#'min fans had best stay away' is a warning that applies to all my recap posts but this one especially. because i'm extra salty

[markantonys]

the gathering storm prologue-chapter 15

first, some pre-reading thoughts. i have been informed that ELAYNE IS NOT IN THIS ENTIRE BOOK. LITERALLY UNREADABLE. she has been the SOLE plotline that i’ve consistently enjoyed and never had any points of annoyance with, how will i survive an entire book without her!!!!

the cover has rand and a woman who i’m thinking must be avi, so either this is a cruel act of catfishing or we will get an avirand reunion in this book!!!! but i won’t get too excited because i just know that any avirand content will be ruined by min breathing down their necks and preventing them from ever having a moment alone, seeing as min will disintegrate to dust if she ever goes 10 feet away from rand for more than 10 seconds.

there is one chapter called “the death of tuon” man i WISH, and the final chapter is called “veins of gold” which is a phrase i’ve seen mentioned many times so i’m thinking something exciting happens in that chapter 👀

moving on. “was [graendal] the only one who saw that al’thor himself was the real threat? why not just kill him and be done with it?” you would think graendal is the horniest forsaken but actually she’s the only one who sensibly wants to kill rand while the others are distracted by how badly they want to fuck him

“though [demandred] was one of the foremost generals among the chosen, warfare had never seemed to bring him joy” “to think he might have been on the other side - might have become the dragon himself, had things turned out differently” ooh i’m starting to see the demandred-mat parallels now!

mesaana has “chin-length dark hair and watery blue eyes” desperately trying to remember if we’ve ever had a description of theodrin’s appearance (but don’t tell me ofc). although mesaana may not be in her aes sedai disguise rn so might not matter. but graendal makes a distinction between aran’gar being with the rebels and mesaana being inside the white tower itself, which is a point against mesaana being theodrin since theodrin has been with the rebels the whole time, but on the other hand graendal isn’t privy to mesaana’s plans and could be misinformed about whether she is Literally in the white tower or not.

graendal waxes poetic about how unbelievably hot moridin is, which is information i am storing away because i suspect i will want to know it later. for reasons.

uh oh mesaana mentions “our woman there” who witnessed semirhage vs. rand. iirc the only women there were nynaeve, min, cadsuane, 2 damane, and 2 sul’dam (and 1 additional damane and sul’dam who were killed in the fight). i guess their source must be one of the seanchan women, but man would i go crazy in the best way if it turned out that cadsuane was a darkfriend! or min, and it turned out it was rj’s intention all along to make her relationship with rand so damaging to his wellbeing with her indirectly causing his two biggest traumas, his kidnapping and his hand, and always ramping up his paranoia with her viewings lmao but i know neither of those things are true, so it must be one of the seanchan (or maybe it’s none of them and i’m just way overthinking this). oh but also more aes sedai did arrive at the end of the fight with semirhage, so it could be one of them, although they didn’t actually witness the fireball (which is what mesaana is talking about).

“‘i want lews therin,’ demandred said, his voice deep, his expression dark, as always. ‘semirhage knows that. she also knows that if she’d killed him, i would have found her and claimed her life in retribution. nobody kills al’thor. nobody but me.’” i’m erasing the number off my “days since a male forsaken’s last sexual tension with rand” sign and putting a big fat 0. another demandred-mat parallel, they both want to fuck rand soooo bad jdkfjg

moridin is so mad that semirhage hurt rand “despite my express command that he wasn’t to be harmed” they all want to fuck him!!!

“moridin looked down, flexing his left hand, as if it were stiff” OOOOOH are moridin and rand’s Merging Troubles getting to the point where moridin feels injuries done to rand? okay maybe THAT’S the real reason why he doesn’t want anyone to hurt rand lmao. but i still like my original interpretation better.

also, i have decided that ishamael-min is another Forsaken/Friend Of Rand foil pair because they both have an interest in philosophy and an unhealthy obsession with rand [bangs gavel] i’m kidding but also it’s true

“the great lord approves of your initiative” graendal is acing her annual employee review. i feel like she’s secretly the cleverest/most dangerous forsaken of all and the others all underestimate her, to her advantage!

“the wheel has groaned its final rotation, the clock has lost its spring, the serpent heaves its final gasps. he must know pain of heart. he must know frustration, and he must know anguish.” sexy and ominous

you know how the villain in the incredibles was a mr. incredible fanboy whose obsessiveness drove him to crimes? that’s masema with rand fjkgh every time masema’s like “the dragon will reward me for my loyalty!” all i can think about is the incredibles you’re not affiliated with me.gif

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH FAILE!!!!!!!!!! JUST KILLED MASEMA AND ALL HIS FOLLOWERS!!!!!!!!! YOOOOOOOOOO I’M LOSING MY MIND she just went full “the lannisters send their regards” on their asses!!!!! chills!!! chills chills chills of the best kind!!!! thank you faile for doing what someone should’ve done many books ago!!! and for delivering the kind of “heroes being machiavellian and doing bad things for the greater good” content that i Actually want to see!!! faile killing masema is Sexy, the boys allying with the seanchan is Not Sexy.

“‘thank you for helping to assault malden, masema,’ faile said, stopping right in front of him. then she reached up and rammed that knife into his heart.” YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

“‘sometimes, a wife must do what her husband cannot,’ he heard faile tell her women as his eyes fluttered trying to close. ‘it is a dark thing we did this day, but necessary. let no one speak of it to my husband. he must never know.’” YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

faile accomplishing in 1 page what perrin failed (no pun intended) to do in 5 books is SO typical jjskdjfg i love her!! i love her!!!!!!! sorry perrin, faile is MY wife now. also, this is one of the few times in this series where a character deciding to lie to their partner is actually justified instead of needless and infuriating, and might provide meaty and fascinating relationship conflict rather than petty drama (though given that this IS perrin and faile we’re talking about i won’t hold my breath lmao)

i’m so rand/min-phobic at this point that as soon as the audiobook said “‘rand?’ a soft voice asked” i instantly began gnashing my teeth in preparation, because i just KNEW it was going to be min arriving to simper (and it was)

rand feels aviendha coming closer to the manor!! an avirand reunion IS in the cards!!

and we open with our usual Listen To How Sexy Min Is In Her Tight Clothes description 🙄 this is at least the third book in a row where we’ve gotten that within the first couple pages of min’s first scene, and i bet it happened in previous books too i just didn’t start tracking it until COT

“why wear trousers only to trim herself up with lace?” LMAO absolutely howling that min dolls herself up for rand and it turns out he thinks it’s weird jfkjgh serves her right

also, we learn that rand’s eyesight is still Weird after semirhage. again i wonder if it’s lingering damage from the light of the fireball or if it’s to do with the Moridin Merging Troubles? oooh we saw moridin being affected by the pain of rand’s hand, so maybe rand is being affected by the black flecks in moridin’s eyes from using the true power??

