Update: I made a video version of this post! Check it out here:
Moving on with The Wheel of Time books. This time I’m talking about book three, The Dragon Reborn. You can find my comments on book two here.
As a reminder, this is a response to the book. There will be spoilers and I’m not going to summarize the plot. Instead, I’ll pick out some of the bits that were most interesting to me. If you haven’t read the book yet, go do that first: it’s a great book and I’d hate to spoil it for anyone.
Wow, The Dragon Reborn is really good!
I should probably stop starting these posts out by saying that the book was “good” – of course it’s “good.” But, seriously, I enjoyed book three at least as much as the first two, maybe even more. Robert Jordan was a fantastic author and he’s managed to avoid all of the issues I’d normally expect from a sequel here: there are plenty more mysteries, lots more world-building, a real sense of tension, and a promise of more to come.
What is The Dragon Reborn about?
I want to start off by talking about what I think is happening throughout The Dragon Reborn. Specifically, what’s driving Rand and why are things escalating so quickly?
We keep hearing how people and events bend to weave around ta’veren, and a strong ta’veren can leave a wake of distortion in the pattern. What’s been left somewhat ambiguous is how much agency the ta’veren themselves have. In this book, I believe that we’re seeing that Rand has more agency than he might think.
The title of the book indicates that we’re really seeing the Dragon Reborn in this book. Going into the book, my assumption was that Rand would start the book as the Dragon Reborn, as he declared himself at the end of the last book. What I found, instead, was that Rand – at least in his own thoughts – was not the Dragon Reborn yet, he was just a puppet of the Aes Sedai.
One interpretation of the book’s plot is that Rand was being drawn to the Heart of the Stone as part of the pattern. After all, this has been prophesied: standing in the Heart of the Stone to claim Callandor is one of the signs that the Dragon was truly Reborn. From this perspective, you could say that all of the bizarre occurrences in the book were due to the pattern twisting around our protagonists.
I do not think this is correct.
If our protagonists were all going along with the pattern, meekly, then I don’t see why it would need to distort events so greatly. As Rand crosses ground, he leaves a large wake of wild stuff. Frequent marriages are mentioned most often, but there are also bizarre fires – such as one where all the walls fell outward, the buckets were full of holes, and debris carried further than expected – violence, and in one case a baby falling a great height and being unscathed. Perhaps this is due to the Forsaken meddling… but I don’t think so.
I think that Rand is causing all of this by working against the pattern.
Rand starts the book heavily conflicted. He’s just announced himself as the Dragon Reborn, but it doesn’t really feel real to him. He still feels like a pawn. What’s more, he feels as though the longer he goes along with things, the less time he’ll have to do anything about it. He’s terrified of his inevitable madness and he doesn’t want to merely wait to see things through.
So, he heads out, earlier than expected. Earlier than intended. Both Moiraine and Be’lal mention that Rand isn’t ready yet (though with opposite emotions, of course.) He hasn’t even begun to master his powers and he doesn’t know what’s happening. He’s scared and insecure. We’ve all felt like this at one point, right – where we’re scared that we’re going to mess everything up but we’re too exhausted and anxious to try to avoid it, so we just want it to end? I’ve definitely gone into exams with this mentality: heaven or hell, at least it’ll be done. Rand doesn’t know much about being the Dragon Reborn, but he does know some of the prophesies. Some signs are inconclusive: even false dragons declare themselves, wave the banner, channel, and have armies. Taking Callandor from the Heart of the Stone is far more conclusive: no false dragon has done this. Moreover, if he is the Dragon Reborn, then he has to do this. If he tries and fails, then he wasn’t really the Dragon. Perhaps Tar Valon could seize Callandor, but if he’s truly the embodiment of prophesy, then he cannot fail, right?
“If I am the Dragon Reborn. If I am not just some half-mad man cursed with the ability to channel, a puppet dancing for Moiraine and the White Tower.“
Rand’s plan isn’t great: he just heads off by himself for Tear, climbs the Stone, and heads for the sword. This is suicide.
