Sanderson is done with WoT part 2

[Which Tyler]

That's so fucking evil ;-)

Absolutely - now, where can I get my hands on one?

[Gertrude]

I did read a spoiler free review from Leigh Butler. It got me excited to read this again even though I still don't know what's in it. She wrote down some reactions without saying what she was reacting to. Tease.

[Solmyr]

rumors are that review copies for AMOL are in the wild. Expect spoilers to begin creeping out and bastards like me hinting at things to come.

Thanks for the heads up. Getting off the internet for ~25 days. Cu in mid-jan ;).

[awesome possum]

A few more thoughts since I'm about 75% through Path of Daggers now:

1) Egwene's ploy with getting the Little Tower declare war on Elaida and thus giving her power was much more entertaining than I recall. Her story has been better this book whereas I was bored with her chapters in the last two books. Although it did drag a little getting to that point. Also not sure how or why Halima'gar is just giving her the headaches and disposed of her maids to stay close when all s/he really has to do is use Compulsion to have Egwene as a puppet.

2) Rand's battle with the Seanchan in Illian and Altara is much less entertaining than I recall. Too much focus on the sickness, which sort of came out of nowhere. Is it also a result of his balefire touching Moridin's True Power balefire or just the effects of saidin? Too much focus on him just sitting his horse, going over the menagerie of douchelords again.

I like the quick jumps to Seanchan, I didn't remember those from the first read.

I also don't remember when Dashiva, Gedwyn and Rochaid turn on him so I keep expecting that. I'm also guessing it's Gedwyn and Rochaid who turn on him, I can't remember exactly, but it's being telegraphed fairly transparently that it's them. I recall being surprised that it was Dashiva who was the other 'gar as Narishima was (at the time) the more suspicious one. Now I can see the red herring all over that plot. The part that sticks out the most for me is that Dashiva is described time and time again as a farm boy but then he speaks and reads the Old Tongue fluently. Yet it's waved away as, "oh, he just read a lot of books... on his farm."

3) Elayne still sucks. You'd think she was familiar enough with Caemlyn that she didn't have to Travel two weeks away from the city. And we wouldn't have to deal with chapters about how the Windfinders are jerks and the Kin are scared but losing their fear of Aes Sedai and Nynaeve is horny, etc.

[Poobah]

I'm nearly done with ToM.

At this point mostly I'm just wishing that that cool Asha'man with the talent for gateways and not much else would realise he could open one in the middle of a person. Seeing him getting bullied by Taim's douchebag cronies about how useless he is in a fight irks me. Same again with the whole "lol you can't even blow up that rock" he could open slice it and dice it with gateways. Hopefully Rand or Logain will have the sense to at least teach him the alteration to the gateway weave so he can make the moving 'deathgates' for gobbling up shadowspawn.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

AP - The Halima headache thing was weird and never adequately explained. Some think it was to cover very mild Compulsion whose purpose was to get Egwene to change her mind about the Three Oaths - and she does do a pretty abrupt turnabout on that score. However, I don't buy it, I think she simply accepted Siuan's explanation there.

It's revealed in TGS that Halima's "charge" in the rebel camp is actually Sheriam. The Forsaken seem to think she's in charge. I think the headaches were there just to let Halima stay close to Egwene and see if an opportunity for manipulation arose. The FS didn't want to turn Egwene into a Compulsed slave because she was already doing exactly what they wanted her to do.

As for Rand's sickness, it is indeed another side effect from the balefire incident. If you read between the lines it seems clear that Moridin is having the same issues (probably without a voice in his head wrestling for control, though), hence his exclusive use of the TP.

[The WaterDancer Knight]

3) Elayne still sucks. You'd think she was familiar enough with Caemlyn that she didn't have to Travel two weeks away from the city. And we wouldn't have to deal with chapters about how the Windfinders are jerks and the Kin are scared but losing their fear of Aes Sedai and Nynaeve is horny, etc.

It's been a long time since I read it but I remember that Elayne wanted to know more about the situation in Andor and Caemlyn before making her claim for the throne official. At that time she's been away from Caemlyn for quite some times and was even rumoured to be dead. Appearing in the middle of Caemlyn's palace from nowhere without any knowledge about how things where going there wasn't really smart. And it could be dangerous even with a bunch of Aes Sedai, Kin, WIndfinders and former Damane coming with her.