“elayne. she was distant, far to the east, but he could still feel her bundle of emotions in his head. at such a distance, it was difficult to tell much, but he thought she was...relieved. did that mean that her struggle for power in andor was going well?” INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT ABOUT ELAYNE!!! rand, maybe you could put on a little disguise and pop thru a quick gateway and ASK her how her struggle for power is going! also, interesting that he can pick out any emotion from her at all at such a great distance, i thought that at a far distance you could only really sense serious injuries (like elayne feeling rand’s hand) and emotions wouldn’t come into range unless you were closer? i feel like the rules and experiences of long-distance warder bonds are always changing book to book lmao but i’m not complaining since it gave us 3 whole sentences of rand thinking about elayne.

i can’t find the exact quote again but rand wonders where asmodean is and whether he’s betrayed info about him to the shadow and i’m cracking up jkjfg even rand thinks asmodean should have been more important to the story than he ended up being!

somewhere in this chapter rand mentions that it was a ter’angreal of cadsuane’s that made semirhage’s illusion fall away in the last book, good to know, i thought that semirhage was just lame and bad at channeling or something lmao

rand apparently has a new sword, which an unnamed “they” had recently found and gifted to him, and he recognizes it from his own memories rather than from lews therin’s and “had taken to wearing the sword immediately. it felt right beneath his fingers.” this had better somehow be tam’s heron-marked blade fixed up again because that is the only sword in the world i could accept so immediately and unceremoniously replacing the sword aviendha gave to rand 😤

on the one hand, i hate how min is always glaring at alivia bc she resents her bc she’s going to help rand die, even though alivia knows nothing about this and has done nothing wrong and never been anything but loyal to rand and min is just being mad at her about her own viewing. on the other hand, i do kinda resent alivia’s narrative importance bc while i don’t yet know exactly what her role will be, i’m struggling to see why nynaeve couldn’t have filled it. why introduce a random new channeler who’s “even stronger than nynaeve in the one power” and seems like she’s going to do something channeling-related that’s very emotionally significant in rand’s arc, when nynaeve is right there? i’ll see if i still feel this way once i actually see how this “alivia helping rand die” business plays out, but so far it feels like yet another instance of rj introducing new characters in the second half of the series to fill roles original characters were booted out of, and fill them in a less effective or emotionally meaningful way (cadsuane replacing moiraine as rand’s mentor, bashere replacing mat as rand’s general (i do love bashere, but he’s no mat). and min replacing elayne and avi as rand’s primary love interest, of course, although she wasn’t a new character, but she might as well have been since by LOC she’d changed every single thing about herself For Rand.)

“one cannot blindfold an artist, then be surprised when he has nothing to paint” cadsuane needs to meet up with lini so they can exchange Sayings™!

rand has in custody an extremely evil forsaken who blew off his hand and has brutally tortured and killed thousands of people and could potentially provide their side with valuable info about the shadow..............and he refuses to let the aes sedai torture her or hurt her in any way while questioning her, because she’s a woman 🙄🙄🙄 i know it won’t happen but i almost want rand to be murdered by a woman at this point, he would deserve it.

“time spent in a dark box, being pulled forth and being beaten repeatedly. he would not have a woman in his power treated the same way. not even one of the forsaken.” see, i could totally get behind this reasoning if it applied to people in general, but as the scene goes on rand makes it abundantly clear that it’s specifically WOMEN he can’t stomach being treated the way he was.

“you press us for results, boy, and yet you deny us the tools we need to get them. whether you name it torture, questioning, or baking, i name it foolishness.” for once i wholeheartedly support cadsuane bullying rand! yes cadsuane! bully him more about this!

“turn her over to the white tower, you say? which white tower? ...i doubt that egwene would be pleased if i dropped one of the forsaken into her lap.” are you kidding? egwene would be able to handle semirhage in her sleep! “egwene might just let semirhage go and take me captive instead. force me to kneel before the white tower’s justice and gentle me just to give her another notch in her belt.” what the FUCK rand???? i know you and egwene were a bit strained when you last saw each other back in LOC, but good god this is a HUGE leap to make! and fandom gets mad at EGWENE for judging RAND unfairly. i definitely don’t remember rand thinking or saying anything THIS harsh about egwene before now, so i’m feeling like his suspicion of her is suddenly being amped up to 100 to prepare for a conflict between them.

lews therin says of aes sedai, “we need to stay away from all of them. they refused to help us, you know. refused! said my plan was too reckless. that left me with only the hundred companions, no women to form a circle.” isn’t this.......isn’t this exactly the conversation that’s depicted in the 1x08 cold open that everybody complained about because it made lews therin look reckless? lmao god

“light! i can’t keep this up. my eyes see as if in a fog, my hand is burned away, and the old wounds in my side rip open if i do anything more strenuous than breathe. i’m dry, like an overused well. i need to finish my work here and get to shayol ghul. otherwise, there won’t be anything left of me for the dark one to kill.” baby booooy

egwene’s only been in the tower for NINE DAYS???? oh my god. and she already has all the novices on her side and is making many of the older aes sedai doubt elaida! yeah, she would TOTALLY handle semirhage in her sleep lmao

“this was the woman who had pulled down siuan, the woman who had beaten rand, and the woman who had pushed the aes sedai themselves to the very brink of collapse. elaida needed to know egwene’s anger, she needed to be humiliated and made ashamed!” “this woman, this...creature! she was the cause of the problems in the white tower, she was the one who caused division between rebels and loyalists. she had taken rand captive and beaten him.” so egwene HAS found out more details about rand’s kidnapping and counts it as one of her top 3 reasons for hating elaida 😭❤️ and after rand was being such a dick about egwene in the previous chapter.

