#but they were usually narration so i think they might have been soliloquies not monologues :

[today-i-am-thinking-about]

monologues

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 20

In which Mat shows up for the first time this book, and I am...underwhelmed

Chapter 20: On a Broken Road

I return! Adulthood is overrated and I would much rather just read books for a living. Alas.

So. I have tea, and Chapter 20 of The Gathering Storm, and a promise to myself not to leave this chair until the chapter is done. Let’s do this.

“Women,” Mat declared

Well aren’t we off to a great start.

“are like mules.”

*raises eyebrow* done with your shit and liable to kick you where it hurts?

“Wait. No. Goats. Women are like goats.”

So that part last chapter where Tuon thought to him not to dig himself into deeper trouble than he can climb out of? It only took about three words for him to toss the shovel aside and rev up the fucking bulldozer.

Come on, Mat. You ended last book on such a high, don’t ruin it now.

Also that line doesn’t sound very Mat – in terms of diction and syntax, not in terms of sentiment – but I’ll class that as a nitpick and move on.

“Pure poetry, Mat,” Talmanes said

That also doesn’t sound particularly like Talmanes, but in fairness we haven’t seen all that much of Talmanes.

They’d been lucky to find this ancient road, which must have been made before the Breaking. It was mostly overgrown, the stones shattered in many places, large sections of the roadway just…well, just gone.

Almost as if the path is hard to follow, as if there are places where it seems not to connect or make sense, or where there are pieces missing and it’s not at all smooth, and so it’s like a metaphor, you see. The right hand falters and the left hand strays, but they’re both making their way back towards the centre now, even if one is on a broken road and the other is still trying to find his path, so it’s all symbolic and whatnot.

Sapling pines had begun to sprout at the sides of the roadway and between rocks, miniature versions of their towering fathers above.

It’s the ciiiiiircle of liiiiiiiife…..

I’m sorry.

“It’s like...Well, reasoning with a woman is like sitting down to a friendly game of dice. Only the woman refuses to acknowledge the basic bloody rules of the game. A man, he’ll cheat you – but he’ll do it honestly. He’ll use loaded dice, so that you think you’re losing by chance. And if you aren’t clever enough to spot what he’s doing, then maybe he deserves to take your coin. And that’s that.

“A woman, though, she’ll sit down to that same game and she’ll smile, and act like she’s going to play. Only when it’s her turn to throw she’ll toss a pair of her own dice that are blank on all sides.”

So this feels…off, to me. And not in an overly critical nitpicking sense, but in a this is actually jarring to read sense.

Mostly, I think, it’s because Mat shouldn’t be saying all of this out loud. This reads much more like his internal narrative, and even then it’s usually broken up a bit more. The sentiment – much as it makes me roll my eyes because who doesn’t love misogyny in the form of ‘women are mysterious and entirely incomprehensible creatures set on playing games with men’ – isn’t too far from things Mat has thought before, but the way it’s framed feels wrong.

The long, drawn-out metaphor, the way he’s just monologuing his merry way down this road…on the whole, Mat doesn’t do that. When Mat’s exasperated, we usually get the occasional grumble or maybe an exclamation out loud, and the rest is in his internal monologue, interspersed with the action of the scene.

This is much more suited to Thom Merrilin, really.

Also, when it comes to the subject of Women, Mat definitely makes generalisations both in his thoughts and out loud, but they’re usually more closely linked to specific characters.

“Now, you’ll scratch your head and look at the dice. Then you’ll look up at her, then down at the dice again. ‘But there aren’t any pips on these dice,’ you’ll say.

“’Yes there are,’ she’ll say

Mat just doesn’t talk like this. He doesn’t create entire metaphorical scenarios, complete with dialogue, and then narrate them to make his point. When Thom goes off on his bootmaker story, Mat interjects with “what in the Pit of Doom does this have to do with making those fool women see sense?” And then Thom proceeds to tell this long and supposedly didactic story, while Mat sits there and wonders when we’re going to get to the point, which is Elayne and Egwene and Nynaeve.

This whole game-of-dice metaphor could work, perhaps, if it were broken up into single sentences – most of them unspoken but instead just part of Mat’s own thoughts – and scattered throughout the chapter to form a mini-theme. That’s something Jordan does with chapters from time to time. A Cluster of Rosebuds last book did something similar, actually, with the running theme of courtship-as-tactics.

