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cryptoclastic posted:Is this where Dumai's Wells happens?[/b] Yup. Book 6 is a slow cooker untill the whirlwind ending, but there is a lot of cool stuff that happens. The opening scene with Bashere and Mazrim Taim is really well done. There are also a floodgate of Forsaken POV's which really start to flesh out each of them that remain.
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May 14, 2012 12:29
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cryptoclastic posted:So we have now finished The Fires of Heaven, which was an awesome read! Time for book six, Lord of Chaos. Is this where Dumai's Wells happens? I can't wait! Only in the wheel of time can a prologue go for 100 pages. I love WOT.
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May 15, 2012 03:19
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I would say that while Jordan is guilty of some degree of padding, he is actually pretty good at descriptive writing. I have a decent mental image of most of the scenes in WoT, whereas in most books I read it but don't really think about it or get much out of it. Like I said before if it weren't for the WoTisms and the crazy women the level of immersion would be almost incomparable.
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May 15, 2012 11:18
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The Lord Bude posted:Only in the wheel of time can a prologue go for 100 pages. I love WOT. Was Lord of Chaos where they started releasing them early? I know they did it for WH and onwards so a long prologue makes sense, specially since they were charging like $5 for it.
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May 15, 2012 13:01
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At least things happen in the prologue. I'm ~300 pages into Book 7, and of the most significant events in the book so far, all but one happened in the Prologue. And for goodness sake, why did Amys, Bair, and Melaine not tell Egwene what happened to Rand in Book 6? They had this long conversation in tel'aran'rhiod with Egwene asking about how Rand had been doing with the Aes Sedai, and not one peep from the Wise Ones! Egwene is going to flip her lid when she finds out.
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May 15, 2012 18:23
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werdnam posted:why did Amys, Bair, and Melaine not tell Egwene what happened to Rand in Book 6? They had this long conversation in tel'aran'rhiod with Egwene asking about how Rand had been doing with the Aes Sedai, and not one peep from the Wise Ones! Egwene is going to flip her lid when she finds out. Egwene is no longer part of the Wise One inner circle, so they cut her out of the loop. Egwene's later reaction to the incident really reinforces how much her priorities have changed.
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May 15, 2012 23:05
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These are words about Olver, with a little extra-book knowledge: Why the hell would RJ NOT make him Gaidal Cain? Red herrings are only good if they don't make the reader feel cheated, I mean poo poo, Birgitte deserves to at least know who GC is. It just smacks of ret-conning, like if we found out that Rand wasn't the Dragon or something, "haha, gently caress you, it was Bela", or something.
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May 16, 2012 00:36
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Quad posted:These are words about Olver, with a little extra-book knowledge: Woah, this never occurred to me. It...makes a lot of sense. 
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May 16, 2012 06:49
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Quad posted:These are words about Olver, with a little extra-book knowledge: Timing, we've seen Gaidal on scene while Olver has to have been running around for 9 years already.
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May 16, 2012 08:07
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veekie posted:Timing, we've seen Gaidal on scene while Olver has to have been running around for 9 years already. But Birgitte says when she notices Gaidal has left T'A'R that he is in the world as a baby or a small boy.
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May 16, 2012 08:11
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Jedit posted:But Birgitte says when she notices Gaidal has left T'A'R that he is in the world as a baby or a small boy. Dreamtime/Realtime gap. As shes talking to channelers, they might look more or less the same even in a few years, we know that T'A'R time flows at different rates, but never backwards, so Gaidal is at best 2-3 years old.
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May 16, 2012 09:03
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veekie posted:Dreamtime/Realtime gap. As shes talking to channelers, they might look more or less the same even in a few years, we know that T'A'R time flows at different rates, but never backwards, so Gaidal is at best 2-3 years old. Book 13 spoilers be here: T'A'R is literally a magical made-up dream world where dead heroes chill with wolves. He could have made it work, and it would have been satisfying. As it is, Olver serves almost no purpose, other than to show that Mat broke the -Finn's power somewhat when he stole Moiraine back.
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May 16, 2012 11:19
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Kruller posted:Book 13 spoilers be here: I thought the point of Olver was to give Mat someone to be fatherly towards - look at the way he reacts when he discovers the men have been teaching Olver to gamble and chase women. It seemed to be a sign of his growing maturity and leaving behind his scoundrellishness.
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May 17, 2012 04:44
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Besides, I think hes a Hero of the Horn that got rolled out earlier anyway, his behavior patterns are archetypical of a Future Main Character type.
