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Casao posted:Perrin - I don't see this at all, about all any of them know is he has yellow eyes. He's shown time and time again he's the same person otherwise, and he's pretty at peace with the Wolf thing now so he has no reason to mistrust people. Wow, that's an impressive lack of reading comprehension. Perrin has wolf's eyes like some Trollocs do in the tales, and he can apparently control wolves who are believed to be servants of the Dark One; as Arioch said, literally becoming a monster out of scary stories. It doesn't matter whether he's changed as a person because the people who are afraid of him didn't know him before he became a wolfbrother, and it doesn't matter whether he has no reason to mistrust people because the problem is them not trusting him.
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Jun 5, 2012 08:43
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Jedit posted:Wow, that's an impressive lack of reading comprehension. Perrin has wolf's eyes like some Trollocs do in the tales, and he can apparently control wolves who are believed to be servants of the Dark One; as Arioch said, literally becoming a monster out of scary stories. It doesn't matter whether he's changed as a person because the people who are afraid of him didn't know him before he became a wolfbrother, and it doesn't matter whether he has no reason to mistrust people because the problem is them not trusting him. More of him not trusting himself really. By this point pretty much everyone he knows accepts it as merely remarkable. Only Perrin is really conflicted on the matter.
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Jun 5, 2012 09:44
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Jedit posted:Wow, that's an impressive lack of reading comprehension. Perrin has wolf's eyes like some Trollocs do in the tales, and he can apparently control wolves who are believed to be servants of the Dark One; as Arioch said, literally becoming a monster out of scary stories. It doesn't matter whether he's changed as a person because the people who are afraid of him didn't know him before he became a wolfbrother, and it doesn't matter whether he has no reason to mistrust people because the problem is them not trusting him. Guess I was unclear: all the people beside Perrin and Egwene(to some extent, I honestly can't remember if she knows it) really know is that he has yellow eyes. It makes people uneasy, but he's shown he's consistently trustworthy. Considering he ended up with the entire Two Rivers rallying to him and loving him, apparently he's not that untrustworthy to other people. But go ahead being snarky, it makes your point.
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Jun 5, 2012 10:42
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To be fair, Moiraine mentions there are Aes Sedai who would do their best to gentle him if they knew the truth about him, as well as him repeatedly being called a Darkfriend simply because of his eyes. The point does kind of stand.
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Jun 5, 2012 10:43
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Two Finger posted:To be fair, Moiraine mentions there are Aes Sedai who would do their best to gentle him if they knew the truth about him, as well as him repeatedly being called a Darkfriend simply because of his eyes. The point does kind of stand. There are Aes Sedai who would gentle regular men if they could (which does pretty much go back to my original point), and White Cloaks who call everyone Dark Friends. Aside from that, I don't remember anyone really calling him Darkfriend because of his eyes, and certainly not recently.
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Jun 5, 2012 11:07
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The point here being, Perrin doesn't trust himself or his relationship with his closest friends enough to confide in them about his powers. He doesn't even explain to Rand about it until ... when? I forget, but I think it'll probably be after the conclusion of LoC, and I don't think it was explicit. He doesn't even talk to anyone about Hopper and his fear of losing himself in the wolf dream, until with Faile in Towers of Midnight!
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Jun 5, 2012 15:56
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Paracelsus posted:
Yeah, this is the relevant Jordan quote: quote:For Anonymous-George, long ago I saw one of the first, I believe, novels about a young woman who wasn’t allowed to use magic or whatever because she was a woman, and the thought occurred to me as to how it might go if men were the ones who were denied the right to do magic. Or whatever. I hate using the word magic. From that long ago thought grew the One Power divided into saidin and saidar with the male half tainted and the reasons for and results of it being tainted. Now in most of these societies — Far Madding is the obvious exception — I did not and do not view them as matriarchal. I attempted to design societies that were as near gender balanced as to rights, responsibilities and power as I could manage. It doesn’t all work perfectly. People have bellybuttons. If you want to see someone who always behaves logically, never tells small lies or conceals the truth in order to put the best face for themselves on events, and never, ever tries to take advantage of any situation whatsoever, then look for somebody without a bellybutton. The real surprise to me was that while I was designing these gender balanced societies, people were seeing matriarchies. https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1KC11jaLntu-qaywo1hVcCIcA8xGpiVi1ExvLAg4uUz8
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Jun 5, 2012 16:19
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You guys are skirting the line awfully close on spoilers. Most of this chat could be moved over to the ToM thread to spare new readers accidental spoilers, since the re-read is still in book 6. I've gotten close myself, which is why I stopped posting in here. The surprises are better if you don't see them coming.
