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2021-07-03, 06:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
And the Aes Sedai as a whole did take catastrophic losses on at least two occasions, during the Trolloc Wars and during Hawkwing's conquests (Hawkwing put a price on Aes Sedai loyalists and besieged Tar Valon for the better part of twenty years).
SpoilerThe novels strongly imply that while the population of Randland recovered after both of those millennial conflicts, Aes Sedai numbers did not do so due to a combination of factors including restrictive recruiting (especially age-based limits), reduced public trust, and the spread of stateless populations lacking the strong institutions to funnel girls to the tower. This led to the extremely high numbers of latent channelers waiting to be discovered during the course of the novels.
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2021-07-18, 01:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
Chapter 53: A Flow of the Spirit
After a long day of blacksmithing, Perrina nd Zarine head tot he inn to meet with Moraine and Lan so Morraine can gie them the 411. Rand is in Tear, she says, and all sorts of weirdness is happening, including a whole slew of marriages and murders and some young woman called the First of Mayene apparently submitting to the will of the High Lords, let's see if she becomes important later on, this sounds like some important political development. Everyone's been having dreams of Rand holding an object to bright to look at in a room full of red columns, which incidentally is the cover of this book.
Perrin asks what's to be done about Be'lal and Morraine says she'll deal with him. She and Lan are going into the Stone tonight to kick some Forsaken behind while Perrin, Zarine, and Loial will be sent to Tar Valon to sit on their thumbs until things are safe. Yeah, I'm sure that will happen. Loial is upstairs in his room so they head up there to give him the news, Zarine leading the way, but when Perrin enters the room he finds Zarine lying unconscious on the floor. Morraine stops him from rushing to her or else he'd have suffered the same fate. There's a wooden hedgehog lying on the floor where it fell from from Zarine's grasp, the one stolen from the White Tower that puts you to sleep. Morraine reasons that it was a trap laid for her only Zarine rushed in and tripped it first.
Of course the trap didn't get it's intended victim. No adventuring party worth its salt sends the Wizard through the door first. That's what Rogues are for. Things aren't looking good for Zarine though. She's not just asleep, Perrin can't see her breathing and he can't hear a heartbeat even with his super wolf hearing.
They interrogate the innkeep and learn that despite Morraine's strict instructions tolet no one into their rooms, he allowed a couple of ladies up there who said they were leaving the hedgehog there as a surprise for her. What a chump.
Well, it looks like the element of surprise is lost. Even without Zarine getting sleep cast on her, this means the baddies know our heroes are here and they'll be expecting them, although they may not be expecting Morraine to be there since the trap was meant for her.
Perrin's not just going to let his new romantic interest character die though, so he tells Loial to stand watch and goes into the room to fall asleep next to her. Remember that wolves have dream powers in these books and he's part wolf, so there is a strong rationale behind his actions.
He shows up in the dream world dressed in a blacksmith apron with a hammer at his side instead of his axe. Hopper is there too and calls him a fool for coming here when the danger is so great. He tells Perrin to get out while he can but Perrin refuses. Zarine is in there somewhere and he's got to save her,
Because that's what heroes do.Last edited by An Enemy Spy; 2021-07-18 at 01:22 PM.
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2021-07-18, 02:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-18, 03:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
Chapter 54: Into the Stone
Mat scrambles atop the rooftops of Tear, looking for a way into the Stone of Tear. Considering the chapter title, my money is on him succeeding. As he contemplates whether or not he can make the climb up the city wall, he suddenly feels steel at his throat. Reflexively, he takes out the legs of his assailant and then realizes he is surrounded by Aiel all armed with spears and wearing the black veils that mean they're out to kill.
So I read Dune last year and I realized, holy cow, the Aiel really are just the Fremen, aren't they? In fact, The Wheel of Time positively drips with Dune influence from every pore. Rand is very much a Kwisatz Haderach figure with being the male who can use the powers normally restricted to the female order and in being a messiah figure to the Fremen/Aiel, and the Aes Sedai are very much like the Bene Gesserit. This isn't a criticism of Wheel of Time, just an observation. Jordan may have worn his influences on his sleeves but he didn't rip off Dune te way Terry Goodkind ripped off this series when he wrote The Sword of Truth.
It isn't just the Aiel up here though. Juilan Sandar steps out of the shadows as well. It seems this rooftop is the most happening place in all of Tear tonight. Everyone's trying to break into the Stone of Tear tonight. The Aiel are here because this is the night Rand will claim Callandor and Sandar is here because he feels guilty about the whole betraying Team Magikarp to the enemy thing, even if it technically wasn't his fault, which again proves why you should always kill off any loose ends if you're the bad guys. Don't just let the man walk, at the very least throw him in a cell until your plot is complete so he can't muck it up.
The Aiel take off for the Stone, easily scaling the walls because they're the Aiel and are therefore perfect and good at literally everything. What better environment to learn to scale sheer cliffs than a desert? There were only four on the roof, Gaul and the three female ones from earlier, but Mat can see what must be hundred of them making their way up the wall.