“egwene hesitated in the doorway, looking in at her rival for the first time since departing from the white tower with nynaeve and elayne to hunt the black ajah, a turning point that seemed an eternity ago.” 😭 i swear if i don’t get a full wondergirl reunion.........🔪🔪

“‘what do you say to that?’ that you are a plague upon this structure as vile and destructive as any disease that has struck city and people in all years past.” JKDHFJHG DAMN EGWENE i love her. respect for her for managing not to say this aloud but boy do i wish she had hjfg

“egwene could sometimes feel that band [the a’dam] on her own skin, itching, impossible to move. sometimes, it still made her faintly sick to move around freely, as if she felt that she should be locked away, chained to the post on the wall by a simple loop of metal.” 💔💔💔 and you expect me to like tuon and support her marrying mat?? i am not saying that i bet all the readers who love tuon are the very same ones who hate egwene, buuuuut

while being beaten egwene thinks about what a pointless, absurd punishment it is compared to the “pain of soul she felt at seeing the white tower suffer beneath elaida’s hand” and starts to laugh crazily, rand vibes! but she comes to a different conclusion: “i understand. i didn’t realize what the aiel did. i assumed that i just had to be harder, and that was what would teach me to laugh at pain. but it’s not hardness at all. it’s not strength that makes me laugh. it’s understanding.” she and rand are foils!

aviendha pov!! “aviendha did not fear death, but there was a very big difference between embracing death and wishing for it.” an outlook that would be helpful to rand’s mental health right now if aviendha was allowed to talk to him for even 10 seconds.

aww throughout this chapter avi thinks about elayne constantly, always asking herself What Would Elayne Do and thinking on how much elayne has taught her ❤️❤️

why the fuck does avi still call rand “rand al’thor” in her narration? they had their moment in WH where she called him by his first name! i thought they were past this!

“now that they were first-sisters, they could marry him together as was proper” “it was good to know rand al’thor would be hers, although she would have to share him. she did not begrudge elayne, of course, but min...well, aviendha did not really know her.” perfect throuple, avirandlayne triad when, min get out of this polycule, etc etc

aviendha thinks about how she doesn’t yet have anything to offer rand and that she won’t give him a bridal wreath until she becomes a full wise one. i have Some Thoughts about this, will go into them at the end of the post once it’s more relevant.

but for now i will say this: “she would come to him when she was ready, then lay the bridal wreath at his feet. and she couldn’t do that until she knew who she was.” WHAT a contrast from min remaking herself and shaping her entire personality and appearance around what she thinks rand would want her to be lmaoooo

“i once thought that there was only one way to be strong, but i have learned from my first-sister that i was wrong.” ❤️❤️ “rand al’thor...i do not think he has learned this yet. i worry that he mistakes hardness for strength.” okay so clearly rand needs to spend some time with elayne too (and avi) so that he can learn this same lesson! dammit!!

ah, min did indeed end up telling avi about her viewing of her having quadruplets with rand, in WH min was uncertain whether avi would want to know about it. although avi’s never referenced this before and in the previous book even said something like “hope i never get pregnant if it sucks this much” to elayne, so i’m wondering if rj always intended avi to know about the viewing or if this was sanderson’s decision.

she also thinks about min’s viewing of the 3 of them loving rand: “the viewing was a comfort.” how sad is it that poor avi has been given so little time with and affection from her own boyfriend that she has to think “thank god i have a prophecy proving that he loves me” damn. “but it was also bothersome. aviendha loved rand al’thor because she chose to, not because she was destined to.” THANK YOU!!!!! exhibit A of why avirand is the only Fated Romance in this series that works! (randlayne i don’t count as a Fated Romance since elayne didn’t find out they were fated until after they were already in love)

GAWYN RETURNS!!! recalled as shouting thank god it is my boy!!! and we see him outside a prologue for i believe the first time since LOC! could this mean he’ll actually have a plotline this book? oh i hope so!

i always would’ve had a soft spot for him bc he fits my standard blorbo archetype perfectly, but would i have loved him as much as i do if not for the hilarity of how confused and mad you guys are by me loving him? we’ll never know jdfkg i’m still waiting to see what crime(s) he commits that makes the whole fandom hate him so much. surely it can’t just be siding with elaida in the coup and not helping rand at dumai’s wells? bc while those are hardly good looks for him, i don’t see how they’re bad enough to earn such universal hatred. there must be a very big crime somewhere in these last 3 books. chuckles nervously i’m in danger.jpg

quick tangent bc i’ve been thinking about the show: i think that in the books elaida having been around as an adult figure, and potentially a mentor figure, for most of gawyn’s (and elayne’s) life is something that was not made enough of, so in the show it’d be neat if we saw elaida kinda manipulating/grooming him so then it’s even more understandable and heartbreaking when he believes her over siuan in the coup (judging from leaks show!gawyn seems to have a more complicated relationship with morgase than he does in the books, so i could totally see elaida swooping in to prey on those mommy issues, especially if she’s maybe planning her coup and decides it would be helpful to make sure gawyn and his friends will side with her when the time comes).

anyway, we have so much of gawyn being sexily conflicted and angsty in this chapter, and you all know me, you know i’m eating this UP. “am i destined to end up fighting against each and every man who has been a mentor to me?” baby boy

“light send that elayne had arrived in andor...her duty to andor outweighed her duty to the white tower. and what of your duty, gawyn trakand? he thought to himself. he wasn’t certain he had duty, or honor, left to him. perhaps his guilt about hammar, his nightmares of war and death at dumai’s wells, were due to the slow realization that he might have given his allegiance to the wrong side. his loyalty belonged to elayne and egwene. what, then, was he still doing fighting a battle he didn’t care about, helping a side that - by all accounts - was opposed to the one elayne and egwene had chosen?” baby booooy. also, an interesting little honor-and-duty musing right on the heels of avi’s in the last chapter.

“[egwene] had chosen a side. hammar had chosen a side. gareth bryne had, apparently, chosen a side. but gawyn continued to want to be on both sides. the division was ripping him apart.” BABY BOOOOOOY [giggling and twirling my hair around my finger] he’s just soooo burdened by duty and torn apart by conflicting loyalties

rand thinks about mat (in the context of thinking that even mat wouldn’t know what was the best bet for what would end up killing rand since so many things are trying to) and sees that he’s dicing before a crowd. “rand had not seen the small, dark-skinned woman with mat for some time. who was she? where had she gone?” anxious at the prospect of mat having obtained a girlfriend during your separation hmmm?