But, it has to happen, right?
Remember the scene where Mat encounters Comar cheating at dice? Comar’s dice are rigged, so Mat aims to expose him by taking his dice and showing that they’ll both throw the exact same toss several times in a row.
“He spilled the dice onto the tabletop. They bounced oddly. He felt – something – shifting. It was as if his luck had gone wild. The room seemed to be writhing around him, tugging at the dice with threads. For some reason he wanted to look at the door, but he kept his eyes on the dice. They came to rest. Five crowns. Comar’s eyes looked ready to pop out of his head.”
Even though it was Rigged, the pattern made Mat win, even if it went against reality. Rand’s plan is terrible – it’s weighted against him – but the pattern forces him to win anyways, no matter what rules it had to break. I think that the strange events occurring around Rand were the necessary shifting of the dice to force his weighted-against plan to win. That, and things that needed to be a certain way when he seized Callandor needed to happen more quickly, such as marriages, burned cities, and novices acting as full Aes Sedai.
“That town burning, and the wells failing, and…. That is evil, Moiraine. I can’t believe Rand is evil. The Pattern may be shaping itself around him, but how can the Pattern be that evil? It makes no sense, and things have to make sense. If you make a tool with no sense to it, it’s wasted metal. The Pattern wouldn’t make waste.”
Here we have Perrin talking to Moiraine about how the pattern should be more efficient. Perhaps Perrin merely misunderstands the pattern’s “goal”: it isn’t concerned with good or evil. But we should also consider that much of the waste here is created by our ta’veren pulling against the weave. If they were all a bit more patient and calm, then maybe the pattern wouldn’t be so twisted.
This is fascinating on it’s own, but what’s really funny to me is that Mat is doing the exact same thing as Rand, but for completely different reasons: whereas Rand is forcing fate to prove that he’s the Dragon Reborn, Mat is forcing fate because he always wins: he’s perfectly happy to just accept that he’s lucky. What would the pattern have done if Rand’s path had required him to win a bunch of gold and repeatedly pull off dashing heroics?
Finally! Some POV scenes for Óðinn Mat!
But Mat and Perrin were ta’veren, too, and she had also dreamed of them. Odd dreams, even more difficult to understand than the dreams of Rand…. Mat, placing his own left eye on a balance scale. Mat, hanging by his neck from a tree limb. There had been a dream of Mat and Seanchan, too, but she was willing to dismiss that as a nightmare. It had to have been just a nightmare. Just like the one about Mat speaking the Old Tongue.
Egwene’s prophetic dreaming
Have we had a single POV chapter for Mat in the first two books? If we did, I don’t remember it. My wife kept telling me that Mat was fantastic, but I really just had to take her word for it through the first two books: it’s not that he was bad, just that he barely did anything except foolishly steal that dagger from Shadar Logoth.
Well, now we get plenty of Mat scenes, and goddamn, he’s really entertaining. His story, by itself, is heavily picaresque: a pretty loose series of dashing events loosely related to the main plot and all underlined by Mat’s cunning, daring, and sheer luck winning the day against what would otherwise be a frustrating world. He somehow managed to have the most boring tasks of all our protagonists – recover from an illness and deliver a letter – and still have the most fun.
As I mentioned above, if we look at Mat within the rules of The Wheel of Time, he’s the only character who seems to have an intuitive awareness of how the pattern works. Moiraine can agonize over the pattern all she likes, but Mat just dives in head-first. You can call him an idiot, but at the end of the day, he was always in the right place at the right time and with the right tools in hand. He has a feeling that he knows how the story ends, so he knows that he can get there any way he’d like.
Looking at Mat beyond The Wheel of Time, we can also see some similarities to Odin: probably my favorite mythical god. Egwene’s prophetic dream is enough to make this connection: Odin is particularly well-known for spending an eye and hanging from Yggdrasil in order to gain magical secrets. In fact, “Yggdrasil” means “Odin’s horse,” which is a kenning for “gallows.”
