WoT revisited
Okay, humm. So I totally lost steam writing about the Wheel of Time books. Finished the penultimate one a while ago and am now waiting for the last one in paperback so I can buy it. Anyway, since they actually got better at the end I think I will actually re-read the last books some time in the future, and to do that I need a summary of each book so I don't have to read them all again. (The horror!) So, with a bit of help from somw wikis and a very quick scan through the book... here is a summary of Lord of Chaos, where everything starts dragging like hell.
Summary
There are two things that happen in this book that are important later on. First Rand declares an amnesty for men who can channel and installs Mazrim Taim as a teacher to them, despite the voice in his head screaming bloody murder whenever Taim is near. Their numbers grow extremely quickly because of plot.
Secondly the Tower is split (actually I can't remember if this happened in the last book or in this one and I can't be bothered checking now.) and Egwene is summoned from the Aiel to be their new Amyrlin. All the Aes Sedai thinks that she's just some kind of malleable figurehead, but then they forget that she's a main character and main characters in this series succeed in whatever they do (even when they fail).
Mat has become a general for the Band of the Red Hand and marches south in some plan to... well, it's not very clear. Something to do with Sammael who rules in Illian. Halfway there Rand comes and tells him to go get Elayne from the rebel Aes Sedai instead. Exactly how this is possible without messing up the plan about Sammael is not clear. He goes there anyway and gets ignored and then Elayne, Avienda and Nynaeve go to Ebou Dar to find a MacGuffin and he tags along.
In the end Rand gets kidnapped by the Aes Sedai from the White Tower, locked in a box and hauled away. Perrin and some unimportant characters run after to rescue him, and there's a big fight at Dumai's Wells where Taim and the Asha'man also turn up and pretty much nuke the enemy.
Some thoughts
It's really interesting how many pages you can skip and still don't miss anything. There are entire chapters where the characters just sit and talk (or rather argue with each other) or go dancing, or whatever. We also are told that there's some kind of plan to do something about Sammael, but we're not told what, just that Mat and Bashere have figured womething out. This is very annoying since we never get a conclusion to the plan. At the end of the book this plan is seemingly forgotten and everyone is doing other stuff instead and Jordan seems more inclined to write about the cleavage of the dresses the female characters wear. And speaking of female characters... in this book Faile is absolutely dreadful. She is insanely jealous, stops talking to her husband even though he tries his best to understand why she is angry with him, and she's just such a bitch you want to throw her from a window. Who the hell behaves like this? What kind of idiot expects her husband to know all about the customs from her country when she hasn't told him? It is infuriating and it also completely destroyes all chapters about Perrin since he just mopes around thinking about her instead of being the level-headed friend that Rand needs. Gah.
The other female characters are not much better, especially Nynaeve and Elayne who just sniffs at everything. The only ones that are somewhat likable are Birgitte and Verin.
Goddamnit, I'm getting upset about this horrible book so I'll stop now. The sad thing about this series is that they could have been good with a competent author and characters who are not so HORRIBLE.
Funniest thing
Okay, the bit where Mat finds the girls and tries to get them back to Rand and the Tower is pretty funny since he refuses to believe Egwene is really Amyrlin. But it does not outweigh all the horribly bad and boring bits in the book.
Summary
There are two things that happen in this book that are important later on. First Rand declares an amnesty for men who can channel and installs Mazrim Taim as a teacher to them, despite the voice in his head screaming bloody murder whenever Taim is near. Their numbers grow extremely quickly because of plot.
Secondly the Tower is split (actually I can't remember if this happened in the last book or in this one and I can't be bothered checking now.) and Egwene is summoned from the Aiel to be their new Amyrlin. All the Aes Sedai thinks that she's just some kind of malleable figurehead, but then they forget that she's a main character and main characters in this series succeed in whatever they do (even when they fail).
Mat has become a general for the Band of the Red Hand and marches south in some plan to... well, it's not very clear. Something to do with Sammael who rules in Illian. Halfway there Rand comes and tells him to go get Elayne from the rebel Aes Sedai instead. Exactly how this is possible without messing up the plan about Sammael is not clear. He goes there anyway and gets ignored and then Elayne, Avienda and Nynaeve go to Ebou Dar to find a MacGuffin and he tags along.
In the end Rand gets kidnapped by the Aes Sedai from the White Tower, locked in a box and hauled away. Perrin and some unimportant characters run after to rescue him, and there's a big fight at Dumai's Wells where Taim and the Asha'man also turn up and pretty much nuke the enemy.
Some thoughts
It's really interesting how many pages you can skip and still don't miss anything. There are entire chapters where the characters just sit and talk (or rather argue with each other) or go dancing, or whatever. We also are told that there's some kind of plan to do something about Sammael, but we're not told what, just that Mat and Bashere have figured womething out. This is very annoying since we never get a conclusion to the plan. At the end of the book this plan is seemingly forgotten and everyone is doing other stuff instead and Jordan seems more inclined to write about the cleavage of the dresses the female characters wear. And speaking of female characters... in this book Faile is absolutely dreadful. She is insanely jealous, stops talking to her husband even though he tries his best to understand why she is angry with him, and she's just such a bitch you want to throw her from a window. Who the hell behaves like this? What kind of idiot expects her husband to know all about the customs from her country when she hasn't told him? It is infuriating and it also completely destroyes all chapters about Perrin since he just mopes around thinking about her instead of being the level-headed friend that Rand needs. Gah.
The other female characters are not much better, especially Nynaeve and Elayne who just sniffs at everything. The only ones that are somewhat likable are Birgitte and Verin.
Goddamnit, I'm getting upset about this horrible book so I'll stop now. The sad thing about this series is that they could have been good with a competent author and characters who are not so HORRIBLE.
Funniest thing
Okay, the bit where Mat finds the girls and tries to get them back to Rand and the Tower is pretty funny since he refuses to believe Egwene is really Amyrlin. But it does not outweigh all the horribly bad and boring bits in the book.