A Memory of Light [FULL SPOILER DISCUSSION] Part 2

[Darth Richard]

Ah, the it isn't rape because she liked it excuse. Drives me bonkers. ANd has its on genre now I guess, what did someone say way back. Viking rape porn, or something? Blech.

*changing subject*

Yeah, Jordon/Sanderon/Etc all certainly did not do well the the last, i dunno, 5 or 6 books with the sense of doom area, although I can think of few authors who are really good at that. Mayhaps it's own thread.

[Gertrude]

I was getting the feeling of doom and desperation right before Rand came down from Dragonmount. That was well done, I thought. The scene with Rand and the apples was a welcome relief and had actual impact for me. But then the suffering and Dark Touch was kind of pushed into the background and not revisited again except in a general way that didn't feel so immediate anymore. So yeah, I agree.

[williamjm]

It's a possible outcome depending on the very circumstances that take place at the end of the book. Given those circumstances take place, my take was that future (or one very close to it) is indeed how everything will fall out: a lot, lot better but not perfect.

I think a relatively small change could potentially lead to a big change in how the future turns out so there's still a lot of scope for unpredictability. We've seen already that Aviendha's contribution to get the Aiel included in the Dragon's Peace seems like it make a big difference to how things are likely to unfold, but when they discuss it the Wise Ones still think that they can't be sure that they've done enough to stop a similar future happening. The relationship between the Seanchan and the other countries still seems fragile, I don't think the differences are insoluble and Rand's suggested future is plausible but it doesn't seem a foregone conclusion that the peace will be maintained.

I was getting the feeling of doom and desperation right before Rand came down from Dragonmount. That was well done, I thought. The scene with Rand and the apples was a welcome relief and had actual impact for me. But then the suffering and Dark Touch was kind of pushed into the background and not revisited again except in a general way that didn't feel so immediate anymore. So yeah, I agree.

I agree, I think Rand's storyline in The Gathering Storm was probably the most effective at making it feel like things were going badly. I think maybe because although we knew because there were two more books that things would turn out well in the end, at times it was hard to see how this was going to happen because so many things were going wrong. The last two books didn't feel quite as gloomy, The Last Battle had some tension in terms of the fates of individual characters but no matter how overwhelming we were told the odds were, it never felt like Mat was in danger of losing the battle.

[Shryke]

I've been going over the book, sort of jotting down shit that didn't seem really wrapped up in AMOL and reading about the apparent extent of RJ's notes being less then we previously thought, and I'm really starting to think alot of things that just seem to disappear in the last few volumes (especially in AMOL) may be things Sanderson had no notes on and so either forgot about or didn't know what to do with so he just sort of shunted them off.

Beyond just minor characters being completely forgotten, there's alot of small plotlines and ideas and such that are just ... never mentioned again or just sort of abruptly ended in a sentence.

[Lightning Lord]

Shryke, would you be willing to share some of your list here? I'm curious. I haven't done much in terms of re-reading beyond LoC, I was pretty well fed-up with the bloat by the eighth installment. I wonder what I've forgotten.

[Slurktan]

Much of the Seanchan system pre-dated Luthair's arrival. The cultural stuff and the slavery certainly did. Luthair introduced the a'dam and damane, but not much more beyond that. The Seanchan even changed the system after Luthair's death so that only women could sit on the Crystal Throne, a throwback to the pre-Luthair system of hundreds of small kingdoms mostly ruled by women.

There can be an Emperor of Seanchan, it just hasn't happened in 900 years. Hence why no one thinks it particularly noteworthy that Galgan is clearly going after the throne as would be the case if a man could not be Emperor

[Darth Richard]

I was getting the feeling of doom and desperation right before Rand came down from Dragonmount. That was well done, I thought. The scene with Rand and the apples was a welcome relief and had actual impact for me. But then the suffering and Dark Touch was kind of pushed into the background and not revisited again except in a general way that didn't feel so immediate anymore. So yeah, I agree.

