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| Moghedien, Nynaeve and Elayne |
Greetings friends, I've been reading Wheel of Time now in the post Witcher book reading era and have a fair number of thoughts. Firstly I only fully read the first three books and the vast majority of Crown of Swords, this is because the first three books are very cohesive and self contained and more or less follow a coherent plot structure. After that the groups of characters and their plot lines are completely separate entities that have essentially no influence on each other whatsoever except for convenience, so I quickly identified the most interesting plots (predominantly team Girl Squad, Mat, and Black Ajah hunters) and simply stopped reading the ones that weren't. Overall I made it to book 12 since we're still looking for the elusive 13 and 14 somewhere in the house, but wiki filled in the blanks nicely.
I am still reading plenty of Michener and it is very jarring going from Jordan to Michener, Michener can tell an extremely emotional story with historical implications and basis in reality in the span of 10 pages and on multiple occasions it takes Robert Jordan 500 pages to pass a single day (15 books averaging ~800 pages to pass 2 years); but I suppose that's why Michener is an esteemed author and Jordan is just like a top 10 fantasy writer in the past 30 years or so.
To get compliments out of the way Jordan does an extremely good job of setting up environments and cities so you feel like you understand them and their inhabitants (while you are in said city, cultures aside from the extremely different variants don't hold up outside of their own cities) and spends an ungodly amount of time in them individually. But since there's just so much fucking writing it doesn't matter if he takes forever because there's always at least one more city to explain for hundreds of pages. I understand and like Novigrad in the Witcher 3 but in the books its just an anonymous city the same as any other because the author doesn't spend 80% of the book describing environments and characters' innermost thoughts ("I wish Rand would fuck me silly" 90% of the time)
For more Witcher comparisons: Overall the Witcher books are much better because almost every character in the Witcher is outstanding and realistic and/or reasonable, the central plot (e.g. the Mythology episodes in the X-Files) of both series is quite weak and Jordan's themes (Violence/Power is good, women are strong, independent but really want Ta'veren fanfiction, "pillow friends" are okay even if most of them are conveniently evil) are maybe slightly more well thought out but nowhere near Tolkien allegory levels or anything. Both have the general weaknesses of Fantasy writing omnipresent, but the villains are moderately successful in the Witcher and utter failures in Wheel of Time.
The Wheel of Time is very likely to be a major television (been in pre production for years) show at some point but I'd assume due to the lack of sex (copious amounts of non sex related nudity) and extraordinarily slow pace it wouldn't garner that much attention relative to GoT or what have you; there's plenty of violence but its doled out in extremely foreshadowed massive explosions rather than layered intrigue. Also if it really went the distance the show would go on for like 9-15 seasons and while in the books only 2 years pass in that time frame that's not how it would work with real actors (or a reasonable story of course).
Without further ado here come my character ratings for select characters, if I don't mention a character just assume they're a 1-2 because there are hundreds upon hundreds of useless villains and nameless Aes Sedai that no one gives a fuck about. I would put artwork for each character before them but to be frank most of the fan art sucks for WoT except oddly for the Japanese book covers.
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| Elaida and Alviarin |
Moghedien 9/10
Ah delightful, blessed Mog. I haven't really discussed this point yet but the heroes in Wheel of Time are INSANELY overpowered almost the entire time and there's like a 0% chance of failure at any given moment, perhaps some minor manipulations here or there that don't have any chance of causing a tragic event; even characters that you assume would die due to boredom or having disappeared for 6 books eventually come back and they're totally fine. That in mind the evil characters are mostly like "Yooo Ima fight Rand's bitch ass" and then they die, BUT Mog is so much of a coward that she somehow endures all of the shit that happens to her, the last one (arguably two) standing of the Forsaken/Chosen. The Forsaken are the Nazgul essentially except they have human attributes still. Losing to a random girl 1/50th of your age and 1/100th of your knowledge? That's fine. Enslaved by said character for a whole book? Mog endures. Shamed by Satan and enslaved to the Witch King? Mog doesn't give a fuck, cowardice is the answer if good is too overpowered and by God Mog will live through everything and just keep trucking right along being shady and cowardly the whole way. A coward is the best villain the series, by far and more or less the only one with a plot arc or character development.
Mat 9/10
Best Fantasy Han Solo impersonation out there. He is kind of shit for the first two books but quickly becomes the universally regarded best character after that.
Nynaeve 8/10
Nynaeve is the one good character that actually has a significant weakness for much of the books and it makes her more and more interesting over time. Essentially before she can embrace her DBZ powers she has to be mad, if she's not mad then she's useless. She's actually pretty lame in the first book but they develop her being mad all the time so well and make fun of it so frequently that she becomes both comedic and relatable; greatly enhances whoever is around her at any given time. She does simp for Lan but Lan is pretty hype so that's cool; also not a polygamist. Her portrayal doesn't seem to be overly sexist in contrast to most of the other major female characters. Nynaeve's healing of Siuan is the best scene in the whole series and takes an insane amount of time to develop but actually feels like it was necessary to create the emotional impact.