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Jun 6, 2012 10:14
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veekie posted:For Mat I suspect most of the reason was simply his being a gambler, prankster, and womanizer. They wouldn't have even considered the possibility of him doing anything but nonsense. The Wonder Girls treating Mat like a piece of poo poo on their shoe is nothing new. After their rescue in TDR they were bitchy and when he said some pretty innocuous calling them on it they began to threaten him with the Power. Later, instead of asking for their Amyrlin letter back, they bound him up with the Power while they ransacked his room.
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Jun 6, 2012 12:26
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I'm not rereading the books but I am following the thread just to enjoy the reactions of new readers, so please don't spoil things for them 
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Jun 7, 2012 00:38
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Kruller posted:You guys are skirting the line awfully close on spoilers. Most of this chat could be moved over to the ToM thread to spare new readers accidental spoilers, since the re-read is still in book 6. I've gotten close myself, which is why I stopped posting in here. The surprises are better if you don't see them coming. Sorry if you're referring to my posts here. I think I spoiler-tagged anything that might be an issue, but I'll back off on it. It's my first time through the series, too, and I want to talk about it, I'm just too impatient to read at the thread's pace. I'll pipe down.
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Jun 7, 2012 07:28
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I think it's fine so long as spoilers have what book they are from prefaced. The bigger issue is to make sure replies are spoiler tagged too. Anyone who sees "Towers of Midnight" and is only on Lord of Chaos Should be smart enough not to click on it. A lot of us are ahead of the thread and if you are confused about something, I don't think there is a problem getting it clarified.
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Jun 7, 2012 14:31
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Man, I forgot how quickly the leadup to Dumais Wells passes. When I was 100 pages from the end of the book and Rand still hadn't been kidnapped, I started to wonder if Dumais Wells didn't happen until the next book. One thing I never understood, though: If the three oaths prevent Aes Sedai from using the power as a weapon unless threatened, how the hell are they always smacking people with Air? Is it some fine line thing, like their not hitting hard enough for it to really be a "weapon"? Ahh, and with the end of Lord of Chaos comes the start of the painfully boring  political intrigue . Robert Jordan had many strengths as a writer, but that just wasn't one of them. It just seems so out of place with the tone of the story, where up to now the character's world has been constantly expanding. Now we're suddenly dealing with the game of houses in Cairhein, Caemlyn, and the rebel Tower like anybody gives a poo poo. Quick! Everybody name your favorite Cairheinien lord! What? You can't remember any of them? I understand that Robert Jordan created elaborate backstories for every character, no matter how minor they are. It seems like he forgot, though, that the reader doesn't know any of that stuff. A Crown of Swords is just needlessly complicated. I'd have to pick A Crown of Swords as the most boring part of the series, as well as the most nonsensical. New readers, slog your way through this and you'll be rewarded by book 10.
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Jun 7, 2012 17:01
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Minarch posted:One thing I never understood, though: If the three oaths prevent Aes Sedai from using the power as a weapon unless threatened, how the hell are they always smacking people with Air? Is it some fine line thing, like their not hitting hard enough for it to really be a "weapon"? The oaths are a personal thing, not some almighty judging force they connect themselves to, Aes Sedai can tell lies as long as they think they're telling the truth, and similarly they can use the power to hurt someone as long as they consider it a form of discipline rather than using it as a weapon.
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Jun 7, 2012 17:55
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Minarch posted:Ahh, and with the end of Lord of Chaos comes the start of the painfully boring Dobraine is pretty cool. I'm a big fan of the Cairhienin nobles who take to Ji'e'toh, although I can't remember any of the individuals apart from the one Rand went all  on, she turned out pretty cool.Colavere, although not a "good" lady, was a pretty interesting character. I always enjoyed the Tarien and Cairhienin political power-games just for how incredibly cut-throat they were, plus Jordan gets to show off his talent for writing "butterfly flapping its wings" storylines where you can actually believe that things were set in motion intentionally by incredibly capable characters (or according to prophecy) instead of it being painfully obvious that it was written backwards, like with so many other authors. The Andoran stuff, I'm with you on. That poo poo was awful, other than the one Tarien lady who came early on. Weiramon was awful to read about though, he should have been sidelined due to incompetence long before he had the chance to get up to any real trouble.
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Jun 7, 2012 18:25
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:plus Jordan gets to show off his talent for writing "butterfly flapping its wings" storylines where you can actually believe that things were set in motion intentionally by incredibly capable characters (or according to prophecy) instead of it being painfully obvious that it was written backwards, like with so many other authors. That's where I think Jordan's writing hits its weakest point though. If the story at least included some background on all of these nobles, I might be able to keep track of them. As it is, a couple dozen names get thrown out, some poo poo goes down, and I sit back and go "yup, that sure was a book." Sure, that kind of story can be interesting; Jordan just isn't the man to write it. Were things set in motion by the character's actions? The book says they were, so I guess so, but I'm not really left with any idea of how things would have been otherwise.