I’ll probably make a longer post at some point just to talk about Odin, but for now, let’s get a couple of things straight. The popular depiction of Odin in modern media is pretty much completely wrong. Odin is not masculine, fatherly, or honorable. He’s a cheat, a liar, cruel, merciless, and effeminate. Note that the very fact that Odin wields seiðr magic makes him un-masculine and he gets called out for this. For an example, look at Lokasenna.
One famous story of Odin that would be illustrative here is Vafþrúðnismál. In this story, Odin wants to match wits with the famously wise giant Vafþrúðnir. Frigg cautions him against going, as Vafþrúðnir is the wisest of all, but Odin doesn’t care. He strides into the giant’s home using the name Gagnráðr (meaning literally “giving wise council,” but also “victory”) and engages him in a battle of riddles where the loser loses his life. They go back and forth for a while (the poem is basically a way to record a bunch of other mythical facts, which is a common form in lays like this.) Eventually, Odin asks an impossible riddle: what did he whisper into Baldr’s ear before he was placed on the funerary ship. No one else could possibly know this, as Odin never told anyone. The giant admits defeat, and that’s the end of it.
So, that’s a story about Mat, right? He decided to do something stupid, a woman told him it was a bad idea but he ignored her, he swaggers his way through, declaring victory from the start, then he wins unfairly. A lot of stories about Odin are pretty wild. In another story, he steals the mead of poetry, drinking it all up, then turns into an eagle and flies away with it in his belly. Along the way, it gives him diarrhea and she shits some of it out over the land, which is where the inspiration for mortal skalds comes from. Mat can’t transform into an eagle, but otherwise that totally sounds like something he’d do.
Odin is also known as a wanderer. His weapon isn’t a quarterstaff, but a spear. Nonetheless, the image of Odin wandering the countryside with nothing but a staff is a common one. He is the inspiration for Gandalf, after all. Still, I wonder if Mat will ever turn in his quarterstaff for a spear?
Another of Odin’s traits is the ability to change luck on the battlefield. Odin claims the lives of dead warriors for his Einherjar, but they don’t always die when he wants them to. So, he occasionally gives fate a nudge: sometimes he’ll tilt luck in favor of a warrior that he wants to win, but then later turn luck against that same warrior to claim him in his prime. Arrows might fly a bit more or less true under Odin’s influence.
If not for Egwene’s dream, I’d think that I was stretching the likeness a bit here, but that dream was just too specific. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this develops further in the rest of the series. As I said before, I’ll probably talk more about Norse mythology in some other posts at some point, but if you want to read more, I really like H.R. Ellis Davidson’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe for some specific analysis of the themes and history and I like Lee M. Hollander’s translation of The Poetic Edda. Both books are still in print, so you can find them wherever you buy books.
I also just want to drop a few of my favorite quotes from Mat here:
- “You’ll never catch Mat Cauthon.”
- “He could feel the dice tumbling inside his head.”
- “It’s the luck,” Mat mumbled. “I’ve figured it out. The dice. My luck works best when things are… random. Like dice. Not much good for cards. No good at stones. Too much pattern. It has to be random. Even finding Comar. I’d stopped visiting every inn. I walked into that one by chance. Thom, if I am going to find Egwene and the others in time, I have to look without any pattern.”
- “I am no bloody hero.”
Oh, I almost forgot to mention it, but it was just delicious seeing Mat totally trash Galad and Gawyn in chapter 24. I kept wanting him to brag about it to the girls at some point, but it’s probably for the best that he didn’t. Or not; frankly, Elayne would’ve probably loved hearing that Galad was knocked down a peg by a commoner.
One more random comment: I wonder whether Egwene’s dream of Mat with his eye on a scale will have anything to do with Rogosh Eagle-Eye?
Perrin’s back!
I mentioned last time that Perrin didn’t get to do much in The Great Hunt, so I’m really glad that we got so much more of him in The Dragon Reborn. I really just like how Perrin thinks. He’s a bit insecure and tries to compensate for it by really stepping back and considering things. It’s funny, but I feel as though I can really identify with this… though anyone who knows me would laugh at me saying that I identify with a character known for cautiously considering his words and actions before saying or doing anything.
