The Dragon Reborn (Chapters 20-25)

Annals of the Homestarmy

Wednesday, May 29. 2013

Posted by Radar in Wheel of Time Read-Through

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The Dragon Reborn (Chapters 20-25)

Great chapters to read, even though they take place within the White Tower and deal with all the women's issues I hate so much. Thankfully most of that seems to be curtailed. And we get to hear about The Amerlan's Uncle Juan. Continued in-attempts to make sure spelling is correct. Chapters and summary below the fold.

Ch20 Visitations
Saleen pays a visit to matt. The Amerlan shows up next. The horn is linked to matt, and whenever blown the heroes will come fight for you.

Ch21 A World of Dreams
Metaphysics discussion of worlds, only one creator and one evil one. The dream world, Tel-Eye-On-Riad is discussed. And apparently there is only one dream world and everyone from all the existences can go to it.

Ch22 The Price of a Ring
Igwayne becoming an accepted. "Was it real?" If it is real then Sheariam hopes that all that have not come back from the rings are miserable. Rand can be controlled by the shadow if he loses his mind, according to one of the Rands. Opening to the true source means you can be exposed to other things. 13 dread lords weaving through 13 merdrall is a bad combination for anyone. She is now the amerlan seat and has to still rand. A man channeling is considered a crime by the white tower. The black adja attacks the tower.

Ch23 Sealed
The process of accepting went weird and no one seems to know why. Apparently there was a real danger to her life. Alana is upset and willing to take her turn in the kitchen because of what happened. "What does it mean to be green adja?" You must love men and stand ready. They are called the Battle Adja, and was always with the armies doing the actual fighting. They will be there at the last battle. Elaine is shaken up as well though I don't know why.

Ch24 Scouting Discoveries
Matt gets up. He looks in to whether he can make an escape. He can't. Taking on galad and gowan with a quarterstaff and he beats them. Those two are overly confident.

Ch25 Questions
Igwayne dreams some odd things. Perin with a beard, rand taking a crystal sword, a falcon(matt) and a hawk(perrin getting leashed), rand approaching shonchan, rand enter a burning pit, matt with his eye on a balance scale, matt hanging from a tree limb, matt and shonchan. She doesn't like dreaming. Nineve is still impatient. They don't like the info they were given, complaining that it is useless. A list of terangrial that the black adja took with them. All of them last studied by Corienen Nadiel. 13 stolen items, for the 13 that left the tower. Balefire is scary. A device that will alter chance/luck. Nineve tries to take the ring to use it first but Igwaine asserts dominance. A run in with saleen.

Matt is like "Uncle Juan". That seems like a good thing to me and one of the real positive aspects to Matt. Why wait for the last battle to use the horn again? Use it in all the battles coming.

Very interesting idea about the dream world. Though it seems it would get a bit crowded. Are all the people in the parallel worlds the same people as in this world? Could they run in to their own version from another world?

Igwaines question about whether what she saw was real or not is a good one and one of the mysterious that I actually like from Jordan. I guess that Sheriam does not like the idea of someone turning their back on their responsibilities. I can applaud that. I won't, but I could. She still acts like a puffed-up eyesadie. I wonder what other things you can be exposed to when you open up to accept the true source. Can the evil 13 thing be counteracted with a mirror team of good people? That would be very troubling to go through, but I guess you need to know if someone is going to be willing to sacrifice everything that was, is, and might be.

Who is Alana again? I like that she is so upset that she is willing to take the lowest form of penance for what happened, even though no one knows what happened. Do we ever find out? Did someone try to trap her? Was that person Saleen? The green adja seems like a good choice for igwayne. It would be interesting to know what Elaine saw in her process to become Accepted. Do you have to go through the angiral stuff to truly be able to channel the power? The white tower just seems like an institution for controlling things. Is it actually blessed by the hand of the Creator?

These chapters make me not like Galad ad Gowen. I enjoyed Matt smacking them around the way he did. But it does seem odd that he can magically have such profound skill. If these guys are so good then they should be able to beat him easily. I wonder how I would do in such a contest.

