I consider A Crown of Swords to be the most underrated volume in the Wheel of Time. Not because of how incredibly good it is (although, to be clear, it’s very good), but because of how fashionable it was to absolutely hate the book upon release. Yes, there were people dismissing the series by the sixth book and even the fifth[1] one, but here in book seven is where it became fashionable to do so. And I will not lie, I was very much That Guy my own self.

I even know why I was so put out at the time.[2] Part of it was the horror of only ten days passing. Not because those ten days failed to be exciting and action-packed, but because each successive book had already represented a slowing of the pace, and if things had continued at that rate (they did not, but who was to know at the time?), future books were apt to dedicate entire chapters to treatises on the inflexibility of Lan’s facial expressions or on Elayne’s bathing habits. But mostly it was that the driving plot of the book (the quest for weather rectification in Ebou Dar) ended so abruptly, both without a satisfactory resolution and more importantly with an imperiled cliffhanger for my favorite character. And that was before I knew it would be a four year cliffhanger instead of the already untenable two I expected at the time!

So yeah, annoyances. But that’s the joy of this reread in a nutshell: no delays between one book and the next, I am reading the entire motherfucking series from start to finish, with nothing in between, no other distractions of any kind, just the story all in one piece. It’s fair to say I came around on this book for its own merits years ago (it is the last one I had read three times already, I reckon) when I could see it as part of the whole, er, pattern instead of just for what it disappointed me by not delivering Right Now. But it’s also the book that has improved the most for me over time for that specific all-of-a-piece reason. Sure, it has slow chessboard parts, but the main-plot excitement parts are absolutely as exciting as any in the series, which I fear I will not be able to say about this next book.

We’ll see, I guess!

[1] I have a friend who was a little annoyed by my cavalier mention of Moiraine’s storyline in The Fires of Heaven, just as if he ever actually plans to finish the series, even though he stalled in that book something like eight or ten years ago now.
[2] Okay, immediately after the time, I should say. I do not believe that there is more than one book in this series (and quite possibly not that many) that I disliked while reading it. Only after the fact, when I was digesting what I had just experienced and contemplating what was (unfairly?) delayed to future volumes, have these annoyances ever cropped up.

So, these are certainly getting harder. I mean, yes, Lord of Chaos is a hard book. “Let the Lord of Chaos rule” indeed. Not only is it the book where the first real convolutions of Aes Sedai plot mystery and basically every other type of political mire that you can imagine begin to rear their heads, but it’s also hard to watch such a trainwreck. I don’t mean that in the plotting sense, of course, just in the “Shit just got real” sense.

But it’s damn hard to review. I would claim that this is because of my self-imposed spoiler moratorium from here on out, but that’s not it really. Anything that I would put behind a spoiler cut[1] has already been discussed in every conceivable iteration when I was still young enough to read all of it in all its glory and even participate now and then. (Google Groups may even still have most of it.) And any theme I would try to tease out is right there in the title.

So, I will instead report on the two things that really stood out to me on the reread, although they’re not new either. One is what a huge fan of Min I am. The other is what a huge non-fan of the endless summer I am. Because of how evocative it became, which is certainly praise for Jordan’s talents, but I suppose of the backhanded variety. But not really. Good writing about uncomfortable things should make the reader uncomfortable. Right? (But for so long? Sure, like six months in Randland, but more like six years out here. Hell, even at the pace I’m reading, it is lasting less than regular summer, but I still feel it worse in the book.)

That said, it does raise a discussion point I don’t remember seeing crop up back in the day. Non-specific magic weather, or stopped-the-earth-in-its-orbit magic weather? I’m sure the latter has more physics consequences than I could shake a pointed quark at, but it’s kind of cool to consider nonetheless.

[1] Taim. I paused several moments to consider, and that’s the size of it. It doesn’t properly capture the scope of the discussions I would rehash, of course. Man, that guy is a compelling character, and one of the best examples of the cyclic nature of the Wheel of Time. All the moreso if he had never knowingly spoken to a Darkfriend when he first met Rand.

