn’t cooperate with Moiraine’s goals, but they do guide her to where she needs to be.
Outro
I think that just about wraps things up. There’s plenty more good stuff in New Spring, such as all of the Aes Sedai and Malkier lore we see. Lan and Edeyn’s relationship was definitely… interesting. Maybe Lan actually can understand Mat’s situation with Tylin a little bit? For the shortest book in the series, New Spring really had a lot going on.
But, I also desperately want to find out what’s going on with Egwene in Knife of Dreams. So, let’s call it here.