Towers of Midnight SPOILER THREAD

[Renasko]

Finished the book, finally. Thoughts ranged from happy to disappointed. Didn't really enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Still need to go through some of the other posts in this thread. First couple of pages put me off my thoughts, for the large part. Let's see...

Not enough Mat. I don't know, going into this book, I was expecting a larger concentration of his character and co. Why so much Egwene? She's a damn pain in the ass to read. A real slog. I figured her and Rand had gotten their part in the previous book. Instead she gets her own way and breaks Gawyn, hurrah. He's a nice little puppy now.

Bit odd how downplayed his return to Camelyn was...helped by his reaction to Morgase and Elayne's reaction to Galad returning. Though her character irked when Morgase revealed herself and in other parts, like with Perrin.

Berelain breaking it down was cool. Her going all slackjawed over Galad was pretty boring.

Galad was good to read, until he met Perrin. Those two were a little difficult to hit it off.

Erm, this is going nowhere. I'm tired, this isn't making much sense...

Why is Faile wearing Rolan's thing around her neck, still? What the hell?

Curious over Logain's disappearance. Where do we reckon he is? I'm guessing a bunch of the Asha'man are under compulsion by one of the Forsaken, assisted by Taim. A showdown with Logain and he is seemingly inevitable.

Moiraine can do better than the Old Man. What was with the mention of him and Elayne getting up to inappropriate stuff? I recall that mildly being thouched upon - interest - in earlier books, but had largely dismissed it until coming across that. Also, what is the point in Moiraine losing a large amount of her power, if she can still be more powerful than normal with her angreal?

Aviendha makes me sad, too. I got supremely pissed off with the book at one point, yesterday, and just had to spoil the fucker. Read a few posts, came across a teary emoticon next to her name and thought she would die! Gah. Thought someone might pick her off at Rhuidean. Considering the Last Battle, as well, she might've stayed there for quite a while.

Lan's parts did not spark interest. A shame. Itultrade's parts weren't as good as they could've been, as well. The Northern Kingdoms losing their way should've been pressed more.

Min continues to be a sound brick in the WoT building.

Rand taking down Cadsuane was my favourite part of the entire book.

So on...

Death to Egwene.

ETA: Oh yeah, nice 'holy shit!' moments at the end.

Rand feeling 'desire' for Lanfear. Oh noes. Damnit, Lewis Therin, three ladies ain't enough? Pay another a visit.

And how great was it seeing Dreadlords in the field of battle? Why did they leave? A few versus Perrin and Galad would've seen them off nicely.

[Renasko]

Lady Power Rankings

That list makes me feel like a bad fan. Not as devoted to the series as others, by any stretch of the imagination, but who're Sharina, Talaan, Someryn, Tamela, Viendre, or Metarra? Bah. Bloody series. I'm due a re-read and all, but it shouldn't really be necessary, especially given their strength. Surely they should've been used in some shape, like Alivia or Nicola?

[Doug LeBeau]

This book has received pretty good reviews, but it contained...I don't know, too much filler or positioning within the first 1/2-3/4 of the book, it felt way too much like Crossroads or Path, or Winter's Heart, maybe that one most of all since all the action happened in the last few chapters. Still there are plenty of resolutions.

If the books ends the way Avi saw in the columns then I will just burn the books I have bought, and I own at least a couple of copies of everything before Winter's Heart. But then, this really is more of a trilogy with the darkness in the middle. Since TSR I have admired the Aiel, well, not the Shaido, but a grand majority of the rest.

I do not want the Seanchan to survive, I hate them more than any other kingdom from any series of books I have ever read. I hate them more than the Lannisters. I guess I have to say that I will never read the series again if the Seanchan are not destroyed.

I think once the last book is out, I will be able to look at this book along with TGS and have a better view of the pacing.

