Rand catches up to Asmodean in Rhuidean, recognizing him as Natael, and they have an epic battle that destroys most of the city. After winning a fight over a miniature statue linked to the one in Caemlyn, Rand cuts off his connection to the Dark One, another Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Lanfear arrives, and he reveals that his plan is to force Asmodean to teach him to use the Power, now that the other Forsaken will believe he changed sides anyway.
Lanfear agrees to leave him alone for now, and reveals that she was disguised as Keille before she leaves. Rand finds the female version of the statue, and in a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming sees that a fissure the fight opened reaches to ground water and will eventually make the area a fertile valley. Taking Asmodean back to Alcair Dal, he finds that many of the Aiel left, but many more are standing with him in the battle to come.
The two identity reveals fall rather flat since I never cared that much about the peddlers, but otherwise this is a great ending, and it’s quite a relief to have a book where Rand doesn’t fight Ba’alzamon at the end.
This book shows cracks starting to form in the series. There’s a lot of good stuff here, but the pacing really suffers as we now have four separate plots with only the barest of connections to each other. Even when our heroes split up in the first three books, it was clear why we were following all of them. But toward the end all of them still manage to have gripping climaxes that make me very glad I don’t have to wait for the next book.
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