Maybe it’s because of this line: “Even as a child he had been bigger than most of the others, and he had quickly learned how easy it was to hurt people by accident when you were bigger than they. It had made him cautious and careful, and regretful of his anger when he let it show.” This is something I can legitimately identify with. Anyways, I just like Perrin: I’m glad that he gets to see Hopper in the dream world.
Can I stop to mention just how awesome the ways wolves communicate are? “Again you come, like a fool. The sending was of a cub sticking its nose into a hollow tree trunk to lap honey despite the bees stinging its muzzle and eyes.” “Morning Mist, she was called, but as with all their names, it was more than that: a frosty morning with the bite of snows yet to come already in the air, and the mist curling thick across the valley, swirling with the sharp breeze that carried the promise of good hunting.”
The wolf names for various bad guys are also just great. Ba’alzamon is “Heartfang,” Lanfear is “Moonhunter,” Gray Men are “Notdead,” Myrddraal are “Neverborn,” and Darkhounds are “Shadowbrothers.”
Honestly, I’m not all that well-read on myths and stories involving wolves, so I’m not sure what to make of Perrin’s wolf powers. I’ve read a fair bit about the Ylfings, but I’m not sure how much that applies here. Stories about berserker clearly apply, particularly in how Perrin seems to lose himself, but I still feel like I’m missing some piece. Maybe there’s some Native American inspiration here? I might need to do some more reading on this. Little details, like Perrin never appearing with his axe in his dreams, cause me to wonder whether this is simply because Perrin does not like think of himself with his axe or if there’s some deeper meaning.
On the more modern side, Perrin’s wolf dreams did remind me of Hircine’s domain in Oblivion, from The Elder Scrolls.
However, Perrin is more than his wolf powers, as The Dragon Reborn repeatedly causes us to think of him as a blacksmith.
I want to call out here just how much research Jordan must have done for the blacksmithing. Chapter 50, in particular, has a long sequence in which Perrin forges a chamfer knife. This bit goes into quite a bit of detail into the blacksmithing process, and it all appeared to me, as an amateur enthusiast, to be entirely accurate. If you want to learn more about pre-modern methods of producing metal goods, I highly recommend this series of posts: Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It? There are also other small comments, such as Perrin unstringing his bow to preserve both it and the string, that indicate Perrin’s attention to his tools. I also liked the use of the term “cold steel” to refer to Perrin’s axe. Maybe I’m just a blacksmithing geek, but whatever your interests, this attention to detail is fantastic.
The relationship between Faile and Perrin is also really interesting. Downright charming at times, frankly. I don’t generally like too much attention to romance in stories, but these two really are just incredibly cute together.
Faile is also just a great character on her own. Most of the women in The Wheel of Time are kind of… mean, and arrogant to the point of stupidity. It’s really fun to have a female character who’s still tough, assertive, and confident… but not completely insufferable. “Something tickled the back of his neck, and he jumped a foot before he realized he was smelling a clean, herbal scent through the spices and tar and stinks of the docks. Zarine wiggled her fingers, smiling at them. “If I can do that with just a brush of my fingers, farmboy, I wonder how high you would jump if I-?”” Mat might by cocky enough to charm some of our Aes Sedai, but it’s nice to see Perrin getting some attention from a woman whose worst intent for him is to see him blush. Perrin continually struggling to decide what he thinks about her nose and gradually finding her less ambiguously attractive was also really fun to see.
Oh, one last thing that might not mean anything but I want to mention anyways. In the town of Remen, the inn they briefly stop at, running into some obnoxious Hunters of the Horn and a caged Aiel along the way, the inn’s name is Wayland’s Forge. The name Wayland is a reference to Wayland the Smith – or, as I learned it, Völundarkviða, ‘The lay of Völund.’
