The Wheel of Time

 

by Robert Jordan
and Brandon Sanderson

The Wheel of Time is now a TV series available from a streaming service which shall remain nameless. To say that I am a devotee of the fantasy series would be a gross understatement. To say that I am disappointed in the TV production would completely misstate my reaction to what they've done to Robert Jordan's epic fantasy.

I understand how remote the likelihood is of most people reading any series consisting of  fourteen volumes and a prequel, totaling 10,173 pages in the hardback editions -- not including glossary or appendix page counts. That's 4,410,036 words according to Wikipedia.

Hard to even think about, isn't it.

But that's even more reason that the TV series folk should have more faithfully interpreted Jordan's story. And they could have done. They could use video in place of many of those millions of words.

This is an overview of Robert Jordan's life's work, so ably completed by Brandon Sanderson.

The Plot, simple, time tested, Good versus Evil. Not unlike every war humans have ever fought. At least from your side's point of view.

     Thousands of years before the book series starts, The Creator created a world
     based on the concept of balance with the Wheel of Time to run it. The Wheel,
     driven by the One Power, spins out threads (the lives of men and women) which
     are woven into the Patterns of the Ages. The One Power is divided into saidin 
     which men can channel and saidar which women can channel. Those who could
     channel, both male and female, were the original Aes Sedai. They worked together
     to protect and serve the peoples of the world.

                      
 Ancient Symbol of the                                    Snake eating its tail    

  Aes Sedai, men and women                                   the golden ring              

               (Looks familiar, doesn't it!)                                  Aes Sedai women                               

     Underpinning the sense of balance in this world, there was a destroyer, Shai'tan, 
     the Dark One. The Creator imprisoned Shai'tan away from the Wheel, but during
     The Age of Legends, also long before the series starts, something happens and
     The Dark One's prison is ruptured allowing him to touch the world and corrupt
     some of the powerful and ambitious people to support him. They attempt to
     free him.

     In that Age, the Wheel spun out the Dragon Lews Therin Telamon to defeat
     The Dark One and his followers. Using seven seals, Lews Therin resealed the

     Dark One's prison, but The Dark One cast a taint on saidin, the male half, which
     caused any male channeler to go insane doing all sorts of damage to the world
     and the people around him before he dies. This left the female Aes Sedai to 
     consolidate their power and rule the part of the world on which the series focuses.

     
     Unfortunately the seals Lews Therin used were flawed and by the Third Age,
     which is when Jordan's book series starts, the seals are failing. The Wheel spins
     out a new Dragon to battle The Dark One and his forces.
    

You don't need to know all this before you start the books. You discover it as you read.

The Theme, also simple and time tested. Seemingly ordinary people from ordinary lives do have what it takes to step up and save the world.

     “Egwene and Nynaeve, Rand and Mat and Perrin. All five from Emond’s Field
     in the Two Rivers. Few people had come into the Two Rivers from outside,
     except for occasional peddlers, and merchants once a year to buy wool and tabac.
     Almost no one had ever left. Until the Wheel chose out its ta’veren, and five
     simple country folk could stay where they were no longer. Could be what they were
     no longer.”

Characters. Robert Jordan was not only a master at world building, he drew characters that you can know well enough to recognize on the street in your own world. Each of the five main characters has their own story arc. Indeed, the supporting characters have their story arcs. And even some of the minor characters.

The three young men from Emond's Field are twenty years old, only just coming into adulthood. Egwene is a couple of years younger. Each comes from a stable home and is raised with traditional values. Nynaeve is several years older and holds a position of power in their community. She was trained by the town Wisdom to provide medical care to the Emond's Field people. When her mentor died, she became the Wisdom  and she took on the responsibility for the well-being of the town with a passion. That passion became an obsession focused on the four young people forced out of Emond's Field by the Wheel's will.

These young people travel through their world. They learn about and from the many differing cultures. They flee from and battle against The Dark One and his devotees. And they become powerful enough for Good to defeat Evil.

Now about this TV production.

Contrary to the perverted television series, Perrin was not married at the beginning of the story and did not kill his wife, accident or no. Mat's father was not a drunk and womanizer. Nor was his mother crazy.

For that matter, Egwene's father owned the Winespring Inn and was the town's mayor. Rand's father made the cider and brandy served there and was a respected member of the town council. Egwene's mother cooked the meals served in the inn's common room and was active in the town's Women's Circle. I can assure you, the inn was clean and the patrons there, orderly, even during festival.

And don't get me started on the misbegotten costume designs!

They did do a good job of the Trollocs.

Perhaps if the TV production were intended to fill the niche left empty at the end of Game of Thrones, this abomination might be understandable. Understandable, not acceptable. 

Please, please, please. Enjoy the TV series, if you must. Just remember, it in almost no way reflects Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's well-crafted story. 

Leadership: An Essay

Our World, Our Home

There are some books worth reading more than once. At least they're worth it to me. One is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I know, I know. I've mentioned it before. It's a fourteen volume fantasy series, the volumes ranging from 681 pages to 912 pages with so many named characters and so many invented terms that each is followed by an extensive appendix of names and terms. It's not everyone's cup of tea.

