r/wheeloftime

I'm doing my first read through and I'm on Book 6: Lord of Chaos. A person casually mentioned in book 1 has just shown up at the front door. Thinking back he's been mentioned at least once in all the prior books. My mind is absolutely blown that he's just here now as a character.

Does anyone know any behind the scenes stuff on how Robert Jordan planned this series? There are so many characters and places and things going on. How did he plan these monster novels and know to have certain characters prepped for their appearance several books down the line?

The only other author I can compare this to is GRRM and even he can't handle finishing the last two books of A Song of Ice and Fire.

I'm halfway trough the CoT, and this question popped into my head. Who is able to call the best shots to achieve the best outcomes possible? Who made the best decisions through the course of the books? Characters making mistake is intrinsic to the plot, so I thought it was interesting to ask who, in your opinion, makes the least mistakes?

I know the wonder girls applies to mainly Egwene Nynaeve and Elayne with maybe Aviendha but I will here rank and give my opinion on the 8 young ladies who were the love interests/main characters. I will make an Aes Sedai one separately so we don’t have them here except for the mentioned 3.

8- Tuon
I honestly didn’t se many posts and comments about her so I do not know what the general consensus is on her. To me she is the weakest of the 8 characters. I am not sure if day 1 Tuon changed at all comparing to the end Tuon. She is a slaver, and a proud one at that. She immediately basically makes Min one of her servants (even if it is a high position) in the last book which shows she didn’t change much. We see no internal turmoil at all when Egwene confronts her about Suldam (and her) being able to channel and instead she is mad at her people for not letting her know Egwene was one of her former slaves. What I think is if RJ lived we would have more than 14 books and Seanchan would deal with all Suldam Damane situation but it got cut short in the end which means, to me she doesn’t have any redeeming qualities.

7- Aviendha
From here on, I like this characters. So while 7 might seem low, I don’t actually dislike Aviendha. I do find her a little bit boring, especiall early on. She actually gets better but a little bit too late. I like her visit to Rhuidean and the arc that comes with it. Wish it was earlier. Wish we could have seen her as a Wise earlier. At least I wish we could have seen what happened in the future with her visions.
Until the very end she was the side character to first Rand and Egwene and then Elayne. I feel like she didn’t become a character until Tower of Midnight.
I also dislike her defeat of Graendal. I like that they used unweaving. I just wished she would successfully use it to win. Or at least take herself out with the explosion. But the way it was perfectly timed with Rand winning so Graendal got distracted for a second and explosion for unknown reason caused her compulsion to attack herself was extremely random. Out of all “major wins” against a darkfriend, this one is by far my least favourite.

6- Elayne
Elayne would have rank much higher if it wasn’t for the bath. Joke aside, Camelyn politics were boring. It didn’t make sense to me at any point that so many of the lords and ladies would oppose Rand after being dead afraid of him.
I didn’t like her, “Ill be fine because Min saw that my children will be fine” arc where she got kidnapped every other day.
She was a pretty good character until she went back to Camelyn. I liked how she maintained her royal background while also fitting to everywhere she went better than Nynaeve. Sadly she got wasted.

5- Nynaeve
I started with a dislike to her in the beginning. And kept hearing that she gets better. She gets tamed, she doesn’t get much better. Actually after marrying Lan she kinda disappears. There is a big lack of Nynaeve POVs in the last few books. I might not like her character but she is an important one and while we see her through Rand or Cadsuane or Min we definitely don’t see a lot of her through her.
She hold power strong enough that it was felt in the entire world. We didn’t get a few sentences about it from her during that time. She did one of the coolest things but she wasn’t the main character talking during or even after about it. She seriously doesn’t even talk about it in her future POVs.
Again, we kept hearing how strong she is, yes we got 3 more stronger characters but she was the only one fighting and getting a POV in the last battle. The only thing she did was trying to heal Alanna with herbs because she can’t channel during the time and then fail to save her.
I get that her being with Rand was important but it is such a waste of an important character while Rand, Mat, Perrin and Egwene all had their badass moments in the final battle.

4- Faile
She went from 8 to 4 after she got captured. I do not like Perrin. He is boring. And I thought I disliked Faile but I was disliking how Perrin saw Faile. I think she is overall a fascinating character. It seems like she was just grabbing power through Perrin in the beginning with how much she rules instead of Perrin but when we got to her POVs we see that she didn’t want this and actually escaped from it but she knows her duties and performing them.
She is brave and caring, she is smart. She is younger than the majority of the cast. I really liked how she hold the hostages of Shaido together. I think she might be one of the best leaders we see in the series. She has so few bad moves.

3- Berelain
People might be weird that she is included or this high. But I loved Berelain and just wanted her to be happy. She was just playing the game of thrones. She was sassy and funny. She was loyal to Rand and to Perrin and she was extremely smart. Queen of the smallest nation with no power whatsoever ended up being really important for the light. I was happy for both her and Galad when that romance started and I hope they will live happily ever after.