Völundr is a blacksmith who, alongside his brothers, marries (or at least partners with for nine years) a trio of swan-maidens they come across. After nine years, the women simply leave “to fulfill their fate.” Völundr’s brothers pursue their wives, but Völundr remainds, forging arm-rings for his woman. Note that arm-rings are a common display of wealth in Norse myth.
A local king, Níðuðr, notices that this famously talented blacksmith is now living along, so he has him captured in his sleep. Níðuðr takes Völundr’s sword and gives one of the rings Völundr made for his missing wife to his daughter, Bǫðvildr. At his wife’s insistence, Níðuðr also has Völundr’s hamstrings cut, and his him imprisoned on an island to make various fancy objects for him.
Now, this is where it gets wild. Völundr cannot run away, due to his legs (note the mythical pattern of a lame blacksmith here.) But, that doesn’t mean that Völundr is helpless. He first begins his revenge by telling Níðuðr’s two sons that he’s forged a great treasure for them… they just need to look into the chest that he placed it in. He snaps it shut and decapitates them, then turns their skulls, eyes, and teeth into jewels to give to their unwitting parents. Then, Völundr lures in Bǫðvildr, saying that he’ll mend her ring, but he just gets her drunk and rapes her. Depending on the version of the story (there are several,) Völundr then escapes on wings he crafted for himself.
It’s a pretty crazy revenge story of a simple – if talented – blacksmith finding a deep and twisted rage when he’s caged and mistreated. Hopefully Jordan just used the reference because he needed a name for the inn and was thinking of blacksmiths, but it seemed significant to me.
Fun side-note, Wayland is also referenced in the Aliens franchise in “The Company,” where it’s called “Weyland” and “Weyland-Yutani.”
The Girls
Okay, I feel like I need to have at least one section to talk about Nynaeve, Elayne, and Egwene, but I’m honestly not really sure what to call out. I mean, there were plenty of good scenes with them in this book, but nothing really stuck out to me as being particularly noteworthy. Egwene’s dream powers would be really interesting… if Perrin’s wolf dreams weren’t better. He gets to hang out with Hopper in Tel’aran’rhiod and Egwene doesn’t, so it’s not really fair, but still.
Egwene’s trial was really solid, both in the trial itself and in the extra bit of danger from having her ring nearby. I actually went into that section wondering whether her ring would mess things up, so I got to feel very clever when that turned out to be the problem. It reminded me of taking a bag of holding into an extradimensional space, and I thought it was a neat touch.
Her vision of the future, in which she’s the Amyrlin Seat, never took the oaths, and can conjure balefire was really cool. I’m still not really sure where the bit about greens needing to “love men” fits into their primary ideology of being prepared for the last battle though. I’m probably just not seeing the whole picture yet. Still, this was a badass scene for Egwene: I hope we can see more of this person in books to come.
Nynaeve got some pretty badass moments too. In particular, I liked how she responded to the assassination attempt in chapter 15 by immediately using the air trick she learned from the Amyrlin. Overall, Nynaeve is still pretty goddamn annoying in how arrogant and irrational she is, but she does seem to be getting a bit better. At least, she seems to be aware that she has some real problems with anger, patience, and teamwork and she’s making at least some effort to improve. For example, her thoughts on how she should be a bit more patient with Egwene towards the end of the book showed some real growth, or least a desire for growth.
Nonetheless, both Nynaeve and Egwene are just doing a terrible job of working together. Nynaeve, as the older and more experienced person with some experience as a leader, should really be able to find more productive ways to approach Egwene. It’s very obvious what’s causing Egwene to act out so much and a good leader should be able to help speed that phase along. For her part, Egwene isn’t even trying to act like an adult, which is all the more frustrating given that she seems to think that she suddenly is one now that she’s technically on the same level as Nynaeve.
You know, I found most of the leadership training courses and books I consumed as part of my career to be pretty boring, and a lot of it was bogus, but I keep finding that I really want to just force basically all of the women in these books to take a basic course on teamwork, management, and project management. It’s not just Egwene and Nynaeve; Moiraine could benefit from this too. There are just some basic things they could learn that would help them all a lot.