Mat has just spent an entire page monologuing, uninterrupted even by his own thoughts or narrative. The only other time I can think of where Mat even comes close to talking for that long is when he pulls the stole off of Egwene’s shoulders and starts his ‘no, you listen to me’ routine with her and Elayne and Nynaeve. And the whole point there is the lack of interruption, because the reader knows he has everything completely backwards and is digging himself a rather spectacular hole.

Oh, and the time he gets annoyed at the Eelfinn not answering his questions, and starts running off at the mouth without realising what’s happening. Again, this serves a rather important purpose, because it’s what lands him Odin’s role.

Mat’s character relies heavily on the contrasts and interplay between what he says, what he thinks, what he does, and what happens around him. The play of ironies that drives Mat’s character is created by the dissonance between when he says and thinks, and how he actually interacts with the world around him and how other characters view him, so that the reader actually knows him better than he knows himself. Mat’s character depends on context.  

And you can strip him of elements of that context in certain scenes, but it’s usually with a deliberate purpose – upsetting the balance of his narrative by letting him speak uninterrupted (or think uninterrupted or act uninterrupted) has consequences one way or another.

Here, though, there isn’t any of that. There’s just…nothing but Mat talking. And so we’re completely stripped of the balancing effect that allows his character to work.

“’Clearly you can see that they actually came up as twos!’ And she’ll believe it. She’ll bloody believe it!”

“Incredible,” Talmanes said.

The other issue here – or rather, part of the same issue of a complete lack of context or framing or interspersed balancing narrative, action, or other characters to serve as kaleidoscope lenses – is that Talmanes is being used here as an entirely flat sounding board, rather than as a chorus. The difference between the two can be subtle, which no doubt makes it difficult to write well, but there is a difference. All this line from Talmanes does is to remind you that Mat is not giving a soliloquy, and it doesn’t even do that particularly well.

The point of surrounding Mat with other characters is not so they can act as mirrors or supports but so they can act as lenses, giving the reader a different perspective through which to view Mat, in order to build a more accurate picture of him than he presents on his own.

You have to surround him with chorus and context, so that everything he says and does is filtered and reflected and bounced around off of all these different mirrors, each reflecting a fragment froma  different angle, so that all the fragments come together into a mostly cohesive whole that is more than the sum of its reflected parts for the reader. That leaves Mat free to dive headfirst into the nearest pile of dramatic irony.

Without the chorus, though, without context or characters who serve to inform and illumnate rather than provide a simple and unaltered reflection, you’re forced to more or less take Mat at face value. Which flattens him as a character and also makes things like the misogyny of this absurd dice analogy far more frustrating than it might otherwise be, because the narrative is doing absolutely fuck-all to contradict, qualify, or moderate that view.

So now that I’ve spent more words talking about that monologue than it actually contains…

Oh wait nope we’re still going.

This would probably annoy me significantly more if I liked Mat more than I do; I admit that I’d rather see Mat written weirdly than more or less any of the other major characters. Sorry, Mat. I did name my new fox-neighbour after you, though, so there’s that.

As is, it actually doesn’t annoy me much more than Jordan’s Mat was wont to do, and instead is weirdly interesting to me from a meta perspective, in terms of working out exactly what feels so wrong about this, and why it would have been written this way.

“By the time they’re done,” Mat continued, almost more to himself

Almost? Please. The attempt at putting Talmanes into this conversation is almost more awkward than if Mat has actually been talking to a tree this entire time.

And is far more awkward than if this entire thing had been in Mat’s thoughts. Preferably chopped up and scattered as seasoning throughout the chapter.

“You’ll sit there and stare at the table and begin to wonder, just maybe, if those dice didn’t read twos after all. If only to preserve what’s left of your sanity. That’s what it’s like to reason with a woman”

Actually there’s a name for that; it’s called gaslighting and it’s far more commonly done to women than by them, especially in abusive relationships. But sure, let’s just flip it around and turn it into an accusation against half the population, conveniently placing men as the victims and women as, yet again, mysterious incomprehensible creatures who delight in toying with men.

And speaking of ‘toying’, I wouldn’t find this whole rant nearly as irritating if it were about a woman specifically rather than women in general. It would be more interesting than offensive if he were talking about Tuon here, because their whole relationship is a mess and there’s so much to play with there. This would fit right in with the characterisation of their courtship as a game of strategy and tactics, of manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, of two people at the table each playing a slightly different game.