Well, as mere non-Aiel who are bound by the laws of physics and reason and weren't just born superheroes, Mat and Sandar are going to have to find another way in. Which is why Mat brought along a bundle of fireworks they stole from the Illuminators last book. Mat makes the jump to the wall, and finds an arrowslit where it meets the fortress. He shoves the fireworks into the slit and sets them off.
He climbs through the hole he made and runs into a bunch of soldiers who clearly just woke up and haven't put any armor on. Mat rushes them with his staff but there's no way he can beat them, until Sandar catches up and then there's no way a bunch of goons can handle two named characters. They dispatch them with ease.
We cut to Rand rushing through the corridors of the Stone. How did he get in? I doubt even he knows, he's so out of it. He just knows he's going to get that sword and nothing else happening around even registers in his mind.
We go to Egwene in her cell next to Nynaeve and Elayne, waking up from a dream about Rand and Mat. She freaks out when she realizes that once again she's a prisoner, but at least she isn't collared this time. They are Shielded from the Source though, so there's no way they blast their way out of the cell, and one of the Black Ajah is standing guard on the other side of the door. But the dummies didn't search them well enough, because Egwene still has the ter'angreal, so she goes into the dream world where maybe the Shield can't reach her and she can find a way out of this mess.
She appears in the Heart of the Stone in the chamber where Callandor is, and finds the Black Ajah Joiya Bir there as well, also in the dream world. Joiya freaks out when she see her since the Shield should keep Egwene from dreaming, and Egwene cuts her off from the source, which without a ter'angreal means she can't return to her body until Egwene releases her, and then uses an Air weave to rough her up a bit just for a bit of revenge before running off and leaving Joiya trapped there.
We go to Perrin who has infiltrated the Stone through the wolf dream and is tearing through the corridors killing guards who I guess in real life were asleep but were put into the dream world without their knowledge to stand guard through magic? Perrin is literally ripping these poor guys to pieces with his jaws like a full blown werewolf. He kicks open a door and finds Zarine.
"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" she doesn't say. What she actually does is vanish. It was some kind of trick. He takes off to keep hunting, and woe to any poor bastard he meets along the way.
We go back to Mat, running through the halls while the sounds of fighting are all around him with the Defenders fighting the Aiel. He runs into some puffed up bozo calling himself High Lord Darlin who challenges him to a fight. They fight and Mat wins, though not without difficulty. Mat actually catches a glimpse of Rand going down the next hall. He puts his staff back over his shoulder and completely on accident brains another High Lord who was rushing him from behind. Better to be lucky than good, right? He and Sandar head off down the hall and the chapter ends.
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2021-07-18, 04:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
No lightning, but is big and strong, has a hammer, and is fighting a wolf (inside himself rather than a giant one). Additional spoilers aside, I will tell you he never rides a goat-chariot. But Perrin-Thor is still pretty valid, despite another guy having Thor in his name.
Always fun when you're reading a fantasy/fiction series and think to yourself, "Gee, the aesop is pretty blatant here." And then you remember Sword of Truth exists, and therefore in relative terms the current book is fine.
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2021-07-18, 05:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-18, 05:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
I still say nothing compares to mckiernan and his blatant ripoff of the mines of moria in his iron tower duology. We have an elf, a dwarf, this worlds version of a halfling, and a human chased into the mines of moria (called something else here I wont bother to type) they get set upon by a water monster with too many tentacles and are trapped inside when he collapses the entrance on them. They have to go through the mines by memory of the single member who went through it once centuries ago, dodging this worlds version of orcs who have taken over the place, there is an ancient evil monster that they cannot fight that was freed when the dwarves delved too greedily and too deeply chasing after them. It confronts them on the bridge over a bottomless chasm, and while in this case they beat it by luck and working together instead of wizard semi suicide, it still falls down the bottomless gorge on the collapsing bridge. Sweet baby jeebus. The rest of the series isnt as bad but its still SUUUPER lotr influenced. I rag on that scene a lot but I honestly really enjoy the world he has built through a couple dozen novels. Its just that particular story is by far the biggest ripoff I have ever read.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2021-07-18, 06:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
While there definitely are Dune influences, there are other significant ones too. Prior to writing WoT, Jordan was best known for writing stories about Conan, and WoT retains very strong influences taken from Howard's stories about the iconic Cimmerian. Notably WoT's very strong strains of cultural determinism - in that the culture in which a character was raised is overwhelmingly dominant in character development even for characters who have long since abandoned that culture and entered another one, especially among the Aes Sedai - seem to be lifted very heavily from Howard. This holds true regarding the Aiel as well in the sense that the Fremen draw upon tropes that 'barbarians are superior' that absolutely predate Dune and that are very strongly present in the stories of Conan (who after all, is 'the barbarian' and happens to be superior to basically everyone he encounters).