Here is basically what it is. It is an epic telling a Good vs. Evil story. It has heroes, both male and female. It has villains, both male and female. It is a world of discrete nations and many distinct and identifiable cultures with their various concepts of honor and appropriate behavior. This world and the Wheel of Time were established by the Creator. The world and the Wheel of Time were endangered by The Dark One once before. He was defeated and imprisoned by a previous Dragon. Now in this new age, The Dark one is breaking out of his prison and again threatening the world and the Wheel of Time. The Wheel of Time has spun out a new hero, The Dragon Reborn. He must bring the disparate factions of the world together to meet The Dark One and his forces of evil at Tarmon Gai'don, the final battle. If the good guys lose it will mean the end of the world and the end of the Wheel of Time. The ultimate end of all.

There are small slices and great swaths of wisdom throughout the books. Wisdom that easily applies to our world and the age we live in.

The White Tower is an institution of powerful women led by their Amyrlin Seat. During the course of the story, it is taken over by a tyrannical Amyrlin and is divided. The rebel faction chooses their own Amyrlin, Egwene al'Vere. Her story arc rises to its climax in Book 12,  The Gathering Storm.

Egwene unites the White Tower and is raised Amyrlin Seat of the unified Tower. As Amyrlin she chastises the loyalist members of the Hall of the Tower.

     "You are a disgrace. The White Tower--the pride of the Light, the power for stability and
       truth since the Age of Legends--has nearly been shattered because of you," she says.

Egwene continues,
     "Elaida [the former Amyrlin] was a madwoman, and you all know it! You knew it
       these last few months as she worked unwittingly to destroy us. Light many of you
       probably knew it when you raised her in the first place!

    "There have been foolish Amyrlins before, but none have come as close to tearing down
      the entire Tower! You are a check upon the Amyrlin. You are to keep her from doing
      things like this!

     "You dare call yourself the Hall of the Tower? [the Aes Sedai's legislative body]  You
       who were cowed? You who were too frightened to do what was needed? You who
       were too caught up in your own squabbles and politicking to see what was needed?"

In the United States, we too, have a government that depends on its constitutional checks and balances to assure good leadership. Our leaders do not rule, they must "Lead by presence instead of force, uniting instead of dividing." -- Siuan Sanche Sedai, supporter of Egwene Sedai, Amyrlin Seat.

Our Congress has the same responsibilities as the Hall of the Tower. And we, as citizens, are responsible to hold our representatives to account.

The Importance of Books in My Life in Real Time

Marie Yovanovitch being sworn November 15, 2019

I finished reading Educated by Tara Westover very early Wednesday, November 13 after having stayed up way too late the night before reading it. Reading threw me behind in my preparations for a party I was having Wednesday afternoon. What kind of person reads instead of doing what they're supposed to be doing? To quote from the play Camelot, C'est moi!

Educated (which, by-the-bye, is an excellent book) was one of the books I read taking a break from rereading the eleventh book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'd also reread Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 for the Introduction to Literature class that my daughter is teaching.

The party was over and I was tired. The problem being, I needed to find another book to read. I took How Language Began to bed with me that night. It is a good book, too. Nonfiction. An academic study of the evolution of human language. I read it off and on Thursday, then took it to bed with me again last night.

But today, it would not do. I have the Impeachment Hearings running on TV. An academic study of linguistics just does not give me the escape I need to make it through this testimony.

I've lived through some pretty frightening times -- President Kennedy's murder, the horrible things that happened during the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, Nixon's Impeachment Hearings, the Oklahoma City Bombing, 9-11, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, Trump's campaign rhetoric (which continues to this day), and his presidency. These are but the highlights of low times as I see them. Too much of these on TV in real time. Again it is scary, because of the possibility of someone or several someones to decide to take matters in their own hands. And it would all be live on TV.

Books can take me away from all this.

The Wheel of Time series is my blankie. It is fourteen volumes of escapism. WOT takes me to a world described with a fullness and consistency that I do not find in our real world. It's many characters are heroic, though flawed or they're mighty and villainous. Good guys and bad guys. And we know from the getgo which is which.

Anyway, the obvious goto would be to read the next WOT book -- Book Twelve, The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I couldn't find my copy of it. It's bound to be somewhere in this house. The bookshelves in the basement, the stacks of books in my office, in the bedroom, in the living room. Somewhere. But ....

So I bought Book Twelve and downloaded it to my tablet.

In Brandon Sanderson's Foreword to the book, he writes "In November 2007, I received a phone call that would change my life forever. Harriet McDougal ... called and asked me if I would complete the last book of The Wheel of Time." He goes on to recall his experience on September 16, 2007.

I remember my own experience of September 16, 2007.

I was driving home with my not-quite 18-year-old daughter. We were running at 65 miles per hour north on I-35 from Oklahoma City. The radio was tuned to National Public Radio's evening news program All Things Considered. The route, the speed, the radio program were all perfectly normal and unremarkable. 

