Book #20 - The Gathering Storm

[corrielle]

And now... my last book for 2009.

20. The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

When I began to read The Gathering Storm, I was hopeful and excited, but I had some anxieties in the back of my mind.  Was it going to be any good at all?  Was the plot actually going to start to move toward a conclusion?  Was the new author going to be good to the characters I love like they're family?

Having finished, I now know that the answers are: Yes, yes, and yes.

One of the things that I've always enjoyed about epic fantasy in general and this series in particular is that it deals in really broad, sweeping, world changing events on the one had while being intensely character-driven and personal on the other.  It's a hard balance to strike, and I almost feel like the last couple of books in the series didn't quite manage it as well as the earlier ones did, but The Gathering Storm hit it just right. The sections dealing with political and military concerns were decent. It wasn't overwhelming, but it was always in the background. The signs are there, the clouds are gathering, and the world is going to war against the forces of the Dark One... it is going to be epic.  We have masses and masses of men and armies and supplies moving around, Lan gathering Borderlanders to follow him against the Shadow, Rand getting the armies of the countries who are under his control ready to go, and it's all very grand and martial, but at the same time there are people in the midst of all of this, with individual hopes and plans and loves.  And when this book is personal, it's good. Case in point: the Prologue that takes place in the Borderlands where the farmer abandons his fields to join the others riding north against the Shadow made me care about these people I've never met before, instead of sigh about new characters I have to keep track of (yes, I have done this in past books).  Also, over the past few books, I think I've decided that Rodel Ituralde, the Domani general who's giving the Seanchan so much trouble, is made of win and awesome.  I think that together, he, Lan and Gareth Bryne are going to give the Dark One's armies a run for their money.

Egwene and the White Tower

For the last several books, one of my favorite plotlines has been the split in the White Tower. Egwene got captured at the end of book 10 (I think), and all through book 11, she's been sowing seeds of discontent against Elaida, trying to get the other Sisters to stand up for themselves and see what Elaida is doing to the White Tower with her arrogance and abuse of power.  I continue to have amazing respect for Egwene.  She defines grace under pressure, and she is wise and sharp as steel.  The way she slowly gathered support from the loyal Aes Sedai, the way she defied Elaida even though she knew it would cost her... brilliant. And finally, when the Seanchan attacked the Tower... the image of her standing at the hole the damane have blasted in the side of it, knocking raken out of the sky with lightning she's channeling with the help of the circle... it was just awesome.  I get shivers just thinking about it.  All of the little threads she had going... the novices trusting her, the Sisters who had come to trust her opinion, really came together at the end.  And I think it was a nice touch that the loyal sisters in the Tower chose to raise her rather than being forced to accept her, and again, we have Egwene's wisdom and respect for the White Tower and not wanting to attack it outright to thank for that.

The choices she's made since being raised were interesting... Silviana as Keeper was smart.  She was one of the first to defy Elaida on Egwene's behalf, but she's a Red and a loyalist. And this choice is the first step of many in healing the divisions in the Tower.

Even if all of this world-altering stuff wasn't enough, there were other "smaller" things going on that answered questions and satisfied some long-held desires. First of all, Gawyn Trakand is finally on the "right" side of things. He and Egwene finally got to speak to each other, and it was good, if bittersweet. Egwene is a very powerful woman, and she knows it, and she shoulders that responsibility well, even if it means telling Gawyn to wait.  At least he isn't convinced that the rebel Aes Sedai kidnapped her and forced her to be a puppet Amyrlin any more... Second, Siuann and Gareth Bryne talked about their you-can-cut-it-with-a-knife attraction to one another!  *dances a lot*  I love Siuann and all her fisherman's daughter swearing and political savvy.  And I love Gareth with his honor and loyalty and stoicism. (I think I love him for the same reasons I love Lan... Gareth doesn't quite reach Lan's levels of fatalism, though...)  Anyway, I really love the two of them together.  And now, he's her Warder!  The section where Siuann bonds him and he ponders the fact that he can feel her attraction to him made me giggle and grin for a good half an hour before I could read anything else. 

Finally, and most devastatingly... one of the questions that has been troubling WoT fans for years got answered:  Is Verin Black Ajah?  We finally get to find out that yes, yes she is. But not in the way you think.  I've always liked Verin, and it would have broken me a little to know that she was a true Darkfriend who was actually devoted to the Dark One.  What actually happened seems to be a very her thing to do, Verin being Brown Ajah and all.  She joined the enemy to study them... kept records of what she learned, and got around her oath not to reveal what she knows about the Dark One's servants until the hour of her death by taking some very precisely timed poison, dying secure in the knowledge that her work is in good hands. I teared up when she finally passed away.  It was a powerfully written scene, and a good end for a character I'd always liked.

