#aelia reads knife of dreams

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You're telling me an illuminator invents a dragon that is not a dragon to kill dragons that are not called dragons.

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She [Tuon] wondered about the scar he [Mat] took such pains to hide. That he did was understandable. Why had he been hanged, and how had he survived? She could not ask. She did not mind lowering his eyes a little—in fact, it was enjoyable making him writhe; it took so little effort—but she did not want to destroy him. At least, not for the moment.

You know, mat and tuon are courting each other like it's a performance and/or a battle and I'm here for it. But also these last two lines really are something.

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Grim tone or no grim tone, Mat enjoyed looking at the dark little woman who was to be his wife. Who was halfway his wife already ... Burn him but she was beautiful ... Her big eyes were dark pools a man could spend a lifetime swimming in. Her rare smiles could be mysterious or mischievous, and he prized them. He enjoyed making her laugh, too. At least, when she was not laughing at him. True, she was a little slimmer than he had always preferred, but if he could ever get an arm around her without Selucia there, he believed she would feel just right. And he might convince her to give him a few kisses with those full lips. Light, he dreamed about that sometimes! Never mind that she called him down as if they were already married. Well, almost never mind.

get yourself somebody who talks about you the way mat talks about tuon <3

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I do like whenever chapters warm me up to aes sedai who don't necessarily always ally themselves with the protagonists. Romanda's power struggles with lelaine and egwene and her reluctance to accept older novices can be frustrating but she still has valid concerns and I love the little detail about her reading books about adventure and romance. Beonin is elaida’s ally but I still liked reading the bits where she talked about her mother and grandmother and her determination to hunt down murderers because she considers it the worst crime possible. 

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She felt Birgitte leap from somewhere miles behind her to perhaps a mile ahead, and she wanted to laugh. The bond said Birgitte was aimed at her target, and Birgitte Silverbow never missed.

I thought the elayne kidnapping plotline was kind of unnecessary but you know points to rj for making me weepy over this.

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I reallyyy want to give perrin a chance and I, for a fact, had a post saved in my drafts just rambling about how I felt like I’d slightly warmed up to him since he abandoned his axe (although question. if he uses the hammer for violence does it really matter that he abandons the axe. and it never came across to me like he enjoyed torturing that shaido captive)**** but chapter 12 of knife of dreams kind of highlights every single one of my problems with him lol. 

The narrative tries to hammer in how Perrin’s characterisation revolves around his thoughtfulness and practicality but it feels like he barely embodies them. I saw red for a moment there when Perrin just shoved thoughts of mat - his childhood friend!! - aside while distantly acknowledging that he could possibly be in trouble*. For a second there I wanted to shake him and tell him that worrying about somebody other than his wife literally wouldn’t hurt anybody. And I won’t say he fully doesn’t care about the various events leading up to tarmon gai’don because that would be straight up false but he doesn’t care about them nearly as much he should and he spends every single moment griping about his responsibilities or trying to run from them**. 

The event that made me furiously type out this post, though, was his bland dismissal and apathetic attitude being aimed at a man literally dying after vomiting beetles in front of his eyes and demanding the seanchan to ignore him and get to business. that’s not practicality lol!!! If I were one of the seanchan I’d have straight up strangled him right there.***

This is not even to start on how he forgot to ensure that masema followed him as promised when he first learned that faile was kidnapped in book 9 and constantly comes across like he feels he can do some stuff better than berelain just because he’s straightforward or whatever - idk I don’t have the words to elaborate because I’ve paid zero attention to his chapters since book 9.

in short: I LOVE scheming. Perrin hates scheming. I’ve now filed for a divorce.

****EDIT: I don’t know anything about how his hammer is supposed to function later. excuse any erroneous assumptions about it.

* ** *** (quotes under the cut)

But then, Balwer had been in a frenzy—a dry, dusty frenzy, yet still a frenzy—to seize this chance to gather information on what was happening in Amadicia under the Seanchan. For himself, Perrin could barely make himself care. Only Faile mattered, now.

