The Wheel of Time

Unless Abys got a lot more competent in the show than in the sequel movie, you're underselling Sandermat here. He may have "Comic Relief Character" stapled to his forehead, but he's far from dumb or incompetent. This is the Mat who killed the gholam, escaped the Tower of Ghenji, and commanded the Last Battle, after all.

Doc already mentioned him feeling more like a Sanderson character than a Jordan one, but I'd add that the one he specifically reminds me of is Wayne. This chapter, which starts with Wayne talking to his hat and ends with him having captured a fugitive while his detective buddies were busy getting stonewalled, exemplifies him pretty well. Wayne and Sandermat are consistently silly, but they're also consistently badass, intelligent, and perceptive.

Damn, I don't remember any of this and it's too vague to track it down.

Sanderson was the guy who decided the easiest way to guard a mountain pass was with a regiment of cavalry.

Sun Tzu is spinning in his grave.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Maybe the horses are really fat.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

They could be elephant-sized and it would still be the same problem - the advantage of cavalry, at any point in history, is speed, maneuverability and shock value. A static cavalryman - like someone who has to stand still and defend a narrow passage - is dead. Because he'll be outnumbered, and only really able to fight effectively with perhaps the front rank (provided he's stationary.)

And if you bring them to bear against the people assaulting the passage then you're really doing their work for them. Especially if they outnumber you and you aren't able to break them with a cavalry charge. Then you're officially up shit creek without a paddle.

edited 5th Oct '15 10:40:42 AM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

The One Power did it?

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Or maybe Sanderson just doesn't know how to medieval warfare.

I don't blame him. Few fantasy writers do. Jordan was among 'em, which is why it frustrates me to no end :P

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

But then I'd have to admit Sanderson has noticeable flaws as a writer and that way lies spontaneous combustion.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

I dunno, the only major battle I've read so far didn't make any mention of tactics beyond "Rand sits in tower, acts as Artillery, gets blown up. He doesn't really show the tactics.

Then again, that's reasonably early into the series so I dunno, maybe it gets better when more big fights start to happen.

Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.

You get it from Mat's perspective. Rallying his troops, putting them in formation, letting them brace themselves against the Shaido attack. But you get it in bits and pieces because Mat has no idea what in the fuck he's actually doing.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

I finished the series a couple of weeks ago (sans the prequel and that short story about how Demandred found that male Sa'angreal that he used in the Last Battle.

I really love these books, I ended up finishing all fourteen over a period of about 20 weeks, with a bit of a break in the middle.

I got into Wheel of Time because of a friend of mine.^note I wish I'd listened to him a few years back, then I would have been just in time for A Memory of Light. And I had a lot of fun discussing theory's about mechanics of the One Power and people. Although I tended to be right about workings of the One Power much more often than people and their motivations.

In no particular order a few of my favorite things about the series off the top of my head.

• The idea of ta'veren is one of my favorites things about the series. Especially when characters consciously made use of it.
• The characters. Some of my favorites were: Rand, Moiraine, Mat, Perrin, Nynaeve, Elayne, Min, Lews Therin, Verin, Tuon and probably loads more. Not only that even less important characters got developed well, which I'm sure I'll appreciate more once I get around to doing a re-read.
• The nature of the One Power was also one of my favorite parts about the series to read about, every time something new was discovered, or characters talked about it I always got excited. This gave me lots of fodder to think about. One of the things I guessed kinda right early on, around book 5-6 was that a reverse weave of balefire would exist, although I thought it might be used to bring the Dark One into the Pattern.

edit: I almost forgot to mention, I really liked how Rand's treaty with the Seanchan essentially screwed the Seanchan system of Damane's and sul'dam in the long term.

edited 10th Nov '15 9:14:18 PM by 32ndfreeze

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

The whole White Tower is a damn fine counterargument to the Seanchan rhetoric about channelers and leashes. Here's this perfectly functional society where the marath'damane are voluntarily limiting themselves, but in a self-policing manner instead of handing over their free will to someone else. It doesn't fit with either the Sorcerous Overlord or the loyal weapon narratives.

I mean, it's probably not going to convert anyone active during the Last Battle, but the next generation, the ones who learn about the White Tower growing up? The dogma's gonna have a tough time against that knowledge.

edited 10th Nov '15 10:42:22 PM by rikalous

Welllllll, "perfectly functional" is a bit of an overstatement.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

The world hasn't dissolved into an anarchist hellscape scorched by The One Power. So hey, give the Aes Sedai some credit.

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

And as I recall, at end of series "anarchist hellscape scorched by The One Power" was a decent description of the Seanchan home continent.

Er, their more recent home continent. The more ancestral home continent that they had the big fancy Return to is surprisingly well-ordered for a broken world.

There's also the fact that the White Tower has no survived the coming of The Dragon, which is pretty impressive considering that his Hat was bringing chaos with one hand and salvation with the other.