It doesn’t even all need to be specifically about Tuon – Mat certainly isn’t above a bit of sweeping generalisation – but there needs to be a few anchoring mentions of her. Give 90% of this to his internal monologue and make it mostly about Tuon, and then let him say the other 10% aloud, about women in general, and then Talmanes is only getting pieces of the whole and is responding to those, the reader gets the entire thing, and you start to get some of Mat’s typical contrasts back.

I don’t know who this is but it sure as hell isn’t Talmanes.

Of course, few ‘mountains’ in this area were impressive, not compared to the Mountains of Mist, back near the Two Rivers.

Or, you know, Dragonmount.

But then, it’s hard to be impressive compared to a magic volcano that is pyre, grave, and cairn to humanity’s recurring nightmare and answered prayers.

And Mat was determined. Determined not to be pinned in by the Seanchan again

Militarily, at least.

Innuendo aside, though, this is what I want to see more of with Mat. The whole clusterfuck that comes of being in love with (and now married to) the empress of a nation you despise. It’s an interesting version of the ‘enemies-to-lovers’ trope in that they are both, simultaneously, but in different capacities and contexts, and that? Is fascinating to me, as a concept.

But I also feel like, as with so much else about Mat, I want something written in E but his story is actually written in G. If that makes any sense at all.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is why I have never been able to like Mat as much as I sometimes feel like I should. On paper, there’s a lot about him that’s right up my alley. But then the way it’s executed tends to put more emphasis on the things I’m not so interested in, and leave unexplored the things I am intrigued by. I tend to say that Mat is just Not My Type, but I actually think it’s a case of me being able to see all the ways in which he comes so close to being my type but the story chooses to focus on different things. It’s almost more frustrating, that way.

I should clarify that I don’t even mean this as a criticism. No doubt if Mat were written the way I would want him written, plenty of other people would be having exactly the same issue I’m having now. But it does explain why he irritates me sometimes, and why I can’t quite seem to enjoy him much of the time.

He wanted out of this hangman’s noose of a country.

I See What You Did There.

In truth, Master Roidelle didn’t have a lot of experience being a guide. He was a scholar, an academic. He could explain a map for you perfectly, but he had as much trouble as Vanin making sense of where they were

I don’t know what kind of scholar you’re thinking of, but scholarly and academic mapmaking in my experience involved a hell of a lot of hiking through very real bogs with a compass and a notebook and no free hands to hold an umbrella. Also through a desert taking bearings from the rather homogeneous landscape of low hills because your GPS ran out of battery but like hell were you going to waste an entire day in the field to go back and change them, so you’d better know how to navigate by compass and aerial photograph and make sure the features you plot are still accurate to within a few metres.

Academia and practical field knowledge are NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, is what I’m saying here. Anyway. Moving on…

Since this roadway was so disjointed and broken, the pines high enough to obscure landmarks, the hilltops all nearly identical.

Okay, fine, it’s a metaphor. I will grudgingly accept this.

But seriously. Try to tell a geologist that scholars don’t know how to use the maps they make and you’re likely to get a compass-clinometer in the face.

“I’m just asking,” Mat said, pulling down the brim of his hat against the sun. “A commander’s got to ask things like this.”

That second bit, again, should be in his thoughts rather than out loud. Probably with some follow-up thought about how he isn’t going to start being bloody responsible just because he’s married. Something like...I don’t know. This, maybe:

“I’m just asking,” Mat said, pulling down the brim of his hat against the sun. A commander had to ask these sorts of questions. A commander! Burn him, he wanted to avoid battles, not command them. Only, avoiding those battles behind him would have meant leaving all those Seanchan to chase after Tuon. Tuon. His wife. A commander, a husband, and a noble. He had to laugh – it was either that or weep. Just when he had started to think he understood the rules of the game she was playing, she had to marry him and make him some Prince of the bloody Ravens. Well burn him if he was going to let that turn him into a bloody noble, but he was the Band’s commander, whether he wanted it or not, and they were counting on him to see them out of this butcher’s yard. “Just find the flaming mountain,” he said to Vanin, frowning when the man only looked amused.

I mean that’s rough and not really in Jordan’s style either (trust me I would not even for a moment try to claim that I could do a better job of finishing this series than Sanderson; that is not at all the purpose of this), but it’s kind of how I picture this working. Mostly internal monologue, an occasional mention of the whole dice game thing here and there to keep a running theme rather than beating you over the head with a clumsily narrated analogy, Tuon coming up frequently in his thoughts as she’s sort of the cause of his current crisis of self, and a contrast between what he thinks and what other characters see of him.

