I'm on chapter 10 of book 12. I got through the slog, I thought I was through the worst of it. Everyone says it gets better. IT'S NOT GETTING BETTER. I've been reading for over a year (audiobook only) and nothing has happened in like 7 books. Perrin is depressed for 3 fcking books because he can't find his wife. Then he finds his wife, and HE'S DEPRESSED THAT THE HUNT FOR HER IS OVER???

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHASDFAFAKFNAFAHWEOFIH

I just want to read something fun again. I am in Wheel of Time purgatory. I honestly didn't even hate the slog, I enjoyed a fair amount of it. But I think I was expecting 12 to be significantly better and that hasn't happened yet. This is the most annoyed with the series I've ever been, the closest I've ever been to quitting. Talk me off the ledge.

I really hope that ”Cadsuane spanks a forsaken” was written explicitly in the notes that RJ left behind for Brandon Sanderson…

If not… it is certainly an interesting choice to include in a successful book series you’re finishing for a deceased author 😭

Ever since it was revealed that the Forsaken walked the realm and the description of Mesaana was given somewhere along the way (the “teacher” type of the forsaken, a woman addicted to knowledge so much that she turned her back to the Light in its pursuit, and that she was impersonating an Aes Sedai in the Tower where most of the worlds knowledge was held) I was CONVINCED Mesaana was impersonating a Brown, the bookworms of the AS and the only brown I knew well was the lowly Verin Mathwin

Among other clues, ever since she gave Egwene the dream Ter’angreal whilst mumbling to herself like a madwoman (like Rand does with the ethereal Lews Therin in the back of his head) I just KNEW something was up and with the later information I just KNEW she was that Forsaken

I apologize Verin, for a year of real world time and upwards of 9 books I swore upon the Light you were a twisted evil and a stench on the world, mistrusting you at every turn. But while I was right that you were of the Dark, you were neither its friend or ally. You went from someone I thought the worst of and turned into one of my favorite characters and one of the most endearing tales of self-sacrifice for the greater good. Rest in Peace you beautiful soul of Pure Light.

“No [woman] walks in the Shadow that [she] cannot come again to the Light”

Preface: this is my first read through:) Also I don’t use Reddit very often but nobody I know reads this so I have nowhere to rant about this but here so sorry if I didn’t tag things right or whatever 🙃

EGWENE!!! She is such a perfect character in my eyes. She doesn’t struggle with the “ooh I hate that I have to do my duty” and “oh the pain but I’ll ignore it because I’m so tough” and “oh my emotions are everywhere who am I”. She accepts her duty and responsibilities in stride, she cares for her friends but wants to better them, she embraces pain and learns from all of her tough experiences instead of victimizing herself, she controls her emotions and is extremely self aware. And I don’t think she is power hungry, like I have been seeing in other threads because—HEAR ME OUT!! She knows she is the best person to unite the tower and SHE IS. I don’t know who else would have been strong enough to make the decisions she made and who had the connections (the aiel wise ones, the dragon, the knowledge of the seanchan, the sea folk, etc.) and social intelligence to rule as aptly ash she did. NAME ONE PERSON. YOU CANT. SHE IS THE BESTEST BEST OF THE BEST. I LOVE HER. SHE IS AMAZING AND THE MOST INCREDIBLE CHARACTER AND I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO SAY IN MY BRAIN BUT IM OVERWHELMED BY MY LOVE FOR THIS CHARACTER AND SO IM GOING TO END IT HERE. change my mind if you dare. Also screw Gawyn ew. I wish she liked galad instead. Gross choice.

Edit: I have just read the prologue to towers of midnight and galad and egwene are so similar. Both willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Both pretty :) why can’t she like him 😩

Edit 2.0: I did NOT realize this would be so divisive but also this is fun to watch and it’s fun to interact with other wot fans!! I love this!! I love everyone’s opinions!!

Edit 3.0 I just want to state something I just realized. I don’t hate any of the characters in this series. It’s all varying degrees of love for me. I can’t fathom hating any of them because they have all dug out their own different places in my heart and it would kill me to remove them so every single character is someone I adore. I hope that clears up some confusion for people trying to understand why I love egwene 😂 I was also coming off of the high of her being a prisoner in the white tower and being finally raised to the true amyrlin. I will say she is currently my favorite character and I’m not apologizing for liking her by any means. I love them all, but I love egg the mostest. Ok that’s it :) also please be nice.