Clearly the dreams that Igwayne has are foreshadowing stuff. But maybe not everything was. She dismisses anything to do with the Shaunchan but might some of those be real possibilities?

Oh nice, the girls are back to the same annoying women they were before. When will they change and grow up? Who is Corienen Nadiel? Some back story on her might be nice.

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Curtis on :

First, your questions:

I wouldn't use the Horn in every battle because you give the enemy a chance to learn about it and steal it from you. Whereas, keeping it hidden until the Last Battle means your enemy won't know necessarily how to counter it.

Tel'aran'rhiod is a weird place. We'll continue to learn about it, but Jordan is really hitting the multiple worlds/multiple versions of yourself stuff hard.

I really like your question about using 13 good people to turn a bad person good. But the 13 dreadlords have to channel through Myrdraal, what would the good guys channel through?

Alanna Mosvani was in The Great Hunt. She was part of the group that took Egwene and Nynaeve to the Tower. She gave them lessons and made them suspicious with all her questions about Rand. She is Green Ajah and seems to really want to scrub pots with Egwene. Maybe she wants to chat about boys and have a water fight afterwards?

We do know what happened in the Ter'angreal. There was a magic resonance with the dream ring Ter'angreal that Egwene received from Verin. Alanna noticed it at the first, but was poo-poohed by Elaida the red *****.

The process to become Accepted is barbaric. It's not necessary to learn how to channel, but the Aes Sedai require it as a test of those who would join their ranks. I guess you definitely have confidence in a person's willpower after that test.

I agree. I would like to know what Elayne saw in her trials.

Gawyn and Galad were definitely overconfident. Mat's skill with the quarterstaff did seem kind of out of the blue here. I guess the Warder's don't train against that particular weapon very well. Seems like a pretty big oversight.

I think we got all the backstory we're going to on Corianin Nedeal - the most recent Aes Sedai Dreamer (who died 500 years previously.)

Do we still not know who Selene is? I thought she kind of tipped her hand at the end of the Great Hunt. Am I not remembering correctly?

Radar on :

The horn only works for one person. Keep that one person safe and then you don't have to worry about it.

I was thinking that 13 women would channel through 13 men. Not sure how they would, but I apparently equate merdrall with men.

Oh right, I forgot about the ring. Must have not been paying attention to that in the last read through. thanks.

Yeah the quarterstaff/sword fight seemed odd. And a quarterstaff is just a sword that you can grab from both ends. Really it's just a stick that someone gave a fancy name. Just use your sword to block it. But maybe Jordan was just trying to play up the overconfidence of nobility thinking that they can beat a simple farmer. I like that idea.

We all know who Saleen is. I just didn't feel like she did anything very noteworthy in these chapters other than show up and freak people out.

Curtis on :

I know you know who Selene is. I just can't remember if Jordan revealed who she is in this series. Apart from it being fairly obvious I mean.

I don't believe your points on the quarterstaff being like a sword are quite right. As I understand it, a quarterstaff is held differently and has a significantly greater reach (it's longer). This would require a swordfighter to approach his adversary differently. These apprentice warders apparently hadn't fought much against staff wielders.

However, Mat would have to be an expert staff wielder, because these boys have been trained in martial combat their whole lives. The bit about his dad kind of felt thrown in after we spent so much time in book one talking about how the three boys felt more secure with a bow than any other weapon. Perrin's expert axe-manship aside.

AoD on :

The other danger with using the horn is that these people CAN die, and then you'd be left without critical pieces at Tarmon Gai'don.

Radar on :

If they are calling these people back from the dead, then what is the problem?

AoD on :

Before answering this question, I must confer with my consigliere - I may have said too much.

Radar on :

Well then this is officially the worst Harry Potter book in the series.

AoD on :

I don't know, Deathly Hallows is still a strong contender - see this guy's chapter-by-chapter deconstruction of it: http://web.archive.org/web/20090520183604/http://ferretbrain.com/articles/article-146.html

Curtis on :

I think you're confusing later events with current happenings. That's all I can say here.

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