One of the things I found particularly affecting in this latest book—I enjoy the major characters, I’ve followed the major characters through six volumes. But there are certain scenes that really strike me as being very real and very personal. For example, in the middle of the book, Mat—who has been sent on a particular mission by Rand—meets a young boy named Olver?
Uh-Huh.
And their meeting, where as Mat is talking to him, Olver is showing him his possessions: his little cache of coins, the game his father has made for him, and his red hawk’s feather and his turtle shell.
Um-Hum.
That was a very personal moment, that was a very real, very human moment.
I try to make it so.
Which you don’t see a lot in some fantasy. That one, and Rand’s looking into the face of one of the maidens after she has died protecting him from an attack. Memorizing her face and name because he has vowed to memorize the face and name of all the maidens who had sworn to give their lives to protect him. Let’s talk about that scene in particular, I’m curious about it. You had two tours in Vietnam, you’ve had military experience, you’re a graduate of The Citadel. Does something like that particularly come out of the people you’ve met in the military and the kinds of personalities you met in the military, do you draw any of that kind of thing from that?
Some of it. I suppose, actually, that particular thing came from the only time I was really shaken in combat in shooting at somebody, or shooting AT somebody. I had to, uh, I was shooting back at some people on a sampan and a woman came out and pulled up an AK-47, and I didn’t hesitate about shooting her. But that stuck with me. I was raised in a very old-fashioned sort of way. You don’t hurt women—you don’t DO that. That’s the one thing that stuck with me for a long, long time.
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