And there was the fact that she wanted to win by herself and not because of Rand or because she was an Aes Sedai. In this context it was better to gather support from some Andoran houses before moving to Caemlyn.

Remember that Elayne being a spoiled little princes doesn't make her stupid.

[Myrddin]

At this point mostly I'm just wishing that that cool Asha'man with the talent for gateways and not much else would realise he could open one in the middle of a person. Seeing him getting bullied by Taim's douchebag cronies about how useless he is in a fight irks me.

I'd love to see him start playing Portal. Open an opening under an army and put the exit oh, about 500 feet above them in the air.

Or reverse it and open an opening beneath a mountain top and drop it on an army.

Or just open a horizontal gateway about three feet off the ground and cut a few hundred trollocs in half..

That one power is worth the lot of them combined.

[awesome possum]

AP - The Halima headache thing was weird and never adequately explained. Some think it was to cover very mild Compulsion whose purpose was to get Egwene to change her mind about the Three Oaths - and she does do a pretty abrupt turnabout on that score. However, I don't buy it, I think she simply accepted Siuan's explanation there.

Wasn't one of the first things she does when she gets the Oath Rod is swear on them?

It's revealed in TGS that Halima's "charge" in the rebel camp is actually Sheriam. The Forsaken seem to think she's in charge. I think the headaches were there just to let Halima stay close to Egwene and see if an opportunity for manipulation arose. The FS didn't want to turn Egwene into a Compulsed slave because she was already doing exactly what they wanted her to do.

Yep, there are a few scenes of Sheriam getting dragged across the coals, so to speak. And she becomes much more ragged as Egwene starts to assert her own power, thus "ignoring" whatever commands Sheriam has been given to force them into.

It's been a long time since I read it but I remember that Elayne wanted to know more about the situation in Andor and Caemlyn before making her claim for the throne official. At that time she's been away from Caemlyn for quite some times and was even rumoured to be dead. Appearing in the middle of Caemlyn's palace from nowhere without any knowledge about how things where going there wasn't really smart. And it could be dangerous even with a bunch of Aes Sedai, Kin, WIndfinders and former Damane coming with her.

And there was the fact that she wanted to win by herself and not because of Rand or because she was an Aes Sedai. In this context it was better to gather support from some Andoran houses before moving to Caemlyn.

Remember that Elayne being a spoiled little princes doesn't make her stupid.

I didn't mean Travel directly to the palace. That would be too presumptuous.

And she does use her time traveling to put out feelers for how people think of her, but she hasn't let anyone know who she is yet. I must have purposely fogged out this storyline because - aside from Ispan and one of Vandene/Adeleas being murdered - I don't remember anything about it at all. Just that it's soooo boooorrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggg.

[fionwe1987]

A few more thoughts since I'm about 75% through Path of Daggers now:

1) Egwene's ploy with getting the Little Tower declare war on Elaida and thus giving her power was much more entertaining than I recall. Her story has been better this book whereas I was bored with her chapters in the last two books. Although it did drag a little getting to that point. Also not sure how or why Halima'gar is just giving her the headaches and disposed of her maids to stay close when all s/he really has to do is use Compulsion to have Egwene as a puppet.

Any compulsion would have been detected. Only very subtle compulsion can go undetected, and you need a load of skill, and a very solid knowledge of psychology, to pull that off. As far as I know, Graendal is the only one who can do that, and Verin did a primitive version that was also hard to detect.

Any sufficiently complex compulsion that would leave Egwene a puppet would be detected the moment someone delved her. She would also behave in extremely odd ways, and her mental capacity would be reduced enough that people would suspect. Further, we also know Egwene learned Compulsion herself, and ways to counter it, from Moghedien. Whether this means she can avoid being Compelled is not something we know, but its a possibility.

As for the headaches, they were there for only one purpose: Keep Egwene from having True Dreams. As soon as Egwene gets captured in the Tower, she starts getting a slew of Dreams, and her interpretative ability starts improving. The headaches prevented that, and were an obvious ploy by Moridin to deny the Light a powerful Dreamer. Some important dreams still got through, on days Halima wasn't able to give Egwene headaches.

