Matt Mauldin

The Fires of Heaven? You bet – they were burning hot in this book!  Let’s see:

• Rebel Aes Sedai found
• Birgette is in the real world now
• Morgase abandons her throne and flees her country
• A huge battle with tons of Aiel against each other
• Mat displays his exceptional ability at strategery
• Rand Egwene and Avienda fighting with the One Power
• Three Forsaken dead. One captured
• Caerhein and Camelyn are now under the Dragon Banner

Wow – this book was action packed. And you know what the best part was? No Perrin!  Sorry man, but your storyline sucks right now.  In fact, it has sucked since the beginning.  In The Eye of the World, Perrin learned he can communicate with wolves, and soon after he was forced to kill a couple of men in self defence.  Since then, he has whined and moaned about everything he’s been forced to do.  I’m glad he wasn’t in this book because it would have added suckiness to a great addition to the Wheel of Time.

Beyond that, this was just a fun book to read.  The Rand, Mat, and Nynavea/Elayne plotlines moved forward quite a bit.  It was odd that Egwene was not involved in more of Rand’s plotline, but as I mentioned in my post on the last book, her path is much different even though she’s physically in the same location as Rand.

Looking ahead, I can see why she didn’t take too much of a part in this book.  Elayne and Nynavea needed to get to Salidar before Egwene’s next actions can happen – and I’m really looking forward to that.  In fact, I remember the maneuvering in Salidar as one of the most well-written pieces in the entire series.  Can’t wait to get there.

On to the next one: Lord of Chaos.  And oh man, I’ve only got a few short months to finish the series before A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm is released (slated for November 3, 2009).  I better get reading.

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• I cant believe it – my little girl turned 1 this week #
• took the day off to get ready for the birthday bash tomorrow #

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• Hilarious. Weve all seen these things happen: http://bit.ly/3iK89k #

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• oooo, Harry Potter was good #
• The wife and I let Mom watch Haylee – we are at Harry Potter. Starts in 20 minutes #

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I’ve really been procrastinating when it came to writing this post about the fourth WoT novel, The Shadow Rising.  In fact, at the time I write this post I’ve already read more than half of the fifth book. But I noticed how long it’s been since my WoT review (the The Great Hunt) and I owe it to you, my blog, and myself to write this down…

But what can I say?  Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, but there was very little that really moved the story forward.  And by story I mean Rand.  He’s in it for a chapter or two in the beginning and a chapter or two at the end and that’s it. (ok, maybe a little more than that, but come on)

The real page hog was Perrin’s story line.  It was good, but I don’t see how it relates back to Rand.  In fact, when I think back to the other read-throughs I’ve done, I don’t recall when his storyline ever makes a real difference for any of the other major characters we started with in tEotW.  The entire middle of the book was dedicated to Perrin, and it was really nice to see so much of one plotline in one place instead of jumping back and forth after only a couple of chapters.  There was only one major break where Jordan took us to visit Elayne and Nynavae, but overall it was good to sit down and read Perrin’s part straight through.

This is probably the fourth time I’ve read this book over the past ten years, and for some reason each time I get to Tanchico where Thom, Julian, Elayne and Nynavae are, I seemed to skip over a few pages.  Can’t tell you why, it just happened.  Either that or I’ve drawn a blank.  But this time I slowed down and deliberately focused on comprehension. (Remember, the 12th book comes out this fall, so I want to be completley refreshed on all points of the story by then.) As it turns out, I didn’t miss much.  Ha ha! Eagenin, the Seanchan, made an appearance.  I always liked her because she’s one of the only Seanchan that has any sense at all.

Egwene also has a good amount of time in this book.  Although she’s with Rand’s group in the Aiel Waste, her storyline is quite different.  It’s here where she really begins to grow in power and knowledge and I am looking forward to following her story throughout the rest of the books.  Egwene’s growth from a simple farmgirl to the XXXXXXX (no spoiler, sorry) seemed like one of the most natural progressions of any character in the book.  She moves around the world map and interacts with many of the other plot lines quite often.  And in the later books (unlike Perrin) her actions have the potential to greatly affect Rand and the other characters.

Overall, the overall theme of The Shadow Rising is advance-the-side-plots-while-barely-touching-on-the-main-plot.  But that’s ok – you’ll enjoy the read.  If nothing else, it makes you anticipate the coming story even more.

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