Amph Wheel of Time (No AMoL spoilers)

My dad preordered AMOL for me for Christmas.
Unfortunately, I'm only almost finished with the 6th, and I do want to complete the reread before reading MOL.

Lord of Chaos has a lot in it though. The Asha'man, Rand's love trio learning of each other,

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Egwene being raised and severing being Healed

...

It's great

Ugh.

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I forgot the Asha'man explode the Aes Sedai and Aiel. Quite nauseating thinking of it.

Just finished Crossroads of Twilight. While WH didn't annoy me too much on a re-read, this one was pretty painful. Perrin's chapters could have all been condensed into about 5 pages, ditto Elayne and Rand. Matt could have don with just 1 chapter to show his progression with Tuon, and I'll let Egwene have two chapters since she's the only one who did anything this whole book.

One thing that's bugging me during this re-read is at the beginning of the series, characters says that men and women were equal in the power. Then later, RJ backtracks and says men are better in earth and fire (the strong powers) while women are better at water and air (the weak powers.) Lanfear is originally said to be the second strongest Forsaken after Ishmael, but then in a later book, one of the male Forsaken is thinking about how he's stronger than her. Much is made about how unbelievably strong Nynaeve is but it seems like just about every Ashaman we meet is stronger.

I liked it better when men and women were equal in the one power.

I think that the big deal was that she was a wilder who was incredibly strong compared to what the other Aes Sedai were use to. She also had developed such a solid mental block against her own abilities that she baffled many, including herself.

The equality shifts so subtly that I didn't even fully realize it until now.


Jordan exaggerates the way men and women confuse each other to where I become frustrated. It doesn't help that various places expect different things. Like Faile is more jealous the more Perrin pushes Berelain away. It grates on me (especially Berelain's attitude) and fills me with near-rage.

Highly frustrating.

Women are very confusing, actually. Men are straightforward and take things at face value, but women expect men to know what they're thinking all the time. And they expect men to be more complicated than we are, and so they misinterpret men's statements to be something other than what was actually said. But enough about my gender rants. Still excited for AMOL next week!

Besides both genders finding the other incomprehensible, Jordan seems to believe all women want to be dominated. This is especially obvious with Faile/Perrin and Saldean culture, but also with Gareth/Siuan, and a little with Lan/Nyneave and any Ash'aman/woman relationship.

Also not sure how I feel about Mat and Tylin. On the one hand, Mat admits at the end that he'll miss her and seems to actually enjoy their relationship, but on the other hand, if you reverse the genders I would be really uncomfortable about the whole thing.

I never knew how to feel about Mat/Tylin either. It always felt a little awkward, uncomfortable, and unnatural [for Mat] to me.

I almost felt relieved when the gholam killed Tylin, to be perfectly honest.

I had to wiki her for the info I forgot.

Yeah, I'm sure you're not the only one. I can't remember how I initially felt. When I get there I'll probably feel the same as you, tim.

I started reading Jordan as a teenager, so at that age you don't notice how screwed the gender relationships and attitudes in WoT are, jump forward 8 years and it's blindingly obvious so I lost interest. That and it looked like the damn thing was never going to end.

Then Jordan shuffles off this mortal coil, then they get Sanderson to finish it off as a trilogy.

Intrigued I grab Mistborn and have myself quite a time, I'm now fascinated to see what he does with the final WoT books. So WoT's second chance is down to the change of authors.

Oh and my copy of A Memory of Light despatched today for the steal of a price - £10.40! Pretty certain the RRP is now £25! The secret? Amazon pre-order, a long time ago!

BUT this means I'm looking at a probably 12 book, 10,000-page reread, followed by 3 book, 2000-page new read finale! It's going to be ages before I get to it, as it's been at least a decade since I read WoT!

After taking a month to finish book 10, I knocked out 11 and 12 in a week. Only one more before I can start AMoL!

KoD feels really good because it comes after 2 books where barely anything happens and then 2 books where absolutely nothing happens, so when stuff finally starts to happen, it's awesome. Plus, Galad's a badass in the first chapter.

TGS might be my favorite book of the series so far. It's definitely in the top 3. Characters don't go around sniffing about men or acting like women are some sort of alien species, the chapters are shorter and the POVs rotate more, ]we get into Gawyn's head regarding his actions during the Tower Split and that makes him much more likeable imo. There's barely any Perrin so I don't have time to be bored by him. Nynaeve finally seems intelligent and someone who would be chosen as Wisdom. And as much as I'm still not enamored by Egwene, I love the whole image of her

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throwing fireballs at the Seanchan when they attack the tower. Any good feelings I'd had towards Tuon were destroyed the minute she ordered that raid.

And Verin's whole chapter is perfect.

The only one who seems a little off is Mat. He's just slightly jokier than he used to be. And suddenly Talmanes is teasing him? That just didn't feel like the relationship they had in the previous books. Minor quibble though.

@Jedi Ben - I completely understand what you're saying about the gender relationships and how messed up they are...and not realizing it when you first read it. Nynaeve and Elayne especially are grating on me in Crown of Swords.
Good luck with the reread.

One thing that I hate is I'll be more than halfway finished with one of the books and I'll realize that I have no clue what happened in it. Not that I forget what happened, but WHEN, in which book. Lengthy novels warp my brain.

@SoloKnight - *sigh* 4 1/2 books until TGS for me. Congrats on being almost near the end!
Egwene definitely is complete B.A. I don't think she's my favourite, but she's always felt most well-rounded and just very strong.

I never had an opportunity to do a re-read this year, so I'll just have to rely on my memory when I dive into AMOL tomorrow.

Heh, yeah, my refrain on this area is Jordan must have come across some real battleaxes in his time!

I spent some time catching back up on the Wheel of Time wiki last night. Can't wait to start the book in a couple hours.

Evil.

Here's what I will post:

The finale is a monster 909-page hardback.

There's only 2 authors I have in my collection that exceed this, one of them is Sanderson with the first Stormlight Archive book, Way of Kings and the other is Peter F Hamilton, who has at least 3 1000+ page hardbacks!

Oh my goodness.
*faints*

Yeah, it's a doorstop!

Very satisfying to look in the dustcover and read RRP £25.00, knowing I got it for £10.40. Paperback RRPs now are £8.99, which is why I try to buy hardbacks online with an obscene preorder discount of 40-50%, but this one is probably nearer 60% off!

You win!!

Hitting the Tylin parts now. It makes me like Mat even more, especially when he mentally reiterates the fact he never went after a girl who told him she wasn't interested.
People like Tylin fill me with rage

909 pages is quite the brick, but Towers of Midnight is over 850 so it's actually not that much longer. It still won't be the longest book I own as I have Les Miserables sitting on my shelf and that clocks in at around 1,500.