“hopefully mat would return to him soon. he would need mat and his tactical skills at shayol ghul.” all i’m hearing is that rand needs mat and hopes he’ll come back soon 😌

“once rand might have been surprised at how quickly he was obeyed, but no longer. it was right for the soldiers to obey. rand was a king.” “darlin wondered - yet again - about his orders. could no one simply do as they were told?” “had [harine] achieved greater rank, making her too important to attend him? could one be too important to attend the coramoor?” noo rand don’t go dark and tyrannical you’re so sexy aha

“‘for all [the soldiers’] laws and oaths, they are free. me, i seem as if i can do as i wish, but i am tied so tightly the bonds cut my flesh. my power and influence are meaningless against fate. my freedom is just an illusion, flinn. and so i envy them. sometimes.’ flinn folded his hands behind his back, obviously uncertain how to respond.” [snl debbie downer sound effect]

“‘it’s not normal,’ [nynaeve] said. ‘and those overcast skies aren’t the storm i’m talking about. it’s still distant, but it’s coming. and it is going to be terrible. worse than any i’ve ever seen. far worse.’ ‘well, then,’ daigian said, sounding slightly uncomfortable.” [snl debbie downer sound effect]

“nynaeve had spent that fight [at shadar logoth] completely absorbed by providing rand with immense amounts of saidar to weave.” oh, there i was thinking nynaeve was doing some weaving herself and working with rand and taking an active role in the cleansing, but no, apparently she was just rand’s battery. sigh.

because nynaeve has apparently not gone through “finally thinking she’s independent and has authority only to be forced back into a student role and treated like a child” plotlines often enough, she’s now learning the 100 weaves you need to know to become aes sedai (which have literally never been mentioned before) so that she can take the test and become a ~real~ aes sedai since the other sisters think egwene raising her doesn’t count. sigh.

nynaeve offers to try Healing daigian of her grief over her warder’s death. girl if you can Heal emotional hurts/mental illnesses why ON EARTH have you never suggested this to rand or even considered that he might benefit???? oh my god.

nynaeve thinks that her love for lan is more ~important~ than daigian’s love for her late warder (eben the asha’man) because a) it is “genuine, and not due to a bond,” obviously nynaeve is sooo insecure over not being bonded to lan that it makes her look stupid, and b) daigian’s love for eben was “the affection of an aunt for her favored nephew” rather than a marriage, and as we all know, platonic love is inherently less meaningful than romantic love 🙄 that really does seem to be a message of the series overall, what with the way the 3 boys become completely cut off from their platonic relationships and entirely dependent on their single love interest for connection and emotional support, and this is portrayed as romantic and desirable and good.

nynaeve does redeem herself a moment later by thinking about how unfair it is that daigian, who knows as much as any other aes sedai and more than many, is always the inferior in any situation bc she’s weak in the power. finally someone recognizes this! (someone aes sedai, at least, since iirc we’ve had aiel and/or windfinders saying it’s nonsense before.) but then she loses respect again because she thinks about how teaching the kin to stand up for themselves resulted in them standing up to HER too and she isn’t sure she wants to “attempt a similar revolution among the aes sedai,” of course you don’t seeing as the current power system works to your advantage 🙄 although given nynaeve’s frustration with constantly being condescended to, and my frustration that everyone treats her like that, i suppose i can sympathize with her not wanting to implement a more age-/experience-based system that would give older aes sedai even more of an opportunity to walk all over her.

is my sudden uncharacteristic annoyance with nynaeve a sign that sanderson writes her differently? hmmm. something to ponder.

“all these others in camp might bow and scrape and dote on [rand], but nynaeve knew that he was really just a sheepherder from emond’s field. he still got into trouble the same way he had when he and matrim had pulled pranks as boys. only now instead of flustering the village girls, he could throw entire nations into chaos.” awww. walking the thin line between “it’s so sweet that she still sees rand as his old self” and “it’s so frustrating that she refuses to recognize him as an adult and a leader rather than an irresponsible teen” lmao. also, why tf is she calling mat matrim in her narration???

“nynaeve still felt guilty for leaving [elayne and aviendha], but somebody had needed to help rand cleanse saidin.” maybe you would feel less guilty if you’d told them where you were going and why instead of vanishing in the night without so much as a note and then avoiding them in TAR ever since! but i blame the narrative more than nynaeve for that whole thing seeing as the narrative just really doesn’t want elayne and avi to know anything about rand’s life, for whatever godforsaken reason. (so that min can be his primary girlfriend. that’s the godforsaken reason. genuinely it feels like rj decided every character absolutely had to be paired up in a nice heterosexual relationship, realized there were more female characters than male, and put 3 of them with rand so that none of the women would remain single (oh the horrors!), then immediately sent rand and min off alone so that it could still feel like a respectable monogamous relationship. and elayne and avi continue to love and think about rand in their povs because oh the horrors if they didn’t have a boyfriend, while rand only thinks about min in his because oh the horrors if he had a poly relationship.)

“min was there in the tent, of course” of fucking course, seeing as she’ll disintegrate to dust if she ever goes 10 feet away from rand for more than 10 seconds “she was closer to [rand] than anyone” 🤮 i hate it here

nynaeve is all up in arms about rand and min Having Sex While Unmarried, which is obviously stupid, and rand has told her that he can’t marry min because that would make his death hurt her more, which is also stupid, but i would hate it if rand did marry min so i’m not gonna argue. also, why does nynaeve not spare ONE thought for the fact that rand is also in love with two other women - both of whom are very close friends of hers, unlike min - in this whole thing?? like, she’s listing out rand’s Sexual Improprieties and doesn’t mention that he’s also dating 3 women?? and you would totally think nynaeve would misunderstand the poly situation and resent min for stealing away nynaeve’s best friend’s crush/boyfriend! nynaeve was always hearing about rand from elayne and giving her advice and being invested in that relationship! and yet her only objection to rand/min is that they’re not married, not that it’s potentially unfair to elayne! the narrative doesn’t think it’s unfair to elayne, and elayne doesn’t think it’s unfair to elayne (even though min ABSOLUTELY WOULD think it was unfair to min if their situations were reversed), but i do and you’d think nynaeve would too! that is her best friend’s man waltzing around fucking some other woman 24/7! no way in hell would our fiercely protective and also incredibly judgmental and traditional nynaeve not have a problem with that even if she did witness all the love confessions!

aviendha arrives in the tent. she and rand are now seeing each other for the first time since caemlyn (which barely counts bc they exchanged 2 words and didn’t have a single real moment together). AND NEITHER OF THEM REACTS IN ANY WAY!!! like yeah they’re in the middle of a war council so it’s not like they’re gonna start making out, and we’re in nynaeve’s pov so can’t know about their internal feelings (which is a poor writing decision in and of itself, setting this moment in her pov instead of avi’s or rand’s) but where are my heated and meaningful glances?? my lingering looks?? my breaths catching when they meet each other’s eyes for the first time in weeks/months?? my quickly glancing away agains in hopes that other people won’t notice?? and nynaeve also does not react in any way! she KNOWS that avi and rand are dating and doesn’t say a single word about it here! if i didn’t know they were dating, i would have absolutely no idea from reading this scene! so much for my fucking avirand reunion! ugh!!!!