Alviarin 8/10
Alviarin is the only other pure evil character that I like a fair amount, she never actually has that much power beyond shitting on Elaida to comedic effect and kind of just serves as a late game Egwene foil; but her POV is always entertaining and her seeming ubiquitousness quite solid. If anything I'd assume she didn't become more interesting just because Jordan forgot to make the Mesaana plot arc more compelling. She gets touched by Satan himself and that's fairly metal.
Siuan Sanche 8/10
Siuan is the initial Amyrlin Seat (the head honcho for the good mages) before being stilled and replaced by Elaida; after she escapes she joins team girl squad and becomes a really entertaining character. Uses Fish metaphors with reckless abandon.
Thom Merrilin 8/10
The other Gandalf in the Eye of the World, comes back to life much quicker though. Fun character, kills a king and sends a realm into chaos off camera but is still around to make boring characters more interesting for ages afterward.
Morgase 8/10
Elayne's mother and could have been part of the most interesting plot arc if it wasn't hastily discarded when Pedron Niall died unceremoniously in a prologue. Well developed and actually has genuine female reactions to things that aren't incessant fawning.
Rand 7/10
What if Goku/Jesus was an insane tyrant that killed tens of thousands of people and had a Brigham Young number of wives yet people still loved him anyway because of ancient prophecies? Cool idea? That's more or less the entire story of Wheel of Time, unfortunately a large chunk of Rand is incredibly dull and uninteresting somehow; mostly because of how horrifically bland the Aiel are. That said he's great for the first 3 books and then returns to a really interesting state from like books 6-8 and oscillates from decent to great thereafter.
Lan 7/10
Guan Yu as written by a Southern Christian military academy graduate. He's your standard Seven Samurai elite type character but has his mildly entertaining moments on top of that.
Moiraine 7/10
Moiraine is Gandalf. I haven't read the part where Moiraine comes back 20 years after she died in real life (i.e. when the books were written), but it sounds okay. Her death is too foreshadowed but I admire that Jordan stuck to her dying for so long, Sanderson brought her back so hard to criticize or formulate the how and why of it (obviously Jordan intended it to be so) Not quite 2B levels of dying tragic but reasonably effective nonetheless.
Egwene 6/10
Egwene is a tough one, she is ludicrously overpowered too early and quite boring for a large chunk of the story, but she does have by far the best arc in the last three books when she becomes Egwene Luther King and has a pacifist rebellion inside the White Tower. Her being a good character is largely informed by Siuan as advisor, before that point she is very dull and made duller by her exposure to the Aiel. It is interesting that she's such a pacifist with Aes Sedai and then turns around and executes 50 people in the blink of an eye, then plans to assault the tower to bring down Elaida (conveniently unnecessary) after avoiding that for two thousand pages. The last arc I was interested in prior to running out of books.
Cadsuane 6/10
Cadsuane is a Moiraine surrogate introduced out of fucking nowhere, her character design is boring but her presence in the story is really interesting so it works out alright.
Elaida 5/10
Elaida herself is a fairly uninteresting character but her presence in fiction as an incompetent dictator I think is fascinating and relatively unique. Usually this sort of person would either be pure evil or extremely competent in fiction, instead she's kind of just an arrogant buffoon which leads to various comedic situations during her tenure as Amyrlin.
Lanfear 5/10
Lanfear/Selene/Cyndane is a pretty interesting character initially but eventually becomes an obvious cocktease; the other seductress forsaken follow her actions in similar fashions they just go about it in a more mundane way. Her initial demise is mildly interesting and her subsequent domination by the Witch King makes her a tad more relatable.
Berelain 5/10
The one seductive female character who isn't obviously evil, she serves to make the Perrin plot arc somewhat bearable until Morgase appears to carry it for a while.
Leane 5/10
Leane is a completely dull blank slate character until stilled and then becomes a solid foil/support for Siuan and Egwene, seems very likable overall.
Birgitte 5/10
Elayne's Warder and legendary hunter, mostly works well because of the Nynaeve/Elayne/Birgitte Pillow Friend love triangle, gets a bit boring afterward.
Min 5/10
Min's concept is cool and ambitious (she auto foreshadows events that might not happen for another 10 books), but she's a Rand simp like Aviendha and Elayne; a voluntary polygamist. Her chapters with Siuan and Leane are amazing.
Elayne 4/10
Elayne is actually a much better character than Egwene early in WoT but becomes less and less interesting over time. She and Egwene are very similar characters but Elayne becomes a bit angrier and less of a mediator over time, perhaps influenced by her long relationship with Nynaeve. Wants the Rand cock much more than anyone else and eventually is impregnated by our noble polygamist hero, then becomes quite dull afterward. Supposed to be a powerful regal queen or something but it is really hard to respect this kind of portayal of an ostensibly powerful woman having absolutely zero interest in anything but one fairly uninteresting (if immensely overpowered) dude.
Aviendha 3/10
The third Rand Simp of the bunch, she is Aiel and therefore boring but I think she is also just poorly developed fundamentally. Suffers from being in scenes with too many characters until her role becomes background noise; eventually is independent of that but in boring contexts.
Perrin 3/10
Perrin is a pretty solid character up until he gets married, then he's boring as fuck (His wife is similar in that regard).
I'm very interested in the Black Tower arc and Tylin but haven't finished those parts yet so can't really say much about Logain/Mazrim Taim/etc. without that information.
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