Yeah! The buildup to that was pretty good. AMOL to me just felt...I dunno. You know none of the other battles matter, so I just..didn't care. It's like that battle scene at the end of Return of The King. TO me, I couldn't give two shits, just get back to frodo already..

[The Scabbard Of the Morning]

Finally finished the book, I stopped reading the series in the middle of Winter's Heart. But given the amount of time I invested in it I thought I should at least finish the story. So I read plot summaries of all the other books from WH to TToM, and read MoL.

My main comment about the book is that it's ok. I'm glad the story is finished, but most of the book was spend on battles that made no sense to me. If the main purpose of the side battles was to "give Rand the time he needed to fight the DO", then wouldn't the best way to do that be putting your armies in strongly defended castles and cities(like Tar Valon) and hunker down for sieges? Isn't that a much better delay tactic then meeting forces that greatly outnumber you in open field? After all, the goal wasn't to win, it was to hold out as long as possible.

And if you were going to engage such an enemy , wouldn't it make sense to utilize guerrilla tactics of tactical strikes that move in and out constantly to harass the enemies (made even better with gateways), but never actually fighting them head on, be the best way to proceed. It just didn't make sense to me that they were always engaging the enemy in these full scale battles that seemed like awful strategy.

[elmis]

The Seanchan even changed the system after Luthair's death so that only women could sit on the Crystal Throne, a throwback to the pre-Luthair system of hundreds of small kingdoms mostly ruled by women.

I don't think this is correct... there are several hints that Tuons brothers and sisters both have plotted against her, even the General was seen as someone who could have taken over. Are you sure you remember it correctly?

[Shryke]

Finally finished the book, I stopped reading the series in the middle of Winter's Heart. But given the amount of time I invested in it I thought I should at least finish the story. So I read plot summaries of all the other books from WH to TToM, and read MoL.

My main comment about the book is that it's ok. I'm glad the story is finished, but most of the book was spend on battles that made no sense to me. If the main purpose of the side battles was to "give Rand the time he needed to fight the DO", then wouldn't the best way to do that be putting your armies in strongly defended castles and cities(like Tar Valon) and hunker down for sieges? Isn't that a much better delay tactic then meeting forces that greatly outnumber you in open field? After all, the goal wasn't to win, it was to hold out as long as possible.

And if you were going to engage such an enemy , wouldn't it make sense to utilize guerrilla tactics of tactical strikes that move in and out constantly to harass the enemies (made even better with gateways), but never actually fighting them head on, be the best way to proceed. It just didn't make sense to me that they were always engaging the enemy in these full scale battles that seemed like awful strategy.

The purpose was also to kill all the Trollocs. They can't just let them roam free across the countryside or they'll kill tons of people and spread out and be a pain to clean up. They want to keep them confined. They also wanted to pull the Trollocs out of the Blight, so they needed to force the shadow to commit all their forces.

They also can't hole up in a city since with the One Power, walls aren't so useful and plus the Trollocs will just set up a siege and go around them.

For hit and run tactics, that seems like the smartest thing. As I remember, the Trolloc Wars were described in that way to some extent. Basically, a series of running retreats by humans and then a quick reverse and hard strike when the opportunity presented itself.

They seem to be somewhat employing this where they could actually (Egwene's army seemed to be pretty much doing this exclusively and Elayne's somewhat as well), except where they had natural land formations to switch to other tactics (Lan at Tarwin's Gap). It's not quite described clearly in the book though.

The limitation on gateways seems to be that they are very tiring to use and they aren't that large so any time you are moving troops with one, it's a huge bottle-neck. Like a bridge basically. Makes them less ideal for large scale troop mobility.