Suddenly my daughter started screaming and beating the dashboard. Understandably alarmed, I pulled to the side of the road to find out what happened. She was crying and repeating "He died." Not tears of sorrow, but more of fury.

"Who?"

"Robert Jordan! He died! He hasn't finished! He hasn't finished!"

Yep, Robert Jordan died September 16, 2007, after publication of the first eleven books of his Wheel of Time books. But the epic story was not finished. Characters were left in terrible straits. The nations of the world were divided and at war with each other. The ultimate bad guy was about to break free from his prison. And the final battle would require that all peoples fight together or the Wheel of Time could be irrevocably broken. It would be the ultimate end of times.

I didn't recall ever having heard of Robert Jordan or his epic fantasy.

My son, being ever the pragmatist, had not started reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series until the final installment was safely published. Jordan's dying seemed reason enough for me not to ever start WOT.

Jordan was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease in December 2005. He had made preparations in case he died -- extensive notes "... so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

With Brandon Sanderson on board to finish the twelfth book, I decided to give the series a try. That final book turned out to be three books and I must say Sanderson did a superb job. So, yes, I am working my way through the fourteen book series for the fourth time.

And I am surviving the chaos of our real times for the umpteenth time. So far.

Wheel of Time

My memory from 6 years ago today on Facebook: "A Memory of Light. This title will be released on January 8, 2013. So says Amazon. Hooray. Guess I won't have to let the air out of Brandon Sanderson's tires after all."

Before Wheel of Time, I proclaimed to all and sundry that I didn't read fantasies. Or series. As far as I was concerned, no one would ever be able to meet the standard set by J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. 

And then, and then.... My daughter Grace and I were driving north on I-35 at 70 mph, listening to NPR as was my want. It was September 2007. Grace graduated high school a few months before and would turn 18 that October. Suddenly she started screaming and pounding the dashboard. Got my attention, I'll tell you.

When I got us stopped and tried to find out what was going on, it turns out she was listening to NPR's news more closely than I. They had just announced that Robert Jordan died. 

Grace was furious! He died leaving his Wheel of Time series unfinished. She had read them all up through the eleventh one released two years before. We're not talking graphic novels here. We're talking page counts from the shortest at 334 pages for the first book up to 987 pages for the longest. The prologues exceed 50 pages. And writers are constantly dissuaded from including ANY prologue at all.

She'd been trying to persuade me to read them for ages. I'd read the Harry Potter series (also fantasy, also a series) mostly to humor the child Grace. (At least in the beginning. I must confess I'm a Harry Potter fan now.) But that day I was really glad I hadn't started reading WoT yet. And then I didn't have to because the writer died and it would never be finished.

Hah! and double Hah!

Jordan had planned one more book. He knew he was terminally ill and he made preparations -- He said, "I'm getting out notes, so if the worst actually happens, someone could finish A Memory of Light and have it end the way I want it to end."

What did Robert Jordan's widow do? She chose a writer to "finish" the series. Brandon Sanderson. The announcement was made in December, 2007, less than three months after his death.

So I started reading, assured that the series would be completed. And I read. And I read. And I read. I  immersed myself in Jordan's world. Its three young heroes. Its strong women. Its righteously good characters and its scary, powerful bad characters.

More than a year later Tor Books, the publisher, announced that the last book would be split into three volumes. Sanderson cited timing and continuity reasons for the change in plans. Three more books! That would be a total of 14 for a person who does not read series. Intolerable. Plus, I read a couple of Sanderson's books. They were acceptable, yes, but could he carry Wheel of Time?

Nine months later the first volume completed by Sanderson, The Gathering Storm, was released. YES! It was good. It was faithful to Jordan's life's work. WoT was in good hands. Then a year later, the next in the series Towers of Midnight was released. And I was pleased. If anything, I liked Sanderson's WoT volumes even better than Jordan's. 

A year came and went and the only word from Tor was that the final book A Memory of Light, wasn't ready. There were rumors. The internet was filled with speculation and hope and despair and frustration. 

The next year I went to a writing conference and pitched my book to a Tor editor. Then I asked when A Memory of Light would be released. She said she wasn't the editor on it and that nobody knew when it would be released. It was still being edited. Only half joking, I threatened to find out where Sanderson lived and let the air out of his car's tires. She sympathized with me.

Then six years ago today, Amazon announced that A Memory of Light would be released the following January -- six more months to wait!

Was it worth the wait? Yes, it was. I've since reread the series through twice more and periodically pick up this volume or that to read again.

These days, I sometimes need to be reassured that Good will triumph over Evil. It may just take a little longer than we had hoped.

When the Writer Can't Write -- Nonfiction

image from Harvard Business Review

Yep. I've got post-surgery, drug-induced writer's block.

The surgery went well. Rehab is coming along. Ten days in and counting. I still have trouble putting thoughts together in any consistently coherent way. A writer can't write if they can't think.

I can't stand another moment in front of the TV. TV News? My thinking is so muddled, I can't even maintain appropriate depression. Daytime TV? All those talk shows? They're just so much noise. Those folks are less coherent than what's going on in my head. Nighttime TV? There is PBS, but I can't seem to keep up with anything. Except the cooking and travel shows. Even with them, I tend to dose off which, admittedly, is not terribly unusual for me. But this is ridiculous.