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May 17, 2012 05:41
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more olver chat I still don't discount the possibility that he's Gaidal. There are things that even the heroes don't understand about their connection to TAR. Remember that it is the world of dreams. What if a hero can be reborn, but still remain in the dream world until he actually is ready to become a hero? Maybe their past lives live on for a time in dreams, until their new life is ready for them to start acting in full.
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May 17, 2012 06:22
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Recursive Expanse posted:more olver chat RJ has confirmed that Olver is not GC, and Sanderson has also confirmed that he knows who GC is, and that it is not Olver. This is why it was so strange to set everything up as if Olver was GC, for literally no narrative reason at all.  So, does anyone here, maybe reading it for the first time, not know who killed Asmodean? That's always a fun bitch-fest about how well RJ thought he was writing.
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May 17, 2012 08:08
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I didn't know who it was even after I read the book where it is supposedly revealed. What he means is he dropped enough clues that you can logically deduct who it was, if you care enough to. I guess I didn't!
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May 17, 2012 08:14
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I have no clue. I read up through book 9 about 6 years ago and but I remember very little past book 4. I didn't even remember that Asmodean became his tutor. 
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May 17, 2012 08:14
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Two Finger posted:olvertalk You're missing the point. Mat is never able to figure out which of his men Olver is learning his bad habits from because the boy is actually learning them from Mat himself. Getting back to "Who Killed Asmo?" - Jordan's comment that "there are enough clues to figure out who did it" was made on the Path of Daggers signing tour. By that time there are enough clues, but there weren't when it happened.
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May 17, 2012 08:28
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Jedit posted:You're missing the point. Mat is never able to figure out which of his men Olver is learning his bad habits from because the boy is actually learning them from Mat himself. Holy poo poo.
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May 17, 2012 08:58
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Two Finger posted:I didn't know who it was even after I read the book where it is supposedly revealed. Well, at this point we have a number of clues, that it was someone who we know he knows, that its not a male channeler(or he'd have felt it coming) and who'd either know he was there(basically nobody, since he just arrived) or who had reason to be there. Its unlikely to be a regular Darkfriend since he outranks them and could countermand most of them. Additionally, its someone who we have seen 'on screen' by that time. And finally motive, which eliminates most of the Light-siders, due to lack of reasons for killing him except for Moiraine. To find the culprit, you establish a pool of suspects and deduct from there. So: Someone has to either be in Caemlyn at the time and avoided the battle, or be able to Travel. This cuts it down to Rand's invasion party and the Forsaken. I don't think we know about Luc/Isam here, so he's out. Moiraine and Lanfear are also out, based on what we know at that point in time. Random Darkfriends are also unlikely, due to how obvious RJ thought it was. Its not a male Forsaken, or Rand'd have felt them Traveling there. This drops the pool down to Rand's group and the surviving female Forsaken(Semirhage, Mesaana, Moghedien, Graedal). He left no corpse to be found, though this is a relatively minor clue, since it IS fairly easy to hide one dead body in a city after a battle. Its someone he knows and is afraid of. This also cuts out Rand's group. Its someone available at the time. Moggy is being subjected to bondage at the time, eliminating her. The occasion seems to be accidental, so it's someone with motive to be in Caemlyn and right after Rahvin goes down to boot. Given the woven traps in the city, its also unlikely for any of the Forsaken to just decide to drop in and sneak around unless they were sure hes gone. This leaves Mesaana, Semirhage and Graedal. The problem is at this point in time there is insufficient data to conclusively eliminate two of them as far as I can tell.
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May 17, 2012 12:30
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veekie posted:
There are only really three female Forsaken seen "on screen" as of TFoH, Mesaana and Semirhage don't show up until LoC. Of those three, TWO of them are temporarily allied with Rahvin--Graendal and Lanfear--and have been seen/around in the Caemlyn Palace at some point. If we truly deduct for motive and opportunity and "obviousness," we have to eliminate Mesaana and Semirhage because really their candidacy is on the same level as Moiraine or Aviendha--wishful thinking, which is something the internet community has a lot of trouble with, and rasfwrj and the wotfaq was never ever really able to agree to outright eliminate these candidates. Basically the only logical candidate at the end of TFoH was Graendal, and by the time she allies with Sammael then rifles through his poo poo after he goes down to Rand/Mashadar, that is entirely confirmed.
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May 17, 2012 13:21
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Oh, that explains it, I can't recall exactly which of the Forsaken have appeared on screen at particular points anymore. Too many re-reads.
