You know, chapter one of The Shadow Rising reads a LOT like the prologues in later books. Lots of side viewpoints, scattered about.
I’ve always liked how these set up a book. I do think they fit best as prologues. (Some of my favorite writing is the Knife of Dreams prologue.)
Love or hate Faile, remember this: She got Perrin to grow his awesome beard. Almost as cool as Rand taking the Stone, that.
Last #wotrrr tweet for the day, and it will be a longer one. (Slight spoilers.) Thought I’d point this out, as it has often struck me. (I doubt I’m the only one.) There is a lot of symbolism to the bubble of evil sequence at the start of The Shadow Rising . Perrin’s axe tries to kill him—pretty obvious there. We see through the next books how that happens in a non-bubble-of-evil way. We also see that the way he grows single-minded in some pursuits, including fighting with that axe, has dangerous implications. Interestingly, it’s Mat’s gambling that tries to kill him—that and the Amyrlin. Another great thematic bit of foreshadowing, though Mat—being Mat—doesn’t have an arc of discovery in the same way as Rand or Perrin. The best one for me is the fact that in Rand’s case, it’s his own reflections that try to destroy him. He only wins when he figures out how to absorb all of those reflections into himself.
“In a moment…he would become the Dragon reborn again. For now, he only wanted to sit, and remember a shepherd named Rand al’Thor.”
It’s good to have Rand back in this book. I remember reading The Dragon Reborn for the first time and begin confused as why he wasn’t in it much.
In a way, all of Mat’s trouble with the Finns can be traced back to Egwene telling him about the stone doorway.
Honestly, Egwene, what did you THINK would happen? Telling Mat about that is like telling a kid there’s a surprise in the cupboard.
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