“Don’t look so glum, Mat,” Talmanes said, puffing on his gold-rimmed pipe. Where’d he gotten that, anyway? Mat didn’t remember him having it before. “Your men have full bellies, full pockets, and they just won a great victory. Not  much more than that a soldier can ask for.”

I think what’s bothering me about Talmanes is that he sounds more like Nalesean here. I liked Talmanes better; can I have him back now please?

“There aren’t losses when you don’t fight in the first place.”

“Then why ride to battle so often?”

“I only fight when I can’t avoid it!” Mat snapped. Blood and bloody ashes, he only fought when he had to. When they trapped him! Why did that seem to happen every time he turned around.

This is better. ‘I only fight when I can’t avoid it’ still feels to me more like something Mat would think rather than actually say, but overall this exchange feels much more true to both of them. And I rather  like Talmanes’s question here.

There aren’t losses when you don’t fight in the first place…it reminds me actually of Rand’s there was a price to be paid for any decision he made. There was a price for who he was. Other people paid it. He had to keep reminding himself that it was a far smaller price than they would pay without him.

Because the answer to ‘then why ride to battle so often’ comes down to something similar, really. There aren’t any losses when you don’t fight in the first place in the same way that Rand’s existence brings a price. Without it, that specific price wouldn’t be paid, but another would. Mat can’t run from battles, and by leading his people through them, he is almost certainly helping to keep the cost from escalating. (Even as he’s helping to change warfare into something even more destructive by introducing gunpowder weapons). There’s a whole interplay, with so many of the main cast, between cost and mitigation, between salvation and destruction.

And so you run into questions like how much destruction is the salvation of the world worth? At what point does the cost become too high? At what point do the scales balance? And how can you accept those costs and not let them consume you, while still retaining enough humanity to care about them at all? Rand’s quickly sliding towards a threshold in that regard, but it comes up in variation with the other characters as well.

Mat tells himself that he avoids battles, but the Aelfinn named him Son of Battles and the name has proved true, and his denials do not always ring entirely true. And yet he does truly hate the price that always must be paid; Mat in the aftermath of a battle is often when I enjoy him the most, because there are some truly beautiful scenes and lines that come out of it.

But perhaps it is precisely this balance he strikes between the thrill of the battle and the stakes and the strategy and the despair at the thought of the cost that makes him a good commander, strategy aside. He can denounce responsibility till he’s blue in the face, but at the end of the day he is always trying to minimise that cost, to keep those who follow him safe. They weren’t even his during that first battle in Cairhien, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon them. Leading them meant paying a certain price, but leaving them would have meant paying a higher, though he wouldn’t have been there to see it.

Why do you ride to battle so often? Because the cost would be higher if he did not.

Probably.

(It’s that ‘probably’ that can cause so much doubt and anguish. You never can prove a negative…)

Of course, Mat was now a nobleman himself. Don’t think about that, he told himself. Talmanes had spent a few days calling Mat “Your Highness” until Mat had lost his temper and yelled at the man – Cairhienin could be such sticklers for rank.

When Mat had first realised what his marriage to Tuon meant, he’d laughed, but it had been the laughter of incredulous pain. And men called him lucky. Well why couldn’t his luck have helped him avoid this fate? Bloody Prince of the Ravens? What did that mean?

This is definitely better. It still feels different from Jordan – and perhaps explains things a little too directly – but it’s far less immediately jarring than the start of this chapter was.

Would the Seanchan chase him? He and Tuon both knew they were on opposing sides now, and she’d seen what his army could do.

YES I WANT THIS. I want Mat to face the Seanchan Army on the battlefield, with them reinforced by the Deathwatch Guard and armed with knowledge from Tuon of Mat’s strategy and style. With women on the front lines because Tuon knows Mat has sworn to himself never to kill another woman. I want a scene that alternates between Mat’s perspective, facing this battle, and Tuon in the Tarasin Palace, unrolling a report delivered by raken with her long lacquered fingernails, calmly issuing orders to her commanders on how to proceed. Mat as the general and Tuon as the Empress, enemies. And that battlefield is between them when next they meet, but they meet as Mat and Tuon this time and so it’s not the same but nor does it erase the blood, and okay I’ll stop because I feel like this is unlikely. Still, I want it, and I will take whatever I can get. I do enjoy the setup, and even these thoughts from Mat about how they are on opposing sides, while in the next sentence he wonders if she loves him. What an excellent fucked up mess.

