Wheel of Time - Page 28

On January 09 2013 10:24 Kaal wrote:

Are you serious?

Egwene is like the worst female character. She shows the Post-Jordan changes the most, and it is fucking terrible. Pre-Amyrlin she's ok, after she just goes straight to shit. In the last 3 books she has completely changed character at least 3 times. It's sickening. Sanderson should stick to writing settings and have someone else write characters because he can't write characters worth my left nut.

On January 10 2013 00:27 PROPrototype wrote:
This seris sounds interesting, mind summarizing it for me?

In the series's fictional mythology, a deity known as the Creator forged the universe and the Wheel of Time, which, as it turns, spins all lives. The Wheel has seven spokes, each representing an age, and it rotates under the influence of the One Power, which flows from the True Source. Essentially composed of male and female halves (saidin and saidar) in opposition and in unison, this power turns the Wheel. Those humans who can use this power are referred to as channelers; the principal organization of such wielders in the books is called the Aes Sedai or 'Servants of All' in the Old Tongue.

The Creator imprisoned its antithesis, Shai'tan (or Dark One), at the moment of creation, sealing him away from the Wheel. However, in a time called the Age of Legends or the Second Age, an Aes Sedai experiment inadvertently breached the Dark One's prison, allowing his influence into the world. He rallied the powerful, the corrupt and the ambitious to his cause and these servants began an effort to free the Dark One fully from his prison. In return, the Dark One promised them worldly power and immortality. Few even among the servants of the Dark One realized that one of the consequences of freeing him might be the breaking of the Wheel of Time and the end of existence itself.

In response to this threat, the Wheel spun out the Dragon as the champion of the Light. The Dragon was a male Aes Sedai named Lews Therin Telamon, who rose to great influence and power among the Aes Sedai. A century after the initial breach of the Dark One's prison, a time during which the Dark One's influence spread throughout the world, causing society to become corrupt and decayed, open warfare broke out between the forces of the Dark One and those of the Light. After ten years of a grueling, world-wide war filled with atrocities on a scale never before imagined, the Light found itself facing the real possibility of defeat.

In desperation, Lews Therin led a hand-picked force of channelers and soldiers in a high-risk, daring assault on the site of the earthly link to the Dark One's prison, and was able to seal it off, although imperfectly. However, at this moment of victory the Dark One tainted saidin, driving male channelers of the One Power insane. The male channelers, in the "Time of Madness," devastated the world with the One Power, unleashing earthquakes and tidal waves that reshaped the planet, referred to in subsequent ages as "The Breaking of the World."

In his insanity, Lews Therin himself killed his friends, his family and anyone in any way related to him, and was known afterwards as Lews Therin Kinslayer. Given a moment of sanity by Ishamael, chief among the Dark One's servants, Lews Therin realized what he had done. In his grief, he committed suicide by drawing on far more of the One Power than even he could handle unaided.

Over time, the remaining male Aes Sedai were killed or cut off from the One Power. In their wake, they had left a devastated world: the land and the oceans reshaped, people scattered from their native lands, civilization itself all but destroyed. Only women were now able to wield the One Power safely. The female Aes Sedai reconstituted and guided humanity out of this dark time. Men who could channel eventually became objects of fear and horror, as they would inevitably go insane unless stopped, and even the Dragon became a loathed figure. Among the Aes Sedai there were women whose sole function was to hunt such men down and cut them off from accessing the One Power.

What followed was three and a half thousand years of history that was marked by a series of rises then inevitable declines in civilization, a time of troubles and chaos that stood in marked contrast to the now mythical Age of Legends. Nations and civilization itself fell, rose, and fell again. Occasional periods of uneasy peace were punctuated by warfare. There were two major conflicts that were of particular importance, in terms of their effect on civilization as a whole. The first were the Trolloc Wars, in which servants of the Dark One tried to destroy civilization once more, in a more or less continuous war that lasted for several hundred years. This period finally came to an end thanks to an alliance of nations led by the Aes Sedai. The second was the War of the Hundred Years, a devastating civil war that followed the fall of a continent-spanning empire ruled by the High King, Artur Hawkwing.

These wars have prevented the human race from regaining the power and high technology of the Age of Legends, and left humanity divided. Even the prestige of the Aes Sedai has fallen, with their terrible power and shrinking numbers, and the emergence of organizations such as the Children of the Light, a militant order who hold that all who dabble with the One Power are servants of the Shadow. The human race has clawed its way back to a level of technology and culture roughly comparable to that of our 1450 to 1600 (although without the sciences, formalized learning, or the military use of gunpowder), with the difference that women enjoy full equality with men in most societies, and are superior in some. One likely explanation for this is the power and influence of the female-only Aes Sedai spilling over into everyday life.

During the last war of note, called the Aiel War and taking place 20 years before the start of the series, the nations of the modern era allied themselves against the warrior-clans of the Aiel, who crossed into the western kingdoms on a mission of vengeance after suffering a grievous insult at the hands of one of the western Kings. The Aiel have since returned to the Aiel Waste, with some saying that they were defeated and fled, but others saying that they got their vengeance and left on their own terms. Despite this confrontation, little is known of these fierce warriors in the kingdoms of the east.

In the time in which the novels are set, mankind lives under the shadow of a prophecy that the Dark One will break free from his prison and the Dragon will be reborn to face him once more, raining utter destruction and chaos on the world in the process of saving it from the Dark One.

On January 10 2013 00:27 PROPrototype wrote:
This seris sounds interesting, mind summarizing it for me?
Thanks.

On January 10 2013 05:30 revel8 wrote:
Ordered my copy! Will stay out of this thread until I have read it! Don't want to be spoiled!

On January 11 2013 02:04 Gendi2545 wrote:
The best WoT book I've read by far was some sort of encyclopedia which described the world before the fall and explained more about the angreal etc. It was someone else's copy though, but I remember RJ wasn't the (only?) author.

On January 11 2013 02:27 Mikau wrote:
I decided to try this out recently as well (after finishing A song of ice and fire). I quit halfway through the first book. Everything seems really slow and tame

On January 11 2013 02:56 TheBB wrote:

I don't recognise this at all. More action happens in the first half of Eye of the World than all of Game of Thrones.

On January 11 2013 02:04 Gendi2545 wrote:
I read the first WoT book more than 10 years ago and loved it, the second was ok, and from there I just remember things getting really slow and drawn out, and every page had some male character thinking how women were impossible to understand. I gave up at about book 6.

The best WoT book I've read by far was some sort of encyclopedia which described the world before the fall and explained more about the angreal etc. It was someone else's copy though, but I remember RJ wasn't the (only?) author.

On January 11 2013 03:03 Mikau wrote:

Like what? I liked the start where they get invaded by (sorry, I forgot names) the orc like creatures and the wannabe Nazgul, but after that it all just seemed like a lot of running while being chased by said creatures. Maybe I gave up on it too soon, but I felt it didn't even come close to all the intrigue, plots and subplots and subtlety of even the first GoT.

I might give it another chance after my exams, but I'm also having fun rereading GoT (and picking up on all the clues I missed the first read-through).