Well, there were a couple poignant moments, a lot of resolution, so I can appreciate all this, and have to thank Brandon Sanderson for delivering it in such an efficient fashion. How can a series from a dead author be continued so quickly, and in a pretty good quality while GRRM can't get out a book he told us would be out a year after the last book that took so damn long to come out? My brother theorizes that while Jordan liked to tease and wink at fans, GRRM has a more hostile attitude. I have to admit, when I am nagged about whichever task, it will never get done.

Who is going to want to watch an HBO series about a series of books with no ending?

[Maltaran]

There's speculation Mat is Odin.

Speculation? I thought that was pretty clear, with the hanging from the Tree of Life in order to gain knowledge, and now the losing of an eye.

[Renasko]

With Mat's Eeflinn spear, could he not have avoided losing an eye and Noal/Jain, if he had realised it's importance straight-away? Was thinkinng of that while reading it. Also, could he now enter and leave the Tower as he wishes? I'd imagine seeing him back there, in any case, given his comments upon leaving and Oliver's thoughts on the matter.

[Slick Mongoose]

Speculation? I thought that was pretty clear, with the hanging from the Tree of Life in order to gain knowledge, and now the losing of an eye.

Jordan borrowed a lot from various real world mythology. Perrin forged Mjollnir, as well. :)

[Slurktan]

That list makes me feel like a bad fan. Not as devoted to the series as others, by any stretch of the imagination, but who're Sharina, Talaan, Someryn, Tamela, Viendre, or Metarra? Bah. Bloody series. I'm due a re-read and all, but it shouldn't really be necessary, especially given their strength. Surely they should've been used in some shape, like Alivia or Nicola?

Sharina is the old woman 'novice' who was with the rebels and invented the novice family dynamic. Talaan and Metarra are Windfinders. Someryn, Tamela, and Viendre are Shaido Wise ones.

And for the most part they aren't used in the novels, I actually like that aspect. No need to make false scenes so they can have a moment to shine.

[lordofavalon]

the book was uneven. i liked the fact that it was a new WoT book, but many of the scenes seemed anticlimatic to me, especially with what happened to Messana and Graendal.

I really wish more of the Forsaken. Sigh.

one thing that really did bother me. at the end of the gathering storm Egwene tells Elayne in a dream that Duhara is black.

but Elayne makes no mention of it in this entire book.

[Maltaran]

With Mat's Eeflinn spear, could he not have avoided losing an eye and Noal/Jain, if he had realised it's importance straight-away? Was thinkinng of that while reading it. Also, could he now enter and leave the Tower as he wishes? I'd imagine seeing him back there, in any case, given his comments upon leaving and Oliver's thoughts on the matter.

He couldn't have avoided losing the eye - that was the price for getting Moiraine back. He could have saved Noal if he'd realised sooner, though.

[Renasko]

Did he need to play along with their game, though? Could've skipped out the deal entirely and kept 'half of the light of the world'.

[TerraPrime]

Some thoughts:

1. Galad is even more unbelievable as a character now. It's quite amazing how someone growing up in the royal court surrounded by politics can come away with such a simplistic either-or world view. Bah. On the plus side, let's slash Galad and Perrin. Is that not a budding bromance or what?

2. The Forsaken is, once again, stupid. If Graendel needed to kill Perrin to redeem herself, then she sure picked the most round-about way of doing it. How about just skimming to where he is, inver-weave a disguise, walk up to his tent, and kill him? I suppose she wanted to get rid of his army as well, but really, with Perrin gone, the rag-tag army will just disintegrate. Or she can just send some henchman to kill Berelain + Alliandre, as well. Evil is incompetent in WoT, and that still hasn't changed.

3. Redeeming the bad guys a bit is Mesaana. At least she didn't get bested in a stupid way. She just under-estimated Egwene's power in the dream world. But that means that the capture of Moghedian is that much more stupid. In fact, it's such a loophole that the author felt the need to patch it right in the text. So, Moghedian, the spider, who uses the dream world to spy and stalk, lost a battle in the dream world to Nynaeve, who wasn't even as strong of a Dreamer as a Wise One novice. Okay...

