Binge Project: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ Book 13

Welcome to the Binge Project series! These Binge Projects will feature me reading or watching an entire run of comics, books, TV shows, or other media in rapid order, then writing expansively about the experience. This installment will be a slower process, as I work my way through the lengthy “The Wheel of Time” book series. 

Previously: Book 1 (The Eye of the World), Book 2 (The Great Hunt), Book 3 (The Dragon Reborn), Book 4 (The Shadow Rising), Book 5 (The Fires of Heaven), Book 6 (Lord of Chaos), Book 7 (A Crown of Swords), Book 8 (The Path of Daggers), Book 9 (Winter’s Heart), Book 10 (Crossroads of Twilight), Book 11 (Knife of Dreams), Book 12 (The Gathering Storm).

And now, The Wheel of Time Book 13: Towers of Midnight. Spoilers ahead.

There were moments earlier in this series where I considered quitting this Binge Project. Particularly around Book 7, probably my personal low point for the series, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going. But even when parts of the books bothered me, there was always enough good that I never got to that point, so I decided at one point to just take a decent-sized break instead. I didn’t even end up truly doing that, though I’ve had a few significant slowdowns as life/work gets in the way. And now, I’ve gotten to the payoffs that are more than justifying the decision to keep going. These Brandon Sanderson entries have been so spectacularly good that every bump in the road was easily worth it to reach this point.

Towers of Midnight was another great book — a slight step down from The Gathering Storm, mostly because Book 12 had such an amazing ending with Rand. But Book 13 has plenty of its own high points, from the redemption of Perrin to plenty of ramping up toward the Last Battle.

Let’s start with Perrin, as he probably got more POV time than any other character in this book, and used that time to really strong results. Perrin was possibly my favorite character early in this series, particularly after his epic defense of the Two Rivers against Padan Fain and the Trollocs back in Book 4. But that proved to be the last great Perrin moment for quite a while, with the character disappearing for a while, then re-entering with a smaller role, then seeing that role expanded into the horribly obnoxious Faile/Shaido plotline that I’ve covered as a consistent weak point til it wrapped up in Book 11. After another book where he made only a brief appearance, Perrin comes roaring back in Towers of Midnight with his strongest book yet.

Perrin goes through a lot in this book. He and Faile finally learn to be truly honest with each other, fully opening up and strengthening their relationship; a big part of why Book 13 was even better than Book 4 for Perrin, in my opinion, was how much better Faile was written by Sanderson than she was by Robert Jordan. Perrin and his army, with accompanying refugees, meet up with the remaining Children of the Light, to whom Perrin must finally answer for killing two Children way, way back in Book 1. The build-up to the non-fight with the Whitecloaks lasts a bit too long, but it’s easily worth it for the long-awaited reveal of Morgase’s true identity to Perrin and company, as well as the revelation that she lived to her step-son, Galad. In fact, Morgase finally is revealed to live to all three of her children, and the shocked, emotional reunions were almost worth the excessive wait.

Perrin’s trial and eventual light sentence were worthy ends to the long-running subplot of him and Whitecloak trouble. Having Galad actually become sworn to him was delicious, as well. Galad interests me much more than either of his siblings these days. He’s so extremely dedicated to doing “what’s right,” and that dedication often makes him very formidable, including in his triumph over Asunawa for control over the Children. But it also makes him oddly childlike (no pun intended) in his thinking, as we see in his struggles to grasp with any shades of gray when Morgase is talking him through how difficult the choices of a leader can really be. His budding romance with Berelain is perhaps a bit too on the nose, but at least her lackluster attempted seduction of Perrin is over for good.

Perrin’s later battle to save the Children of the Light from Graendal’s trap of the Trolloc army was exciting stuff, and I enjoyed the unraveling and eventual death of Byar. Jordan usually did battle scenes really well, and those thankfully haven’t dropped off at all under Sanderson. Perrin’s forging of a new hammer, with Asha’man assistance, was oddly captivating. Sanderson has tried hard to redeem Jordan’s awkward “axe or hammer” choice for Perrin. That whole “decision” initially seemed an obvious metaphor for Perrin being torn between the destructive but necessary duties of a soldier (the axe) and the simple life of a blacksmith that he was being pushed/torn away from (the hammer). But then Jordan weirdly made it much more literal, with Perrin throwing away the axe because he’d grown to enjoy using it … but still using the hammer in exactly the same way, to kill Shaido as he freed Faile. Sanderson’s attempt to redeem that “choice” was to emphasize that the hammer  has the ability to create or destroy, a duality not represented by the axe, which could only kill. That still doesn’t fully work to me, but I guess it worked well enough; seeing Perrin do blacksmith work again finally put him at peace with being a leader, an important benchmark of growth. Even bigger growth was him finally finding his personal balance with his inner wolf, which included a sweet revisitation of the forgotten Noam plot point, with Perrin getting to see how much freer the man is as Boundless the wolf.