2) Rand's battle with the Seanchan in Illian and Altara is much less entertaining than I recall. Too much focus on the sickness, which sort of came out of nowhere. Is it also a result of his balefire touching Moridin's True Power balefire or just the effects of saidin? Too much focus on him just sitting his horse, going over the menagerie of douchelords again.

When has this happened before?

3) Elayne still sucks. You'd think she was familiar enough with Caemlyn that she didn't have to Travel two weeks away from the city. And we wouldn't have to deal with chapters about how the Windfinders are jerks and the Kin are scared but losing their fear of Aes Sedai and Nynaeve is horny, etc.

You don't have to be too familiar with your destination to Travel there. Elayne didn't troop into Caemlyn because of the obvious risk that in doing so, she would slice up some innocent bystander, and also because she wanted to get the hang of the current political currents. Still, this section could have gone a lot faster.

[awesome possum]

Any compulsion would have been detected. Only very subtle compulsion can go undetected, and you need a load of skill, and a very solid knowledge of psychology, to pull that off. As far as I know, Graendal is the only one who can do that, and Verin did a primitive version that was also hard to detect.

Any sufficiently complex compulsion that would leave Egwene a puppet would be detected the moment someone delved her. She would also behave in extremely odd ways, and her mental capacity would be reduced enough that people would suspect. Further, we also know Egwene learned Compulsion herself, and ways to counter it, from Moghedien. Whether this means she can avoid being Compelled is not something we know, but its a possibility.

As for the headaches, they were there for only one purpose: Keep Egwene from having True Dreams. As soon as Egwene gets captured in the Tower, she starts getting a slew of Dreams, and her interpretative ability starts improving. The headaches prevented that, and were an obvious ploy by Moridin to deny the Light a powerful Dreamer. Some important dreams still got through, on days Halima wasn't able to give Egwene headaches.

I didn't take into account that it stopped the Dreams, though I did notice she had been having nightmares more often than not.

Can they discover that someone had been Compulsed by saidin through delving?

When has this happened before?

Every single time he's around them, it feels like. We need to go through the list of who is who and what they're wearing and how arrogant or simpering they are, etc.

[David Selig]

It's been a long time since I read it but I remember that Elayne wanted to know more about the situation in Andor and Caemlyn before making her claim for the throne official. At that time she's been away from Caemlyn for quite some times and was even rumoured to be dead.

It made total sense for Elayne to spent a day or two, maybe a bit more gathering info on the current situation in Andor. But a whole month of travelling (half of which through snow) is completely implausible. Especially given the hundreds of people she was leading.

[Ereinion]

It made total sense for Elayne to spent a day or two, maybe a bit more gathering info on the current situation in Andor. But a whole month of travelling (half of which through snow) is completely implausible. Especially given the hundreds of people she was leading.

And even if she did travel for a month, there's no reason to describe that entire journey.

[Poobah]

I'd love to see him start playing Portal. Open an opening under an army and put the exit oh, about 500 feet above them in the air.

Or reverse it and open an opening beneath a mountain top and drop it on an army.

Or just open a horizontal gateway about three feet off the ground and cut a few hundred trollocs in half..

That one power is worth the lot of them combined.

Exactly!

We see some really cool mass teleport spam scenes in T'A'R but think of the fun that could be had once you start thinking with portals indeed.

Why bother moving your artillery when you can just open a gateway in front of the cannons and portal the shots to directly above the enemy army? Ditto archers, and other channellers. Open a horizontal gateway a few hundred feet above the enemy army and throw whatever you want down onto them.

Shadowspawn hate water, and the world's gonna get 'broken' anyway so open a portal to the bottom of the sea ontop of their army and drown the fuckers ;)

People never get creative or subtle with the one power - it's all throwing balls of fire and fairly standard explosions - they're like a bunch of level 1 mages spamming their only spell. Half of the characters have been leveled up so much that they're army melting weapons of mass destruction, and what do they do with their new powers? Throw it all into bigger fucking fireballs.*facedesk* Egwene's so strong in the power that she can run a ton of complex weaves at once even when she's been forkroot-nerfed into the ground when it comes to masturbatory showing off to her 'teachers' in the tower, but when it's battle time what happens? Fireballs. If you're gonna brute force it at least use a power you're supposed to be strong in like Earth and gravity-spike the enemy into pancakes or something or air which all women are supposed to be good with and slice their army to pieces.