4. Who is the lady that visited with Avi in the waste en route to Rhuidan? Some kind of spirit?

5. The Aiel can pick up a purpose for their existence by becoming the police force. In the Rhuidan vision, it was shown that while most nations kept to the Dragon's Peace, skirmishes and small raids do take place and nobody was there to police it. Seems like a good job for the Aiel?

6. At the Black Tower, seems like Compulsion is being used? Also, Morridin told Graendel that he had recovered 2 Dream Spike, and we see the other in use at the Black Tower. So this adds to the belief that Taim is Morridin's man?

7. Elayne is still meh. I mean, deliberately leaving your warder behind while going to confront black sisters? Good grief.

8. Egwene becomes stupider here than last book. Give me back Battle Egwene please. The mooning-over-Gawyn Egwene is bleargh.

9. Is Alliandre a Darkfriend? That small portion where she got a POV narrative just seems rather out of place unless this is building up to something.

10. The whole Borderland lords thing was kinda odd. All that build up, for a piece of out-of-the-blue prophecy?

[Daeric]

Some thoughts:

1. Galad is even more unbelievable as a character now. It's quite amazing how someone growing up in the royal court surrounded by politics can come away with such a simplistic either-or world view. Bah. On the plus side, let's slash Galad and Perrin. Is that not a budding bromance or what?

2. The Forsaken is, once again, stupid. If Graendel needed to kill Perrin to redeem herself, then she sure picked the most round-about way of doing it. How about just skimming to where he is, inver-weave a disguise, walk up to his tent, and kill him? I suppose she wanted to get rid of his army as well, but really, with Perrin gone, the rag-tag army will just disintegrate. Or she can just send some henchman to kill Berelain + Alliandre, as well. Evil is incompetent in WoT, and that still hasn't changed.

3. Redeeming the bad guys a bit is Mesaana. At least she didn't get bested in a stupid way. She just under-estimated Egwene's power in the dream world. But that means that the capture of Moghedian is that much more stupid. In fact, it's such a loophole that the author felt the need to patch it right in the text. So, Moghedian, the spider, who uses the dream world to spy and stalk, lost a battle in the dream world to Nynaeve, who wasn't even as strong of a Dreamer as a Wise One novice. Okay...

6. At the Black Tower, seems like Compulsion is being used? Also, Morridin told Graendel that he had recovered 2 Dream Spike, and we see the other in use at the Black Tower. So this adds to the belief that Taim is Morridin's man?

1. At least we didn't have to put up with lines of text of Galad mooning over Perrin.

2. Is it wrong of me that I find the forsaken funny when they go all ragh about how awesome they are because they came from the AoL and then they act like bumpkins

3. I think the deal with Moggy was that she always just tries to run away at the first sign of trouble if she can, shes an utter coward and when the dream collar got put on her it never occurred to her to just not accept it, she was instead trying to first flee and then bargain her way out.

6. Someone has said it earlier in the thread but its possibly the 13 channelers and Fade turning going on. I think there's no doubt that Taim is a darkfriend at the very least, the "Let the Lord of Chaos rule" speech at the end of the previous book was damning enough.

[The Imp's Advocate]

Honestly, I think Jordan was lying when he said that Taim wasn't Demandred. Why would a random darkfriend (even an incredibly powerful one) be put in charge of corrupting the Black Tower? Does anyone know if there is irrefutable textual proof that Taim isn't Demandred, or is it still just the word of the author?

[Poobah]

9. Is Alliandre a Darkfriend? That small portion where she got a POV narrative just seems rather out of place unless this is building up to something.

Is she the queen of Ghaldean who swore to Perrin? I don't even remember her getting a PoV, lol.

[MaesterLuwin]

Honestly, I think Jordan was lying when he said that Taim wasn't Demandred. Why would a random darkfriend (even an incredibly powerful one) be put in charge of corrupting the Black Tower? Does anyone know if there is irrefutable textual proof that Taim isn't Demandred, or is it still just the word of the author?