She’d stayed in his possession, enduring captivity, never running. But he had little doubt that she’d move against him if she thought it best for her empire.

And he will continue to oppose that empire. “You are not my enemy, but your empire is.” Where do you go from there?

Yes, she’d send men after him, though potential pursuit didn’t trouble him half as much as the worry that she might not make it back to Ebou Dar safely.

I rather like this as well – the protectiveness here is rather fascinating in contrast with the fact that, from a military standpoint, the Seanchan are a truly formidable enemy (and more so if Tuon does make it back to Ebou Dar safely).

Puts rather a twist on ‘love thine enemy’, doesn’t it?

So we’re once again in a place where the entities and emblems and figures and thrones are set against one another, even as the people occupying those roles still love. It’s a balance that cannot hold long without collapsing one way or another, but that’s part of what makes it fascinating. Mat and Tuon, Rand and Egwene, Egwene and Gawyn and Elayne and Galad…also Rand and Moridin, if you think about it, which is Fine, I’m fine, this is not a problem at all…

“Mat,” Talmanes said, pointing at him with the pipe again. “I’m surprised at you. Why, you’re starting to sound downright husbandly.”

TALMANES. IS. NOT. NALESEAN.

Also Naleseamanes, you can stop saying Mat’s name every single sentence. Though I suppose it’s understandable; I too would need reassurance that this version of Mat is in fact Mat.

Mat’s denial is also weird and this whole ensuing conversation is weird and feels off. For mostly the same reasons as I’ve already gone on about at length.

“What was that? What does that mean?”

“Nothing, Mat,” Talmanes said hurriedly. “Just that, the way you’re mooning after her, I—”

“I’m not mooning,” Mat snapped […] “I’m just worried. That’s all. She knows a lot about the Band, and she could give away our strengths.”

Just…nope. That first bit is not how Mat talks at all, and his denial takes a very different form to this. This is almost more Nynaeve’s style, though even then it’s not a perfect fit. And while Mat is similar in many ways to Nynaeve, they don’t talk the same way.

There are some moments where he reads just fine, but then something like this comes along and it’s just…I’ve tried in TGS thus far to avoid excessive pointing out of differences between Sanderson and Jordan because for the most part it would be an exercise in futility. There are going to be differences because Sanderson is a different author, and with occasional exceptions I haven’t minded them too much. But this is to a much greater extent, and is to the point where it’s actually distracting.

Maybe if I liked Mat more, I would be more inclined to find things I liked about this chapter? I don’t know. Well, it is what it is. And at the end of the day, weighed against the alternative – the series remaining unfinished – I’ll take this in a heartbeat.

“Ever consider marrying one of them?”

“No, thank the Light,” Talmanes said. Then, apparently, he thought better of what he’d just said. “I mean, it wasn’t right for me at the time, Mat. But I’m certain it will work out fine for you.”

I would not be so certain and also I want my Talmanes back.

Mat scowled. If Tuon was going to bloody finally decide to go through with the marriage, couldn’t she have picked a time when others couldn’t hear?

Okay that got a smile. Well, a fond rolling of eyes anyway.

Aes Sedai were great at keeping secrets unless those secrets could in any way embarrass or inconvenience Matrim Cauthon. Then you could be certain the news would spread through the entire camp in a day’s time, and likely be known three villages down the road as well.

Definitely better, especially because here we’re back to the contrasts and contradictions that are so fundamental to Mat’s character. Because certain key secrets known to some Aes Sedai, such as the fact that he sounded the Horn of Valere, have actually been kept very quiet indeed.

“I’m not giving up gambling,” Mat muttered. “Or drinking.”

“So I believe you’ve told me,” Talmanes said. “Three or four times so far. I half believe that if I were to peek into your tent at night, I’d find you mumbling it in your sleep. ‘I’m going to keep bloody gambling! Bloody, bloody gambling and drinking! Where’s my bloody drink? Anyone want to gamble for it?’”

Hello, 999? I would like to report the abduction and probable murder of Lord Talmanes of House Delovinde. Please let me know if you find him; he was supposed to be here several pages ago and his family and I are growing very concerned.