Speaking of Sisters who are really Black Ajah... I felt horrible about Sheriam, too. I'd always liked her, and even though I think we've known about her being Black for while now, I still have some affection for her.  She was present at both Egwene and Nynaeve's Accepted tests, and before I found out what she was, she seemed to be one of the fairer, more level-headed, and less power-hungry Aes Sedai in Salidar.  Still, Egwene did what she had to and ordered her execution.  Hard, but necessary.  
 
Rand and the Struggle to Retain Humanity

I have not been overly sympathetic to Rand for a long time now. Yes, he's a kid from the middle of nowhere who had greatness thrust upon him.  Yes, he's a little unstable because he started to channel before saidin was cleansed and he's got Lews Therin in the back of his mind.  Yes, a lot of people who died for him, and he feels it keenly.  But lately, he's mostly just been whining about these things and acting arrogant and childish to anyone who tries to point out that maybe he might want to go about things differently.  (Not that all of the people who are trying to advise him don't have their own motivations, but seriously, Rand... a little tact never hurt anyone.)

So, I didn't go into this book feeling very sorry for the poor put-upon Dragon Reborn. By the end of it... I was. Rand fears being controlled, as well he should, considering what happened with Galina and the rest of the Aes Sedai Elaida sent to kidnap him.  Now, he fears it even more than he did before because Semirhage got the male version of the a'dam around his neck and almost forced him to use the Power to kill Min. (Until he creepily managed to get hold of the True Source and burned another Forsaken out of the pattern with Balefire... good for Min, not so good for Rand's sanity.)

The harsh coldness that Rand embraced as a result of almost being overpowered by Semirhage was actually pretty terrifying.  Before, he agonized over every decision, telling himself he had to be hard but feeling the weight of the lives he held in his hands all the same.  After he touches the True Source that first time... he doesn't care any more.  He knows what he asks of people is hard, he knows he has to make difficult decisions, and it doesn't bother him at all.  I knew he was pretty far gone when he banished Cadsuanne, (who I like despite her bossiness... I grew up in a family that was pretty much run by a bunch of older women you wouldn't want to mess with, and Cadsuanne reminds me of them.) and so when he burned an entire stronghold out of the pattern because he knew that Graendal was inside, I worried that he had lost what little remained of his humanity.  That made his meeting with Tam (who is his father in spirit, if not by blood) really heartbreaking.  Also, when Rand goes to Ebou Dar with the access key to the Choedan Kal intent on destroying all of the Seanchan there, along with most of the city and the ships in the harbor, I worried for a moment that he might actually do it.  I knew he wouldn't kill Tuon... but I worried that Min's vision of him kneeling before the Crystal Throne might be him begging for forgiveness for what he'd done to a mostly peaceful city. (Come to think of it... I still think it's going to be begging forgiveness, but for the insult he gave her by trying to use Compulsion on her, not for mass murder.)

In the end, Rand doesn't destroy the city or the Seanchan.  Instead, he ends up on Dragonmount, his own existence and purpose and the purpose of reality.  I was reminded of many other very powerful unstable people who have asked questions along the lines of, "People are in so much pain... make such terrible mistakes over and over again... why not destroy the world and end it all?" After a lot of deliberating, he eventually gets his answer from one of the most unlikely places—Lews Therin's voice.  His answer, basically, is that people keep on living so that they can do better.  Correct mistakes, give love where it is needed, get things right.  This is something he's been needing to hear and internalize for a long time, and I like how his realization was his own... Cadsuanne and Tam and Nynaeve and everyone else might have created the circumstances and unwittingly pushed him to it, but the decision was his, made alone on the slopes of Dragonmount.  Having made it, he destroys the most powerful male sa'angreal in existence because one person shouldn't have too much power. And in that moment, I was proud of Rand for the first time in years.  (And now it appears that he'll have no choice but to learn how to use Callandor and let a woman guide the flows of the Power... but more on that later.)

The Gambler and the Empress

I have always loved Mat. Of the original three guys who left the Two Rivers, he is far and away my favorite. (Though Perrin is a sweet, young bear of a man.) So, the fact that more adventures with Mat and the Band of the Red Hand were included in this book was just fine with me. He's still traveling north to Andor and Elayne, trying not to admit that he actually cares for the Tuon, who is his wife now. All of his grumbling and his insistence that even if he is married, he's still going to dice and drink and not be tied down was priceless.  I cracked up for a good long time over his complaining about women changing the rules of the game at the beginning of chapter 20.  And when Talmanes started teasing him about his obvious attachment to Tuon... priceless  (I hadn't paid much attention to Talmanes before now... I thought he was an all right enough fellow if Mat thought he was competent, but in this book I loved him and his witty, dry sense of humor.) 