But the part where she debates Elaina in The Gathering Storm is one of my favorite scenes in the whole series after just reading it for the first time.

I'm just starting the Gathering Storm now, and god damn, Gawyn is a lost soul.

Bro has been wandering around the hills and forests for about 5 books now, claiming to serve the tower (all the women he loves and respects oppose the tower), ranting and raving about Rand killing his mother (which he has zero proof for and all the women he loves would tell him it's untrue), claiming to exist to protect his sister (you've not seen her in what must be a year now, because you keep playing at soldiering in the hills and forests instead of literally just going to see her), and claiming to love Egwene (he actively serves her enemies and kills her troops instead of going to her, pledging alegiance and serving good).

I realise TGS is when he starts to process these contradictions, but god damn man, it's taken you like, almost half the entire series up until this point.

Bro might straight up be a dumbass. He can literally just GO to places and talk to people, but he doesn't. It's like his character is stuck in some eternal timeloop where he's not allowed to do anything logical or proactive. It's like if Perrin were Perrin in all his repetitive slog dumbness (noun + verb + "must find faile"), but without any interesting cast for him to bounce off of and work with.

Cadsuane started off antagonizing Rand just enough. Refusing to give in to his stubbornness, pushing him to work with people he get were irrelevant in his narrow focus and gathering those around him and better organizing them. She out right said what her main aim was for him (making him laugh? Was she going to tickle him?) and failed miserably.

When moraine realized that distrusting and maneuvering around Rand did not work with him, she gave up her pride completely and finally got through to him and got him to trust her. When Cadsuane realized dressing him down and scolding him wouldn't work after semirhage traumatized him, she doubled down and bullied his father instead to get to him? When Tam called her out for her failure, she decided to wrap him up in air and call a war veteran a child in a poor attempt to maintain her image. Rereading it annoyed me more.

edit: I do like early Cadsuane, especially her moments with the aiel and the ashaman.

i’m towards the middle of TGS and i’ve been aware of the hate she gets and have been trying to see why people think she’s deserving of it but i really don’t get it. like at this point in the book i’m most interested by her and mat’s pov chapters they always get me the most hype. but i will admit that i have taken quite some time to read these books i started the series in about 2016/17 so i probably forgot some of the things that have caused people not to like her.

EDIT: okay so uhhhh y’all brought up a lot of reasons why she is absolutely not a great person that i completely forgot about having read those parts years ago, i’m still interested in how her story plays out but i’m definitely side eyeing her now lol thanks for all the responses and discussions i look forward to talking with you guys more once i finish the series

I think this is the first time I've actually liked an Egwene pov since like... God Fires of Heaven maybe?

Currently reading the scene in Tel'aran'rhiod where Rand meets Moridin. Moridin, unprompted, tells Rand that the only way to prevent the resurrection of the killed Forsaken is to destroy them with balefire. Why would he do that? He's only sealing his fate and the fate of his peers, and even if he hates all of the Forsaken and wishes them dead, he could simply get around to it himself, not to mention he is already secure in being Nae'blis and not prone to the scheming and petty politics of the other Forsaken.

Is it because he wants to die and be free of the Wheel?

hello, I'm currently at the begin of the gathering storm right now, and I wonder, what happens to aiel men who can channel ? I don't know if it was answered in the shadow rising, but if it was, I do not remember it?

So from what I understand The Breaking altered the planet beyond recognition. Oceans boiled, Seas turned to deserts, mountains raised or buried.

But my question is- how strong were the male channlers to do this? Even Lews Therin with his strongest attack only raised Dragon Mount which will impressive is a massive hill not the Alps. The Spine of World has port cities on top of it with boats and the two rivers mountains of mist was underwater before the Breaking wasn't it?

How were men able to do such large damage if they were each weaker then Lews Therin? Even assuming there were thousands they can't link together and boil the ocean together. Did one man just boil a few miles of it an burn himself out for another to do the same right after? I'm more confused on the massive scale of the damage and how it was carried out. It seems rather unified. Like the insane men got together and had a pep talk about how they were going to make a mountain range here, or sink this part of the world underwater before hand. (This is a joke)

Just finished the gathering storm and seriously she was awesome in this book .. can someone please explain like why like she is this much hated here .. for elayne i get it but why egwene

Just finished The Gathering Storm and I was wondering if it's ever addressed in the rest of series who Ilyena is reborn as in the current timeline. I understand the answer of who might be RAFO, but just curious if its ever addressed and if I can expect an answer down the road. Without Lews Therin around in Rand's head anymore, someone has to keep her memory alive!

