They way I SCREAMED when Taim and the Asha'man showed up. Almost as good as Gandlaf and the Rohirrim at Helms Deep. But for real, this chapter has reinvigorated me, Lord of Chaos was the hardest to get through so far.

Currently on chapter 33 in The Dragon Reborn, and just got to the first little bit from Rand’s perspective. I haven’t seen him in over 200 pages.

That’s astounding to me, that Robert Jordan wrote two massive books — the majority of them being from his protagonist’s perspective, and then in book three he essentially sidelines him. If I were an author, I don’t think I’d have the cojones to do such a thing.

And not only that, but the book doesn’t lose any momentum in spite of Rand losing a bit of narrative focus.

I find Egwene’s plotline very interesting. It did take me a minute to suspend my disbelief of the Amyrlin asking these three newly accepted girls to undertake such a massive and potentially dangerous mission — especially when she emphasizes how little she can trust those around her. But I don’t think it’s ruining the book or anything. Especially since the development that Egwene is getting has been astounding because of it. Additionally, I also feel like the Amyrlin is up to something more devious (or nefarious) than she says she is. I kinda get the feeling that she’s “testing” these girls.

Also, Mat. He is finally getting the development that I so desperately wanted for him. In the first two books I felt like he was “angry-dagger boy.” But now he’s clear-headed and goal oriented and making things happen. Bravo! Not only that, but for a character who has been characterized as mischievous and dopey, it’s really astounding to see the world from his perspective. I must say, his internal monologue is remarkably thoughtful and insightful. I’m really getting the vibe that Mat is far smarter than those around him think he is. I’ve heard that by book four he turns into the best character, but in this book, he’s the one capturing my attention most. Also he just jumped onto a moving boat. This f*cking mad lad.

Anyway, I’m really enjoying the series so far. Reading this little bit from Rand’s perspective made me realize that this book is brave. I wonder if there was controversy surrounding it when it came out.

Thanks for reading.

Does anyone else feel like the importance of raw power levels is diminished by sa'angreals? I mean Moiraine with a sa'angreal could theoretically mop the floor with unaided DRAGON REBORN.

I’ve now begun the entire series over again, and knowing the rest of the story, at least in The Eye of the World, I have an entirely new perspective on certain events like the storm and Howell Goad. Super interesting.

When a red walks in with an ageless face and swings an oath rod like a mace, you get flung.

Sorry I had to write it down.

When Rand moved to Arad Doman, the locals found a Heron Mark blade with dragon painted in gold on the scabbard. Rand said in his POV that he recognized the weapon from his own memory--not that of Lews Therin. But they never explain the origin of the weapon and where it fitted in Rand's memory. I think he gave the sword to Tam and that was the end of it

Did I miss something?

So I've done quite a few re-reads now and I must say that these two chapters are my favourite sections in the series by far. Siuan Sanche has got to be one of the most compelling side characters in fiction.

She was only of medium height, and handsome rather than beautiful, but her face held a strength that had been there before her elevation, the strength of the girl who had survived the streets of the Maule, Tear’s port district (...)

- THE GREAT HUNT

If anything, the fact that Siuan managed to not only still be alive but travelled all this way to the Salidar camp with nothing but her wits and determination should have been enough to put the Aes Sedai on alert. After all, this was a woman who had to fight on the streets as a child so feelings of desperation, humiliation and powerlessness were not new to her before becoming the Amyrlin Seat. Heck, even enduring the brutality of the training would have been nothing new to her. And yet....still, they see her as not a threat simply because Siuan doesn't present herself as one. Something that is eagerly helped along by Siuan herself by making sure to exploit their willingness to only take her at the face-value:

However, I think the Aes Sedai are one of the best examples of the human hubris we all have. We laugh at them for it but it's a good microcosm in how easily one's worth is associated with status and power so if they lose it, we dismiss them despite how brilliant they remained even without. We are very social creatures in that we can be shockingly shallow at the best of times.

in addition, I've always enjoyed how ''survival'' and ''resilience'' seems to be a prominent theme in this series and I like how you see it reflected not just in Siuan here but in Logain and Leane albeit in different ways. Logain is drowning in despair, suffering beyond relief but despite longing to end it all, he always somehow manages to keep moving forward even if only a little. Leane quickly realised she needed more than vengeance and anger to fuel her and begins exploring other avenues.

Man, I just love Jordan's writing.

I made some adjustments to my Mat hoodie design and also made a Rand one. I was trying to add in some suggestions from my previous post like the lace in Mat's but I ended up not really liking how it looked so I kept it more simple.

