ID please...

Book: 2; The Great Hunt


Chapter: 50; After. THE END!


Character Groups:
Mountains of Mist            Almoth Plain
Rand                                 Mat
Perrin                                Egwene
Loial                                 Nynaeve
Moiraine                           Elayne
Lan                                   Verin
Min                                   Hurin


Well, Mr. Jordan certainly crammed a lot into the last third of that book, like, a whole four months. But, as I have to keep reminding myself, I am not trying to summarise the plot here. 


While the ever expanding ensemble cast are taking a well deserved winter break, I would like to take a moment to go off on a bit of a tangent. You see, The Great Hunt took the scooby gang out into the wider world and one of the themes of the book was the apparent decline of humanity. As can be seen on the map of Randland (as the main continent has become lovingly known) huge swathes of land are unclaimed by any nation and most of the action in book 2 takes place in the spaces once occupied by the extinct nations of Hardon and Almoth. 

I should point out that this map was coloured in by my own fair hand after the analogue fashion because I don't own any picture type programmes more complex (or indeed other than) MS Paint. Anyway, it was quite fun, I should to more colouring in.


Sorry, back to the point. 


What I was struck by is that while the people of this continent (and, it is revealed, others) share a common language and religion (in the loosest sense of the word) each country has its own distinct appearance, mode of dress and cultural norms. Here are some that we have come across.


Cairhien (KEYE-ree-EHN): The nation of Moiraine's birth. Technically she is a noblewoman from the former royal house of Damodred but prefers to be known just as an Aes Sedai (House Damodred lost the throne in embarrassing and bloody circumstances). Cairhienin are described as short, fair skinned and dark haired. their soldiers shave and powder the front halves of their heads and the nobles wear dark clothes with slashes of bright colours across the front of their dresses or coats. the women wear huge skirts and tall powdered wigs. they speak in clipped tones with an almost musical accent. So Cairhienin look Chinese, dress like pre-revolutionary French nobility and sound Welsh.

Andor: Most of the Hobbits, sorry, Emond's Fielders were born in Andor as were Min and Elayne. I have always thought of Andor as Elizabethan England, especially since Queen Morgase is described as a beautiful and fierce woman with a mass of curling red-gold hair and a habit of sending people who upset her to the headsman.

Shienar: Shienar is the newest of the Borderlands, the chain of northern countries sworn to protect the world from the Dark One's Blight encroaching from the north. They are a warrior people who favour fighting from horseback and topknots. Shienar has only been a true borderland for about 50 years, since the still more northern kingdom of Malkier (which Lan happens to be technically king of) was swallowed by the Blight. 

Aside from that, we know that Taraboner women wear their hair in hundreds of braids with beads on the ends that clack whenever they move their heads, Domani women wear scandalous dresses and Aiel are tall, red-haired and deadly.

Of course all of this pales in comparison with the complexity of the Seanchan... 

Moon River

Book; 2, The Great Hunt


Chapter; 30, Daes Dae'mar


Character Groups:
Cairhien                     Kinslayers Dagger     Tifan's Well       Tar Valon
Rand                           Mat                           Moiraine            Egwene
Loial                           Perrin                        Lan                   Nynaeve
Hurin                          Ingtar                                                  Min
Selene (sometimes)    Verin                                                   Elayne
                                  Various soilders


See what I mean about the characters? Bear in mind that I am only including characters in the list that are important to the overall plot arc, since chapter 16 that number has gone from 10 to 14, not counting the soldiers, and I have actually left out a few because they aren't that important just yet. I have decided to include locations for each group, just to stop me getting lost! To keep to rule 2, I will not be describing new characters any more unless I have something interesting to say about them.


For example, Verin. Verin (or Verin Sedai to give her her full title) is another channeler. She belongs to the ancient, female only, order of channelers called Aes Sedai, which I believe I have mentioned before but not explained. Aes Sedai are subject to three oaths. 1) To speak no word that is not true, 2) to make no weapon for one man to kill another and 3) not to use the One Power as a weapon except in last defence of you life, that of your Warder...yadda yadda, the list goes on. The point is that Aes Sedai are bound to these oaths in such a way that makes them as much a part of a woman as her own skin, once sworn they are unbreakable. 