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2021-07-18, 07:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
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2021-07-18, 08:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
As with many WoT characters, Perrin is influenced by figures from our mythology and history. In his case it is Perun, the bearded Slavic war god whose symbols were the axe, hammer and arrow. There was also an association with bulls. And Perun is often seen as the Slavic version of Thor. But there is more - Perun had an opponent, a god called Veles who could take the form of a wolf and who possibly shared a wife with Perun. Some have speculated that that may tie into the internal struggle Perrin has between his wolf and human sides.
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2021-07-18, 09:33 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
The same way the Aiel did, by scaling the wall.
Spoiler: SuggestionLiandrin actually does this, so this is the most likely explanation. In fact, we see her use this weave in book 2, to get Amalisa Jagad and her ladies searching the keep for Rand.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2021-07-18, 09:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-18, 09:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
Pretty sure you're entirely correct.
At some point in the series, it is mentioned that
Spoileralmost every woman who starts channeling before going to the Tower either learns to eavesdrop, or to make people do what she wants. The Tower tries to beat the latter out of anybody they catch doing it, but it is a pretty common trick.
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2021-07-18, 10:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-19, 10:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-19, 10:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-19, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-19, 07:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
Lets be honest, how many people had even heard of Perun before? I don't think Slavic gods are all that well known - I only learnt of him from playing Crusader Kings, which was a long time after reading the books and even then I didn't put it together - that came through reading fandom wiki articles.
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2021-07-19, 07:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-19, 08:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
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2021-07-20, 05:15 AM (ISO 8601)
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2021-07-20, 06:18 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
To be fair, for a demi-god stand-in with epic world spanning feats and magical powers....he's pretty forgettable and lame.Spoiler
Blame falls on RJ here. For making magic users to OP. To a degree where they kinda leaves most others irelevant.
thnx to Starwoof for the fine avatar
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2021-07-20, 11:07 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
I think the odds of people hearing about Perun before are slightly higher on a D&D webcomic forum :P. I'd heard of him before and recognized the name similarity.
SpoilerIt's not just that, Mat, Thom, and Lan are all memorable and pretty fantastic despite being a mundanes. Perrin's problem is that he peaks in Book 4 fighting to free the Two Rivers. He gets a couple more great moments like at Dumai Wells but mostly just runs in circles in his personal story and general character arc. He then rides off to WoT Vietnam and everything about him sucks from books 7-11; then Sanderson tries to rehabilitate him since he was one of Brandon's favorite characters. Sanderson didn't pull it off for me but YMMV.
Back to AES, I'm not quite sure if you caught it but Mat actually sees Rand climbing into the Stone right before he's ambushed by the Aeil. If your question was 'how did Rand get into the Stone from the wall given Mat had to blow up a window?" that we never see. But he probably just completely climbed the wall or carved his own hole with the Power.
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2021-07-20, 11:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
I have heard the name once. It was a fanfiction written about the avengers and it mentions that thor beat up dracula once, who then decided his pride was so hurt he had to go out and slaughter perun, another thunder god, to assuage his ego. I never would have made the connection as aside from thunder god, i have no clue about the godly dude.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2021-07-20, 12:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
Oh boy have I missed this thread.
I see we're back to the usual shenanigans of 2-3 pages of mostly spoilered discussion per actual chapter of the Let's Read.
It's like we never left.Originally Posted by Lord Magtok
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2021-07-20, 12:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
A neat touch I've always liked from this chapter is Mat wondering how the heck the fireworks blow such a massive hole in the wall. He didn't expect to blow a hole, he just wanted a distraction. It both shows how powerful black powder is in a confined space and that Matt's luck is working overtime to generate a large enough hole in a stone wall for him to enter by.
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2021-07-20, 01:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
thnx to Starwoof for the fine avatar
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2021-07-20, 01:39 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
SpoilerIt's been a while since I read the aMoL trilogy but I found Perrin's 'trial' to be redundant stupid and annoying, his presence during Rand's epiphany unearned, the dreamworld fights over the top, and overcoming Lanfear through the PowerOfLove(TM) to be absurd. Most of this was due to Brandon just making up stuff for Perrin to do to be cool; Jordan was essentially done with the character and had finished his arc in KoD. Sanderson said the notes were basically 'Perrin becomes a king at the end'.
His hammer was cool though.
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2021-07-20, 02:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
SpoilerI felt the dreamworld fights worked decently well. In a realm where anything is possible with just a thought, why shouldn't an epic showdown be wildly crazy and unreasonable? It did veer a bit into anime level shenanigans, but over all fit rather well for me.
At least Perrin wasn't Androl.
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2021-07-20, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time IV: The Spy Reborn
SpoilerI actually thought relative to where I thought they were going it was toned down. They made a big deal about people going physically into the dream, so I kept waiting for Perrin to realize he can bring Dream into the real world. I had actually thought that was what Saitan was doing, that he was a nightmare god bringing dreams into the real world (all of the impossible dream logic they use with him.)