rand says that the aiel were in andor to help elayne. in a previous book bael had complained that it was foolish of elayne not to accept aid from whatever spears were available and bashere had to explain to him about the intricacies of wetlander politics, but here bael says “she was right to refuse aid. i’d rather run across the entire waste with a single skin of water than have leadership of my clan handed to me by another.” Sanderson Inconsistency Alert (also for an aiel to call it the waste instead of the three-fold land). and in response “rand’s expression grew dark again, his eyes stormy” even though in the previous book he’d come to acknowledge that elayne was indeed right to refuse his aid with caemlyn. another Sanderson Inconsistency Alert, or maybe just a standard Regression Of Rand’s Non-Min Relationships.

okay so rand wants to STOP ituralde’s kickass campaign against the seanchan so that the seanchan will be his friends. SIGH. i understand about the whole allying with former enemies against the shadow thing, i know, i know, but i just will never like it!

there’s tension between rand and the aiel in this chapter. “we are not kidnappers.” “you are what i say you are, bael.” “we are still free people, rand al’thor.” “i will change the aiel with my passing. i don’t know what you’ll be once this is all through, but you cannot remain what you were.” gee, if only rand had an aiel partner who could be relevant here and talk to him on her people’s behalf and talk to her people on his behalf! if only! rand/avi as a bridge between two cultures and rand/elayne as a political powerhouse are SO RICH narratively and plot-wise and character-wise, and they were COMPLETELY WASTED in favor of rand spending all his time with an in-universe-ly useless and a narratively useless love interest who CONTRIBUTES NOTHING TO THE STORY!!! I HATE IT HERE!!!!

now we get some siuan/bryne nonsense. feeling heterophobic in this chili’s tonight.

aww egwene is completely willing to believe saidin’s really been cleansed, when near everyone else we’ve seen has been skeptical and dismissive.

random thought but: egwene needed an army/general to besiege tar valon. elayne needed an army/general to hold caemlyn. perrin needed an army/general to attack malden. rand needs armies/generals always. and where is our protagonist who was set up as the greatest general of the age? fucking about in a circus in the middle of the woods! what a waste. what a narrative waste!!!! mat could have fit into any one of those plotlines better than his own and been more useful and had more character development there than in his own!

now, perrin thinks it’s weird that tam calls him my lord and tam does call him just perrin when they speak in private. thank you sanderson!

tam mentions the queen of andor being pissed if they tried to bring back manetheren. he doesn’t know that’s his daughter-in-law! the mother of his grandbabies! not that rand knows that second thing either. but still!!! i’m weeping!!

wait a minute wait just a minute. now we have tam AND morgase in the same traveling party, both unaware that their kids are dating and expecting babies together..............jots down note to resolve this in my avimatrandlayne fic series since i just know the books won’t resolve it. man if i don’t get to see lini react to elayne being pregnant out of wedlock with the dragon reborn’s children and also having a shared aiel girlfriend with him, then what’s this all been about?

anyway, perrin says “the sooner that elayne takes her throne and sends a proper lord out to the two rivers, the better.” 1) confirmation that perrin knows who elayne is, nice lmao 2) why the fuck does the two rivers need a permanent lord?? they were doing just fine before! i’ve hated this arc since tsr.

perrin says, to tam, rand’s father, who has not seen rand in ages and is very worried about him and only just found out he’s the dragon reborn because perrin didn’t fucking bother to tell him earlier, “[rand] seems to like scooping up kingdoms. like a child playing a game of wobbles.” then notes that tam smells concerned and does nothing about it. what the hell perrin! i don’t want to hear any of that “mat is the worst friend to rand” nonsense, perrin is Clearly the worst friend! i bet mat would make an effort to console tam about rand if he were here, or at the very least not say upsetting things about rand in front of him. as a general observation, for all that perrin is allegedly so thoughtful and slow to speak, he is not very empathetic and never has been.

but perrin gains some points back by acknowledging that he hasn’t been a good leader lately and has ignored all his other obligations to focus on faile. “aram had been a friend” [footage not found] perrin was always annoyed by aram and rude to him “one that perrin had discarded in his quest to save faile. aram had deserved better.” yeah [sobs]

ituralde says that thom used to like juggling to entertain little elayne 😭 i’m dying for trakand family flashback cold opens in upcoming seasons

“there was a sword at [rand’s] side, and the way he walked made ituralde think he knew how to use it. he strode with firm, determined steps, as if he thought the soldiers around him an honor guard.” rand has massive bde confirmed 🥵

“something about the newcomer drew ituralde’s eyes.” “he was fit - lean and hard” “‘i am rand al’thor, the dragon reborn. and i need you.’” “‘you are my concern,’ al’thor said, eyes so hard that they seemed ready to burrow into ituralde’s skill and search about inside for anything of use.” “‘i have orders,’ ituralde said, shaking his head. wait. he wouldn’t do as this youth asked if he didn’t have orders. except...those eyes. ...eyes that demanded obedience.” “there seemed to be a...a force about al’thor, drawing ituralde in, demanding that he do as asked.” weird amount of sexual tension here. i love it. in fact, there is more sexual tension here than rand and min have ever had hjfkgjh the ta’veren pull isn’t real, it’s just that rand is hot and everyone wants to fuck him and makes up magical explanations for it so they don’t have to admit it (see: mat in tsr)

speaking of mat, rand currently needs an army and a Great General. 😤😤😤😤😤

the maidens are upset that rand went to meet with ituralde without any guards, but they blame themselves because “if a child hurts himself because he was not taught properly to stay away from knives, then the shame is upon his parents.” 🥺

apparently the maidens have been beating rand repeatedly to Teach Him Properly and rand takes it calmly but doesn’t change his behavior one bit afterwards. i miss the days when the maidens were getting him drunk and giggly and tickling him and tucking him into bed 😔

“if you listened to [elayne] talk about the aches, sicknesses, and frustrations of her pregnancy, you would almost think she was approaching death!” girl you’re gonna get pregnant with QUADRUPLETS and Then You Will See. also, this does not fit with the wifely behavior of previous books’ aviendha fussing over and coddling elayne so much that ELAYNE got annoyed!