I have to feel a little bad for Mat... all he's trying to do is get his sizable army to Andor, and things keep getting in his way.  Take the village where he just wanted a nice quite game of dice and a night at a tavern.  Turns out the village is one of the places where the Dark One's touch is making the pattern unravel, and after nightfall, every person in the village goes crazy and tries to kill everything in sight, only to wake up in their own beds the next morning untouched, even if they were killed the night before. It's a truly creepy sequence that had me worried for just about everyone in Mat's little group that went into that village.  One might say that he shouldn't have ignored the warning signs or the weirdness coming from the villagers when they told him to be gone by sunset, that he shouldn't have tried to use his Luck to gamble for food for his men... but... How under the flaming Light was he supposed to know THAT was going to happen? *hrmph*  (Yes, I identify with Mat way more than is healthy.)

A couple of last notes... Mat gets to use a couple of fantastically colorful new Randland expletives in this book.  I can't find any at the moment, but they're awesome.  

And finally... he doesn't miss Tuon and worry about her a lot. Really he doesn't.

While we're on the subject of Tuon, we didn't get to see a lot of  her in this book, but when we did, she was a force to be reckoned with.  I like Tuon quite a bit, and I'm fascinated by the fact that we get to see her meeting with Rand from her perspective.  Seeing Rand through her very foreign eyes was... interesting.  She is not afraid of him, and barely sees him as her equal while she is still only Daughter of the Nine Moons. Rand, of course, treats her with the utter lack of respect he uses with most people, which offends her.  He is at the height of his "I am cold and emotionless" routine, and he sees it as his job to get her to agree to peace with him as quickly as possible so that he can move on to other things.

For a long time, this scene absolutely horrified me because I thought that Rand had attempted to use Compulsion on Tuon, and that she had somehow resisted it.  Now... from my point of view, Compulsion is one of the most evil things you can do with the One Power.  Using it, even for a good cause, would have meant Rand was really far gone, much farther than I had even thought he was.  However, after I reread the scene where they meet, I couldn't find any hard evidence that Rand had channeled at all, and I started to wonder if her desire to agree with him hadn't been his ta'varen nature at work and not intentional on his part at all.  I went online to see if there was any verification of Rand's use of that particular weave, and I found this http://forums.dragonmount.com/index.php?topic=49575.140;wap2, which is a report from an interview with Brandon Sanderson where he says that Rand did not use any type of weave on her at all.  Which means that her impulse to agree was the pull of Rand being ta'varen, which makes me feel infinitely better about Rand as a person. However, Tuon doesn't know what's going on.  All she knows is that something other than herself is controlling her thoughts and her reactions, and she is being pushed to do things she wouldn't normally do. Fortunately, Tuon is not a weak-willed woman, and she pushes back.  I don't think we've ever seen through the eyes someone under the influence of ta'varen while they're being influenced... so that was fascinating.  It was also interesting to see that if someone is strong enough, she can resist it.

Compulsion or ta'varen, though, the end result is the same.  There is no alliance, Tuon is offended that Rand tried to bully her, and she has proclaimed herself the Empress, who, under Seanchan law, can speak to no one as an equal. (I love her new name... Fortuona is just neat sounding and epic.) And she plans to attack the White Tower.  In her, as in Egwene, there is a great amount of wisdom and savvy for one so young.  Even as she sees the raken off on their raid to Tar Valon, she knows that it is going to set Rand against her, she knows how dangerous that is for her, and she does it anyway, because, I think, she believes it is something that must be done.

As a side note... Tuon discussing Mat with Rand and Nynaeve was priceless, especially when Nynaeve is so quick to jump to his defense when Tuon calls him a scoundrel.  I also like that the way that Rand and Nynaeve speak of Mat causes her to reevaluate her ideas about him.  Even more than that, I love that she thinks for a moment about how she likes Mat the way he is and doesn't really want him to change and be a proper Prince of the Ravens. Tuon chooses to keep their marriage to herself during the meeting, which was understandable... but it might have made Rand act more civil toward her if he's known he was speaking to his old friend's wife... But she had no way of knowing that, and probably thought she had nothing to gain from letting that bit of information slip. *sigh* Rand is in for a big surprise when he finds out... if anything surprises him any more, that is.

Things that worried me or made me go, "Hmmm..."