- Transparency is good whenever possible. It’s frustratingly difficult to hit the right level of transparency when working in a large corporate environment, but it’s very easy when working with just a few people. Share knowledge whenever you can and speak up when something is bothering you.
- Actively communicate when something is bothering you or when you think you’ve bothered someone else. Again, this is kind of tricky in a modern corporate environment, but it’s just trivially easy when dealing with just a handful of people, particularly if they’re good friends. Egwene is upset because she feels like Nynaeve is still treating her like a child: just have a couple of conversations about this. They all know what the issue is, but they only communicate about it indirectly.
- Leadership is better when it’s supportive as opposed to domineering. Nynaeve is the most experienced of the trio, so she probably should take a larger leadership role than the others, but she should also be more open about this and try to share her experience. When Nynaeve notes that Egwene needs to be convinced on every little decision, this would be a great opportunity to start sharing some of her reasoning. She could teach Egwene what she knows while also making Egwene feel included. She can’t stop what she’s doing for a conversation for every decision, but if she did it when it’s convenient then maybe Egwene wouldn’t feel left out when it isn’t convenient.
These are all pretty much the same things I said about Moiraine in the first book, which isn’t surprising given that the White Tower seems to be intentionally training all fresh Aes Sedai how to be terrible leaders without realizing it. I think that most of this is intentional, but part of me really wonders why nearly all of the female characters in these books are so awful so far. They’re arrogantly, smugly certain that they know what’s best, but this very arrogance often interferes with their plans. If they’d just be a bit less arrogant and aggressive, they’d be far more successful. Would Rand have felt the need to rush off to Tear by himself if he’d felt able to truly trust and talk to Moiraine? Would Mat have gone off on his ridiculous plan if he’d felt safe and respected in Tar Valon?
We can actually see that Perrin is making some progress in trusting and working with Moiraine… but this comes entirely from his side, not hers. He’s finally willing to tell her all about his wolf dreams, which forces her to consider whether to handle him like an Aes Sedai or as an ally. Telling him that there are people who would gentle him over that, but she wouldn’t, was a good step. Admitting that she doesn’t really know how to help him, but she’ll do what she can, was also good. She could have kicked this process off much sooner if she’d made the slightest effort. She smugly waited for him to be “ready” to talk to her, but by “ready” she really just means “desperate.”
Okay, I don’t want this to turn into too much of a tirade, but seriously, there are very few likable female characters in these books thus far. I can see some seeds here and there which hint at future character growth, but at this point, it’s a bit baffling. I haven’t bothered to tally up the counts, but how often does a woman say something like “Men fight when they should run, and fools fight when they should run. But I had no need to say it twice.” (this one’s from Faile)? Men often say derisive things about Aes Sedai, but not often about women as a whole – and most of what they say about Aes Sedai is pretty justifiable, given how the Aes Sedai conduct themselves.
At this point in the books, I honestly can’t tell whether this is social commentary, just an early part of some character arcs, or… if Jordan just had some views on women that are coming out here. It’s been going on for three books now, so I imagine that I’ll have more to talk about in the future. For now, I’m not really sure what to make of it. I generally enjoy chapters involving the girls – it’s not as though they’re ruining the books – but as characters, they’re really just not all that likeable. Granted, all of the characters are appropriately – expertly – flawed, but the male characters’ flaws are varied and aren’t overly focused on their gender, whereas all of the female characters have a great deal of overlap in their flaws.
That said, if we cut away the overlap in their flaws (their low opinion of men, arrogance, and opacity) I do like that Nynaeve and Egwene have some flaws that are unique to them. Nynaeve’s temper is an interesting trait and I’m looking forward to seeing how it progresses. Egwene’s trauma over being chained and unwillingness to be confined again is also interesting: I wonder if this will result in her not taking the oaths as they’re another form of chain?