Arg this crap drives me nuts! Those fireballs can't be very efficient at all either :/ Think of all the wasted energy making big fireballs to hurl at people. Make a near-invisible razor thin ribbon of air at head height and let the enemy army run through it. Stick lances of air straight through their heads / hearts. Raise the temperature in their brains a few degrees. See above with regards to fun gateway shenanigans. Do we know anyone really strong in spirit? I kinda suspect that such a person could simply rip the life out of an enemy and make them drop dead on the spot; Moghedian's weave that throws Birgitte's soul out of T'A'R implies you can do stuff like that. Get Rand to remember and teach that shadowspawn seek-and-destroy ball of death he uses at the start of TSR.

I would really like to have seen, say, one of the forsaken be known as an assassin or something. Highly skilled in all the most efficient and deadly ways to use the power instead of all the showy pyrotechnics and crap we see get thrown around.

[fionwe1987]

I love cool tricks with the One Power as much as the next guy, but I think the way even the subtlest of channelers resort to fireballs and basic destruction weaves in battle is very realistic. Sharp blades of air? That needs to be positioned precisely. A ball of fire? Its fire (heh) and forget, and has an extended range of damage.

In fact, when RJ gave us new weaves of destruction, they were also shown to be of the same type, only more destructive. A blossom of fire is, again, an explosion. Arrows of Fire mimic a barrage of arrows. Deathgates again kill massive numbers, and once woven don't need to be directed at all.

On the flip side, making swords of Air, while possible, is useless in battle. You make it, then have to devote your attention and some of the flow of the Power to swinging it, or positioning it. Why bother, when a giant ball of Fire is easier to make, and causes so much more destruction? Why try subtle gravity altering effects that are bound to take time when simple Earth and Fire causes the ground to erupt in fifty feet high columns?

[Shryke]

Well, I believe most of them are new or only briefly mentioned before nobles and Rand's opinions on them, as I remember, come back into the story later in the book.

He's getting kinda crazy and paranoid.

[Shryke]

Well, we know in the AoL they were much better at this shit when they decided to just start destroying everything around themselves. We see it in KoD.

And alot of this stuff hasn't been available to anyone for a few thousand years, so it'll take time to figure it all out again.

But alot of "subtler" effects are pointless. Control requires just as much effort as power. You could kill someone by reaching inside their chest and stopping their heart, but it's much easier to just burn them. Same effect, less effort. Subtle effects require precision that is, frankly, unnecessary.

[Poobah]

Why is fire 'easier' or exploding the earth? Especially for women who, we are directly told in the books and glossaries and elsewhere as fact are weakest in fire and earth and strongest in air and water. More than anything else I suspect that the White Tower falls back on these 'cause they're a bunch of clueless idiots with little imagination, and of course wizards throw fireballs. Or possibly 'cause it'll look cool in the movie / tv adaptation *sigh*

Also meh I don't feel like fireballs are particularly efficient, as I said earlier. It's a big fireball - how much energy do you actually need to kill your target and how much is just extra light and heat? I don't feel like throwing out a sharp ribbon of air needs any more control than lobbing a fireball anyway - and if you want to maintain it so it continues to exist then you've actually got something useful and far less visible: just channel some more air to keep it going and lash it around a bit any time anything looks at you funny. And well, if big showy stuff is what you have to use because it's "easier" to make something big, unwieldy and unfocused then why haven't we seen any tornadoes spinning through fists of trollocs? See above with regards to white tower incompetence.

@Fionwe : why do you need to dedicate lots of energy to swinging a blade of air around, but none to making that fireball arc through the air and hit your target, and it's apparently much easier to keep on channeling up fireball after fireball and throwing them out than to sweep some air through the opposing army? Though now we're talking about maintaining things it WOULD be cool to see a moving pillar/ball/wall/whatever of fire wandering around incinerating anything it touches - see that's a good use for fire - make big wall of fire in front of enemies, move said wall forwards till those enemies are all either burned to death or fled. Why bother with hundreds of fireballs that are mostly gonna splash and only do partial damage to most of your enemies when you can just finish them off with one weave.