“You won’t go soft just because you got married, Mat. Why, some of the Great Captains themselves are married, I believe. Davram Bashere is for certain, and Rodel Ituralde.”

Gareth Bryne…well, we’ll have to wager on that one.

“No, you won’t go soft because you’re married.” Mat nodded sharply. Good that was settled. “You might go boring though,” Talmanes noted.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH TALMANES. I miss Talmanes. I suppose this is how I would feel about Mat if I liked Mat more. Huh. Okay, those of you who like Mat more than I do…in the immortal words of Zuko, that’s rough buddy.

Talmanes would be a wine snob, though. I will give him that.

Mat exhaled in relief. He’d begun to think that they might end up wandering these mountains until the Last Battle came and went.

Lost and uncertain, the left hand strays…only not anymore.

This thing with the maps, though…this is another part, I think, of why this chapter isn’t working for me. There’s nothing happening. That in itself isn’t completely new; there are plenty of chapters in Jordan’s books in which not a whole lot actually happens in terms of events, but there’s usually still a purpose to them, and they tend to be done differently for different characters. Someone like Elayne can just about pull off a scene that’s mostly just conversation (well, given some people’s comments, I guess these scenes also don’t work for everyone, but at least they’re in line with Elayne’s character as a politician in a political arc).

Mat also definitely have scenes that aren’t action-packed, but Mat’s ‘passive’ scenes serve a very specific purpose; in these, the passivity is a point unto itself. This sort of scene, with a long stretch of nothing but talking and analysing something, is more suited to Perrin. Mat’s scenes, when they’re not the contemplative storm that precedes a character moment, rely on action to bely the thoughts. There’s a constant play of contractions between what he thinks or says and what he does, and removing the active element causes that balance to collapse. We’re effectively getting only half the picture here, and it throws everything off.

The action can be subtle, but it’s nearly always there. Otherwise, everything is silence and we’re entirely in Mat’s thoughts. Mat doesn’t do ‘talking heads’ scenes. They don’t work for him.

So the tone feels wrong, and the ratio of thought-to-dialogue feels wrong, as does the balance of thought/dialogue and action, but also just the way the scene is framed and planned and outlined feels wrong. It isn’t the right kind of scene for Mat. The conversation might have felt less jarring if it were set against a stronger backdrop, but it isn’t, so there isn’t even anything to distract from the wrongness of the conversations.

Sigh, hello Joline.

Mat and I can agree on one thing: Joline is annoying. And annoyingly incompetent. It doesn’t help that she has the bad luck to show up in scenes that annoy me all on their own, but she really does have a gift for being irritating, and I don’t often side with Mat on who he considers irritating, so that’s saying something.

She couldn’t hurt him with the Power, of course – even without his medallion, since Aes Sedai were sworn not to use the Power to kill except in very specific instances. But he was no fool. He’d noticed that those oaths of theirs didn’t say anything about using knives.

The funny thing is, I don’t know how many Aes Sedai would have noticed that loophole. No doubt some would have. Those who involve themselves with the world, rather than closing themselves off from it. But the others? It would be a very Aes Sedai blind spot for them to have.

Still, from the way each of those Aes Sedai looked at Mat in turn as they reached the front of the line, you’d never know that they owed him their lives. That was the way of it with women. Save her life, and she’d inevitably cliam that she’d been about to escape on her own, and therefore owed you nothing. Half the time, she’d berate you for messing up her supposed plans.

Sigh. This is entirely true to Mat, and true to Jordan’s writing of Mat, and it annoyed me as much when Jordan did it as now, because the narrative continues to back him up on this.

‘Here now’ is an Elend phrase, not a Mat one. The fact that I cannot stand Elend is probably not helping matters here.

Teslyn, at least, continues to be her surprisingly awesome self.

If they’re headed to Caemlyn, that means there’s a good chance of a reunion between Elayne and Mat. I am genuinely looking forward to this. He can teach her to swear and she can teach him to royalty and it’ll be great.

After that, he could make good on his promise to Thom.

YES! MOIRAINE! GO GET MOIRAINE! GO TO THE TOWER SON OF BATTLES! GO TO THE TOWER, TRICKSTER! GO, GAMBLER! GO!

Can I please just skip over Mat and Joline talking to each other? Do I have to read it? I don’t want to. I don’t like these conversations; they always make me annoyed and tired.

“You’re welcome to go on your own,” Mat said.