[Gigei]

At the book signing I went to, Sanderson said that the entire epilogue was written by Jordan himself and they included it with very little editing. (Its also why there's no appendix to this book, they wanted the last words to be RJ's own.) So Rand riding off into the sunset without a thought for his unborn children (as was mentioned in the last thread) or a farewell to Min or any other thing that we could have wished to see was obviously never meant to be included. That doesn't exempt it from critique, just pointing out that the critique has to go somewhere.

Rofl, yeah it was very jarring that Rand didn't even think of his kids. Deadbeat dad!

Am I the only one who mentally pronounced "Knotai" as "Naughty" and laughed picturing Tuon calling Mat her "Knotai" boy?

:)

There was more talk needed between all characters but i feel of all only Nynaeve was criminally short changed

Kinda true but then Nyn had some great parts in the last books and she did help with Alanna so its alright for me.

I think the enormous scope of what Egwene does with the weave, the fact that it comes out of nowhere, and the name all combine to give that moment a very comic-book feel, which distracts from the dramatic seriousness of the series' lead female character dying. I have some deeper issues with it-- Jordan tended to use the notion of balance within the Pattern as a narrative get-out-of-jail-free card, which annoys me-- but the execution more than the concept is what really lets it down.

I agree completely. Thematically, opposites are very WoT but the way it was done was too anime-style/cartoony. Having the a weave that is the opposite of balefire feels right and it also makes sense that Eg should be the one to find one though Nyn would also be acceptable since Nyn also invents and uses complicated weaves. Nyn cured Logain after a lot of study, IIRC she was examining him several days. Nyn also cured madness/taint and there was a very memorable independent discovery of balefire early on in the series. So Eg suddenly discovering a super-weave is really the same as Nyn discovering balefire... but the execution was just too over-the-top that the Flame discovery seems unnatural.

"Rand doesn’t know the Song"

As a giant heap of BULLSHIT. If Rand doesn't know the song, then how is it that he's freaking singing in Tuon's garden and as he's singing the garden comes back to life.

Because the Song as the Tinkers think of its isn't Rand's song. The song that Rand knows is just a growing song. Think of it - some Aes Sedai could just make stuff grow while singing, would that be the Song, the one that the Tinkers believe in? Nope. Cuz the Tinkers aren't just out to make plants grow, they mean something much more metaphysical and Rand's plant-growing song doesn't make people happy+peaceful+perfect+Samadhi+everything.

Meh. In 1999 Jordan was between Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart, where he seemed to have lost control of the series. After that "RAFO" comment I can't but think Jordan was talking out of his ass a whole lot of the time.

I mean, the first thing we see with the Tinkers is Reyn asking Elyas if he found the song. Elyas explains to Perrin that the song is "why they travel," Elyas said, "or so they say. They're looking for a song. That's what the Mahdi seeks. They say they lost it during the Breaking of the World, and if they can find it again, the paradise of the Age of Legends will return." He ran his eye around the camp and snorted. "They don't even know what the song is; they claim they'll know it when they find it. They don't know how it's supposed to bring paradise, either, but they've been looking near to three thousand years, ever since the Breaking. I expect they'll be looking until the Wheel stops turning."

Then we see through Rand's vision the Tinkers and Ogier singing together to grow crops. And then Rand sings and brings a garden back to life after growing the one grove of trees at Merrilor. But it's just a philosophy.

I never expected it to be a major plot point, but what we got feels like a cop out in my opinion. YMMV.

WTF? As per your quote, singing the Song would mean paradise. If, as you say, Rand did sing the Song, where is the paradise? Nowhere, therefore obviously Rand never sang the Song.

[Shryke]

Rand's not even singing a "growing song". The song, it seems, is irrelevant. Rand seems to use just any old tune (Mat recognizes something about it) It's the person that matters. You need The Voice (some sort of magical talent) that allows you to enhance growing via singing.

Like many things, the Song is something twisted over time. It was originally just something to make plants grow and the Tinkers have elevated it to a philosophical concept, to some thing that will cure all the world's ills.

