A Wheel Of Time Read Along discussion

Week 2 of The Dragon Reborn, Chapters 15 to 29!

Oh yes, the start of Mat's awesomeness. The dice motif. Waking up from your deathbed and beating up two apprentice warders. He is fully redeemed from the creepiness and all the complaining in the first two books.

Yeah, Mat's fun now!

I don't know if I would want all of the books of series to be like this, but I'm liking this third book. It's been lighter and more YA-ey. Rand, with his very brooding dynamic, being off the scene must be part of that. Moiraine and Lan, the two serious adults of the gang, are likewise out of the picture. There are adults at Tar Valon but very little is told from their perspective; and likewise, while there are glimpses of evil actors and forces, there are few close-up encounters, and whenever they do happen, they're surrounded and broken up by lots of everyday lightness and camaraderie. The adventures of the girls in Tar Valon, and their dynamic with the Amerlyn Seat, are very Harry Potter-esque to me. It makes the girls seem so much younger than they came across as while fighting Seanchan, for example.

Has anyone else read the Divergent books? The ter'angreal that the novices have to go through in order to become Accepted, is basically them having to face their worst fears, which is the same device that's featured in the books (I've read the first two books of the series), where the Undaunted trainees have to go through their worst-fear scenarios in order to be initiated into the group. Back in TGH, when Nynaeve went through the three silver arches ter'angreal in order to be raised as an Accepted, she was even able to resist some of the ter'angreal's power, remembering that it wasn't reality while inside of it, which is similar to what the main character in the Divergent books is able to do that makes her super-good at it.

One final Young-Adult similarity that I'm getting from this book has to do with how it recaps info from previous books as it's setting up current scenes, especially in the beginning chapters. I have not read a lot of Fantasy stuff, which has a lot of multi-book series. My main experience with that kind of thing, where you have pages-worth of shit you already know that you have to thumb through really quick and is kind of tedious cuz it's just repetitive, was from when I was kid and loved The Baby-sitters Club books. Every single book, they'd have to tell you how Kristy was bossy and a tomboy and how Claudia and Stacey are both super-fashionable and love wearing red and black and oh yeah, don't forget, Stacey has diabetes, Dawn is from California, and Mary Anne is a total goodie-goodie. The Sweet Valley High books pulled the same kind of -ish.

I guess re-capping stuff was more of an unavoidable necessity for multi-book series, especially those more sprawling and plot-dense, back in the pre-internet days. These books had a year or so in between coming out, so of course you'd need a refresher on what you'd read months and months and many other different books ago. Nowadays, it's easy to pull up a little written summary or Youtube recap, so I would hope contemporary series-books don't still do this kind of thing, do they? So yeah, anyway, these parts kind of annoy me and make me roll my eyes.

Lynn wrote: "Yeah, Mat's fun now!

I don't know if I would want all of the books of series to be like this, but I'm liking this third book. It's been lighter and more YA-ey. Rand, with his very brooding dynami..."


Recapping is just standard in every book that is a series. Especially given the time period these were written people would likely just pick up a book without realizing it was a series, then going back and reading more when they figured that out. We didn't have lists upon lists online to figure out what the first book was. We'd either have to look in the back or front of the book and figure it out, or if the publisher was nice, there would be numbered lists in the front.

Anyway, yeah there are similarities to a lot of other fantasy series. This doesn't seem YA to me at all though. Even though the kids are treated like youngin's. HAHA

If you don't like the recap bits you can just skip them, or put your audiobook on triple speed through them, I do that sometimes.

Great post Lynn. I couldn't quite put my finger on what I didn't love about the first half of this book, but the YA similarities are exactly that. I didn't really like all of the events in the white tower and felt it dragged and seemed a little basic. I much prefer the more darker or adult tone that the previous book ended with.

In saying that, I am up to chapter 33 now and it appears to be getting back to the normal tone. There is a scene on a boat leaving the White Tower which felt a bit back in form.

So glad Mat is finally becoming his own strong character, instead of being the annoying jokester all the time. I didn't even know he had quarterstaff skills!

Those quarter staff skills!!

I am really enjoying this book so far. I am really liking getting to know all side characters more.

I think that the characters are one of the things that make this series so rich. Jordan was a master at creating character, I think.

I like Mat a lot more than the first 2 books, but the pacing is a little slow for this one comparing to the second book.

The group is a little dead tho. No more discussion for a long time in the third book.

where is Hurin? :(