Please. Please take him up on that. I am so ready to be done with Mat And The Three Aes Sedai. I’ve liked some of his interactions with Teslyn, but aside from that, it has been a trial. (‘A Cold Medallion’ is in the running for my least favourite chapter in the entire series, if that gives you an indication of how very, very ready I am for this particular part of this subplot to end).

Damn it.

“I count two of you,” Mat said, his anger rising. “That means four horses. I figured you’d be smart enough to do that math, Joline.” And then, softer, he added, “if just barely.”

Excuse me, I need to go hit my head against a wall several hundred times. EVERYONE IN THIS CONVERSATION PISSES ME OFF. Joline, because she’s being arrogant and incompetent. Mat, because this kind of insult irks me, for reasons you can probably guess, but also I can’t entirely disagree with him on this one, but also…

*hits head against wall a few more times*

Are they done yet?

Also it’s yet another line that doesn’t really read like Mat. Not that the sentiment is wrong, because Mat does not hold Joline in anything much higher than contempt, but that specific brand of under-his-breath mockery isn’t really his style.

Teslyn gave him a shocked glance, seeming disappointed.

How…meta.

To the side, Talmanes just lowered his pipe and whistled quietly.

I see Talmanes as more of a lowered his pipe and raised an eyebrow type if anything, or he could pull a Lan and suddenly become completely absorbed in studying the contents of the bowl of his pipe until the awkward stops (while of course following every word because he’s as Cairhienin as they come).

“That medallion of yours makes you impudent, Matrim Cauthon,” Joline said coldly.

“My mouth makes me impudent, Joline,” Mat replied with a sigh, fingering the medallion hidden beneath his loosely tied shirt. “The medallion just makes me truthful.”

The tone – weary rather than flippant – and that second half of the line almost makes this work, but it’s still a bit too…well, a bit too Sanderson to feel like Mat. Which I think is part of the issue; Mat is the sort of character who you could at first glance toss in the same group as some of Sanderson’s characters, but on a closer look Mat really doesn’t belong there. This is Sanderson’s humour, and the humour Mat serves to provide is different.

Mat’s humour isn’t in witty retorts; those are reserved more for the Aiel (and occasionally Rand, oddly enough). Mat’s humour comes more from the piling-on of minor dramatic irony throughout a scene or arc, so that what he says is funny because he’s the only one not in on the joke.

And that’s…not a style of humour I’ve ever seen Brandon Sanderson write, that I can think of. His humour comes from the characters themselves saying or doing things that are funny or witty or clever. Mat’s humour comes from the way Mat’s statements fall on the surrounding story. It’s situational humour rather than intentional humour. It’s saying something unintentionally funny rather than cracking a joke.

Mat has never really struck me as a funny character. He’s used for comic relief sometimes, much as Nynaeve is, but I wouldn’t actually call either of them funny, for the most part. Mat’s funny to read – if your humour runs that way; mine often doesn’t, so I could be wrong here – because the reader actually knows him far better than he knows himself. You’re not laughing with him, you’re laughing at him.

And on the occasions when what he actually says is meant to be funny, it tends to be more a tone of irreverence than an actual joke or wisecrack or one-liner. This seems to fall into that second category, though the fact that the tone isn’t presented as flippant definitely goes some way towards mitigating it. Still, it reads more like a character who’s used to making witty and cutting rejoinders and is now doing it out of force of habit, which…isn’t Mat, because that’s not his style to begin with.

Anyway. Now we’re bartering with horses as the currency and ‘an end to Mat and Joline ever having conversations’ as the much-coveted item for purchase.

The fact that Joline hasn’t thought about the logistics beyond the immediate numbers needed for her convenience is entirely true to her character, I must say. She’s a great example of all the negative traits of Aes Sedai and precious few of the positive ones.

If the land didn’t decide to start blooming soon…

Not sure our wounded Fisher King is in much of a blooming sort of mood at the moment, so you might be shit out of luck on that one, sorry. But you never know; maybe if you ask him nicely?

“But with only one horse each, we’ll barely be faster than the army!” Joline said.

You are an embarrassment to your Ajah.

“And Vanin,” Mat called. “Make sure Mandevwin is aware that when I say ���a few of us’ will go down, I mean a very small group, led by myself and Talmanes. I won’t have that village invaded by seven thousand soldiers looking for fun!”

No fun is to be had! By anyone! Not one single fun! If I have to be all responsible and shit then damn it, so do you. You hear me? No. Fun.