I have been reading. Finished A Memory of Light, the 14th and final volume of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I did just fine with it. Of course it's my third time through and I'm thoroughly familiar with the umpteen characters. And Memory is 885 pages of the "Last Battle." How could anyone get confused about what's going on there?

I still was not ready to write. So the thing to do was to start another series that I've read before -- so I don't have to figure out who's who or what's going on.

John LesCroart's Dismas Hardy series. Unlike Wheel of Time, each book is a complete crime fiction story. But you need to start with the first one, because the stories are in the same world with the same characters. The thing I like about them is that the well-developed characters live and change as the stories go along. I have a vested interest in them.

So last night I started Dead Irish. Also, it was my second try at sleeping in my bed after the surgery. I haven't been able to get comfortable sleeping lying down. I've been sleeping in a recliner. So...I took the book, cuddled down in my bed, next to my warm husband, and prepared to read myself to sleep.

He likes to read himself to sleep, too. Normally, I am courteous enough not to interfere.

I'm reading along quite happily when I come to this paragraph:

       "In a way, he thought it was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. There would have
        been some symmetry in that -- both of his parents had died in a plane crash when
        he'd been nineteen a sophomore at Cal Tech."

My mind kicked into editor mode.

"Listen to this," I said interrupting Scott's reading. He didn't care about the crime novel I was reading. But he's in his care-giver mode right now. He's a nice man. He'd've been courteous regardless of my medical situation.

Anyway I read him the paragraph as Mr. LesCroart wrote it. And proceeded to followup with the wording I thought the writer should have used. And why.

        "It was too bad the plane hadn't crashed. (No need for the attribution. It was third person close. Obviously, we were inside the main character's head.) There would have been symmetry in that -- his parents died in a plane crash when he was a nineteen-year-old Cal Tech sophomore. (Fewer words, same information. Stronger language.)"

"Hmmm," my husband said.

For several days now, I've been verbally rewriting the dialog on TV commercials. And in syndicated episodes of  Blue Bloods, one of Scott's favorite TV shows.

If a writer can't write, there is only one alternative. Edit!

I think my husband is going to be glad when I've completed rehab and started writing again. Maybe then he can watch his shows and read in peace.

Profanity and Curses -- an essay

image from economist.com

   Not exactly topics for this holiday season, so if you want you can note it in the back of your mind and come back to it after the New Year when you’re hung over and thinking along these lines anyway.

   So what got me going on these subjects? I went to the movies. The youngest person in the audience was my daughter Grace. She’s 25. There weren’t that many people there, probably fewer than 20. None-the-less, I expected a certain level of decorum. We were after all in a public place not in someone’s living room. Or den. Or garage.

   As usual the theater starts with advertising their treats – popcorn, soda, Starbucks. Then they go to the next standard fare and we hear from the white-haired man behind us “Now we gotta sit through the damn trailers.”

   “I didn’t know Dad came with us,” My witty daughter said. He had not. Though in defense of my husband, he may have thought it, but he’d never have said it out loud in a movie theater.

   And ‘damn’ is certainly not the worst thing I’ve heard in public. The *f* word bandied about in McDonald’s will get me to say something pretty quickly. Usually it’s young people that need to be spoken to. But more and more often it seems profanity is used by all age groups and genders, not so much to shock but as common conversation.

   Okay, I admit it. I’m old. I have white hair and I grew up believing that people who resort to profanity have limited vocabularies and no imagination.

   I’m not a complete prude. A flat tire in the middle of I-whatever during rush hour. Stepping barefooted into the dog’s accident in the hall in the dark. A heavy vase dropping within inches of you from the upstairs balcony. Unpleasant surprises especially if they carry a sense of danger are all well worth an expletive or two. And the simpler, the easier to bring to mind and quicker to say.

   One can be trained to say acceptable things in lieu of what they really mean. Like Winnie the Pooh and his “Oh bother!” or my Grandmother’s “Fiddlesticks!”

   I started this as a rant against, but I seem to be warming to the subject.

   I think of Shakespeare’s insults and curses. While gentle and obtuse by today’s standards, they were apparently rude and obvious to his audiences.

From Henry IV, Part 2

“You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!”

   I don’t know exactly what it means either, but it sounds really bad. Maybe I could use it the next time Sonic messes up my hamburger and puts mayonnaise on it.

   Though I don’t appreciate profanity in public, I do think it has its place in literature, movies, music, etc. When I told Grace the original title of this blog post (Perversion, Profanity, Blasphemy, and Sacrilege) she asked if I was writing a review of one of John Irving's books. I love John Irving's writing. He is brilliant and I enjoy his juxtaposition of tragedy and humor shot through with the absurd. Considering my stand on socially unacceptable language and behavior in public, I cannot listen to his audio books in Oklahoma's summer time at the drive-in hamburger joint. Can't roll down the windows without turning off the book, dontcha know. Hmmm. Can you get earphones for the speakers in your car?

