The cliffhanger is resolved just by them having to take a longer way around. Kind of a letdown, but then, what else could it be? Then Loial asks Rand if he thinks this whole thing will ever end, which is either Hilarious in Hindsight or Harsher in Hindsight depending on your point of view. Yes, that’s me having a laugh at all of you who have been waiting more than two decades for the end of this story, and still have almost a year to go, while I’ll be able to move right on to it when the time comes.
There’s a pretty weird sequence where Egwene gets upset that Rand so much as talked to Min, only for Perrin to bring up her time with Aram. It serves no purpose except making Egwene look randomly petty and hypocritical, and even Mat bringing up the randy farmer’s daughter doesn’t help, since Rand never reciprocated her advances. Boo to the whole exchange.
Lan senses someone behind them, and Mat immediately fires an arrow, like an idiot. And to think I was hoping he’d get better without the dagger. Though this quite amusingly makes Loial into The Eeyore and he keeps interrupting everyone else’s lines to complain about the situation. That’s cut short too when they find a guidepost defaced by Trollocs, which answers how they’ve been getting around undetected. I’d actually forgotten that was a question that needed answering, but it’s great that it happened within the first book.
It gets worse when Lan finds some Trollocs that have been turned to stone, in terrible pain. And there’s no time to worry about that, as Rand hears the Black Wind, an Eldritch Abomination that’s part of the Way, or something ancient that got trapped in it, and now just wants to steal people’s souls. And you know, I could complain that it’s a ripoff of the Balrog, but the race to get out is so intense that I didn’t notice at all until I thought back on it. I’m also very impressed that what we have here is essentially the premise of The Happening, and Jordan actually makes it scary.
Everyone does make it out, but Moiraine’s You Shall Not Pass! ruins her staff. But she at least makes it herself, so we won’t be getting anything about Moiraine the White. And of course, now the problem becomes, where the hell are they? Well, there’s a map right afterwards (with an unfortunately screwy compass layout) that should help with that.
It seems Jordan got all the boredom of the Way out of his system last chapter, so this one could just be freaking terrifying. I was genuinely worried that some of these guys might not make it, and not at all because of the Balrog similarities, which as I noted I was too wrapped up to notice while reading. Though there is the unfortunate bit with Egwene, that might be the series’ supposed sexism rearing its head. I’ll have to wait and see.
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