oh my god avi thinks that wetlanders all complain a lot and initially thought this was shameful, But Then: “however, if complaining was something that elayne did, then aviendha refused to accept it as a sign of weakness. her first-sister would not act in such a shameful way. therefore, there had to be some hidden honor in it.” 😭😭😭😭😭 avi loves elayne SO MUCH!!! truly Elayne Has Done Nothing Wrong Ever In Her Life, I Know This And I Love Her. i have never related to a wheel of time character more.

avi: “not all wetlanders” you’re right, elayne would never do this

avi theorizes that Wetlander Complaining could be either a) exposing weaknesses to your companions as a sign of trust and friendship or b) a way of showing humility a la gai’shain subservience. she once shared these theories with elayne and “received only a fond laugh in return” THEY ARE MARRIED

“[aviendha] was strong and brave. not as brave as some others, of course; she could only wish to be as bold as elayne.” 😭😭😭

once again avi thinks What Would Elayne Do throughout the chapter and tries to consider problems the way elayne would 😭 thank you avi for providing me with the elayne content i would otherwise be deprived of in this book.

there’s some weird fire thing (bubble of evil?) that avi successfully puts out, like a goddamn Hero. rand comes to see what’s going on and we have our first and only avirand interaction so far: rand is angry about the fire and yelling at the sky i.e. the forsaken (i assume) that he’s coming for them, avi says “rand” and he looks at her and then walks back into the house. that’s it! that’s our only interaction in the first 190 pages (as of this scene and 250 pages as of the end of chapter 15 by which point there have still not been any additional interactions) between a couple who are a) in a committed relationship b) bonded as warder and wardee and c) in the same location together for the first time in many weeks and many books. i expected nothing and i’m still let down!! ugh!!

avi kinda plays mediator between rand and the aiel here in her convo with melaine (she says that rand’s plan is good but that he should’ve phrased it differently so as not to offend the clan chiefs), why can’t we see her filling that role in conversations with rand as well! ugh!!

“another thought occurred to her as she pushed that one away - a treacherous one. a thought of rand al’thor, resting in his room. she could go to him...no! not until she had her honor back. she would not go to him as a beggar. she would go to him as a woman of honor.” still bottling up my rant for a few more chapters, but It Is Coming. also, we all know that if avi HAD tried to go spend the night with rand, min would’ve chased her out of the house with a broom.

oh damn now egwene says it’s been “well over a month” since siuan told her in TAR about asha’man bonding sisters, which was only like 2 chapters ago. big sudden timeskip! i wonder if the other plotlines have jumped ahead a month too. i.e. how mad do i need to be about avirand potentially not having spoken to each other yet for an entire month lmao

HMMMMM seaine is described as having black hair and watery blue eyes. mesaana??????? but surely that would’ve come out when they were using the oath rod on each other in a previous book.......although maybe seaine only swore that she wasn’t black ajah, which would technically be true if she was actually a forsaken. hmmmmm.

okay so now rand has rounded up ituralde and egwene the black ajah hunters, hopefully that’s the end of some side character subplots now

gawyn returns and yes, he’s definitely being set up for a proper plotline this book! thank god! SOMEBODY needs to fill my trakand quota.

damn gawyn is basically a blademaster at this point even if he doesn’t have a heron-marked sword. a blademaster and a genius general so young, always agonizing about the mountain of duty, doesn’t trust aes sedai...........there’s some foiling with both rand and mat going on here but my brain is too sleepy to analyze further.

“all gawyn had ever wanted was to protect elayne.” me the fuck too! baby boy! “he wanted to defend andor. maybe learn to be a little more like galad.” baby boy!! i can’t wait for the show’s more complicated version of gawyn and galad’s relationship (again going off leaks here), because i can deeeefinitely see grounds for giving gawyn a galad-induced inferiority complex even if the books channel that into simple, uncomplicated idolization.

when the warder sleete starts telling gawyn about how his aes sedai has only one warder because she said she would only ever take another if sleete found someone he judged worthy: “all right, gawyn thought, wondering why he was being told this.” [squishes his cheeks] you are so stupid i love you

“‘hammar was a good man.’ ‘he was,’ gawyn said, feeling a twist in his stomach. ‘but he would have killed you,’ sleete said. ‘killed you cleanly and quickly. he was the one on the offensive, not you. he understood why you did what you did. nobody made any good decisions that day. there weren’t any good decisions to be made.’” first of all, crying, second of all, grateful that gawyn got to hear this from another mentor figure, third of all, very interesting reveal that hammar was on the offense and gawyn killed him only in self-defense, because the way i’ve seen people talk about it is that gawyn committed such an atrocity by murdering his mentor but it seems that he really had no choice and hammar was the one who attacked HIM first.

oh right, gawyn’s other current crime is that he wants to kill rand for killing morgase, but i don’t see why i should hate on him for this when he’s far from the only WOT character to fall victim to misinformed rumors that lead him to believe the worst of somebody who doesn’t deserve it. that’s kind of a theme of the entire series!

anyway, gawyn wants to have a homoerotic rivalry with rand soooo bad but rand is too busy dealing with all the forsaken who want homoerotic rivalries with him to be aware that gawyn wants one too or even to remember his existence. poor gawyn. you’ll have to wait in line.

“the pay [for the camp’s washerwomen] was small for so much work, and gawyn gave the women what little extra he could afford out of his own pocket, a gesture that had earned him laughter from narenwin sedai, but thanks from the village women. gawyn’s mother had always taught that the workers were the spine of a kingdom; break them, and you’d soon find that you could no longer move. this city’s people might not be his sister’s subjects, but he would not see them taken advantage of by his troops.” he’s a good boy! 🥺 and so like elayne! and dare i say foiling rand’s current worse-than-ever I Will Use People mentality?

gawyn finally finds out that egwene is a) the rebels’ amyrlin and b) held captive in the white tower and being “made to howl half the day” and he is turning on his men/the aes sedai just as i was crossing my fingers for!!!! oh my god it’s happening everybody stay calm stay fucking calm!!!!!

i can foresee that gawyn’s rescue attempt of egwene will cause problems and/or annoy egwene since she doesn’t want to be rescued. gawyn’s Great Crime, perhaps? but i can’t blame him for being frantic and wanting to help her bc he has no idea that she doesn’t need or want help and also, “siuan sanche had been stilled and slated for execution, and she had simply been a deposed amyrlin. what would they do with a false amyrlin, a leader of a rebel faction? made to howl half the day...egwene was being tortured. she would be stilled! she probably had been already. after that, she would be executed.” so, i will 100% understand if egwene is annoyed with him for trying to rescue her from a situation she has well in hand, but i also 100% understand why gawyn is afraid for her and is going to try to help her.