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Jun 7, 2012 22:05
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Minarch posted:That's where I think Jordan's writing hits its weakest point though. If the story at least included some background on all of these nobles, I might be able to keep track of them. As it is, a couple dozen names get thrown out, some poo poo goes down, and I sit back and go "yup, that sure was a book." Sure, that kind of story can be interesting; Jordan just isn't the man to write it. Were things set in motion by the character's actions? The book says they were, so I guess so, but I'm not really left with any idea of how things would have been otherwise. I was referring more to Rand's machinations than anything else--that political stuff is really fun (for me) to read because of the contrasts between what the character says and what going on when we get the first-person inner viewpoints. I definitely agree that it's hard to visualize (and therefore tough to keep distinct) the supporting cast. I think a big part of that is, there's just more characters than was necessary; a lot of those dudes could have been rolled together, and we the readers would have been able to swallow the material a lot easier if we didn't have to struggle to figure out who it happened to or who did it and, oh, they're never heard from again until the next book. Great, yeah, I totally remember that guy that appeared in a paragraph 1,500 pages ago.
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Jun 7, 2012 22:34
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wellwhoopdedooo posted:I think a big part of that is, there's just more characters than was necessary; a lot of those dudes could have been rolled together, and we the readers would have been able to swallow the material a lot easier if we didn't have to struggle to figure out who it happened to or who did it and, oh, they're never heard from again until the next book. Great, yeah, I totally remember that guy that appeared in a paragraph 1,500 pages ago. Well, I can recall enough to assign an archetype to each one, but they're really just background fluff activity.
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Jun 9, 2012 11:56
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Having problems keeping up these days. However, we must continue! A Crown of Swords, prologue through Chapter 7
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Jun 11, 2012 11:05
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Man, book 9 has a mega prologue. Is this when they started charging $3 to get the prologue a month or two ahead of the book's release?
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Jun 11, 2012 13:45
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Cartoon Man posted:Man, book 9 has a mega prologue. Is this when they started charging $3 to get the prologue a month or two ahead of the book's release? That sounds about right.
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Jun 11, 2012 15:22
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arioch posted:That sounds about right. Verified, it starts with Winter's Heart. The prologue to book 11 - (slight thematic spoiler) Embers on Dry Grass - got me excited about the series again, and the full book did not disappoint.
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Jun 11, 2012 19:07
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Especially considering how lovely the ending cliffhanger of book 8 was, I can see why. After reading book 8, I'm almost tempted to place it at the top of my poo poo list, but I need to finish book 10 first. I think my brain is intentionally blocking out a bunch of horrible Elayne chapters from Crossroads of Twilight...I just know it.
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Jun 11, 2012 19:19
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I'm still stuck in FoH because of those drat Elayne and Nynaeve chapters. At least Birgitte's showed up by now, she's okay.
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Jun 11, 2012 22:13
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In Lord of Chaos I just started reading chapter summaries for pretty much the entire Salidar gang.
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Jun 11, 2012 22:46
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Chamberk posted:I'm still stuck in FoH because of those drat Elayne and Nynaeve chapters. At least Birgitte's showed up by now, she's okay. Birgitte owns, especially in book 7 when she gets totally trashed with Matt. Thats one of my favorite scenes.
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Jun 12, 2012 00:13
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OK, the bit with Juilin acting drunk on the tightrope was pretty funny.
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Jun 12, 2012 01:44
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Cartoon Man posted:Man, book 9 has a mega prologue. Is this when they started charging $3 to get the prologue a month or two ahead of the book's release? Yeah, I started Book 9 last night even though I was kinda tired. I told myself "I'll go to sleep after the Prologue, it can't be that much longer."  I'm really loving annoyed at Book 9 so far. Book 8 was building up a lot of great momentum at the end (though it took forever to get there), and Book 9 just dropped it all off. General "feel" of book 8/9, not any specific spoilers but just being careful.
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Jun 12, 2012 04:57
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So glad I read the book 9 prologue while half asleep on the commuter train this morning. The rebirth scene with Aviendha and Elayne was just as terrible as I remember it. The description of crusty old Amys stripping naked, grabbing her boobs and declaring that "THESE BREASTS HAVE GIVEN SUCK!!!" makes me want loving to vomit.
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Jun 12, 2012 11:54
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Amys isn't that old, plus she's a strong channeller I think?
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Jun 12, 2012 13:05
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You're probably right, I don't know why I picture all the Aiel Wise Ones as crusty crotchety old women. She's probably closer looking to Moiraine if anything. That said, the scene still makes me want to puke.
