So while I love the magical girl genre, it isn’t the magic or the girl that I like–it’s the slice-of-life that, even with superpowers and hidden identities, felt more real to me at 12 or 13 than Saved by the Bell ever could.
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Beyond the expanded scope from adventuring party to nation-state wrangling, the plot has to slow for another major reason: Travelling. Rand can warp around, collapsing time and distance in such a way that “the journey” as a trope barely exists anymore. And “the journey” is the beating heart of the Fantasy genre: we all live in the travelogue that “There and Back Again: A Hobbit’s Tale” built. Now that he and a few others can move around the world near-instantly, plot-restrictions-via-distance are a thing of the past.
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What I wrote about Perrin in The Shadow Rising holds true for Nynaeve in this volume; she is a microcosm to understand another of Rand’s problems. This time, it isn’t about delegating responsibility and accepting your limits, but about understanding—maybe even embracing—who you are; even if you don’t want to. Rand has to come to terms with Lews Therin: his past, his present, and his refusal to put women in danger, even to the point where Moiraine has to sacrifice herself to save him.
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It is weird feeling of anxiety, balancing reading through a book quickly because it pleases you, but slowing down because there is not an easy way to pick up the next in the series. For good or ill, the third book in the Wheel of Time is where the series finds its feet. All the characters are who I remember them being: Mat’s not a jerk anymore; Perrin is a little boring; Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve start rolling their eyes with exasperation at “men” on the reg:
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It’s risky to extrapolate my enjoyment of Lanfear, considering that I do not know where the books ultimately go but lots of other people definitely do: maybe Lanfear will miss the Medea or Elphaba treatment and be saddled by the standard “foul temptress gets an ironic comeuppance” character arc. Or perhaps she will be the bland metonym for never being so evil that you are unable to be redeemed? Forsaken, until you aren’t:
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When there were only forty or so pages left of Darker Shade and little prospect of a satisfying resolution, I braced myself for the “Book One Cliffhanger Ending,” where the immediate threat has ended yet a larger horror rises in the distance. But it comes together in an altogether pleasing, albeit alacritous, way. Things—life, culture, people—won’t return to their pre-adventure status, nor will they maintain the heightened stress of all-consuming plot-based action. If there was never another book, things would be okay.
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The Wheel of Time, the High Fantasy series equivalent of Moby Dick at least in terms of wordcount, has popped up enough times for me lately for me to give it a serious look: “One thing we can do. We can try. What seems like chance is often the Pattern. Three threads have come together here, each giving a warning: the Eye. It cannot be chance; it is the Pattern.” And so I’ll start this journey, for the second time. I’ve read up until at least book six—possibly eight, because I at least recognized that cover—of the fourteen novels. The first book, The Eye of the World, still does as good a job setting everyone up, building out a world, and having as silly a climactic battle as it did when I was sixteen.
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