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May 17, 2012 14:20
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arioch posted:
Yeah, the problem though was it's a fantasy series where characters can be expected to come back from the dead, and where deaths offscreen are virtually guaranteed to not have happened, so it was impossible to truly rule out Lanfear until we saw in later books that she'd actually died and come back and was thus actually taken out of the picture. Overall it was a puzzle that was "obvious" to the writer, but not obvious to the reader, because the reader didn't know what the author hadn't told them yet (i.e, that Asmodean's death wasn't the first appearance of Mesaana, that Lanfear had actually died/been trapped beyond the doorframe, etc.) It was deductible but basically impossible to "know."
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May 17, 2012 14:34
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arioch posted:
Not entirely true. Lanfear or Moiraine could have used a wish from the Finn to be allowed to kill Asmodean. However, by TPOD it's obvious this didn't happen for various reasons.
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May 17, 2012 17:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Yeah, the problem though was it's a fantasy series where characters can be expected to come back from the dead, and where deaths offscreen are virtually guaranteed to not have happened, so it was impossible to truly rule out Lanfear until we saw in later books that she'd actually died and come back and was thus actually taken out of the picture. Yes but this never happens. The only person to die, then come back and get POVs before enough context was given to where we knew exactly who he was is Ishamael/Moridin, and there's no way Asmodean would have been able to identify his reincarnation. It took GRAENDAL awhile to be sure herself. Even if you analyzed the mystery based on just assessing selections of RJ's writing it should be pretty clear by somewhere mid-LoC that those other suspects could and should be eliminated. No, we couldn't "know" "for certain", but pinning the blame on the appropriate person was for sure possible and far more plausible than any of the alternatives. And by the next books afterwards espousing an opinion contrariwise to that becomes entirely unreasonable. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 18:30 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 18:25
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I just started Fires of Heaven, and since I picked the series with book 4 after a several-year break, I have a question or two about the prologue. Lanfear says that 4 Forsaken are dead, and one's under Rand's control. However, I can only think of three dead ones: 1. Aginor 2. Balthamel (both were killed at the end of EotW) 3. Ishamael (defeated at the end of Dragon Reborn) Was Be'lal killed in the first book, as well? I remember Rand having 3 showdowns with Ishamael, once at the Eye, once in Falme, and finally in the Stone of Tear. I don't recall exactly what happened (if anything happened) with Be'lal. Doesn't help that 'Ba'alzamon' was Ishamael's nom de plume for the first three books, that just makes it more confusing. Also, how are you supposed to pronounce Cairhien? I'm thinking Care-Hyen.
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May 17, 2012 22:47
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Chamberk posted:I just started Fires of Heaven, and since I picked the series with book 4 after a several-year break, I have a question or two about the prologue. He was balefired by Moiraine in the Stone. Never monologue!
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May 17, 2012 22:53
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Chamberk posted:Also, how are you supposed to pronounce Cairhien? I'm thinking Care-Hyen. I think it's something close to care-ee-in
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May 17, 2012 23:12
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Chamberk posted:Also, how are you supposed to pronounce Cairhien? I'm thinking Care-Hyen. The glossary tells you things like this, but I'll give you benefit of the doubt and assume you're reading on Kindle rather than just too lazy to look. It's pronounced "KAI-ree-EHN".
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May 17, 2012 23:12
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The pronunciations never match up with how I first read them so I just ignore anything 'official'. It makes for a better read.
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May 18, 2012 08:12
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I always thought Key-ree-in. I'm probably retarded, though.
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May 18, 2012 09:00
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Just started book 8. I can't remember hardly anything that happens here. All I remember is something something, fight the Seanchan, something something, busted Callandor. Oh and the supergirls fix the weather and Elayne is still a bitch. Is this the begining of Chasing Faile, or is that book 9? This is where it starts. Its gets so hard to keep reading...
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May 18, 2012 11:57
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Kai-Ree-En is how they pronounce it in the audiobooks.