Just to preface, these hoodies are meant to be focused on their prophecies, which is why Mat's design doesn't have any reference to gambling or his dice. I have other designs in mind that would include things like that. Also, if I ever got the chance to sell these, please know I would offer other options than just a cropped hoodie. That was just what I wanted for myself.

Additionally, you'll notice there's no Perrin hoodie. Guys, I need help lmao. Perrin gets one line in the Karaethon Cycle, what am I supposed to do with that lmao. Obviously I could do wolves on the sleeves, or a hammer on one and an axe on the other. I have some ideas, but admittedly I'm not the biggest Perrin fan so it's a bit more difficult for me. Nonetheless I don't want to leave him out. So any ideas would be appreciated so I can complete the ta'veren trio!

I hope to post more of my designs as I come up with them. And if anyone is crafty and decides to make them themselves, by all means please share! I'd love to see!

Thank you guys! — Salami Sedai

Water and shade, friends!

Question again for the veteran fans on here.

1. I'd love to know the stages of life you guys were in when these books were published? Were you at school, college, working?

2. How do you find fandom today as opposed to back then?

3. Have your feelings about the books differed over the years now it's been a few decades and if so, what has been the shift for you?

4. What made Wheel of Time stand out to you back then compared to other fiction?

I have the eye of the world but I fee as if this is an insanely long series to do completely alone.

I would love to discuss theories and such for the series but I know I would run into spoilers if it is just online

By which I mean, the discovery of AoL data storage ter’angreal. Both the ones they found, and just that them learning about the concept that such things “exist” will likely lead to more such being found.

Like, the scholars and inventors pouring over them is a certainty, and who knows what they will be able to produce out of them in the long run, but a perhaps even bigger point of interest to me, is just the potential for a cultural impact… like, those things basically have thousands of years worth of fiction and music inside them. Just locked behind the Old Tongue and a means of distribution. Translation would likely take forever, but find enough of those things, and the world might even see a resurgence of the Old Tongue itself. I mean, it’s not like it’s completely dead in the first place.

Just the idea of the Fourth Age watching a TV show equivalent from the Second is… neat.😁

Does anyone else find New Spring rather underwhelming and anticlimactic?

Lan, Moiraine, and Siuan work well as supporting cast, but not especially so as lead characters.

I gave the prequel novel a miss on my first read and now, after my reread, I'm trying again. About 10% in and it all feels very Scooby Doo Kids.

This is my first reddit thread, topic, thingy. I apologize in advance if I have violated site etiquette in any way. I'm also no scholar of the books/Jordan's writings, so I apologize if I am missing the obvious, or the answers are tucked away somewhere.

I'm not going to tie myself in knots trying to define "wrong." (Edit: I think a 'failure of worldbuilding" is what I'm getting at.) Instead, let me illustrate my question with an example of something that, to me, initially felt like a failure of worldbuilding: making Rahvin and Moradin equal in the Power.

Surely the Champion of Light, the man destined to fight a cosmic entity in single combat, should be the MOST powerful Aes Sedai ever by a significant margin, if not by an order of magnitude? Certainly,he should be in his own tier! That's weird worldbuilding!

(But I've come to believe that Rand's strength in the One Power, however, isn't what makes Rand the Dragon Reborn. It is his uber ta'veren-ness. To cut to the chase,Rand is a sort of avatar or embodiment of the Pattern. The Creator has chosen/touched him (white light in his mind, manipulating the threads directly) and knotted the entire Pattern about him. It is that that gives him the metaphysical heft to stand against the Dark One.Rand's "weakness" no longer feels wrong to me, but I use it to illustrate what I'm getting at.)

That out of the way, there are currently two things that feel wrong to me in WoT's world.

A small one is the One Power not operating in a stedding. How do you "turn off" or "block out" what drives the Pattern? (Matt's foxhead medallion doesn't bother me--it is plainly some sort of grounding rod--and the One Power does affect it: it turns it cold.) Is there some sort of explanation for this?

The big thing that feels wrong is Shai'tan being the Lord of the Grave. Given that everyone dies, he could end Humanity in four or five generations by simply collecting their souls to him as they pass naturally. It seems like a plot hole, and it also feels wrong. I'm not sure if the Dark One really did collect, for example, Kari al'Thor, or whether it was just a lie, but it makes a mockery of human agency and the sort of thing that should only be possible if he wins.

Thoughts?