   One of the more fun parts of writing my books is making up profanity. If you've read Murder on Ceres, you know I write Science Fiction/Murder Mysteries. Just as time and tide wait for no man, language changes whether we want it to or not. Which gives me a wonderful opportunity to make up my own profanity for my future world.
   Certain bases for profanity will continue into humanity's out-migration from Earth. Excrement and bodily functions come to mind. *sh* will still be quite useful, but generations of knowing chicken only as brewed protein rather than a two-legged, feathery creature will do away with any connection between the words 'chicken' and *sh.*
   The concept of a religion-defined 'hell' will probably be dropped from human consciousness as various religion-defined forms of marriage are being dropped now. So there's another opportunity for a new word for where you can damn someone to.
   The concepts of blessings and gods will change, too. The greatest of gods will probably continue to be the creator of human life. We humans have always recognized light as the symbol of that god no matter his name, though not always because we understood the Sun provides energy for life -- human or otherwise. At least as we know it.
   Another religious symbol will be water. Already among desert peoples (including the Judeo-Christian culture that grew up in the deserts of the Middle East) water symbolizes life and is used as an important part in religious sacraments. In our move into Space where water is rarer and more difficult to obtain in life-sustaining quantities, humans will probably continue to use water as a symbol of a life-giving creator.
   No doubt, the new blasphemies will malign the Sun and Water. Humans hurling curses at their fellow humans will threaten to cut them off from Sun and Water.
   These will also be the bases for blessings.
   In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, the Aiel, a desert people used to too much sun and too little water, say "May you always find water and shade." In the darkness of Space the blessing may come to be "May you always find water and sunshine."
   A blessing I offer to you.

Sun and Water

     image from adsoftheworld.com

E is for Expository Writing

 

E is for Expository Writing

            At which I am very good. Expository is the adjectival form of the word exposition, which is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as a statement or rhetorical discourse intended to give information about or an explanation of  . . . . The very definition of the word can send you to the cereal box in search of something interesting to read.

As a fiction writer expository writing is the bane of my existence. Well, that and clichés. I am not alone in this. Robert Jordan, author of the fantasy series Wheel of Time, writes an exciting story filled with heroes and heroines who must battle against terrifying beasts and stupefyingly evil villains to save the world from the Dark Lord. So exciting that I stay up too late to see what happens next. And this is my second time through these fourteen books. So actually I know what happens next. And I love it.

BUT, it makes me crazy when he describes in detail the manner of dress peculiar to each country in the world every time one of those citizens appears in the story. Or describes in detail the varied forms trollocs come in, and that Ogeir have eyes “the size of tea cups.”

I understand the need to tell readers everything the author knows about his world or his characters or their back stories. But does the reader have the same need. Indeed, do they have the same interest and enthusiasm in all the things the author has researched, imagined, and invented? Even more importantly, is this information necessary for the reader to understand the story?

For example, my character must travel from Oklahoma City to Denver. Nothing in particular happens on the trip to affect the story. The only thing that is important is that three chapters into the story he be in Denver instead of Oklahoma City.

In my research I can discover that he could drive north on I-35 to Salina, Kansas, turn west onto I-70, pass through open prairie, pass by several wind farms, and see a herd of antelope. But I don’t have to share all that with my reader.

I can just say, Exhausted from his eleven hour drive from Oklahoma City, Brad fell asleep at the wheel and ran head-on into a semi.

Done and dusted.

On Re-reading The Wheel of Time

 

 

I do not have a history as a re-reader of fiction. Nonfiction, certainly. But there the point of re-reading is obvious. To check a date, to confirm a fact, to pursue a deeper understanding. But fiction? I do not feel the need to recheck fictional facts or fictional dates. And, for that matter, if I didn’t understand it the first time through, I only read it because of some obsessive-compulsive need to complete the damned book once I started it and I surely was not going to start it again. There are too many good novels out there and too little time. And I have not historically considered fantasy very high in that endless list of good novels.

But something is different about The Wheel of Time. The first time I read it, I was in such a hurry to find out what happened next that I missed the construction of the plot. I did not consciously appreciate the character development. I was only dimly aware of the author drawing me into an addictive relationship.

The story-line is straight forward. The hero grows to young adulthood in The Two Rivers, a simple agrarian society. An egalitarian culture that respected work and common sense. Where social status was determined by an individual’s contribution to the community. A narrow society that had little contact with the wider world. The hero and his hometown friends are pulled away from their comforting and comprehensible way of life and thrown into the fascinating, exciting, and always dangerous rest of the world.

The fourteen volumes of the series add up to one long chase scene. The author chivvies us along as the characters flee certain death or chase dangerous villains. From battle to battle with no time to rest, until we miss our reasonable bedtimes and delay our real-world duties. Until we get to Tarmon Gai'don, the final battle, and find out if the good guy wins and preserves The Wheel of Time and saves the whole world.

Simple. Typical American, Abe Lincoln story. No high-born hero necessary.

