Rand, you goat-brained woolhead!
Dear Reader,
Robert Jordan sends our three village boys across the map to hunt for the Horn of Valere. Egwene and Nynaeve begin their training in Tar Valon where the black Ajah is waiting. Again, we get to explore the well-built fantastic world of The Wheel of Time. Again, we can't help but love the characters - but half the time, we want to grab them and shake them.
One has to admire the amount of schemes and schemers in this volume. Padan Fain, the Gollum in book 1, has become an antagonist in his own right. He escapes with a band of Trollocs, the dagger from Shadar Logoth and the Horn of Valere. Moiraine Sedai sees an opportunity for Rand: She sends him off as second-in-command of the Shienaran soldiers who pursue Fain. And she makes sure to burn his peasants' clothes and pack nothing but embroidered coats on Rand's packhorse. A quick lesson in manners from Lan, and people bow to Lord al'Thor no matter how often he claims to be a shepherd.
The hunt leads them south into a kingdom where nobles play the Game of Houses. (Why does that sound familiar?) Moiraine Sedai and Lan go elsewhere to find information. They get attacked by a monster that kisses people and sucks their soul out. (Now who took that for inspiration?) Nynaeve and Egwene make friends with Elayne, the daughter-heir of Andor. Together they get kidnapped by the black Ajah.
Plans and gambits, traps and snares. I love this kind of stories. I love it less if characters fall into traps when they should have seen them from three chapters away. Rand meets a beautiful lady, she calls him a great man, and he lets her lead him around on a nose ring like the big bull calf he is. Egwene is right to call him a woolhead and a goat-brained idiot. But Egwene herself follows an Aes Sedai into a Waygate on nothing but her word that this trip will "remove a danger". Remove a danger to whom? To Rand, or to the Darkfriends' plans? Egwene, you woolheaded, goat-brained fool! And Nynaeve goes right with her. Robert Jordan's characters are brilliant on one page, stupid on the next if it suits him.
What keeps me reading the Wheel of Time series is the world. In The Great Hunt we visit an Ogier stedding, meet an Aiel, watch Rand and company fight new monsters and invaders. The plot, too, has its moments. The characters are but so-so, but it doesn't matter. I'm off to book three.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
