Binge Project: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ Book 7

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)

And now, The Wheel of Time Book 7: A Crown of Swords

I’d like to start this edition with a quick word about binging. This may be its own post someday, to elaborate on why I do these Binge Projects, but for now I’ll be brief. I enjoy binging media because I think it helps with immersion. By going through a show, book series, or whatever in rapid order, you necessarily spend more time in that fictional or nonfictional world over a shorter period. When my wife and I raced through Doctor Who this summer, for instance, I was spending several hours a week in the TARDIS. With that time investment often comes a greater appreciation of the world being built before your eyes. Usually, I come to love a series even more by embracing this kind of immersion. But like everything, this isn’t without its flaws. Binging can accentuate the positives, but it can accentuate the negatives, too. Seeing bad things repeated again and again in rapid order often drives them home even more than when the viewings are spread out (looking at you, Buffy Season 4).

All of which is preamble to say: I’m starting to wonder if The Wheel of Time is suffering from being binged. There are so many awesome things in this series that have made me really enjoy it and that have gotten me excited to keep coming back for more. But its flaws are also being driven home, and frequently, with greater force. Sometimes, I’m just more aware of minor tics; Jordan’s incredible overuse of variations of the phrase “a smile that never touched [his/her] eyes” stands out with quick reading. But while that’s mildly annoying, it’s small. Jordan’s major flaw remains the same thing I’ve already discussed ad nauseam: the guy just couldn’t write women to save his life. Having a few unsavory female characters is great; having every damn woman in the series be a fucking shrew is just hard to bear.

I’ve started calling this Jordan’s “Angry Women Trope,” and for good reason. The female characters are manipulative, hypocritical, delusional, and rude, but above all, they are so goddamn angry. All. The. Time. It’s clear to me that Jordan was trying to go for a worldview that embraces shades of gray and gives nearly every character a mix of good and bad. But the “bad” for the male heroes tends to be stuff like being too eager to go fight ultimate evils, while the bad for women frequently involves berating men for doing nothing in particular wrong. The degree to which the Angry Women Trope holds back a book has varied throughout the series, though it’s clearly not going away under Jordan (I’m holding out a sort of desperate hope for Sanderson). Some books he’s been able to dial it back to a relatively minor nuisance. A Crown of Swords is not one of them.

Book 7 is just awful at times. I hate saying that, but it was bad enough that there were moments when I had to force myself to keep going. It seems bizarre now to think that I once called Nynaeve my favorite character after Book 2; Jordan has made her ground zero for Angry Women Trope. Aside from her battles with Moghedien, I’ve spent most of the past several books hating her. Putting her and Elayne with Mat for nearly all of this book only made things worse; Mat being around major female characters brings out the worst in Jordan. Mat is a prime example for how the men’s flaws come out better. Mat is undeniably misogynistic, and doesn’t even realize it himself, yet the tone of the narrative still manages to play that off as part of his lovable roguish charm. In contrast, even the women’s realization and recognition that they’d been treating Mat like shit was somehow presented in a way that still made them look worse.

My conclusion after all of this is that maybe I need a break from binging this series. Binging is a double-edged sword: you get immersed in writing, but that can include the bad writing. The upside is that the faster you binge through it, the faster you can hopefully get past the bad and onto something good. But the more I get hung up on the Angry Women Trope, the more I think I just need a little time away from The Wheel of Time. It’s not coming quite yet. Book 7 was the shortest installment in the series in several books, and Book 8 is even shorter, so I’m going to try to fly through it and get to Book 9. A friend of Andy’s who’s already read the series recently told me that his favorites are Books 9 and 14. If that’s true, maybe a break after Book 9 would be a good place to pause. And maybe/hopefully, these next two books will rock hard enough that I’ll change my mind and keep going. But that’s my plan for now.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the Angry Women that made A Crown of Swords a bit of a drag. The series has reached a point where things have slowed down considerably. Jordan built his world rather deliberately in the first two or three books of this series, then with things established, hit the accelerator for a couple much more exciting rides, particularly Book 5. Now, it feels a little like he’s shifted back to world building at a more deliberate pace, trying to set up the myriad twists and turns we still have left for another seven books. It isn’t uncommon to see a long series hit a snag after some midpoint excitement/climaxes; George R.R. Martin, for instance, had a similar issue with A Feast for Crows, in my opinion. But it’s still a drag when  you get to that snag on the heels of awesomeness.

(Brief sidenote: the number of minor ideas in The Wheel of Time that have ended up with a similar parallel in A Song of Ice and Fire is climbing. There’s the Games of Houses (see: Game of Thrones, obviously), Perrin’s wolf connection (amplified by warging) and even now, the titular Crown of Swords (the Iron Throne, also made of swords). Just interesting to see such striking similarities, even if unintentional.)

Not a ton happens in this book. The Nynaeve/Elayne/Mat plot takes the course of the entire book to search one city and finally find the Bowl of the Winds, but we don’t even get to see it used in this volume. They find the group of White Tower rejects and wilders, but since those women were also Angry Women at first, that was less than fun. Perrin fights with his wife (who is so damn Angry Woman), then makes up, then is fighting with her again when we finally see him just starting out on a mission. I don’t even know what the fuck was up with Sammael’s manipulations of the Shaido Aiel, but that happened. Elaida took most of the book to finally find out what happened at the end of last book, at which point some genuinely interesting stuff happened: Alviarin started to take overt control, and Elaida made her own last-ditch effort to save her position (and maybe life) with an independent investigation.