And where Perrin really shined was in the Wolf Dream, teaming up with Hopper to master Tel’aran’rhiod  and fight Slayer (or Isam/Luc) and defeat the Dream Spike. Perrin’s final battle with Slayer converging with Egwene’s final battle with Mesaana was maybe the highlight of the book to me. Not only were the fights themselves kicking ass on a pretty large scale, but those two main characters hadn’t interacted in so, so long that it was nice to just see them briefly share a scene again. I also loved Perrin’s casual deflection of balefire, not even realizing how badass of a move he just made. It showed that his mastery of Tel’aran’rhiod probably surpassed even Egwene’s, and Perrin being superior there absolutely delighted me — not because I like Perrin more than Egwene (I don’t; him being the highlight of this book doesn’t fully make up for several prior books of mediocrity), but because that arguably means his teachers (wolves) were better masters than Egwene’s (the Wise Ones). And that was great for the simple fact that wolves rule. Bring on the Last Hunt!

Which brings us to the saddest death of the series thus far: Hopper, who dies for a second time, but this time with finality. Poor, poor Hopper. Fucking Gawyn gets to survive this book, but not Hopper? Rough. But Hopper’s competition for “saddest death so far” is pretty low. Now that Moirane’s once-seeming death has been fully undone with her rescue at the end of this book, hardly any of the good guys have ever actually died — even now, 13 books in. That’s kind of crazy, right? Makes me wonder what the finale will bring. Was Jordan wanting to save everyone for the end and then unleash a bloodbath, or was he really intending for almost everyone to survive? We know Min had a viewing that Alivia will help Rand die, but he also was told by the Eelfinn that he would live by dying, and it’s unclear if that was literal or figurative. We’re also introduced to a Dark Prophecy of the Forsaken that they think means Perrin will die, but are they wrong? Nynaeve and Lan are bonded now, allowing each to feel if the other dies; is that just in the nick of time for one of them to bite the dust? And what of everyone else? So many questions; I’m freaking excited for this endgame.

So let’s keep moving. Among the Forsaken, we learn that Graendal survived Rand’s balefire after all (but Aran’gar did not), but then she and Slayer fail to kill Perrin, resulting in Shaidar Haran coming for her. Does he kill her, or just torture her? Probably the latter, since Lanfear also appears to Rand in a dream at the end, wailing of her torture at the Dark One’s hands. (We also got the mystery solved of why Lanfear is weaker now, via Moirane’s explanation about the Aelfinn/Eelfinn draining the Power.) And Padan Fain makes another cameo, planning to kill both Rand and the Dark One. Just how powerful is he? The answer to that still seems very unclear, even now at the end. It’s bizarre: I remember thinking back at the end of Book 5 that Rand was plowing through the Forsaken awfully quickly; now, there are so many major villains still left that I don’t know how the hell we can wrap it all up in just one more book.

Among those are Taim and the Black Tower, where Book 13 gives us more chapters than ever. Most of them involve showing the growing darkness among the Asha’man, almost like an infection of evil, with both those who remain good and the good Aes Sedai all being trapped by the inability to Travel out. Surely the spread of Taim’s influence is Compulsion at work, leading again to me suspecting Taim is one of the Forsaken, and it would almost have to be Demandred, right? Also, we never did find out who killed Asmodean way back in Book 5, but Taim showed up right after that, so I’m calling Demandred as both Taim and Asmodean’s killer.