[fionwe1987]

Why is fire 'easier' or exploding the earth? Especially for women who, we are directly told in the books and glossaries and elsewhere as fact are weakest in fire and earth and strongest in air and water.

Because a fireball consists of Fire and Air. While the Fire provides heat, I suspect the Air part of the weave increases combustible components in a compressed ball. Then you essentially send a spark through that, and hurl it away, and watch as the gas under pressure explodes outwards.

Exploding the ground, on the other hand, is a weave of Earth and Fire. While someone like Egwene can do it without any effort at all since she's one of those rare women with great strength in these Flows, most women don't have that ability.

More than anything else I suspect that the White Tower falls back on these 'cause they're a bunch of clueless idiots with little imagination, and of course wizards throw fireballs. Or possibly 'cause it'll look cool in the movie / tv adaptation *sigh*

That's part of it, certainly. But I suspect part of the reason why wizards tend to throw fireballs is because there's a lot more collateral damage with something like that.

Also meh I don't feel like fireballs are particularly efficient, as I said earlier. It's a big fireball - how much energy do you actually need to kill your target and how much is just extra light and heat?

But the extra light and heat expands outwards, killing more Trollocs in the blast radius, and at least stunning those farther away.

I don't feel like throwing out a sharp ribbon of air needs any more control than lobbing a fireball anyway - and if you want to maintain it so it continues to exist then you've actually got something useful and far less visible: just channel some more air to keep it going and lash it around a bit any time anything looks at you funny.

But that requires active effort. Why bother to keep at it if you can simply launch a bolt of fire and focus on the next bunch of targets?

And well, if big showy stuff is what you have to use because it's "easier" to make something big, unwieldy and unfocused then why haven't we seen any tornadoes spinning through fists of trollocs? See above with regards to white tower incompetence.

We have, actually. Nynaeve brings up storms of wind all the time, and Egwene takes out to'raken with blasts of Air, and Rand uses actual tornadoes to blow up dust fiends, and enormous waterspouts to destroy Trollocs.

@Fionwe : why do you need to dedicate lots of energy to swinging a blade of air around, but none to making that fireball arc through the air and hit your target, and it's apparently much easier to keep on channeling up fireball after fireball and throwing them out than to sweep some air through the opposing army?

Because fireballs have tons of heat that can propel them forward. You don't have to ctively deliver them to their destination. You launch it, and it flies that way. Which is why they sometimes miss. Swingin about a weave of Air means you have to actively maintain that weave. And given that creating two weaves at once is more than twice as hard as doing each one individually, every moment you're spending moving around this weave of Air is moments spent away from making fresh destruction, if you're a weak Aes Sedai. With Fireballs, you can make them one at a time, and each time you send one out, you can start working on the next one. The end result is you create more destruction this way than maintaining one weave constantly. Mind, you can substitute fireball with blast of Air, Lightning, etc.

Though now we're talking about maintaining things it WOULD be cool to see a moving pillar/ball/wall/whatever of fire wandering around incinerating anything it touches - see that's a good use for fire - make big wall of fire in front of enemies, move said wall forwards till those enemies are all either burned to death or fled.

We've seen that, sometimes. Moiraine in the first book maintained an enormous wall of Fire between herself and the Trollocs. We've also seen Rand send out enormous gouts of flame that chase Trollocs till they're burned. We've seen Egwene maintain a spherical wall of Air that would deflect arrows, and channelers slam webs of Air at each other all the time to fling people around. But some of those things are less useful in a battle. Also, given what Egwene says about juggling with weaves, I suspect moving weaves around isn't exactly effortless. We've also seen Nynaeve struggling with precisely placing blocking weaves, and talk about how it takes quite a bit of dexterity to achieve that.

Why bother with hundreds of fireballs that are mostly gonna splash and only do partial damage to most of your enemies when you can just finish them off with one weave.

Because such weaves require enormous effort? A single fireball is easy for even weak women to manage. A huge gout of continuously maintained flame takes a lot more effort, and not everyone has that kind of strength.

[Frey Pie]

Just finished TGS. Now thats a satisfying ending of a book for me

One thing that stood out for me though-Egwene making the rebels apologise after she was made Amyrlin in the WT. Bit odd anyone?