Ba’alzamon
Behind him the air rippled, shimmered, solidified into a man who looked around, his mouth twisting briefly with distaste. Not so tall as Lews Therin, he was clothed all in black, save for the snow-white lace at his throat and the silverwork on the turned-down tops of his thigh-high boots. He stepped carefully, handling his cloak fastidiously to avoid brushing the dead. The floor trembled with aftershocks, but his attention was fixed on the man staring into the mirror and laughing.
“Lord of the Morning,” he said, “I have come for you.”
The laughter cut off as if it had never been, and Lews Therin turned, seeming unsurprised. “Ah, a guest. Have you the Voice, stranger? It will soon be time for the Singing, and here all are welcome to take part. Ilyena, my love, we have a guest. Ilyena, where are you?”
The black-clad man’s eyes widened, darted to the body of the golden-haired woman, then back to Lews Therin. “Shai’tan take you, does the taint already have you so far in its grip?”
“That name. Shai—” Lews Therin shuddered and raised a hand as though to ward off something. “You mustn’t say that name. It is dangerous.”
“So you remember that much, at least. Dangerous for you, fool, not for me. What else do you remember? Remember, you Light-blinded idiot! I will not let it end with you swaddled in unawareness! Remember!”
For a moment Lews Therin stared at his raised hand, fascinated by the patterns of grime. Then he wiped his hand on his even dirtier coat and turned his attention back to the other man. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The black-clad man drew himself up arrogantly. “Once I was called Elan Morin Tedronai, but now—”
“Betrayer of Hope.” It was a whisper from Lews Therin. Memory stirred, but he turned his head, shying away from it.
That bit’s from the prologue to the first book. It’s relevant now just in case anyone still thinks that Ba’alzamon is Shai’tan, rather than Ishamael: “In the Old Tongue, ‘Betrayer of Hope.’ One of the Forsaken. Name given to the leader of the Aes Sedai who went over to the Dark One in the War of the Shadow. It is said that even he forgot his true name.” Well, maybe he forgot, but it looks like it’s “Elan Morin Tedronai.” It’s still ambiguous just what happened to Ba’alzamon: though he left a human corpse when killed, he doesn’t seem all that human in most respects. We can ignore his powers and long age as traits of Aes Sedai, but his burning eyes clearly mark him as different. At various points I’ve wondered whether he’s an avatar of Shai’tan, or simply blessed with great powers. In any case, he’s certainly not equivalent to Shai’tan.
The name “Ba’alzamon” means “Heart of the Dark,” and is a Trolloc name for the Dark One. Yet, it’s not odd at all to think that the greatest of the forsaken would use a name for Shai’tan in his dealings.
I’m not sure what to think of the name “Ishamael.” Assuming that this is meant as an alternate spelling for Ishmael, this name would mean “God has hearkened.” I’m really curious whether this will come up in a later book. There’s so much prophesy here, perhaps Ba’alzamon was the fulfillment of a promise from the Creator. He did, after all, force our protagonists into their destinies. Moiraine tells us: “The Creator is good, Perrin. The Father of Lies is evil. The Pattern is what is. The Wheel of Time weaves all lives into the Pattern, all actions. A pattern that is all one color is no pattern. For the Pattern of an Age, good and ill are the warp and the woof.” Perhaps Ba’alzamon is a literal necessary evil?
We should also bear in mind that Shai’tan in Islam is not a single man, but a term for evil spirits who whisper to the heart of humans and jinn. Is the Dark One even a single being that can be killed, or something far more abstract?
Note, however, that our characters do not know all of this; not even Moiraine. The confusion felt by everyone but Moiraine at her insistence that Ba’alzamon is not Shai’tan isn’t just another instance of Moiraine not telling people things that, if she were more rational, she would want them to know: she only knew that killing Shai’tan would not be like killing a man. She knew it at the end of the first book and again now: either Ba’alzamon is not truly dead or he’s not Shai’tan. In the first book, we didn’t have a body: now we do, so she’s only left with one valid interpretation.
