Knife of Dreams

For Christmas my brother decided to give me his old iPod with all of the Wheel of Time audiobooks uploaded.  I decided that this was probably the ideal method to finish these books since it takes like six months to trudge through one of them.  Unless of course they were so boring that I fell asleep while driving.

I finished Knife of Dreams, the 11th book in the series and also the final one by Robert Jordan.  I am guessing that Jordan knew people were complaining about how the stories were not getting wrapped up and that we were nowhere near The Last Battle (Tarmon Gai’don).  He decides to wrap everything up quite nicely.

I think if I was actually reading it though, it would have been boring as hell.  There were parts of listening to it that I kind of zoned out for.  I think it is the fact that there are so many Aes Sedai and they all have names that sound like other characters.  It can be confusing and frustrating.

That said, the last few chapters were fantastic.  I was excited by the battle at the manor house, where Rand allows Lews to take control and start creating death-gates and fire arrows and other weapons, which Logain immediately copies.  How can you not love Logain?

Elayne finally becomes Queen of Andor.  That was probably the worst side story ever.  How many books has it lasted?  The politics of becoming a ruler is not all that interesting.  Especially when the majority of it is just her trying to convince different Houses to join her. 

Oh, and it was pretty obvious that it was a Black Ajah trap the moment she went to capture them, right?  I was just happy that there was finally a resolution to the initial quest.  Remember when she, Egwene, and Nynaeve set out to find the Black Ajah, then everything split apart.  I think Elayne even comments upon how it came full circle.

Perrin rescues Faile by making a deal with the Seanchen.  Rand also realizes that he cannot fight them and unite everyone with the sword.  Instead, he knows that he will have to join forces with them for Tarmon Gai’don.  Oh, and Mat is now married to Tuon, so he is a Seanchen prince or something. 

Mat’s story was easily my favorite.  I love when they meet up with his army and Tuon sees that he is more than he seemed.  She makes a comment about how a lion would look silly if you stuffed it into a small crate, but out on the plains it is very dangerous and that Mat with his army is like a lion in the plain.  Or something to that effect.

It seems that everyone is coming to the same conclusion by the end of the book that the Tarmon Gai’don is coming and everyone just needs to stop fighting each other and be ready for it.  Galad does that at the beginning.  Defeating Valda in combat and becoming the leader of the Whitecloaks.  He says that they will have to fight alongside Aes Sedai during Tarmon Gai’don, but the most important thing is winning that battle.

I am guessing that Mazrim Taim is a darkfriend.  His comment at the end of the book “let the lord of chaos rule” was exactly what the Dark One told the Forsaken.  I do not think he is one of them though, since Lews would have recognized any of them.  Maybe he will be allowed to replace one of the dead ones.  Remember, Lews did warn Rand to kill the man.  Multiple times.  Trust the madman in your head!

Speaking of Rand, I guess he has one hand now.  That was a fairly quick thing.  If I were reading the book, I would have had to go back and read it twice.  At least they captured Semirhage.  Something tells me that Moridin will not be pleases that she attacked Rand, since he ordered them not to kill Rand.

On a side note, did anyone think that the reason the palace corridors were changing in Caemlyn was because of Rand and Elayne’s unborn twins?  That was my first thought, but then it was explained that the Dark One was coming through and things were changing all over the place.

It is weird how far this series has come.  In the first book, there was a weird tree person and saidin was this pure substance that was at the Eye of the World.  It honestly does not make sense in context to what has happened since.  Also, back in the early books, everyone was so afraid of Aes Sedai and yet now they barely notice them.  Hell, they are not even the most powerful women who can channel. 

I look forward to the next books because Brandon Sanderson takes over and everyone says they are much better.  I feel like Jordan would have probably been good now that he has the story going in a direction again.  It felt like everything was going in separate directions.  I kept expecting him to introduce another army with even more powerful women who could channel and men who breath fire and most likely some dragons.  Fortunately, he just ties it all together with a nice bow and says “okay, lets go to Tarmon Gai’don!” 

Author: Ngewo