Or are they? A few chapters ago, Verin uttered a harmless little sentence that, it seems, broke the first rule. This is one of the great mysteries in the series. 'Did Verin Lie?' has been discussed on forums and blogs as long as there have been forums and blogs and the answer was a long time coming. This is in fact the 'longest delay' between event and explanation that I mentioned in a previous post. When I finally read the resolution, I curled up in a ball and giggled manically, earning some very strange looks from my sister.


Now for Selene. When I first read tGH in...oh... 2001, I found Selene absolutely fascinating. she pops up seemingly out of nowhere spouting cryptic phrases and giving off an air of knowing so much more than everybody else. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and on this read through I just found her a bit annoying. This could be because now I know what she is up to, (much as I would like to, I can't erase my knowledge of the future books and start again) but I think it is just that in ten years my tastes have changed.


I was wracking my brain trying to find a succinct way of explaining this and it came to me quite suddenly. Selene is River Song (I'll assume that you have seen the most recent series of Doctor Who). She turns up out of the blue being all enigmatic and twirls out hero around her middle finger. She refuses to tell us anything while hinting at everything and when the big reveal comes, its a bit of a let down (if not a bit nonsensical). At least Selene vanishes as easily as she appears whereas River seems to have become a fixture.

Have YOU got the Horn?

Book: 2; The Great Hunt

Chapter: 16; In the Mirror of Darkness

Character Groups:

Rand           Perrin                   Egwene             Moiraine

Loial            Mat                      Nynaeve            Lan

Hurin           Ingtar

                   Various soilders

Here is a question. What do the "infinite improbability drive", "Narrative Causality" and the "Chevalier Effect" have in common? That's right children, they are all ironic plot devices that allow a story to take great leaps of logic or justify enormous coincidences without breaking the mechanics of the world in question. (For those who are interested, the guilty authors are Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin respectively. The late, great, Mr. Adams actually scores a twofer in my library with the "interconnectedness of all things" in the Dirk Gently novels.) There is probably a proper, literary name for this sort of thing and if anyone knows it, feel free to tell me, but I shall call it a McGuffin.

With that in mind, what are ta'veren? You do catch on quickly, they are the WoT McGuffin, although in this case there is rather less of the irony.

About half way throught tEotW, Loial revealed that Rand, Mat and Perrin are all ta'veren, people whose very presence bends chance, luck and fate around themselves, and now no-one seems to be able to shut up about it. To be fair, it is quite elegant. Ta'veren fit perfectly into the mythology and can be used to explain pretty much anything. How did Perrin meet the only man in the world who could teach him the talk to wolves? Ta'veren. How was Rand separated from anyone who would recognise the signs of his channeling just as those signs showed up? Ta'veren. Mat hasn't done anything too obvious yet but eventually he becomes the most blatent ta'veren of the three, although not the most powerful.

Now, in other news, you may have noticed the list of characters above is getting bigger and more complicated. From here on in, this becomes a major feature of the WoT books. Smaller characters appear and disappear, the major characters bounce about all over the world. The reason I put the current groups at the top of each entry is that I find it the easiest way to keep track of the story, certain plot threads are always attached to certain groups. Today's new additions are Hurin, Ingtar, and a group of Shienaran soilders. Ingtar and the Shienarans are not to interesting right now but I'd just like to say a few words about Hurin. 

Hurin is a Sniffer. He can smell violence and track murderers by scent. He joins the Great Hunt of the book's title to track the Darkfriends and Trollocs that have stolen the fabled Horn of Valere. Nothing wrong with that really, but Hurin has always seemed such a flimsy character. All there seems to be to him is his ability and his obssesion with fawning over "Lord Rand" (long story). He mentions that he has a wife but otherwise there seems to be very little to him. Now it could be that his only purpose in the story is to go missing with Rand and Loial so that Perrin can have a chance to shine as a fake "Sniffer" or that he is there to make Rand accept some responsibility for once but when every other character in the series, even the walk on parts, seem to be so fleshed out, Hurin grates.