[Gigei]

I also like how the twitter chat mentions Dobraine. I wondered why they forgot him but it seems RJ did at least leave a note about Dobby.

Why does it say:

Did the bonding between Rand, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min transfer over to the new body?

Yes, though I don't know how or why.

Mistyped Aviendha into Nyn?

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=874#28

Rand's not even singing a "growing song". The song, it seems, is irrelevant. Rand seems to use just any old tune (Mat recognizes something about it) It's the person that matters. You need The Voice (some sort of magical talent) that allows you to enhance growing via singing.

Like many things, the Song is something twisted over time. It was originally just something to make plants grow and the Tinkers have elevated it to a philosophical concept, to some thing that will cure all the world's ills.

Yeah I get it.

[Myrddin]

The Tinker's search for the Song always seemed like the search for "The Truth."

If you substitute Truth for Song in their greetings, farewells, etc, it makes sense.

"I will find the Truth, or another will find the Truth, but the Truth will be [found] this year or in a year to come. As it once was, so shall it be again, world without end."

[Terez]

Quote

RJ wrote the Mat/Tylin scenario as a humorous role-reversal thing. His editor, and wife, thought it was a good discussion of sexual harassment and rape with comic undertones. She liked it because it dealt with very serious issues in a humorous way. She seemed to think it would be a good way to explain to men/boys what this can be like for women/girls, showing the fear, etc.***

If this quote was the goal, then I feel like it was an utter failure. I am one of those dense readers, maybe with my own preconceptions of men getting raped, who didn't really see it as rape until others pointed it out. It was nothing like what I think it would be like for most women to be raped. I got no sense of fear and just a little sense of helplessness from Mat.

I think RJ knew that most readers wouldn't think of it as rape, that this was something that was only likely to come up on fan forums, or perhaps in academic discussion (which is already happening, before anyone scoffs at the notion). That's part of how the issue gets highlighted: someone brings it up, another person says they never thought of it that way, every time this subject gets brought up (which is often). And then we realize, "Wow, people really don't take male rape seriously," and that it's actually believable that Mat didn't take it too seriously either, none of which amounts to condoning rape.

The fact that male rape is generally different from female rape is part of why people don't take it seriously; the argument generally goes that if a man isn't turned on then he can't be raped in the (reverse) conventional sense. So in order for that particular double-standard to be addressed, RJ had to make it at least somewhat sexually exciting for Mat, which was believable. This sort of thing happens in the real world, but there's a lot of evidence that it's underreported. Mat had a knife to his throat; he was definitely forced, and he was definitely scared. Some guys read it and get that sense of fear; some don't see it as rape at all. I think that has more to do with how we see male rape than anything else.

Great subject to joke about. Hell, I laughed out loud.

For me, it was just handled poorly. Most of the 'adult' themed material in the books were. WoT falls pretty well into the YA fantasy field for me, and when RJ attempted to dip his toes into areas outside of that, he usually fucked it up.

ETA: I won't even start on how fucking inept BS is at tacking mature themes.

The focus was on the funny. If you're going to address a situation that you know is touchy, you should do it well or stay away from it. WoT is very YA when it comes to adult themes, IMO, and this was better left out. Nothing wrong with that, but know your limits and audience. That's all.

I shouldn't be surprised to see comments like these on Westeros. :P I think there is a very big difference between "suitable for young teenagers" and YA.

There are a lot of layers—everything is an onion. And we're talking almost a four-dimensional onion here. Any particular point that you look at—almost any particular point—has layers to it. It's one of the interesting things to me, is how much can I layer things without making it too complicated. It's quite possible for somebody to read these books as pure adventure, and I actually have twelve-year-old fans who do that. I was surprised to find that I had twelve-year-old fans, but I do and they read it just like that. Other people spend quite a lot of time discussing the layering, and it's fun for me to do.