“egwene was in trouble. he blinked deliberately, standing in the square, cattle calling distantly, water bubbling in the canal beside him. egwene would be executed. where is your loyalty, gawyn trakand?” conflicted characters deciding to turn on their side (bonus points when it’s because they care for someone on the other side) is my favorite arc and the moment of that decision is my favorite moment of that favorite arc, so i am absolutely frothing at the mouth right now!!

“burn you, elaida! burn you, siuan sanche, and your entire tower. stop using people. stop using me!” gawyn and rand and mat parallels!!!!

every time i agree with cadsuane about something (again this time it’s rand being stupid for refusing to harm women) it’s such a Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Good Point moment jfkgh

on the other hand, every time cadsuane thinks about all the things she’s taught rand or wants to teach him if only he’ll listen, i become the “let me ask you a very fair question. what DO you do successfully?” vine. literally what HAS cadsuane done successfully in this entire series so far??? besides made rand even more snappish and less likely to listen to advice.

crying that sorilea going “semirhage is just a normal human she’s not even SCARY. so lame and disappointing.” is what makes semirhage start to crack hjdkfgj

“the problem was, al’thor wasn’t ready for the last battle. cadsuane could feel it in the way he spoke, the way he acted. the way he regarded the world with that dark, nearly dazed expression. if the man he was now faced the dark one to decide the fate of the world, cadsuane feared for all people.” okay so try and do something Actually Helpful about it then

we officially learn that rand and min share a room every night. while avi is all alone out in her tent or wherever. URGH!!!!

and rand officially learns (via dream encounter) that the shadar logoth man he keeps seeing in his head is ishamael resurrected. he also learns that balefire is the only way to kill someone too permanently for the dark one to bring back, and i can tell this will lead to rand going too trigger-happy with balefire.

min has one (1) generous thought about avi: “aviendha’s quick thinking had made a potential disaster into a mere inconvenience. not that she was being rewarded for it. the wise ones continued to work her as hard as a merchant’s last mule.”

min hasn’t been able to get close enough to avi to have a conversation even though they’ve been in the camp together “for some time.” the wise ones’ sudden punishments are truly just a plot device to keep avi from spending any time with her 2 polycule members who are with her now ugh (more on this shortly)

min thinks that she and avi became a little more comfortable with each other while drinking in caemlyn, “but one day did not friends make, and she was definitely uncomfortable about sharing.” AS IF YOU’VE EVER HAD TO SHARE A FUCKING THING UGH!!!! min is the one who gets 95% of the screentime with rand yet also the only one who still complains about having to share him!!! (avi complains about sharing him *with min* bc she doesn’t know min, but not about the idea of sharing in general.) elayne and avi are so onboard to share with each other, they love each other and rand so much, they are so wholeheartedly happy to see rand love the other person, it’s a wonderful dynamic between those 3 that min completely tanks!!! what the FUCK is she doing in a poly relationship if she’s uncomfortable with sharing!!!! min is that person who says they want to try an open relationship but then gets mad when their partner actually dates other people.

“she wasn’t aes sedai - thank the light - but somehow she had bonded him.” what do you mean “somehow”??? it was all elayne’s doing! as usual going out of her way to include your ungrateful ass in her own relationship with rand!!

i am literally SO TIRED of min thinking about how hot it is to feel rand’s desire for her when they fuck. if i have to read about it one more time i’ll snap!

“what was she doing trying to solve a scholarly mystery?” i sure as fuck don’t know. “but who else was there?...even those [aes sedai] who had made their oaths to him might decide that it was in rand’s best interests to keep secrets from him.” YOU MEAN THE THING YOU DO LITERALLY ALL THE TIME???? URGH!!!! and then 2 sentences later: “she felt she was getting close [to figuring out what rand would have to do about the seals] but it worried her to reveal what she’d discovered to rand. how would he respond?” EXHIBIT FUCKING A altho later in the scene she does indeed tell him her theories so, fine, i’ll let it slide THIS time. but there have been MANY other times where she tried to or actually did withhold info from him “for his best interests.”

“she’d never thought that she, of all people, would become a fool for some man.” does the fact that you think thoughts like this SO OFTEN tell you something? no? “yet here she was, following him wherever he went, putting his needs before her own.” that’s not love or partnership, that’s obsession and unhealthy codependence. “that didn’t mean she was his pet, regardless what some of the people in camp said.” LMAO WE STAN SOME OF THE PEOPLE IN CAMP also like literally the fact that min has to insist SO OFTEN TO HERSELF that she’s NOT a fool for rand and NOT just his pet.........the lady doth protest too much methinks

min on why it’s good to be underestimated: “any assassin who came to kill rand should think that he could ignore min. the would-be killer would soon discover the knives hidden in min’s sleeves. she wasn’t as good with them as thom merrilin was, but she knew more than enough to kill.” [footage not found] name ONE time when you have been a help to rand in a fight, min. scratch that, name one time you have not been an ACTIVE HINDRANCE to rand in a fight. min is also a character i am constantly asking “what DO you do successfully?”

“she loved him. she hadn’t chosen to do so, but her heart - or the pattern, or the creator, or whatever was in charge of these things - had made the decision for her.” really? because i seem to remember you going “well, since i’m fated to love rand, i’ve decided to suddenly be madly in love with him and chase him down and force him to love me back, even though he’s not my type and i don’t find anything about him attractive.” also, min-avi contrast again: earlier avi thought “i love rand because *i* choose to, not because fate said so” and here min thinks “i didn’t choose to love rand but fate forced me to.” exactly why avirand works as a Fated Romance and min/rand doesn’t!!!

“and now she wouldn’t change her feelings if she could. if it meant danger, if it meant suffering the looks of men in the camp, if it meant...sharing him with others.” you count having to share your boyfriend with others one of the top 3 worst things about dating him?? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN A POLY RELATIONSHIP!!!!!! also this reference to the looks in the camp + the earlier thing about them calling her rand’s pet + “what did it matter if soldiers in the camp didn’t know what her value was?” (sidenote, what IS your value, min? what DO you do successfully?) she is trying soooo hard to feel oppressed over some people in the camp Hurting Her Feelings, when this is literally the first time she’s ever gone anywhere and not had everybody in the vicinity fawning over her as the dragon’s girlfriend and granting her privileges. even the maidens loved her and encouraged her relationship with rand despite having previously chased off every woman but avi who tried to get close to him!

min tries to get rand to tell her what’s bothering him, he says “no you’ll think i’m mad,” she’s like i swear i won’t just tell me, so he tells her about lews therin’s voice and how he tries to seize saidin etc, and she immediately thinks “oh my god he’s mad” lmao god. at least she doesn’t say so to his face though.

min tells rand that he has to destroy the seals because “i’ve been reading herid’s books all this time, and i believe that’s what he meant by ‘clearing away the rubble.’ in order to rebuild the dark one’s prison, you will first need to open it. clear away the patch made on the bore.” not to flex on min but i figured that out the MOMENT i first read herid’s note about clearing away the rubble. i could’ve told rand this like 6 books ago. so min has now done one (1) thing successfully, but it was a thing that anybody who can read could’ve figured out, so i’m not counting it.

while rand is snuggling up with min in the cozy bedroom that they share, alone, every single night, aviendha is out in the night all alone exhausted and humiliated and doing all her useless punishments. have i mentioned that i hate it here? because i hate it here.