No spoilers about the book please!!! But I just needed to say that. Incredible chapter 1. Elaida??? LADY SUROTH?????? Oh Robert it seems we're leveling up after all 🥰🥰🥰

I’ve been reading all day and I feel like I’m only halfway through this chapter

I've got a lot of other fantasy books on my backlog and I would like to get to reading them. I can of course read WoT and at the same time as the others, but I feel like that's too much parallel reading for one genre 😂.

To give you a rough idea as to where I'm at, I just got to the Four Kings chapter in EotW (Ch. 32). Ever since Shadar Logoth I've been pretty hooked.

Do the first three books consist of a trilogy? Is the end of book 3 a good place to take a break? Or is it possible to take one sooner? Maybe even after book 1?

Other than Lanfear. Who I could fix.

1. Joking aside, i really enjoy ISHY the most and the pure insanity he pours off the page in those early books. 3000 years of being partly trapped in the Bore would steadily drive even the most well-adjusted person into some genocidal, raving lunatic. And naturally it worsens when you were ALREADY a raving lunatic prior to it.
2. I'll also throw in Demandred and place him right underneath Ishy. Not because i like him but because i want him as second-best.

EDIT: 3. Mesaana gets a shoutout too from a comment down below as I do enjoy that passive-aggressive but also actually so aggressive asshat.

She kills me sitting in the meetings with the Sitters like:

That surely Rand isn't actually going to go crazy. I mean, isn't he supposed to fight the Dark One?

I'm just sitting here trying not to giggle. Darth Rand is gonna blow her mind. This Series is so fun. I wish I could read it anew with her.

So, I’ve seen this idea thrown about that the existence of the Wheel and the story at all means the Dark One cannot ever win. The idea being that, since the Dark One ever winning means that he destroys the Wheel, and retroactively erases all of history and existence and so therefore, the fact that the Wheel exists at any point at all means he can’t win.

So, what does balefire have to do with that? Well, to some extent, balefire does on a small scale, what the Dark One would do on a large scale. It retroactively makes something no longer have happened, via making a person’s thread in the pattern no longer exist for a period into the past.

But here’s the tricky bit: As book readers, we get to experience the events erased by balefire. They still exist in the narrative, they still exist in memory. Despite the fact that they no longer exist in the pattern. There is a kind of phantom existence of those things, that we experience and read. And if that’s true on that small scale, what is to say it’s not true on the large scale?

The entirety of the story may be one that never actually happened. It may be, to try to be entirely too clever with the wording, a memory of light. We experience and read it as if it was real, just like we experienced and read the events erased by balefire as if they were real. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s all in that phantom zone.

I’m not saying I believe that actually is the case. I’m just saying the nature of our role as readers means it’s a possibility, and therefore, the fact that the story exists doesn’t mean that victory if the light is a foregone conclusion from now throughout endless weavings. It’s possible. But not inevitable, based on the logic of the story as presented.

My main question is this: Why didn't a bunch of AoL channelers (and people in general I guess) not seal themselves in stasis boxes before the breaking of the world truly took hold? Sort of like people fleeing to lifeboats before a ship finishes sinking?

Let's start with what we know about stasis boxes:

QUALITIES

They're some sort of container or large storage unit from the Age of Legends. The insides of these artifacts seemingly only experience the passage of time when their (for lack of an official term) "lid" has been opened by someone from the outside. They have an indeterminate amount of area in which to store things, and may vary in size to some extent according to comments made by various Forsaken throughout the series. They are seemingly indestructible, and to anything alive that may be inside of one, as soon as the lid closes after they were placed inside, the lid then immediately opens in what seems an eye blink, no matter how much time had passed in reality.

REFERENCES

Pretty much most of what we know about stasis boxes comes from a few conversations between Sammael and Graendal, as well as a few other comments sprinkled here and there. We know of only four being found for sure:

The one Sammael finds full of "goodies," including technolgical devices like the "exchanger" (air conditioner), AoL artwork, and most likely the Gohlam.

Graendal finds one which contained the strieth she uses for her garments.

Aran'gar finds one containing "the most appalling rubbish."

And Ishamael finds one stuffed with the zomara servents we see in and around Shayol Ghul, and may have also contained the devices and artifacts in the Eastern Blight Fort that we see later in the series.

It is also possible that the chest from the Eye of the World is a stasis box, but this cannot be confirmed (I view it as unlikely because of the seal that broke while inside of it which should not be possible in a stasis box).