Mat turned back to the Aes Sedai. “Well?” he asked. “You taking my kind offer or not?”

It seems like such a small thing, this feeling that some of the things he says aloud in this chapter should really be in his internal monologue. Surely it shouldn’t make that much difference…and yet it really, really does. This, at least the way I interpret Mat (and there is of course the possibility that I’m talking out my ass here and am completely wrong about all of this) should read more like... ‘Mat turned back to the Aes Sedai. “Well?” he asked. Joline sniffed, and he knew all too well what that meant. He would have been glad to be rid of her, but not for any twenty horses! That was pure madness, so why did Teslyn look so disappointed? She usually had some sense, for an Aes Sedai. It had been a perfectly reasonable offer, burn him. It had!’

Well, or a better-written version of putting everything in Mat’s thoughts rather than out loud.

Teslyn trailed after, regarding Mat with a curious expression. She still looked disappointed in him too. He glanced away, then felt annoyed at himself. What did he care what she thought?

This is done much better, with the contrast again between what Mat says and what he feels, between what he feels and what he tells himself, between what he tells himself and what we see of other characters’ perceptions of him.

And it does better than the entire chapter thus far in showing that Mat is on edge. Which is entirely true to character, but unfortunately gets overshadowed by the chapter…trying to illustrate it and massively overshooting the mark.

Has Talmanes uttered a single sentence without appending Mat’s name to it this chapter? I’d look back and check but the very thought fills me with dread.

“You really do miss her,” Talmanes said, sounding a little surprised as their horses fell into place beside one another.

Talmanes? Is that you? I’ve missed you!

This is so much more like him, though, to see straight to the heart of the issue and state it like this. It reminds me a little of his conversation with Egwene. Ah, that conversation. That was a wonderful thing.

“What are you blathering about now?”

Damn it, stop ruining this moment! It doesn’t help that I dislike the word ‘blathering’ in any context, to say nothing of how it feels wrong here.

“Mat, you are not always the most refined of men, I’ll admit. Sometimes your humour is indeed a bit ripe and your tone on the brusque side. But you are rarely downright rude, nor intentionally insulting. You really are on edge, aren’t you?”

Mat said nothing, just pulled the brim of his hat down again.

It’s like they’re taking it in turns to be in character. Talmanes was fine with the ‘you really do miss her’ line and Mat was way off with the ‘blathering’ and then it flipped and now Mat’s alright but Talmanes is saying too many words.

Also it’s almost amusing on a somewhat meta level, because basically what Talmanes is saying is ‘you are out of character’ and…oh, you have no idea. I get that the chapter is intentionally aiming for Mat to feel a bit off, because he is on edge. But that, done well, would look different. This just looks…like Sanderson doesn’t quite have the hang of writing Mat, yet.

Again, I’ve felt that way with his first chapters of a few other characters (Aviendha comes to mind), but even those stood out less. They were more within the ‘margin of error’ I had expected, but this is…not.

Ah well. You can’t have everything, and one chapter out of twenty so far really isn’t doing all that badly, when you think about the task as a whole.

“We’re done with this conversation,” Mat said […] “I just—” “Over,” Mat said.

Talmanes wouldn’t protest; Talmanes would give a solemn nod or slight bow, and Mat would have no way of determining whether it was mocking or entirely sincere. This, here, is a very Sanderson-esque exchange.

“We’ll buy what we can at the village,” Mat said.

Hopefully with Mat’s luck that’ll work better for him than So Habor did for Perrin.

I don’t like sidekick!Talmanes. He makes me sad.

“You’re going to kindly take me up on my offer to go enjoy ourselves at the tavern,” Mat said. “And while we’re at it, we’re going to resupply. If my luck’s with me, we’ll do it for free.”

If Egwene or Nynaeve had been there, they’d have boxed his ears and told him he was going to do no such thing. Tuon probably would have looked at him curiously and then said something that made him feel his shame right down into his boots.

You kidding? She’d have asked how many knife fights there were likely to be, and then gone and ordered an ale to sip while she watched.

The good thing about Talmanes, however, was that he simply spurred his horse forward, face stoic, eyes betraying just a hint of amusement. “Well, I’ve got to see this, then!”

Nope.

Cut out that last line of dialogue there and it might be fine.

As is…well, the chapter ends approximately how it started. Let’s leave it at that.

Next (TGS ch 21) Previous (TGS ch 19)