But the plot. It’s only during this re-reading that I appreciate the true superhero of this story. It’s the author, Robert Jordan. Not only did he construct a coherent world, invent characters in numbers of which Cecil B. De Mille would have boasted, and imagine more daring exploits and dire circumstances than I can comprehend (even after having experienced them vicariously during the first read through) but he got me to read fourteen volumes of fantasy.

His characters are introduced in the first book. So many that during my first reading I forgot their names and their faces until they appeared again and again throughout the story. Now as I read, I remember what they will do, who they will prove to be. I see how the author has drawn them in 3D and full-color. It’s no wonder I cared so much about them.

Their own individual stories weave and wind, over, around, and through each other. When I read it before, I would be frustrated when Jordan left whatever character we were following to follow another. And then again, when he would leave that character to follow yet another. And then again and again, until they came together only to move apart again. A dance of stories, sometimes a stately minuet, but more often, a square dance that I would have to follow without a caller to say what the next movement would be.

This time, I do not worry about what will happen next. I watch the intricate steps and recognize the changes in rhythm. I see the story as though it were a dear friend’s face, at once familiar. And still intriguing as the light plays across angles and planes reflecting all manner of thought and emotion.

When asked in the past to name my favorite novel, I would say John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. But I think now I must say The Wheel of Time is my favorite novel, though it be fourteen books long.

Celebrity Writers

Do you know who this is?

 

   He's a celebrity author. He is one of the "world’s bestselling and critically acclaimed thriller writers" according to the publisher Simon and Schuster who's coming out with an anthology of stories from 23 thriller authors next year.

 

   Admittedly my sense of celebrity seems not to fit that of our general society. I have little interest in athletes or entertainers. Though I can admire the feats of a Michael Jordan or a Maggie Smith, I can't say that I would go out of my way to sit next to them at dinner. Though to be at table where they sat next to each other might be interesting.

 

   Celebrity writers, on the other hand, I would go out of my way to sit next to at dinner or at the same table or in the same hall. Wouldn't it be grand to listen to Ken Follett and hear him say in person that he did not sell his first novel nor indeed, his tenth? If he who has written so many good books and been so often published did not sell his first one then there is hope for me. And J.K. Rowling whose Harry Potter series was rejected by umpteen publishing houses before Scholastic picked it up, then my Rafael Sirocco series has a chance.

 

   Okay, for those two celebrities, it's more about me.

 

   Sometimes my admiration is for writers who have lived through and written about history that I'm interested in. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s novels are among the best in American fiction, but for me his celebrity status comes from his own life experiences. He was a World War II prisoner of war held in Dresden, Germany, during the Allies' bombing and subsequent firestorm there. Later, his work with PEN International to focus attention on the plight of writers being persecuted in their own countries.

 

   Maya Angelou is in this same category of celebrity writers because of whom she had known--from famous leaders in our country's civil rights movement to unknowns in that same struggle. I get a thrill every time I drive through Stamps, Arkansas, because I know she lived there as a child.

 

   Then there are some of my favorite authors--John Irving, Robert Jordan, John Lescroart (That's his photo, by the way.) Diane Mott Davidson, Donna Leon, Patrick O'Brien. These are the writers I come back to time and again. Not because they feel like celebrities to me. I'm not even particularly interested in meeting them. It's their characters that I would like to spend time with, talk to, or just admire in person.

 

   I would like to know:

 

   John Wheelwright, best friend to John Irving's Owen Meany, from A Prayer for Owen Meany my favorite novel. It's about growing up. It's about friendship. It's about living with disability and mortality.

 

    Egwene, the country girl who becomes the head of the greatest institution in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time world. She is only one of literally a world of characters with whom I would gladly spend time. Well, all except the truly scary villains and terrifying creatures. Those can stay on the pages of the book.

 

   Dismas Hardy and Abe Glitsky and their families from John Lescroart's San Francisco based crime novels. Beginning with the first of these novels we meet these people and follow them as they build their lives together. Maybe we could all meet at Lou the Greek's for lunch.

 

   Goldie Bear from Diane Mott Davidson's culinary mysteries. We follow Goldie and her best friend (who happens to share the same abusive ex-husband whom they both refer to as 'the jerk') and Goldie's son as they get involved in murder mystery after murder mystery. Goldie does meet and marry a Colorado, sheriff's detective named Schultz. Nice man. Nice country, since that's where I live. Goldie is a caterer so naturally there are recipes included, most of which I've tried in my own kitchen.

 

   Commissario Guido Brunetti from Donna Leon's murder mysteries set in Venice, Italy. This  policeman knows the vicissitudes of the Italian justice system but works to solve crimes and bring the bad guys to some kind of reckoning anyway. He loves and respects his wife. The stories don't always have an ending that satisfies my just-desserts sensibilities, but they feel real and I understand Brunetti's cynicism. Couldn't we have a great discussion about right and wrong?

 

   Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey from Master and Commander and the other books in this series that follow the British navalman through the Napoleonic wars. And let me just say Jack was hot in the books before the movie folk cast Russell Crowe to play him in the movie version. I might even flirt a bit.