Those colors spun in his head, and for an instant he glimpsed Mat riding off a road into forest followed by a line of mounted folk and packhorses. An instant only, because he dashed the image aside without so much as a thought to why Mat was going into the woods or who was with him. Only Faile mattered.

[Perrin] “They’re just borer beetles. You can find them almost anywhere there’s old fallen timber.” The man jerked, lifted his gaze and jerked again when he saw Perrin’s eyes. Catching sight of the hammer at Perrin’s belt, he darted a quick, startled glance at the Banner-General. “These beetles came from no log. They’re Soulblinder’s work!” “That’s as may be,” Perrin replied calmly. He supposed Soulblinder was a name for the Dark One. “It makes no difference.”

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The line from lord of chaos that goes, "Head high, she stepped through, ready to face whatever came with her aiel heart" is never not on my mind and chapter 24 of knife of dreams embodies the essence of the sentence as it chronicles egwene's captivity in the white tower. amys, sorilea, and all the other wise ones who mentored her would've been really proud and maybe especially so because of the time she spends mentoring and comforting the accepted and novices in the tower :')

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Mark me down as scared and horny?

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Woah a fact I didn't expect to learn was tuon and mat being meant for each other because they both loathe reading books

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I haaaate how aram is treated like some rabid dog 🥴 we get to see a character make the conscious choice to give up the way of the leaf and instead of exploring it properly he's reduced to just some guy who follows perrin and faile around like some mindless puppy. I also really dislike how he's made out to be really violent and looking for an excuse to whip his sword out and kill things and the implication that he's seduced by masema's followers' inclination for destruction because he loves it so much.

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Sounds kind of gay of the gholam to defy the very reason for its existence and purpose to hunt aes sedai and chase mat instead.

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AHH. I just need a moment here because I so appreciate the elayne chapters because of their exploration of grief and the amount of love poured into writing the female characters. vandene half-mad from adeleas’s death trying to resurrect her sister by dressing in her clothes... reanne corly who comforted and cared for wilders, rejected novices and damane who never got to become an aes sedai of the green ajah... mirane larinen carrying her childhood doll everywhere, hiding it from the aes sedai so it would escape being burned with her possessions, and keeping it even after age wore it down... I'm going to miss all of them even if I knew mirane only for two pages and I really wish aviendha had stayed in caemlyn because elayne's chapters don't quite feel the same without her in them.

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Um. So rand has been mad all along.

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It appears I won't have access to deathless over the weekend so I might almost definitely start knife of dreams since I have a physical copy of that. I kind of feel sad that this was the last of rj's books I have left to read because I really loved living in his world these past few months - but I do look forward to reading the eleventh book because for all its issues crossroads of twilight set up some really neat and interesting plotlines. And unless brandon picked up his tendency to wax poetic about clothes and architecture and customs unique to specific cultures and their intersection with gender, I'm really going to miss that aspect of his writing style too.

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It seemed that Nicola—and Areina, who was working in the stables and often came to visit Nicola; they seemed so close that Egwene wondered whether they had become pillow-friends, always with their heads together and smiling mysterious smiles— Nicola and Areina had regaled them all with tales of her.

this is so funny... it appears it's impossible to seperate nicola and areina even in the white tower and I'm glad they're living their gayest lives out there. I couldn't resist looking up the wiki and of course nicola bonds areina as her warder later lol.

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Bodewhin Cauthon was quite pretty, but she was an intelligent girl even so, though she had something of her brother around the eyes and rather more of him in her head than she was willing to admit. Undoubtedly she was already hard on the path to the Green, or perhaps the Blue. The girl wanted to live adventure, not just read about it, as if an Aes Sedai’s life would not bring her more adventure than she wished without searching for it.

she’s a copy of egwene with hints of mat in her and you know she’s gearing up for a career in keeping the white tower on its feet with her pranks :)