The Storm IS Coming. But First...

Book; 7: A Crown of Swords

Chapter; 41: A Crown of Swords

Character Groups;

Ebou Dar        Cairhien       Somewhere in Andor     Somewhere in Altara  

Mat                  Rand            Perrin                             Egwene

Nynaeve          Min              Faile                               Rebel Aes Sedai

Elayne             Cadsuane     Berelain                         Rebel Aes Sedai's Army

Aviendha                              Two Rivers army          The Band of the Red Hand

Birgitte                                           

Thom 

Julin

Olver            

Ok... Ok... So it has been a month since my last update, but with Christmas and family and food and food and birthdays and food, I have fallen a bit behind, all right?

All right.

Not that I've had much of interest to say really. I am, of course, not trying to sync blog and plot line here but I do sort of rely on what I am reading to spark off some musings. As may have come across in my last, short but horribly bitter post, the current story arcs could not be described as action-packed, hence a dry spell. 

But as my handsome boyfriend pointed out, that in itself might be worth talking about.

Let one thing be clear. I love the Wheel of Time. If I didn't, I wouldn't have kept reading all those years ago when I first got to books 6 and 7 and found myself faced with quite startling monotony. At least now I have the benefit of knowing that it gets better. 

I have pondered, at length, on what exactly is wrong with these books. Here are my conclusions, feel free to disagree.

As I mentioned before, the first three books of the series had a clear, well executed if predictable arc. In book 4 the arc gets mussed up a bit and longer games come into focus. Book 5 follows up on this with a big flash-bang finale that removes several key pieces from the board and sends others off on seemingly random trajectories. Thus, book 6 and 7 are concerned with the aftermath of book 5. The world is slowly cooking in its own juices and no-one can pull themselves together long enough to do anything about it. In book 6 especially, I feel that even the editor (who I believe was Jordan's wife) was having trouble getting through it. On this read-through I noticed so many silly grammatical errors and things like people channelling the wrong half of the power (women channel saidar, men saidin. This was made worse by the sudden appearance of a character that actually does channel the wrong half of the power.) that it was almost painful to read.

But it wasn't just an editing issue. Sad as it makes me to say it, Lord of Chaos and A Crown of Swords were simply not as well constructed as those that came before. In both books there is a climactic battle with swords and spears and things exploding and burning all over the shop. Should be grrrrrreat, but each battle is crammed into the last chapters with hardly any build up and not even the previously used device of seeing the same thing from a number of different points of view to help you get the full picture. They feel rushed. They feel small. They do not feel like characters should still be speaking of them with a sense of horror and awe six books later. To be honest, when I first read the series and people talked about "the battle of Dumai's Wells", I had to google it and then re-read the chapter. And bare in mind that there were only nine books in the series at that point! 

Anyway, The difficult second album is nearly behind us (ok, so sixth, seventh and eighth album. You know what I mean) and thankfully, at a mere 641 pages, book 8; The Path of Daggers is practically a short story. 

The storm IS coming. Promise.