There's nothing YA about the map of Tar Valon, for example. And there's more to 'adult themes' than explicit sex and lots of death. And as for knowing your audience, and focusing on the funny...I think RJ knew his readers didn't like to be preached at. It was a way of getting people—not everyone, mind—to discuss a double standard that bothered him. And it worked, except in the sense that people somehow took it (for no discernable reason) to mean that RJ condoned rape, or thought rape was funny. He thought our double-standards about rape were funny. If he hadn't portrayed it the way he did, then we probably wouldn't be having debates on whether or not it was rape.

[Werthead]

I don't think this is correct... there are several hints that Tuons brothers and sisters both have plotted against her, even the General was seen as someone who could have taken over. Are you sure you remember it correctly?

It's clearly said in one of the books (WH or CoT) that only women have sat on the Crystal Throne since just after Luthair's time (though I think there was one more man who claimed the throne, a few decades after Luthair). In that case it may be tradition rather than law that only women can take the throne, and a man with the right amount of support could manage it. but he'd be facing an uphill struggle.

[Usotsuki]

A Speaker of Truth could not be commanded or coerced or punished in any way. A Truthspeaker was required to tell the stark truth whether or not you wanted to hear it, and to make sure that you heard. Those Blood who called their Voices Soe'feia thought that Algwyn, the last man to sit on the Crystal Throne, almost a thousand years ago, had been insane because he let his Soe'feia live and continue in her post after she slapped his face before the entire court.

Maybe the Crystal Throne only works for women *shrugs*

[Arataniello]

Shryke, would you be willing to share some of your list here? I'm curious. I haven't done much in terms of re-reading beyond LoC, I was pretty well fed-up with the bloat by the eighth installment. I wonder what I've forgotten.

I am sure that there are plenty of these, but I don't know if I have the willpower any more to figure them all out. I am struggling to finish aMoL at the moment as it just seems to be a weak end to the series.

I am stuck somewhere in the middle of it at the moment, but one thing that I have noticed so far is the complete disappearance of the Ogier from Seanchan in Tuon's forces.

[elmis]

With regards to the rape thing, I'm of the opinion that yes, technically it is rape, but at the same time you can't just switch the roles and have it be the same (ie. Mat with the knife).

I'll take an example from real life, that happened to a co-worker of mine a few months back. He got some Group On tickets (is it called tickets?) for massage as he has problems with his back. So he went to the massage parlor, and got a good massage. When the masseuse was finished giving him the massage she grabbed his dick and said "happy ending"? Now, my co-worker freaked out a bit and said no, got his clothes and got the fuck out of there. When he told me the story I laughed a bit, despite myself, just because the situation was so ridiculous -- at first it didn't even occur to me that she had sexually molested him. I was just so baffled by the story, and that there actually are "happy ending" joints in Oslo.

Anyway, now switch him out with a female co-worker, and a male masseuse that inserts a finger at the end, asking about a happy ending, and you have a totally different situation (even though on paper it is exactly the same). I certainly don't think I'd laugh as a first reaction if he was a she.

[glabrain]

FInished this book. My biggest problem is the dozens of unanswered questions that could have been easily answered in 50-100 pages but they were left in the open. After 14 bloody books I think an extra 100 pages to answer those questions isn't a big deal. Here are some that come off the top of my head. There could have been a couple of chapters from like say 20 years in the future.

1. The Seanchan and the Aiel. What happens to them in the future? DO they continue their conquest. Does the Empress regain control of Seanchan.

2. The Shaido. What happens to them?

3. IS Two Rivers a part of Saldaea now?

4. Asmodean. Will someone please tell me what happened to him. I thought for ten books that he was reborn..

5. Who sent those 100,000 trollocs to Emarins estate? I thought it was Sammael. But that question is also unanswered.

6. Talaan. What the hell happened to her with Merilille? She just reappaears for like two sentences.

I can't remember anymore rihht now but there are dozens of others.

My other main problem is the deus ex machina kamikaze attack by Egwene. Didn't like that at all.