Some quicker hits: Elayne is still awful; I don’t really even want to talk about her storylines in this book, because all I can focus on is her going off on another undermanned and unnecessary mission (this time, impersonating a Forsaken to interrogate a Black Ajah member) that almost gets her killed. She’s the worst, to the extent that I didn’t even care about her gaining Cairhien and whatever else happened. We finally get Verin’s letter opened at the end, revealing an attack on Caemlyn. Verin said in the letter that she was counting on Mat’s curiosity, which means Verin was unusually stupid. She could have avoided Caemlyn’s lack of notice by just making Mat promise to open the letter after a certain period of time, and leaving out the promise to fulfill whatever was inside (the promise of which was why he was too reluctant to open it). It’s not like Mat would have opened it and then not warned Elayne, so that promise was unnecessary. Whatever. Lan slowly gets an army and accepts that that’s a good thing. I was mildly disappointed at first to see him try to turn people away, but at least he got to the right frame of mind by the end. And his wife passed her (unfair) tests to become Aes Sedai in time to presumably help Rand wield Callandor; I’m calling Alivia for the third member of that trio. Rodel Ituralde leads a pretty kickass defense of a Saldean city, holding off an insane Trolloc army for far longer than he should have been able to, until Rand could get there and inflict maximum pwnage. The Borderland rulers finally meet with Rand and reveal their weirdness has been to make sure he could fulfill a secret prophecy that only they knew, which was a bit of a letdown after building up that mystery slowly over several books. But all of the living Great Captains are generally on the same side now. While they’ll obviously all be field generals in some respect for the Last Battle, I’m wondering who will be the main person in charge of Rand’s armies. Ituralde would be acceptable, but I’m hoping the answer is Mat. He has the most experience (through his past lives) and now he has one eye. A one-eyed general with hundreds of years of war memories? There is approximately a 0% chance that Mat isn’t going to do something amazingly cool in the final book.

Mat does pretty damn well in Book 13, too. He spends a good chunk of time around Elayne, but his two biggest developments are finally defeating the Gholam and rescuing Moirane. The Gholam has been a worthy adversary, though I wish we’d gotten more explanation for why it wasn’t supposed to attract attention, a seemingly pointless limitation that prevented it from killing Mat multiple times. But I was glad to see Mat beat it for what sure seemed a final and decisive time; there’s plenty else to wrap up still in the last book anyway.

The Tower of Ghenjei was both wonderfully enjoyable and mildly disappointing. I hoped and expected that we’d get more concrete answers and explanations about just what the Aelfinn and Eelfinn are and how they came to touch the main world, but at least we got a fair amount on what they want and how they operate. Mat was suitably badass in striking his bargain, paying the price of his eye. And Noal sacrificed his life, which was a little too obvious but worked anyway. It was weird to me that Sanderson treated Noal’s declaration that he’s Jain Farstrider as an actual revelation. Were we really supposed to be surprised when Noal had already made it pretty damn obvious multiple times? Regardless, I’m genuinely happy to have Moirane back. It’s weird to think of how major of a character she was early on, and how very long it’s been now since we’d seen her. How will that affect character dynamics in the last book? Surely we’ll at least get to see her meet Rand again.

Moirane and Thom’s romance didn’t really strike any good chord with me; it felt suddenly tacked on just to throw them each a “happy ending,” with hints of anything romantic between them only just beginning in Book 11 before blossoming here. But perhaps more groundwork was laid for that before Moirane’s “sacrifice” than I realize; it’ll be something to look for someday when rereading the series. Similarly, Egwene has some weird capital-D Dreams that seem to predict something regarding towers, but I honestly didn’t really follow them. I think what I’m looking forward to most when rereading the series (which will probably be years from now) is being able to use knowledge of the plot’s endgames to see how much was telegraphed early on, such as in Min’s original viewings of the gang.

Egwene’s big moment comes in finally defeating the rest of the Black Ajah and Mesaana as her showdowns converged with Perrin’s. That was a great series of action events; we’ve seen a lot of Egwene becoming a political genius, but this is the second straight book (coming after her fighting off the Seanchan attack) where we got to see her be an action hero. My only complaint is that we finally find out Mesaana’s secret identity, and it was just some random low-level Aes Sedai whose name I don’t recall ever reading until that moment. Obviously that means it was a good disguise on Mesaana’s part, but why did Jordan (and then Sanderson) ever even bother making a mystery over who she really was in the Tower? It was a disappointing revelation to me, but it only was disappointing because I felt like we’d been led to expect more of a bombshell.

Egwene’s other plot points weren’t as great. She bickers a ton with Gawyn, who spends a lot of time being a dick again before finally letting his ego subside and accepting a more subservient place. And, of course, he goes action hero himself, fighting off the Bloodknives about to kill Egwene. I let myself have a brief moment of hope that the success really would kill him, though being bonded instead was obvious. But he did steal their ter’angreal that grant special abilities in exchange for impending death, so maybe we’re being set up for him going out in a different blaze of glory. Elsewhere for Egwene, she spends a lot of time trying to out-maneuver Rand regarding the Seals, and strike training bargains with the Aiel and Sea Folk. All of those parts were mildly disappointing to me, as Egwene displayed a lot more Aes Sedai arrogance in those scenes than she really ever has, acting self-assured in her belief that the Tower knew more than any of those groups (which it doesn’t).

