Although I think you’re right—we are getting into kind of details, but I do want to come back to the worldbuilding a little bit later in the conversation. But without giving too much away about the final book–there’s a lot of fighting because, you know, it is the Last Battle, right?
Yes.
And I know that your husband had a military background. Can you talk about that, and how it may have influenced his writing?
Yes, he served two tours in Vietnam, in the Army. He was a helicopter door gunner.
And a Citadel graduate, right?
Yes, he was. He went to The Citadel as a Veteran student, and loved that institution and the Army with–with all his heart, you might say. A friend of his said to me once, “Some people take off the uniform, and that’s that. Other people, the uniform sinks right into their skin.” And my dear husband was one of the latter.
And it really shows in the books. There’s a lot of tactics, a lot of military strategy.
Yes, it does. The New York Times said at one point that the books reflect the last 30 years of American experience, including war, in the way that Tolkien’s book reflected the last 30 years of the English experience when he was writing during World War II, that Robert Jordan’s battle scenes are pretty wonderful.
That’s an interesting parallel to Tolkien actually.
The New York Times’ article on Tolkien and Jordan, published in 1996, can be read here .
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