Excerpt of the Day: Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, Book 13)
Had to rush to the condo today because I woke up late, so I grabbed the first book I saw, which turned out to be Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.
I'm a huge fan of the Wheel of Time series, but I am not a fan of Brandon Sanderson. I am turned off by all his internal monologues. It's one of my pet peeves. I don't like characters taking whole scenes self-analyzing in gory detail. Because honestly, does anyone ever do that in real life? It's the exact opposite of Jordan's style, which have characters actually doing stuff and have us (the readers) discovering things about them from there, rather than having his characters internalize and spoon-feed their motives and insights to us.
Well anyway. Like it or not, Towers of Midnight was the one thing that tided me over for the hours I spent waiting in my empty condo, so it's where I'll be getting my excerpt for today.
(Spoilers ahead.)
And I chose Mat's letter to Elayne. Just because it's wicked funny, in a slapstick sort of way:
Your Royal Bloody Pain in My Back,
We're bloody waiting here to talk to you, and we're getting angry perturbed. (That means angry.) Thom says that you're a queen now, but I figure that changes nothing, sense you acted like a queen all the time anyway. Don't forget that I carried halled your pretty little backside out of a hole in Tear, but you acted like a queen then, so I guess I don't know why I'm surprised now that you act like one when you really are a queen.
So I'm thinking I should treat you like a bloody Queen and send you a bloody letter and all, speaking with high talk and getting your attention. I even used my ring as a signet, like it was paper proper. So here is my formal salutation. So BLOODY STOP TURNING ME AWAY so we can talk. I need your bellfounders. It's bloody important.
- Mat
p.s. Salutation means greeting.
p.p.s. Don't mind the scratched out words and bad spellings. I was going to rewrite this letter, but Thom is laffing so hard at me that I want to be done.
p.p.s. Don't mind me calling your backside pretty. I hardly ever spent any time looking at it, as I've an awareness that you'd pull my eyes out if you saw me. Besides, I'm married now, so that all doesn't matter.
***
I'm reminded of one of my favorite WoT scenes of Mat and Elayne, when they were in Ebou Dar and Mat loaned Elayne his foxhead medallion. Now THAT was a perfect example of Jordan's showing and not telling. Sadly, I can't excerpt it just now because I'm too lazy-ass to dig out my WoT books to find it. Maybe next time. I'm up for another re-read anyway, since the final book will be out soon. :D
Excerpt of the Day Project