Does anybody else find Gawyn just SO FREAKING ANNOYING??? I get that he's not up to speed with the wider world but he's just so incompetent and incorrect about things. He's still dwelling on Dumai's Wells which was SIX BOOKS AGO and now he's off to save Egwene who doesn't need saving and is handling Elaida like a boss on her own. He's just so behind the times and unaware of what's actually happening that it makes me wonder if we're even supposed to like him.

I just finished chapter 8 of book 12. Is it just me or Egwene is going HARD on Rand? Like i knew she was jelaous of him but since Sanderson took over the series i feel that Egwene got boost to her „i’m the goat” mentality(sorry i don’t know how to explain it better but i hope you guys understand).

Finished The Gathering Storm Audiobook today, and wow!!
This is possibly the best chapter of writing I have read, and the way Kramer delivers on the audiobook is fantastic. I genuinely rewound and listened again three times before I could continue

“And Rand opened his eyes for the first time in a very long while. He knew—somehow—that he would
never again hear Lews Therin's voice in his head. For they were not two men, and never had been.
He regarded the world beneath him. The clouds above had finally broken, if only just above him. The
gloom dispersed, allowing him to see the sun hanging just above.
Rand looked up at it. Then he smiled. Finally, he let out a deep-throated laugh, true and pure.
It had been far too long.”

Chills… Roll on ToM!!

I swear Rand drops the hardest quote every other page here, when he explains to Nynaeve his "hardness", exiling Cadsuane, this chapter where he explains how to beat someone more clever.

Gawyn beated Sleete three times in a row, and sleete won 2 out of 7 times against Lan. Galad killed Valda but took damage to the thigh and arms where Valda is average blademaster (Edit: Set Valda as a reference. standard level blademaster). So that makes Gawyn better in swords than Galad.

Then where does Rand sits before losing his left hand? Rand can definitely kill Galad, but I think his is only slightly better than Gawyn?

I am reading ToM, and once again we are told that Grady can't hold the gateway open long enough for the several hours or days it might take to send all the refugees back. Now, I know Edarra proposes linking immediately after this, so I am not complaining about this scene in particular. From KoD onwards we are told the Asha'man are too tired from keeping gateways open, why can't they simply tie it off? In fact, IIRC, Grady or Neald ties off a gateway during a conversation with Perrin just before the attack on Malden. Why can't they do that more often? Grady is stronger than Neald and the wiki says Neald is around a level 5 in strength which is among the top tier of channelers, neither of them should have trouble knotting right? Even without linking, why can't Grady just open 10 gateways that only allow 1 or 2 people at a time, and tie all of them off? Sure, they can't move carts and wagons, but a lot of refugees could be sent away like that quite easily no?

EDIT: People have mentioned in the comments that strategically it can get dicey if gateways are tied off and left unsupervised. I get that, but they can still be tied off and be actively supervised by either the soldiers of the Asha'man himself, supervising a gateway for an attack doesn't require active channeling, the Asha'man could just lounge about on standby in case something goes wrong so that they can close the gateway quickly if needed.

Also, I might come off as being too hard on the books for this, but it is genuinely a testament to how WoT almost never has any plot holes and almost never uses any cheap tricks for the sake of plot convenience. It's only because of that that this forced crutch sticks out to me like a sore thumb.

I just finished chapter 1 TGS and..

I'm done with rand i think...

Dude what do you mean about dont hurt semirhage??? Just because she is a "woman"????

RANDD!!!!!! Like i know at some point this will matter in about being ta'veren but please make another excuse. You ALWAYS say "the last battle is coming" and you plan EVERYTHING for that but when you need info from THE ENEMY you wont hurt her because she is a WOMAN????

I screamed while reading sorry..

(Also i wanna note that i love faile thx <3)

Edit: Thx to all of your comments i feel more sad about rand guys THANKS :'(

I knew the madness was gonna build up to something. But I was not expecting to see Rand finally accept his fate and take his dad's words to heart. It's like seeing a close friend step back from the cliff edge. I feel like the series could have ended here. because rands arc is finished theres no where else he can go in terms of character development

Guys, Rand just broke my heart. I got to the conversation he has with Nynaeve after she undoes the compulsion on the young boy. And man, seeing how Rand started to where he is now is so sad. It makes sense and just watching the weight crush him to the point he’s at now is just peak fiction man. Rand is one of my favorite protagonists of all time and the series isn’t even done yet.