Three Writing Styles

STYLES of Writing SOUNDS & Silence

I have always read a wide variety of material, generally with little discrimination. I was as happy with David McCullough’s histories as with Colleen McCullough’s historical fiction. I eagerly read Charles Dickens and J. K. Rowling. Margaret Atwood and John Lescroart both kept me on tenterhooks.

Now that I, too, write, I am no more choosy about my reading, but I am more analytical. This summer I went from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, a naval novel set in the early 1800’s. To a repeat reading of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World, Volume One of his epic fantasy The Wheel of Time. To Cormack McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses, the first in his Borderland Trilogy. Three very different ways to present sound and silence.

From O’Brian this excerpt:

‘Why does he not fire?’ thought Jack. The Desaix’s bow-chasers had been silent these twenty minutes. Indeed, by now she was in musket-shot, and the people in her bows could easily be told from one another: seamen, marines, officers—one man had a wooden leg. ‘By God, he’s going to riddle us with grape.’
…the Desaix began to yaw. She answered her helm as quickly as a cutter, and in three heartbeats there were her thirty-seven guns coming round to bear. The broadside’s roar and the fall of the Sophie’s main top gallant mast and fore topsail yard came almost together—in the thunder a hail of blocks, odd lengths of rope, splinters, the tremendous clang of a grape-shot striking the Sophie’s bell; and then a silence.

And from Jordan:

The back door creaked as someone outside, or something, tried to push it open. His mouth went dry. A crash shook the door in its frame and lent him speed; he slipped through the window like a hare going to ground, and cowered against the side of the house. Inside the room, wood splintered like thunder.

At first when the trees surrounded him, he took comfort from them. They helped hide him from Whatever the creatures were that had attacked the farm. As he crept through the woods, though, moon shadows shifted, and it began to seem as if the darkness of the forest changed and moved, too. Trees loomed malevolently; branches writhed toward him. He could almost hear the growling chuckles stifled in their throats while they waited for him. The howls of Tam’s pursuers no longer filled the night, but in the silence that replaced them he flinched every time the wind scraped one limb against another. He  hardly dared to breathe for fear he might be heard.

Then I read McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses.

Rawlins stood in the door of the kitchen and studied him.
You look like you been rode hard and put up wet, he said.
They sat at the table and ate. Rawlins leaned back and fished his tobacco out of his shirtpocket.

I keep waitin for you to unload your wagon, he said. I got to go to work here in a few minutes.

I just come up to see you.

What about.

It don’t have to be about something does it?

No. Dont have to. He popped a match on the underside of the table and lit his cigarette and shook out the match and put it in his plate.

I hope you know what you’re doin, he said.

John Grady drained the last of his coffee and put the cup on his plate along with the silver. He got his hat from the bench beside him and put it on and stood up to take his dishes to the sink.

Rawlins watched him go to the sink and watched him go to the door. He thought he might turn and say something else but he didn’t.

It was not the absence of an apostrophe here and there that most affected me about McCarthy’s work. Having just read O’Brian’s decorous and abundant language describing sea battles in the Napoleonic Wars with their hundreds of men crowded on ships amid smoke and thunderous cannon fire, I then read Jordan’s graphic descriptions of combat with fantastical, ravening creatures in a world where silence and darkness battered me as harshly as the sounds of raging battles.

And finally I read McCarthy, with whom I was unfamiliar. My reaction to the change in styles was sensory. I felt as if I had been struck partially deaf. He wrote a world where sounds and people are as spare and sparse as the nearly barren dry lands of the West Texas-Mexico borderlands. McCarthy led me through hot, open country, with few people and them slow to speak their few words. A country of far distances and vast silences.

Three very different writers using words printed on paper to build worlds of sounds and silences in my head.

Fantasy Series

Cover Art from Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World

I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard about the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy’s murder in 1963, Senator Kennedy’s murder in 1968, the Edmond Post Office murders in 1986, the Murrah Federal Building Bombing in 1995, and 9/11 in 2001. Having grown up and lived most of my life in the Oklahoma City area, the Edmond Post Office and Murrah Building were parts of my daily life. I passed the post office on my way to work each morning and our credit union was in the Murrah Building. Each of these events shook my world, shifted my world view.

And then one day in September 2007, I was driving north on I-35 with my daughter, then a Freshman at Oklahoma University. The car radio was tuned to KGOU our Public Radio Station. Suddenly my daughter started screaming and beating on the dashboard. When she told me why, it made no sense. Some writer named Robert Jordan died. I had no idea who Robert Jordan was. She explained about his epic fantasy series. His unfinished epic fantasy series, eleven volumes of which she had read and loved and reread in anticipation of the final installment.

Being naturally commitment-averse, I made it a rule never to read serialized novels. Nonfiction in multiple volumes I’ve always been comfortable with. Who can cover the Civil War in a single volume?

Fantasy? Also, not happening. I don’t easily suspend disbelief, so the minute something supernatural comes on the scene, my mind begins to wander and the book languishes beside my bed or under it.

And I never reread works of fiction. There are too many good books out there and I don’t have enough time to read them all as it is.