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May 18, 2012 15:26
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Neurosis posted:The pronunciations never match up with how I first read them so I just ignore anything 'official'. It makes for a better read. Most of the ones I get right without having to look it up, but looking through the glossary I recently discovered I've been mispronouncing Rhuidean. I always read it as ROO-ih-DEEN, when apparently it's more like ROY-dee-an
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May 18, 2012 23:44
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Do they ever do anything with the idea that strength in the OP can be, like, trained, like a muscle or something? It seems like all the main channelers get stronger the more they use it, not to mention (mid book 6)the Asha'man that practice every drat day and are strong as hell within like 6 months. It seems like even the really weak channelers, siuan & leanefor instance, could get a lot stronger with practice. Or does RJ just do a "potential" thing, where no one is actually getting stronger, just reaching whatever max potential they have? Quad fucked around with this message at 04:43 on May 19, 2012 |
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May 19, 2012 04:41
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For the Power, everyone has an absolute strength cap and control cap, which cannot be exceeded except temporarily(via angreal, circles or overchanneling). Women have visible potentials, men have hidden potentials. Women gain strength gradually, men gain strength in bursts. Women also inherently gain strength more slowly than men, but IIRC, gain control faster than men. Finally for both genders, Forcing, that is, channeling as much of the Power as you can, allows you to gain strength much faster, so its kind of like muscle training. However, as control increases with strength, Forcing is likely to cause accidents, particularly early on, such as burning out, death or crippling from either drawing too much, or losing control. Its not clearly stated if channeling in a circle or with an angreal counts as Forcing, but it is plausible that doing so would have similar effects to doing it by overchanneling(which is what Rand has been doing for pretty much all the books up to now I figure, when he makes anything other than the Sword of Fire, he generally just rams all his strength into it).
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May 19, 2012 06:21
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veekie posted:Its not clearly stated if channeling in a circle or with an angreal counts as Forcing There's no evidence per se, but a logical case can be made for neither of these counting. Like you say, forcing is like body building - the more you do it the more you can do it, but the more you do it the more you risk severely hurting yourself. Taken in that light, channeling in a circle is like many people working together to lift the same object, while an angreal is a fulcrum that lets you safely lift more weight with the strength you have. Lifting a weight with your friends helping or with a mechanism providing most of the motive power is not the same as lifting it by yourself.
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May 19, 2012 08:53
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This part of the series is where it begins to "drag" according to a lot of people becuase by now the main characters are powerful and established enough in their own right that they can delegate stuff. Of the male leads, one of them is essentially an acknowledged Great Captain by two countries' worth of noblemen and the other two have credible claims on monarchy. This has the effect of taking the protagonists out of the action and making what drama remains a whole lot more abstract than "Perrin and Egwene are lost in the country and slowly starving to death" while also introducing twelve billion new side characters which gets most confusing with Aes Sedai and Aiel which are two groups that are very... Not Good at emoting distinctively. So in addition to no longer having the immediate drama of Rand and Mat living hard, sleeping under bushes and singing for their supper (a really distinctive and high point of the series) you have Rand making long term plans and Mat trying to deal with those long term plans and a bunch of middle managers carrying them out and a bevy of long standing Randland institutions trying to mess those plans up to maintain their power base. "Which Whitecloak? Oh right, the intensely zealous one who doesn't care if innocents get hurt. Not to be confused with the stern Aiel Chief exasperated with wetlander customs, or the Aes Sedai with the frosty glare who tries to take charge everywhere." Despite the lack of immediate sword-on-sword action, though, there's a lot going on. One thing that I'm surprised gets past most people is how balls out insane Rand has become by this point in the series. On a first readthrough, most people will just see that he's hearing voices in his head but more or less managing to hold it down, but he's really not! At all! Coming off the stresses of the last five books it's a gradual transition and it's not until I read to 13 and then restarted for my final hurrah through the series that I truly picked up on it--he's paranoid where he doesn't have delusions of hidden silent supporters that HAVE to be there they just HAVE TO BE! He changes tack on a dime when having conversations with people and the clan chiefs and generals and nobles all just kind of roll with it because who the hell is going to tell the Dragon he's not making any goddamned sense? He isn't sleeping, he isn't eating, and his To Do list is a ream of people and places who have to get killed/burned before he does... well he STILL doesn't know what he's supposed to do at Shayol Ghul precisely and he doesn't really have a whole lot of help figuring that out! He probably should, but he's fixated on old grudges because his insanity echoes Lews Therin's insanity, creating an endless feedback loop of unchecked crazy. Making it even more subtle are a handful of events in this book which 100% justify his paranoia which, yep! Only serves to hasten the cycle. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 19, 2012 |
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May 19, 2012 20:22
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Willie Tomg posted:One thing that I'm surprised gets past most people is how balls out insane Rand has become by this point in the series. It took me rereading the series backwards to really see the progression. Its a sign of how well hes sinking into madness that we're taking his insanity for granted. Particularly as he goes from ignoring the voice in his head, to ranting at the voice and then worse, holding actual conversations with said voice.
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May 19, 2012 22:54
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