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Eh, he mostly kept out of their way.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

The Aes Sedai as an institution was fundamentally broken. They were supposed to be scrupulously honest, fundamentally humble servants of the people. Instead they were a secretive, insular power bloc unto themselves, whose were primarily known for their trickery and manipulation among the common folk and for their arrogance and meddling among the nobility. Internally, they were factious and bickering, spending more energy on internal squabbles than anything else, despite the polite fiction displayed to the outside world that the Aes Sedai were a united front. They also spent basically their entire history undergoing a long, slow fall from grace, largely due to their own policies — they encouraged isolation over inclusion and adherence to tradition over innovation or exploration, which, when combined with their own sense of infallible superiority, led to stagnation and decline.

Oh, and like half of them ended up being traitors secretly sworn to the Dark One. That also happened.

Pretty much all the good that the Aes Sedai did was done by individuals who happened to be Aes Sedai working independently, either without much in the way of support from the White Tower or in direct opposition to the Amyrlin Seat.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The best you can say for them is that they did a good job gentling male channelers and training wilders who would've harmed themselves and others if left alone. Aside that, they're a net negative.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

I think I've said before that the Aes Sedai and the Whitecloaks represent two facets of the Catholic Church. The former is a continuation of the past, a gateway to an ancient legacy the same way the Catholic Church was to Rome.

And, naturally, like the Catholic Church, it's full of assholes abusing their power because the minute you give people the chance to earn power, a lot of them will inevitably and irrevocably turn into assholes. It doesn't mean that they don't have a job shepherding mankind's future (in the Aes Sedai's case a bit more literal vis-a-vis the Dragon), but like any massive locus of power, it inevitably attracts people who shouldn't be given any power to begin with.

Meanwhile, the Whitecloaks are the ones obsessed with religious purity working zealously to kill anyone or anything that they consider an ideological threat. They're basically the Spanish Inquisition with a healthy dose of the Knights Templar.

Really, considering only half of the White Tower knowingly aided the forces of evil, they actually compare quite favorably to the Catholic Church

edited 11th Nov '15 12:05:41 PM by math792d

Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.

Finished reading Lord of Chaos a little while ago. 'S not too shabby a book, though I definitely felt all that padding in the middle. Whenever I get to The Crown of Swords, it'll probably be after getting some other genre fiction in me.

Also, wow would I ever lolnope away from an IRL Ebou Dar as fast as my resources could manage it.

Wait till you see Far Madding.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Far Madding at least has the excuse of developing a culture in reaction to a bunch of men losing their minds and bringing about an apocalypse. Ebou Dar just has a knife fetish.

I haven't yet read the Wheel of Time companion, but according to the characters page it reveled that Bela survived the Last Battle!!

Man, I really need to track down a copy of that...

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

Finished Knife of Dreams. I'm relieved the Andoran succession and Faile's kidnapping/Shaido subplots are finally over — I'm halfway convinced those were only thought up to give Elayne and Perrin something to do for the past three books. Four Lines, All Waiting indeed.

This was really Mat's book for the biggest part. I like Mat/Tuon, it feels a lot more natural and interesting (after a fashion) than Rand/Elayne, Perrin/Fayle, Nynaeve/Lan or, God forbid, Egwene/Gawin. The Seanchan are just really interesting in general, and it's pretty funny that all three of the lads ended up allying with them to some degree.

Rand basically just showed up, demonstrated further instability, blew up a few thousand Shadowspawn (hadn't seen thousands of Shadowspawn appear out of nowhere in an inexplicable ambush for like dive books, I was getting nostalgic) and got his hand blown off and not really caring. Still my favorite character, but I hope he gets more to do next book. And I never thought I'd say this, but this book may have given a tentative Rescued from the Scrappy Heap to Egwene for me. It's amazing what it does for a character's likeability to get them away from people I like better and surround them with assholes, then have her handle them like it ain't no thang. I still want Cadsuane to die in a fire, though, so the sky ain't falling yet.

Oh, and I remember when Nynaeve had a shred of spine, agency or anything remotely interesting. Man, those were the days.

And finally, of course Taim is a goddamn Darkfriend. The Black Tower had such promise, and I was rooting for them hard, but they're a bunch of assholes led by an evil megalomaniac now. Joy. Are there any evil people other than Padam "where you at tho" Fain that aren't Darkfriends? And how Sandersony is next book?

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

The two most distinctive things about Sanderson's writing are his plot pacing (he tends to build up everything to ridiculous heights and then resolve them all at once in an amazingly short period of time) and his worldbuilding (interesting, complex magic systems that have dramatic effects on the local culture and politics), neither of which he really had control over for Wheel of Time, so I wouldn't say that the novels are particularly "Sandersony". That said, I read all the Wheel of Time books from start to finish pretty much in a row, after they'd all been released, so I have a hard time remembering when one book stops and another picks up anyway. Someone who followed the series as it was being written would probably have better input as far as that goes.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.