I am terrified for Lan's life because of Min's viewing.  She saw Nynaeve bent over someone, weeping.  I suppose that Nynaeve could grieve over any number of people, but losing Lan would hurt her most, and she was so concerned about Lan through the book... and furious with Rand for seeming like he was going to sacrifice Lan and his men to distract the Dark One.  If he dies, I'm going to be inconsolable for days.

Another thing that worries me: the Seanchan should NOT have Traveling. That is going to make things amazingly more complicated.  However, the Seanchan have Elaida and some other Aes Sedai who know Traveling thanks to the raid. This is NOT GOOD.

The prophecy about the "three becoming one" is interesting.  Min and Cadsuanne seem to think it's about how Rand is going to use Callandor. Makes sense... and I have a prediction: I think that Elayne and Aviendha are the two female channelers who are going to use the sword with Rand.  Here's why: Rand, Elayne, and Aviendha are already "one" in many ways.  Elayne and Aviendha are First-sisters. They are both bonded to Rand, and both of them love him, and he them. 

One last prediction/pondering before I go onto random cool things... in the last moment before Lews Therin's voice fades, he wonders if Ileyna has been spun out into the Pattern again.  So... if she has, has her soul been split in three?  Part going to Elayne, part to Aviendha, part to Min? There are some interesting possibilities there.

I really like that Aviendha is finally a Wise One, or about to be.  She deserves it. I had guessed that the way to end all of her useless punishments would be to stand up to the other Wise Ones and say "no."  I like being right.

One of my favorite bits about Nynaeve in the whole book is a scene that comes very early in the book.  Nynaeve is well-meaning, but incredibly stubborn and tactless sometimes.  She thinks that Healing can (and should) solve just about anything that's wrong with a person, including grief.  So, when she offers to Heal and Aes Sedai who stands far below her in the Power whose Asha'Man Warder has died, and then Daigian actually refuses...and explains her reasons.  And Nynaeve gets it.  And, wonder of wonders, she apologizes.  I think I can count on one hand the times she's said she was sorry to anyone over the course of the series. It was a fantastic bit of insight into how she works.

Faile dealt with Masema on her own, without consulting with Perrin or telling him what she did.  She saw that the Prophet was a danger to her husband, and she and the members of Cha Faile took care of it.  How. Awesome. Was. That.

Cadsuanne and Soriela teamed up to help guide Rand.  That is an unstoppable pair, and I kind of love the fact that those two amazing, tough old women see equals and... I almost want to say "friends" in each other.

Perrin trying to reconcile the wolf part of himself with the human part was... interesting.  I like that he entered the Wolf Dream again, and though it makes me sad for him, I like that things don't automatically go back to normal with him and Faile now that he has rescued her.

Tam al'Thor brings news that Morgase is alive and with Perrin... now someone just needs to tell this to Gawyn so he can stop hating Rand with a vengeance...

I'm itching for Mat and Thom to go into the Tower of Ghenjei.  Their upcoming journey gets mentioned a couple of times, but they're still on their way to Andor.  I can't wait to see what happens when Mat comes face to face with his Snakes and Foxes again, and it's most likely going to end with Moiraine coming back... which is going to be all manner of interesting, seeing as she's the one Aes Sedai other than Nynaeve who Rand really trusted.

Not much Elayne or Perrin in this book... I suppose they'll take up large chunks of the next one, which is fine with me.  I missed them... and Birgette, too.  It will be good to see them all again.

Some Last Thoughts on Writing

While I don't pretend to know or be able to tell exactly which bits Sanderson wrote and which bits Mr. Jordan had already finished, there was definitely something different about this book. I think that Sanderson is good at people and good at emotions.  The way he deals with characters inner thoughts sits well with me.  There were several places in the book where I found myself surprised or intrigued at how characters were internally justifying their actions, or how they were thinking about other people. I am about to commit sacrilege, and I say this knowing that Knife of Dreams was written while Mr. Jordan was ill and probably not at the top of his game, but... the ratio of filler description to necessary action/interesting inner change in KoD was much greater than in Gathering Storm.   Sure, there was a bit of description in GS... wouldn't be WoT without it, but there was much less of it, it seemed to me, and it mostly furthered the plot and the tone of the scene rather than just being there to be there as I got the feeling it was in KoD.  Some time, if I've got a few hours to spare, I'll pull apart a couple of scenes from each of the books and try to show what I mean. I'm also wondering if GS didn't read easier for me because I'd just read KoD, which had done the hard work of getting me back into the WoT universe and up to speed on what was happening. 
 

Needless to say, I enjoyed this book immensely.  It makes me feel good about sticking with the series, and I feel like a lot of the various threads of the plot are starting to pay off and come back together.  I can't wait for Towers of Midnight now, (ridiculously ominous name notwithstanding) which is supposed to be coming out in late 2010.