“[rand] was sleeping now, though aviendha had been forced to mute her bond in the middle of her night’s punishment, lest she endure sensations that she’d rather have avoided. at least, she’d rather have avoided them secondhand.” she’s out here all alone in the middle of the night having the worst time and then being forced to feel her boyfriend fucking his other girlfriend, and never even getting to say a single word to him herself let alone sleep with him!! and since they’ve been in the camp together for “some time” and rand has been spending all his time with min, i’m guessing avi has had to put up with this constantly! it’s so fucking unfair! and yet MIN is the one complaining about having to share!! and let’s not forget that there’s no way for the min-rand bond to ever be masked, since it seems that the warder can’t mask it and the bondholder can’t mask it without channeling ability (rand does mention earlier in this book that neither he nor min has ever been able to make the masking trick work), which is exactly why min has no business being a bondholder - anyway, this means that even if rand and avi ever DID get time alone together, which they never do, but if they did, they would literally never be able to get privacy from min! she would be there in the bond feeling the whole thing, unlike avi being able to respectfully mask her own bond when rand’s with min! i hate it here!!!!

okay, finally time for my rant: avi not wanting to be with rand until she’s found herself and found her honor by becoming a full wise one would’ve been adorable and a great character arc for her if it had been introduced way earlier, but to my memory we have never ONCE heard a WORD of anything like this before, either in avi’s few povs up til now or in any dialogue she’s had with rand or about rand with elayne. she’s never given any indication that she can’t be with rand until she’s a wise one and can bring honor to their relationship - true, it could be a new thing borne by the recent shame she feels over the wise ones’ inexplicable punishments of her, but the way she thought about it in her first chapter made it sound like her being with rand hinges on her becoming a wise one, not just on figuring out what she did wrong and getting her honor back. either way, i’m pretty sure this is just being suddenly thrown in here as a convenient excuse for min to remain rand’s exclusive relationship even though another of his girlfriends is literally right there in the same location and plotline and should by all rights be getting some time and emotional development with him 🙄🙄🙄

like it just doesn’t make sense, at this point avi has already bonded with rand (i initially mistyped this as “boned” and that is also something she has already done with rand jkfg) and they’ve told each other they love each other and aviendha told him that she would pick up a bridal wreath if he laid one at her feet even if that’s not the way things are done, so this just feels like a bizarre out-of-the-blue relationship regression. they got into a committed relationship in WH and now they’re suddenly back at square one as if that never happened, and they don’t even TALK to each other in any of these scenes! all because the narrative wants rand to have 3 girlfriends but does not actually know how to handle non-monogamous relationships and would implode if he was actively involved in 2 relationships at the same time in the same place, rather than always being just with 1 woman at a time because the other 2 aren’t around. and because min would have absolutely nothing to do in the story if she didn’t get to be plastered to rand’s side 24/7, so of course he can’t spend any time alone with avi and apart from min 🙄 god forbid her sole narrative function, Rand’s Emotional Support, be shared with a second character!

i will probably be blaming “the narrative” in this context most of the time now since i don’t know what things were or weren’t in rj’s notes so for a lot of stuff idk whether to blame him or sanderson lmao

oh, and the second reason for the narrative needing an excuse for avi to not spend time with her own boyfriend despite being in the same location as him for several chapters is because if she got to talk to him alone and for longer than 10 seconds she would tell him about elayne’s pregnancy straightaway and of course rand is not narratively allowed to know that yet because it would interfere with his downward spiral no-hope-for-the-future arc. ARGH!!!!! i can’t even blame avi for not telling him because this is so clearly Hand Of Author. yes i will continue to blame min for not telling him even though that’s also Hand Of Author, thanks for asking <3

speaking of rand’s downward spiral arc, it is VERY interesting how, in order for that arc to occur, he has to be cut off from all his relationships........except min. rand knowing about the babies or spending time with elayne, avi, mat, perrin, tam, the maidens, etc. would interfere with his downward spiral arc, but spending time with min doesn’t. so, far from the “min is the only one who Understands and Supports him!” take that most of fandom has, what i’m concluding from this is that min is rand’s only loved one who is narratively allowed to spend time with him during his downward spiral arc because she doesn’t hinder that arc, in other words, rand’s mental health and emotional wellbeing are not helped by his relationship with min. like, the fact that the point in the series when min became rand’s sole major relationship and emotional connection just so happens to coincide with the point when rand’s mental health began taking a sharp downwards turn...........i am looking.

anyway. overall, so far i actually haven’t noticed a huge difference in terms of writing style between sanderson and rj, aside from the occasional word choice or turn of phrase that feels maybe a bit more modern/less formal than what rj would’ve written. but definitely nothing that’s jarring, and SO FAR i’m honestly not sure i would’ve noticed there was an author switch if i hadn’t known and the book hadn’t said so. the only big things are a) while avi’s dialogue is the same, her narration in this book sounds like any other character’s narration whereas i think i remember her narration in rj books being very formal (using few to no contractions, for example) in the same way her dialogue is, however we only got a couple brief avi povs in rj books so i could be misremembering. and b) lots more pov-hopping, every chapter is a different pov character and often there are multiple pov characters within a single chapter, whereas in rj’s books there tended to be long chunks with one character/plotline at a time. the pros of the change are that it helps pacing feel faster and that if there’s a certain pov character you don’t like you’re not stuck with them for long. oh the dread i would feel when i checked upcoming chapters and realized i was about to become mired in 100 pages of perrin jfkgjh but the cons are that it can feel disjointed/jumping around too much and we don’t really have time to settle into any of the plotlines since we dart between them so quickly. and also that it makes it harder for me to decide where to cut off my recaps, which is why this post is so long, i kept thinking “oh just one more chapter and then i’ll post it” lmao