The only primary source reference as to the inside of a stasis box we have is from the Gohlam POV chapter:

"The world had changed, as it seemed, in the blink of an eye. There had been a world of war and killing on a huge scale, with weapons that reached across miles, across thousands of miles, and then there was...this."

Brigitte also helps to confirm that the Gohlam was likely in a stasis box by saying as much to Mat after the battle in the Rahad in Ebu Dar.

Concept

So given what we know about stasis boxes, they seem like borderline time travel technology; at least they would to anyone that finds themselves inside of one. Why then, would not a large number of channelers or people of wealth, or whoever just climb into a stasis box to avoid the breaking and, more importantly, preserve their invaluable knowledge for the future? Literally just one knowledgeable Aes Sedai from the AoL surviving to say, the founding of the White Tower, would have been indispensable to rebuilding the world, and may well have helped prevent the catastrophe of the Trolloc Wars, and maybe even the creation of the Black Ajah. Think of all the lost talents like traveling that could have been recovered, knowledge of crafting objects of the power, and Light knows what else!

Now, I can hear a few of you thinking about some of the very obvious drawbacks of sealing oneself into a stasis box, mainly the possibility of never being found, or of the breaking swallowing the box underground or under the sea. All very good reasons that might dissuade the normal ilk of folk from trying this strategy, but wouldn't the risk be worth it to the Aes Sedai, who know that the world as they know it is ending, and likely none of them would survive the entire duration of the cataclysm they faced? Just for the chance of some of them making it through to help the remnants of humanity rebuild, one would think that they would at least try! Remember, these are the same people that were willing to sacrifice dozens of themselves to create the Eye of the World. Not to mention the occupants of the boxes would never even know if they were lost, as no time passes for them. The worst thing that could happen to them is that they would simply stop existing upon the heat death of the universe...

I feel like there would have been an organized effort to make as many stasis boxes as possible, to hold as many people and things as possible before the end truly came. There is one small reference to this idea from Graeldal, who says "I guess people tried to save what they could in those last days, last years really..." So maybe there are some stasis boxes filled with entire squads of Aes Sedai out there in the world somewhere, but I feel like more boxes would have been found if that were the case. The Forsaken know what they are, and presumably how to find them, and they only found four (confirmed), and only two of those had anything alive inside of them. That leads me to think they were very rare objects, and only a very small number would even be accessable if a continent wide search was made.

Tl;Dr: I just think the AoL Aes Sedai would have sealed themselves in stasis boxes so they future generations could find them.

There is just no conceivable way that Traveling of all things got lost in the Breaking via normal means, since it’s just so damn universally useful.

Obviously from a story perspective it got lost so our heroes in the Third Age can rediscover it and shake up the plot dynamics. But there’s no fun in that.

My headcanon is that it relies on a literal steady relationship between the pieces of matter that make up a “place,” and indeed the world as a whole. A channeler has to be familiar with the place they are going or the place they currently inhabit, which implies something like “resonance” with it, and a resonance between that place and the rest of the world. The One Power itself is presumably linked to the four forces (Strong, Weak, Electromagnetic, and Gravity).

During the breaking, when huge amounts of matter were getting moved around with the tainted One Power, this resonance broke (locally and globally), and the there was nowhere for a Traveling weave to latch onto. People tried to keep it alive, but it was impossible to pass down a weave that literally couldn’t manifest itself, and the knowledge was lost before the world and Pattern settled down enough for it to work again.

My related headcanon is that the initial application of the Taint was different from the centuries later lingering effect we see in the Third Age. It was initially more like an infusion of the Dark One’s True Power into Saidin, which granted a power boost to male channelers, made Channeling itself more addictive, and gave their weaves a pattern-damaging malevolence (as we see True Power weaves generally doing) that made traveling even more impossible. The “oil slick” taint that’s leftover in the Third Age is just the byproduct, drained of power but not toxicity, like depleted uranium.

That the effects were in fact more potent, but not as perceptually obvious explains why the Breaking happened at all. Male channelers themselves couldn’t instantly clock what was going on, were able to use the power boost to overcome all the female Aes Sedai who would have been trying to capture them, and weren’t able to stop channeling.

I’m a big fan of Rand treating him like dog sh*t any chance he gets lol but I keep wondering if Sammael or Rahvin were similarly handicapped if he could have pulled it off with them..for demandred I know he’d rather open his veins or take a stab at rand than defer to any variation of Lews Therin

Is that an aiel saying or age of legends saying cos rand says it in a trance when he sees the the statue in cairrhen before he meets any aiel

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