There were noteworthy exceptions to my policies of no fantasy series and single read-throughs. Tolkien’s Trilogy of the Rings, which I read to please a husband. I still have the books, but not that husband. And Rowling’s seven-book Harry Potter series which I read to please my daughter. Happily I still have both the books and the daughter.

Jordan, however, was not a blip on any radar as far as I was concerned. And as of the day of his death, never would be.

Today I am one-third of the way through Eye of the World, the first in what was to become Jordan’s fourteen-book series The Wheel of Time. The final three volumes were written by Brandon Sanderson. And this will be my third time through the series from beginning to end. Plus rereads of the later volumes in anticipation of each new release.

Why The Wheel of Time? To be honest, I thought I’d never enjoy another fantasy after The Lord of the Rings. I tried a couple and was not impressed.

I believed Tolkien’s world, complete with his Orcs and Ents. Then I came to believe Rowling’s world and Jordan’s, with their Hogwarts and Quiddich and Aes Sedai and Tarmon Gai'don. In each and every one of these books, characters from unremarkable backgrounds lead their people against the forces of darkness and win. Characters I got to know and care about, thrown into intolerable situations, attempting impossible goals, and succeeding.

Some days, my real world feels threatened by darkness on an epic scale and I need to believe there are real people from whatever backgrounds who can and will stand up when we need them.

The Wheel of Time

At last it is done. A Memory of Light is read and the Wheel of Time series is completed. Delayed so long by the time it takes to write and edit and publish books, then the reading interrupted by normal life intrusions, the epic fantasy finally ended for me this morning.

And so it is with A Memory of Light. Physically too large to hold easily and read in bed, this Final Battle sometimes dragged me forward, sometimes hurled me forward, and sometimes beat me down with such sorrow that I didn’t think I could continue. But like the characters Robert Jordan raised and Brandon Sanderson carried on, I had to see it through to the end. Whatever end that might be.

My journey through the Third Age began early in 2008, shortly after the announcement that Brandon Sanderson would finish Robert Jordan’s work. As a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, I had been forever after The Trilogy of the Rings, dissatisfied by fantasy fiction in general. I had never liked series. Most had characters about whom I did not care past the first book. And the stories got watered-down and I, quite frankly, did not care how they ended.

The characters in the Wheel of Time series are so well-wrought that they lived in my imagination parallel to the real people in my real world. I cared what happened to them. I needed as much as wanted to know what happened to them.

And the story. The story is truly epic. Written on this page, the word epic is so small, but it feels too big to be contained by this world. I’m sure the story of my real world, if there might be such a story, is also epic. But it does not present itself to me in a coherent beginning, middle, and end style that I can follow. The characters in my real world are so little known to me, even those closest to me, that I do not get to see more than snapshots and shadows of their thoughts and feelings, their anticipations and experiences. There may be a Pattern to my real life just as there is in the Wheel of Time, but I can’t see it. Here is the advantage of fantasy done well. I can’t see these things in my life but I can in the lives of the characters in these books.

Five years and fourteen books later, The Wheel of Time has turned as it willed and, I am satisfied.

January 8, 2013. Make note of that date. The final book in the Wheel of Time series will be available!!!!

I guess this means I will not have to locate Brandon Sanderson and let the air out of his tires after all.

Of any series The Wheel of Time is the best example of the inherent misalignment of readers and writers. We can read faster than they can write…and edit… rewrite… edit… publish…distribute and be discovered by us, the reader.

I have waited so long. But not nearly as long as those of you who started reading WoT when The Eye of the World came out in 1990. You know, twenty-three years for fourteen books, really is not so bad. Especially if you consider that the author died before he could complete what he thought would be the twelfth and final book.

It just feels like forever when you’re caught up in the story and want to know what happens next. Will Voldemort get his in the end?

Excuse me—wrong series. You’d think that Harry Potter would have prepared me for Wheel of Time since I didn’t start reading WoT until after the final Harry Potter came out. Was that 2007, only five years ago? 

Yes, I came to the series only after they announced that Brandon Sanderson would be completing it. Forgive me, those of you out there who have been slogging away at this for long enough to become grandparents. Not to mention losing the author before he finished and not knowing that he had left sufficient instructions for someone else to finish it for you. Then not knowing if the relief author would have the stamina and fortitude to finish it right.

That we still don't know, do we? Check back with me the Ides of January.

Tor has kindly made available  some excerpts for those of us who cannot wait another minute. From the first chapter of A Memory of Light  http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/07/read-an-excerpt-from-chapter-one-of-a-memory-of-light and from the eleventh chapter http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/09/a-memory-of-light-chapter-11-excerpt

And the books are all so long, I almost hated to start each one. But then as I neared the end of Robert Jordan's books and the Sanderson ones were not yet available I slowed my reading to draw it out as long as possible. Repeating with each of the first two Sanderson WoT books. Then I would re-read in preparation for the next one.

Hmmm. If I started tonight, perhaps I could finish re-reading by January 8.

Maybe just the most recent four or five books.

I do have a life to live, laundry to do, a book of my own to finish writing.