The main clue is a Demandred POV in Winter's Heart, where Demandred doesn't recognize Damer Flinn. Since Flinn trained under Taim at the Black Tower, Taim would know who he is.

[CryHavoc]

Sorry for the epically long post, but I finished it last night. Some good, some bad. The pacing didn’t bother me as much as it seemed to bother some people, though I was annoyed that after waiting eight books to get to Finnland, I had to wait through 780 pages just to get there, and that the resolution took all of two (admittedly awesome) chapters.

Anyway. I mostly liked Perrin’s arc. It moved slowly at first, but still damn fast for Perrin. Neald and the hammer were super-cool, as was the fact that at least someone seems to trust Rand. The Elayne arc seemed a little unrealistically quick for me, but I much preferred it to the alternative of sitting around and plotting for two books to get Cairhien. She did kind of piss me off though, especially in the scene when she strips the Andoran nobles of their estates. I mean, if they’re not traitors to Andor, why are they in your dungeon, Ms. I-am-oh-so-righteous? And while we're at it, let's threaten to behead the childhood friend of your boyfriend! The Black Tower stuff was creepy. Taim has his own dreamspike? (Does that mean he either is working directly for or is Moridin?) Yay for the 13x13 trick finally (maybe) making an appearance. And Nyn kicks ass in more ways than one. As for Aviendha, I thought some of the flash-forwards were very powerful, but something about her internal monologue between them (the tone or the word choice maybe) seemed to kill the momentum for me.

Not a critique of the book so much as a comment, as perhaps it was intentional or perhaps I just hate her, but Egwene really got on my nerves after a while. Even ignoring the Nyn test, she’s stubborn nearly to the point of self-delusion. When Rand suggests breaking the seals, it’s understandable for your reaction to be shock or dismay. But to immediately respond by trying to gather enough armies to force him to do what you say without considering his words strikes me as exactly what Elaida would have done. And then, when Nyn, someone you profess to respect and trust, agrees with Rand, to think it’s only because her brain is addled? And then you justify your actions by convincing yourself that he actually wants to be persuaded not to do it? And then assume that because Perrin probably agrees with Rand, he is therefore hostile and might attack you? Ugh. Tuon also made me want to slap her, but that’s nothing new.

I think the Perrin/Mat/Avi storylines kind of exemplify what I felt about the book as a whole. Generally good movement forward, a few really well-written and well-thought-out scenes, and some nice reunions, but peppered with enough little things to pull me out of the story or make me think “wait, what; who’s writing this?” Gai’shain are carrying weapons around. People are calling each other “pal” and everyone’s having things “published” left and right. (Seriously, though, what’s with all this publishing?) In general, I felt like characters' voices were blurring, especially during exposition. I’ve seen some epic infodumping in WoT, but usually it at least held with the dumper’s voice; I couldn’t really tell the difference in voice between exposition from Graendal and exposition from the sul’dam and exposition from the Whitecloaks. The woman who met with Avi spoke like an Aiel sometimes and a wetlander sometimes (though I guess she could be impersonating an Aiel). Some conversations felt completely forced, like the plot demanded it and rather than giving the characters a reason he just barreled on through, and a lot of the internal introspection was so damn "tell". But Perrin’s voice seemed to improve from the prologue to the end, and Mat, while not entirely back in the beginning, was a vast improvement over TGS and seemed almost back to normal by the end. Overall, I mostly liked it, and there were parts I absolutely loved, but I got pulled out of the story in a bunch of places by things that, while little, add up to an inability to stay immersed after a while.

Anyway:

What might Moiraine’s other wishes be? And who came to kill Lanfear? (Slayer, Moridin, someone the Shadow didn’t mind never getting back?)