That Ending
The ending was just fantastic. In particular, I’m talking about how all of the various threads were woven together. There were just so many layers to it, and it all made sense while I was reading it… I’m honestly just really astounded. Bravo.
I particularly liked little details in the transitions. For example, at the end of Perrin’s hunt to save Faile, he has to smash through a great bronze door. He strikes it with his hammer three times: it sounds like a gong the first two, then shatters. The very next lines are from Rand’s perspective: “Rand was still in the Heart of the Stone, but it was different. There were no men fighting here, no dead men, no one at all but himself. Abruptly the sound of a great gong rang through the Stone, then again, and the very stones beneath his feet resonated. A third time the booming came, but cut off abruptly, as if the gong had shattered. All was still.” This is our indication that Rand followed Ba’alzamon into a dream.
Really, I’m not sure how to even do this bit justice in describing it. The last few chapters of The Dragon Reborn are just incredible, easily the best in the series thus far. I’d love to write my own novels, and it’s just daunting to imagine competing with this. That’s awesome.
Callandor
First off, this name just has to be a reference to Caladbolg, meaning “hard cleft” and referring to a number of great swords in mythology. From Wikipedia: “[When] spelled Caladcholg, it is also associated with the more obscure Ulster hero Fergus mac Léti, suggesting a conflation of two legends. It was said to be a two-handed sword that made a circle like an arc of rainbow when swung, and to have the power to slice the tops off hills and slaughter an entire army.” Of course, the most common great sword that could be called Caladbolg is Excalibur.
The substring “andor” in Callandor is interesting. I’m not really sure what the original etymology for Andor in fantasy is, but it’s definitely another name for Númenor and it pops up frequently in other works of fantasy, such as Warcraft’s Andorhall. I’m curious whether “Callandor” is meant to be a compound of “Call” and “Andor,” and if so, does “Call” here mean “to call,” or is that too straightforward?
In any case, it’s a cool sword.
Miscellaneous Stuff
I already covered the big topics that stuck out to me, but here are a few other little things that I noticed.
I love the attention to cultural differences between locations and to flags. There was one in Tear that depicted a silver gauntleted hand surrounded by lightning bolts that I thought was neat, as that indicates a very old concept of Týr.
Rand just keeps thinking that he killed Shai’tan: “I have done it, he thought. I have killed Ba’alzamon, killed Shai-tan! I have won the Last Battle! Light, I AM the Dragon Reborn! The breaker of nations, the Breaker of the World. No! I will END the breaking, end the killing! I will MAKE it end!” I wonder if he’ll ever actually get to “kill” Shai’tan – if that’s even possible – and whether he’ll be able to react this way if he does. Somehow, I doubt it. If Shai’tan is the darkness in the pattern, then would it even be “good” to kill it completely? The Creator sealed Shai’tan away but didn’t kill it: was this because the Creator couldn’t kill Shai’tan, or because doing so would be worse than sealing it away?
I loved the little taste of what’s happening for the Children of Light in the prologue. We didn’t get to see much more of it, but just knowing that Pedron Naill is trying to build a legacy right now and that there are definitely still Darkfriends in the organization (is Bors Carradin?) is really interesting – I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.
Be’lal was a cool name for a Forsaken. Belial is used fairly often in popular fantasy media, and there’s a lot to dig into on the Wikipedia page I linked. For me, the name will always remind me of the terrible writing in Diablo III, where Belial was the master of deceit but the poor dialog made it just painfully obvious what all the twists would be.
As someone from Wisconsin, I liked the bit about the King’s Palace and Great Hall of the Council in Illian. Faile explains that the king said that the council could have any palace they wished, so long as it wasn’t larger than his, so they made a duplicate that’s just two feel smaller in every dimension. There’s legislation in Madison, Wisconsin stating that no building can be taller than the columns surrounding the capitol dome and the capital is just three feet an one-half inch shorter than the Nation’s Capitol in D.C.
Alright, I think that’s it for now! There’s just so much in this book that part of me wants to keep going, but I also want to get started on The Shadow Rising soon.