The Great Hunt
by Robert Jordan
This was my favorite of book of the Wheel of Time series back in the nineties, and I can see why: it’s a straight-up adventure story! The perspective being mostly on Rand—Rand having a cool flute and travelling as a busker, Rand running around a parallel world—gives it a faster pace than the glacial novels I know are to come. The villainous cast of the first novel is augmented with the seemingly one-off Seanchen, and their “enslave the Aes Sedai” mantra is a weird twist of perspective from first book’s “Aes Sedai are peerless and unbreakable.”
Plus, all of The White Tower Tales, starring Egwene & Nynaeve, are full-on proto-Harry Potter stories full of sorcery school antics. They’re a bit of low-stakes fun while adding a lot of verisimilitude from a unique direction. Until the evil Aes Sedai and the whole dehumanizing damane parts, which rightfully traumatize a main character for, well, forever, if memory serves. Ugh. Not whimsical teenaged wizard antics. Not at all.
I knew the major beats of this book a lot better than The Eye of World; it’s a lot more human-centric, so not remembering that Trollocs were a thing is not as big of a deal in The Great Hunt. One place I was just wrong, though, was vaguely remembering liking Mat a lot. In both The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt, he is very unpleasant. I cannot for the life of me understand why I remember not liking Perrin, either, who seems mostly good and interesting. I’m sure something changes somewhere, but it hasn’t, yet.
The Great Hunt also has a big chunk of time spent with Lanfear, who subscribes to, let’s be honest, “The Hot Vegeta Principle” . Anytime a super-strong villain is evil—but maybe not—but also maybe her lack of direct straight-up-just-murdering-people is to further her own goals, and is ultimately extremely evil in the end? That’s a good system. Maybe don’t like the villain, I’m talking directly at you, Walter White fans. 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: true deathbed confessional style.
Speaking of the Forsaken and their extremely biblical names, as well as their general fallen angel prisonbreak motif, and the dangled prospects of sheltering in the light of the Creator, the “reborn” aspect of Rand being the Dragon Reborn is probably more of a christ-alike than I recognized twenty five years ago. I always saw Rand as more of an Arthur, son of Uther. And with the next book in the series centering around a the quest for an untouchable Excalibur-sword that will proclaim Rand as the Dragon to all nations and all peoples, well, that’s Arthur, all right. Complete with Moiraine Sedai as his Merlin/Gandalf/Allanon/Obi Wan. Add in the whole angreal/sa’angreal artifact-naming convention, and it really screams Le Morte d’Arthur and the Merlin-less quest for the sangreal, the Holy Grail. But that version of King Arthur is a Christian reinterpretation of pagan mythological figures, anyway, so we’re back to where we began.
The future knowledge that the series is wrapped up by the author of Mistborn—which was, to me, the closest fantasy allegory to the New Testament this side of C.S. Lewis—is probably why I’m on higher alert for specific symbology this time around.
But with the in-story resurrection mimicking the Dharmic Wheel as much if not more than a returned savior, and the yin-yang symbology of saidin and saidar being kind of like Confucian Chi, maybe it’s more an archetype choice and amalgamation than a direct link to Christian cosmology. Whatever the reason, teasing out foundational tropes from religious or mythological texts and making them accessible and interesting to teens and tweens is laudable all on its own. I know my first exposure to The Odyssey was through Ducktales, and the Siren’s song of “Pennies, Nickles, Quarters, Dimes” still kicks around in my noggin’ every so often. So go ahead and prime young minds to interpret many different bits of folklore; it’ll probably help form a more cohesive picture of human cultural standards.
The broad mash-ups of societies are a category apart, though: all of the distinct countries so far in the series feel like one or two traits from real-world places, taken to the extreme. Same for the populations; It makes me laugh that every single line from Amyrlin Seat—the Aes Sedai Pope, basically—is about fish or nets or boats as shorthand to show she comes from the docks of a fishing nation. After a few years of being surrounded by the multicultural academia of the White Tower—let alone running the place—you’d think she’d either purposefully crush her regional dialect like a modern national newscaster or unconsciously allow it to fade into its own uniquely cosmopolitan patois. I guess this is just a sign of how much the Tolkien linguistic ethos has invaded my sense of what is required to build a believable fantasy world.
So. Epic stories are well-served by drawing broad references from foundational texts. And as there are twelve books left in The Wheel of Time, I will withhold judgement as to what religious subtext hold the strongest sway on this side of the Aryth Ocean, and whether or not it is trying to get me to accept Lord Rand as my personal savior. The Great Hunt, as it stands on its own, is a really fun fantasy adventure book. It could serve as a wrap on the series in a way that is satisfying enough for you to move on, if, say, the libraries are all closed due to pandemic.
But if you want Mat to be a good character, you can’t stop here:
“Are you feeling all right? I mean, you aren’t going mad already, are you? I mean, all those fancy clothes, and all that talk about being a lord. Well, that isn’t exactly right in the head.
No offense, Rand, but I think I will just sleep as far away from you as I can, if you don’t mind. That’s if you are staying. I hear about a fellow who could channel once. A merchant’s guard told me. Before the Red Ajah found him, he woke one morning, and his whole village was smashed flat. All the houses, all the people, everything but the bed he was sleeping in, like a mountain rolled over them.”
Perrin said, “In that case, Mat, you should sleep cheek by jowl with him.”
“I may be a fool, but I intend to be a live fool.” Mat hesitated, looking sideways at Rand. “Look, I know you came along to help me, and I am grateful. I really am. But you’re just are not the same anymore. You understand that, don’t you?”
Because he’s not good in this book. Not even in a Lanfear way.