Why save Maradon instead of Kandor? Is bailing out Ituralde and Arad Doman really more important than keeping the Borderlands from getting split down the middle by a massive army of shadowspawn? It's not like there are more Rand-allied countries that can be invaded from Saldea (actually fewer, since much of that part of the continent is Seanchan). Or is the timeline such that the Shadow is already spread out in Kandor by the time zen Rand hits the scene? Also, where is Lan in the timeline? He seemed to ride through Kandor without much trouble right during the time, chapter-wise, when Kandor was supposed to be getting completely overrun.

Where are Demandred and Logain? And why does Graendal take crap for getting Messanna killed, which she totally could not have predicted, but not for essentially single-handedly convincing Sammael to go after Rand and get himself Shadar-Logothed. Can't they just find and kill Messanna and get her back, anyway? If the DO can fix getting burned to ashes, he ought to be able to fix brain-snappage.

And what was the thing that was supposed to be surprising but we should have anticipated? The only big things that I didn’t expect for this book were the columns also going forward and the dreamspike. Were we supposed to have figured those out?

[Derfel Cadarn]

I'm pretty sure it was the 13x13 thing and not mere compulsion that's been used on the people in the Black Tower. They appear too changed. The noticable change is presumably why its not used a lot, and thus the Black Ajah are probably mainly voluntary darkfriends. I'm guessing Verin never suffered the 13x13 thing.

On the bright side the prophecy bit saying Rand will heal the ""wounds of madness and cutting of hope." sounds like Rand might be involved in healing Ashaman of the madness and 'curing' the 13x13 thing.

[kuenjato]

Taim has his own dreamspike? (Does that mean he either is working directly for or is Moridin?)

It's been a long time from when I've read the books and all, and perhaps it's been established that Moridin has shapechanging abilities, but Rand met Ismael-reincarnated during the climax of A Crown of Swords, and didn't seem to recognize him as Taim... so how is that possible?

[Usotsuki]

And what was the thing that was supposed to be surprising but we should have anticipated? The only big things that I didn’t expect for this book were the columns also going forward and the dreamspike. Were we supposed to have figured those out?

[shamelessly stolen from Dragonmount]

It seems we were supposed to have anticipated that the ashanderei given to Mat was in fulfillment of his third wish, a way out of the Eelfinn territory, not merely a buy three get one free bonus.[/theft]

My own personal peeve was Verin's letter to Mat. Why make a deal that might lead him to leave the letter unopened entirely, simply tell him not to open it for three days.

When talking to Egwene in the Tower and knowing that you're dying take ten seconds to mention the imminent destruction of one of Randland's major power centres, Verin had no reason to keep it secret at that point.

[Old Nan]

Most of these countries are monarchies, but there's none of the arbitrariness or brutality that characterized historical regimes. The closest we come to that is Elaida wanting Rand taken off for questioning, which is 1) Elaida, and 2) not unbelievable considering that she just had a foretelling that he's going to screw up the world and a strange man with a blademaster's sword fell out of the sky into the palace and was consorting with the heir to the throne.

But in general, in the worst-case scenario, your mostly benevolent though possibly stupid ruler is under pressure from the White Cloaks to do who the fuck knows what.

Absolutely incorrect. Andor and perhaps the Borderlands (which we see only fleetingly) are the only nations where rule of law appears to hold great sway, and even in Andor at least that seems to be only the case due to Morgase and Elayne's personal code of ethics (c.f. Lord Nasin). Or did you miss the numerous references to noblemen raping commoners, arbitrary torture, abuse of servants, and brutal suppression of peasants in the early books? There's a reason Rand imposes new laws on Tear and Cairhien.

Seanchan justice is draconian if not brutal, but it encompasses all walks of life. I do not doubt that being a da'covale is a less burdensome life than being a commoner servant in most of Randland. Being a damane is certainly a huge affront to self-determination, but people adapt, particularly ones who already believe it's their duty. That Alivia is so adament in her hatred of being damane after 400 years is frankly unbelievable.

Brandon Sanderson seems like a much more competent author.

:lmao:

Yeah, I've given in to the spoilers. Amazon tells me to expect my copy in eight days; screw the suspense.