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Jun 12, 2012 13:12
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arioch posted:Amys isn't that old, plus she's a strong channeller I think? We can approximate Amys' age quite easily. It is stated that when she was still a maiden of the spear, she was a member of the party who encountered Tigraine Mantear (Rand's mother) after she first crossed into the waste. This event is known to have occurred in 972NE. Given that the events of the books take place during 998 - 999NE, and that a female wilder will generally start to channel anywhere from the early teens to early 20s - Amys would have had to give up the spear and become a wise one apprentice when that happened - Amys is between roughly 38 and 48 years old. Remember that Channelers age much slower than regular people - Nynaeve is in her mid 20s but looks like she is in her late teens, so really I imagine Amys to look roughly late 20s. Considering Aiel lifestyle, she would be very fit - A point is made in the rebirth scene where Elayne notes that Amys doesn't look anything like someone who had been through a pregnancy. I'd also like to chime in and say that I really don't understand the hate Elayne and the other supergirls get. Elayne's plotline from book 8 onwards is one of my favourites in the series, and the only plotline in the series I can honestly say I dislike is Perrin books 8 - 12.
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Jun 12, 2012 15:19
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I hate that scene because it's pretty stupid and I don't give a poo poo but also because apparently the biggest fault with Elayne is that she likes candy? What? This is never even hinted at during any other books and it's also loving stupid considering any one of us could come up with a laundry list of actual criticism of his character. What Elayne says about Avhienda is appropriate (she's scared of water) but really? She's gonna get fat? Anyway, gently caress that scene, it's horrible not because of what it represent or actually involves but because of Elayne, once again.
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Jun 12, 2012 15:23
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I hate that scene because it's pretty stupid and I don't give a poo poo but also because apparently the biggest fault with Elayne is that she likes candy? What? This is never even hinted at during any other books and it's also loving stupid considering any one of us could come up with a laundry list of actual criticism of his character. What Elayne says about Avhienda is appropriate (she's scared of water) but really? She's gonna get fat? It's supposed to say something about Aviendha if she considers that a big fault of Elayne, and not any of her other perceived shortcomings, like her foolhardy headstrongness which Aviendha apparently considers at worst a mix because she admires her courage. Come on, son!
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Jun 12, 2012 15:25
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I also love the part where they have to hit each other as hard as possible. I can believe that Aviendha would bitch slap Elayne across the floor. But come on, there is NO way that Elayne could manage anything other than make Aviendha grunt a bit from a pathetic feeble smack.
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Jun 12, 2012 15:34
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:I hate that scene because it's pretty stupid and I don't give a poo poo but also because apparently the biggest fault with Elayne is that she likes candy? What? This is never even hinted at during any other books and it's also loving stupid considering any one of us could come up with a laundry list of actual criticism of his character. What Elayne says about Avhienda is appropriate (she's scared of water) but really? She's gonna get fat? I recall that was shown before, on their riverboat trip. Elayne was sneaking candies while giving them to children, and it fits with her overall childish(or possibly sheltered) behavior, especially the bit where she acts like an overgrown nine year old with Thom. Outside of politics and the Power she's really immature.
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Jun 12, 2012 15:47
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arioch posted:It's supposed to say something about Aviendha if she considers that a big fault of Elayne, and not any of her other perceived shortcomings, like her foolhardy headstrongness which Aviendha apparently considers at worst a mix because she admires her courage. I still don't have to like it and I won't, drat it. I guess you're right but as a reader I felt like it comes out of no where and I'm sure there's something else RJ could have come up with that's at least more poignant. But as I reread the series Aviendha is pretty on board the Elayne-train from the start so I guess she would focus on something that inane when it comes to an important scene. WOMEN, HUR-RUMPH!
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Jun 12, 2012 15:47
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Why does everyone in this series have dead eyes that never reflect the rest of the emotions on their face? It's not like it's just darkfriends either, it's like even the good guys are all sociopaths.
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Jun 12, 2012 16:49
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Why does everyone in this series have dead eyes that never reflect the rest of the emotions on their face? It's not like it's just darkfriends either, it's like even the good guys are all sociopaths. There's less than a handful of people I can remember with that kind of description and from what I remember all of them but 1.5 are bad guys.
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Jun 12, 2012 20:19
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I think just about every warder is described as having those dead passionless eyes, every dark friend, and some of the children of light. The specific description is whenever someone grins/laughs and Jordan says something like "but his grin never reached his dangerous eyes" or whatever. I dunno, maybe it's just my version of hair tugging/arm folding/spanking where it really sticks out to me and seems like everyone in his world is giving a perpetual evil eye to everyone they see.
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Jun 12, 2012 21:07
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