Yes, it really did take me this long to read The Fires of Heaven. (Yes, I really haven’t watched a movie in this long either.) No, it’s not because I suddenly liked the book a lot less than I have liked the previous ones during this re-read. Yes, it spells all-but-certain doom for my hopes of being caught up with the series by the time the last one comes out in three-ish months. Yes, that makes me pretty sad.

But damn, it doesn’t make me as sad as watching Moiraine’s noble-tragic march through the book, every bit as cognizant of the outcome as I am.[1]  It doesn’t make me as melancholy as the loss (in one way or another that is probably not as lossy as you might expect) of three characters I would like to have watched for longer than I got to.

The metaphor breaks here, because most of the rest of what I have to say is good. So much of what isn’t melancholy trending toward tragic is ridiculously awesome (Mat finding his place in the world, finally) or downright hilarious (any given scene from Nynaeve’s point of view, and I feel bad relegating her to the hilarious when there is so much awesomeness to be had by her along the way). Plus, this is the first book where we see into the minds of the bad guys in a sincere and meaningful way. Those sections have always been my favorites, I think, once they were not solely the province of Ishamael, the 4,000 year old lunatic.

If I have to pick a character to dislike (and save for Elaida, this is probably my first time in the read), it’s Egwene. Her rise to power is cool in its way, I like how much she is learning and how much she wants to learn, but the way she turned the balance of power on her friends solely to keep them from ratting her out for doing something she had sworn she would not do, and especially for her feeling so gleeful about being able to upset that balance of power for such an ignoble end? Pretty icky, Egwene. Just saying.

[1]I have read this book at least four times, and every one of them (well, okay, not the first one in 1994[2]) I have felt increasingly more sad over the course of her scenes and inevitably become teary by the time Rand is reading her letter.
[2] This was the first book in the series I had to wait to read. I did not have to wait long at all, maybe only a month or so? But I did have to wait.

I think that I was a little hard on The Shadow Rising in my mind, when I claimed that The Dragon Reborn was the last book in the series that had a solid structure to bring everyone into the same storyline. I mean, yes, some of the characters have fully divergent stories for the first time, and they will remain diverged until the end of the series from here on out. I mean, some people reconverge at certain times, but never everyone all together. (P.S. Still spoilers, for now. Probably not much longer, I’ll be more careful, but they still exist for now.)

But the plotlines in this book constantly mirrored each other thematically in ways that I would be able to describe rather than assert if I had not waited so very long after the book for the review. (This is a real problem that I will try to avoid in the future. Because, pretty embarrassing, right? I mean, even one “for instance” and I’d be satisfied. But my brain is a blank slate on the point, other than having been impressed by it as I was reading. This is one of the upsides of re-reading a book when you know all the things that are going to happen in it. You can get a lot more deeply into the structure of the thing, the themes, the foreshadowing, develop a real appreciation for the craft of writing. When craft exists, at least, which it did here, despite my lack of proof.)

Plus also, some of the coolest scenes in the series, right? Well, at least, the highest concentration of them. Redstone doorframes? Rhuidean? I’m just saying, cool shit went down. Plus… so, this was the first of these books that I read any of. I was at UT for a weekend “come be at our school” trip, in the summer of 1992, and my occasional girlfriend was reading it, and I glanced at what she was reading, a scene where Mat was trying to convince Perrin that they should both ditch Rand, because, crazy channeler guy even if he is the Dragon, right? She explained to me that Mat was less of a dick than he sounded in that scene, and I eventually picked them up based on the recommendation. (Later, I realized that when she sent me through a three-ringed art installment on the UNT campus  hoping I’d have some kind of vision, that was a reference too.) My point is, it will always be special to me not just because I haven’t entirely gotten over the collapse of the Age of Legends and the Da’shain Aiel, but also because it marks the first words I read in the Wheel of Time.

Anyway, good book. But then, haven’t they all been, so far?