Lan returns after a book away, clearly a changed man (and not for the good) after Moirane’s death. Nynaeve’s only good scene in the book comes with her putting her foot down that she won’t let him waste away and die, marrying him instead. With any luck, that relationship will make her more bearable, but I doubt it; she was sniping at him by the end of the book. The gholam enters the narrative, a truly formidable and intriguing new foe. Trollocs and Myrddraal once seemed intimidating in their own ways, but as the story has gone on, they’ve become kind of old hat; it was pleasant to see a new type of threat. Speaking of, an old threat returned anew with the Seanchan coming back into the story. Perhaps Mat meeting the Daughter of the Nine Moons is coming nearer.

The Forsaken continue regrouping. I accidentally left Asmodean off my dead/presumed dead list when discussing Book 6, but I’m pretty sure now about the three who have been reborn. Osan’gar must be Aginor (I noticed the Trollocs hint when rereading his introduction), which surely puts Balthamel as Asan’gar. In this book, we also get Moridin, whose name means death; as the most intimidating of the newcomers, he surely must be Ishamael. I didn’t love the idea of a “True Power” that’s better than the One Power but somehow just now being mentioned, but maybe it’ll win me over. Additionally, Min’s comment about being wrong about a Moirane viewing is surely proof that Moirane still lives (Min is never wrong), which one assumes means that Lanfear lives too. Suddenly, it looks like a pretty good chunk of the Forsaken are still around.

And I really don’t believe that we had one crossed off the list in Book 7. Being a bit of a slower book, it was like Jordan suddenly realized he needed to tack on something exciting to end on. So after two and a half books of buildup to a showdown with Sammael and Ilian, the whole confrontation lasts…less than 25 pages. Ok. Whatever excitement Jordan thought he was providing, those pacing issues just killed it for me. It felt too sudden and rushed, and with practically no real fighting between them; Rand gets hurt, follows Sammael around, then sees Mashadar and assumes Sammael is dead. The idea of a fight in Shadar Logoth is pretty cool, as was the idea of Mashadar killing the Forsaken. But again, there was so little actual fighting. And without seeing a body, I just don’t believe it one bit that Sammael is dead. Considering Jordan has already brought back three Forsaken who died on-screen, I’m not about to be convinced by an off-screen death. Rand didn’t feel saidin being channeled to Travel and escape, but saidar could have been; Graendal has been in deep cahoots with Sammael.

There was also the deus ex machina of Random Guy Who Can Channel saving Rand and disappearing. But Rand couldn’t feel him channel, and he came out of went to nowhere, and…whatever. I feel pretty confident that there’s something awesome in that mystery, but it just didn’t work in the already rushed context of that whole battle. My guess is that he’s the other man who Min viewed Rand grappling with for control, possibly Lews Therin made flesh (Lews Therin had been quiet for a while), or even Rand hallucinating Lews Therin made flesh. Another mystery involves Padan Fain, now calling himself Mordeth (appropriately), who gives Rand another kinda fatal wound (because he needed another). What is Fain’s final role going to be? If Tarmon Gai’don surprisingly isn’t the conclusion to the series, I could see Fain being the final boss.

So, with so much talk about Angry Women and a story that’s slowing down, I want to end on a positive note by discussing the easy highlight of the book for me: Egwene. I can barely emphasize enough how shocking this was to me. I found Egwene boring for most of the series until Book 6. Early on, she seemed to exist only so she could have thoughts about Rand. Jordan broke them up and moved past that part of her with her Wise One training, but even that was only ok to me, since the Wise One teachers often slipped into Angry Women themselves. She’s had arguably the worst romance of the series by falling in love with Gawyn, whose character traits consist solely of being angry about a lie (that Rand killed Morgase) and being Elayne’s brother; I can’t understand any attraction on Egwene’s part to this guy who so far has been a cardboard cutout.

But as Amyrlin — holy cow, I actually really like her! For once, we actually get to see Jordan put his manipulative women to work in a way that lets scheming be cool. He needs to not just assign traits to women; he needs to find ways to let his women be fun to the reader, and Egwene is genuinely fun in Book 7. She starts to out-maneuver women many times her age, learning how to slip away from advice she doesn’t like and trap people into following the direction she chooses. We got to see some of this in Lord of Chaos, but she really takes off in A Crown of Swords. She’s now gotten several important cogs bent in her direction and is starting to take control, moving from figurehead to actual power. It’s the kind of thing Jordan needs more of (and to be fair, Elayne does have a similar moment later when forcing recognition of her and Nynaeve as Aes Sedai) in order to turn around his treatment of women. You can’t have a truly great series without being to write well one half of the population.

So here we are: exactly halfway through. Two more books, and I might be taking a bit of a break from the series. But for now, onward to Book 8.

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NEXT TIME: The Path of Daggers, Book 8 of The Wheel of Time