2- Min
Honestly, pre Sanderson, she wouldn’t be this high. She basically was an accessory to rand during the middle of the series. With two superpowerful competitors for Rand, she was really in the background but I think in the end she spends the most time with him and ends up being the most help to him thanks to her research.
I didn’t like at the beginning how she was written as she is in love with Rand because she saw the vision and she will end up in love with Rand so she has to love Rand. During that time I disliked her.
Then started to like her better when she helped Siuan escape. She slowly started to get better and better. I liked how even though she is the one with the vision of all 3 are gonna end up together with Rand, she is the least ok with it while Aviendha and Elayne basically jumps in to lets become sisterwives train which is fine from Aviendha side since her culture but come on Elayne, you are a princess have some self respect.
I liked that she accepted her shortcomings and found a way to be helpful. She also managed to be the one who needed the least amount of saving from Rand out of the 3 despite not having any power and instead she keeps Rand sane as long as possible. She makes sure he listens to Cadsuane, Wises and Nynaeve but she also doesn’t let them steamroll him. Overall solid arc from her. Wish we saw how she got out of working for Tuon. 

1.	Egwene  

The queen. I know all the negative about her but she is the strongest character in the list by far. She suffers the biggest amount of torture and trauma in the series along with Rand. She rises above it all. She has 2 Forsaken/Chosen One defeat under her belt which again is only shared by Rand (I am counting Taim of course). Both of the wins are impressive. She defeats one in a battle of wills. In the second she sacrifices herself while saving so many and defeating one of the strongest channelers who had one of the strongest sangreals.
I just love a character who knows what must be done and does it instead of complaining. I love how she puts herself in danger and doesn’t hide behind others but also not reckless about it like Elayne and takes calculated risks (except for one). People are also forgetting how young she is actually I feel like. She is 2-3 years younger than the boys. She has some childish moments but most of the time she feels like the only adult in the room among bunch of 100 year olds.
She should have survived. I know one of them dying to raise the stakes was necessary but why couldn’t it be one of the Rands trio or Perrin? My girl should have lead the White Tower to better days and she would have bring the age of peace. I honestly do not think peace would last with Cadsuane as Amirlyn and Aiel and Seanchan and SeaFolk all have their problems. I do not trust Cadsuane enough to deal correctly with the Kin and Elayne. Egwene was respected and accepted by the Tower, Aiel and the Seafolk. She was already making an agreement with Tuon. Her deals were good in that it gave women freedom to go wherever they want and live in the culture they want but still have the information exchange. I don’t understand how people see that as power grab as it was an equal agreement for all, otherwise why would SeaFolk agree when they are the toughest negotiators and why would Aiel talk about how much honor she has.

I’m currently reading The Great Hunt and honestly, I really dislike the whole plotline where the girls/novices go with Liandrin and Fall into her trap.

The reasoning behind it just feels really weak to me. By that point, they already knew that the Red Ajah had a Bad reputation and they had been warned multiple times not to trust people blindly. Because of that, it feels completely out of character that they would follow her so easily without questioning it more.

I get that the plot needed to happen somehow, but the writing there just doesn’t feel believable to me at all and a Out Of Character. 

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Wheel of Time is my favorite. I’ve also read everything Brandon Sanderson. Someone recommended Sword of Truth and I couldn’t get through the first book. I’ve read a few Discworld books. Just looking for another epic high fantasy series.

Edit to add I also LOVE Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files

Spoilers for the whole series; don't read if you don't want them.

I just finished the series yesterday. I gave up in the middle of Winter's Heart when I was a teenager (which was the newest book at the time, I'm old), but decided to reread and finish the series maybe a month or so ago. I remember hating how many characters there were when I was younger, and this time around, I still hated having a ton of POV characters (but dealt with it by listening to the audiobooks).

Upon finishing, I'm struck by the thought that several plotlines could have been eliminated without losing much of anything. The two characters that come to mind right away are Jaichim Carridin and Padan Fain. Carridin's sections all amount to some version of "You failed the Dark One; we're giving you one last chance," until he is, finally, killed, without doing anything important. Fain's sections amount to "I hate Rand and Perrin and Mat; I'll get them in the end, hahaha!" before he gets unceremoniously killed by Mat.

Who else could be cut to make this series, which is honestly a little bloated, more streamlined?

I won't name the character who is the Dragon Reborn so as to avoid any spoilers...

But can we all just accept and acknowledge that it was clear who the Dragon was in the 1st page of the book?

Why do we pretend that it is a "spoiler" to say that rrrrrrrrrr *poof.

Why does not one mention Galad for the empty Sun Throne? If Elayne is eligible through her father then surely her older brother of the same father would be as well >! (and Gawyn as well, but no one wanted him in charge, plus you know….😕) It strikes me as odd that his name never comes up. But he’s smart, capable, honorable, etc. plus clearly paired off with Berelain. The First of Maybe and the King of Cairhein seems like a great strategic marriage.!<

I just finished….. I think apart of me just ended with it

I've read a few times that some of the Cairheinin are wearing "con". I get that it is some sort of identification thing, but what exactly is it? I figured it might be a badge , colour combo or logo, but then it was mentioned that someone had the con behind their back, so now I'm just imagining a little banner on a stick.