I talked a bit in the Book 12 post about the question of how could this series end happily when so much darkness was spreading, maybe beyond what defeating the Dark One could cure. Book 13 gave us conflicting answers to that dilemma. At first, it seemed we were being given reason to hope after all. Rand’s recovery on Dragonmount gives him the power to reverse much of the food spoilage, which was one of my biggest concerns; Arad Doman is saved from the seemingly irreversible starvation after all. But then Aviendha gets to Rhuidean, and the answer swings way back to the negative as she gets her visions of a dark future. Even in this world she sees where the Last Battle has clearly been won by the Light, everything seems pretty awful. The Seanchan (who learn Traveling in this book) are the dominant empire, and we see the Aiel reduced to pitiful creatures. We knew only a “remnant of a remnant” of the Aiel would be saved, but I thought that meant most would die in battle; Aviendha’s visions show them increasingly ruined for generations to come. And the visions also tell of the White Tower falling to the Seanchan (something Tuon/Fortuona again resolves to see happen in this book), again making me wonder if Rand is just saving the world to see it fall to a slavery-driven empire. Hopefully this is all resolved happily, but Aviendha’s belief that these are visions of what WILL happen, not merely what COULD, leaves me worried that Sanderson has painted himself into a corner with those chapters.

Fresh off probably his best moment of the series at the end of Book 12, Rand has a relatively smaller role again in Towers of Midnight. But what we see of him was everything I could have hoped for to follow up his big Book 12 moment. He and Lews Therin are fully merged and at peace, and you can tell. It’s like he’s become a fully realized person for the first time, and it’s bizarre how captivating that lack of inner conflict is, after seeing his struggle for so long. He’s cool and collected, acting in complete control of himself and his actions for the first time in a very long time. He’s still authoritative, but with much more calmness to it. He also kicks more ass with the Power, using Lews Therin’s knowledge to help just kill everyone to defend the Saldean city. He tries to make things right again with the Aiel and even Cadsuane, though he also changes that Cadsuane dynamic for the better by finally getting more respect from her. And for all Cadsuane’s faults, Min was right; even if indirectly and not how she intended, she did teach him what he needed by fulfilling her promise to make him laugh and cry. The laugh we already got, and the cry comes here when he gets another chance at a reunion with Tam. I found that second reunion to be another wonderfully beautiful moment for Rand, possibly one of the final moments of happiness he’ll  have.

Perrin and Mat had a similarly sweet moment when they reunited for the first time in ages. It’s weird to say this about such a small and generally inconsequential moment, but I teared up a little when Mat popped out to surprise Perrin, telling him he’d caught a badger for old time’s sake. It was such a poignant reminder of those old times, and how far we’ve come. There was a time in the early chapters of The Eye of the World where I thought Perrin and Mat would just be Rand’s annoying tag-along friends who’d be ditched soon. It soon became apparent they were more than that, but it’s really astounding how far they’ve grown since those humble beginnings. And the wonderful thing about Jordan introducing almost all of the main characters way back in Book 1 is that we can chart similar astounding growths for nearly everyone.

It’s all led us here, from a sleepy farming village to the brink of one last battle for the fate of all that is and ever will be. We have come to journey’s end…

…but not yet. A while after I mentioned, at the end of my Book 11 post, that I didn’t think Jordan had done a good enough job since Book 1 at continuing to develop Lan’s man-without-a-country destiny, a friend messaged me to ask if I’d read Jordan’s Wheel of Time prequel book. The answer was no, because until that message, I hadn’t even known that existed; I’ve tried to not read too much about the series for fear of spoilers. But as my friend then explained and as I’ve since read about, Jordan wrote a novella called New Spring for a fantasy anthology, published in between Books 8 and 9. He then expanded it into a short novel that became “Book 0” of the series, following the end of the Aiel War and Moirane and Lan’s early days. As much as I want to rush on to the end of the saga, I also really want the Last Battle to be the last thing I read in the series, so I’m going to read the prequel book now. Since it’s shorter, I hope to breeze through it in the next week or so, and still be able to finish Book 14 to conclude the series before Christmas. We’ll see. But for now, I find it rather fitting to go back to the very beginning right before reading the very end.

Though, of course, there are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time…

–

NEXT TIME: New Spring, Book 0 of The Wheel of Time.