WoT part 5 and 6
I forgot to mention that I finished The Fires of Heaven, part 5 of The Wheel of Time, didn't I? Well, I finished it, and I'm almost finished with Lord of Chaos too.
After reading the WoT FAQ a while ago, I know more of what is going on. Now that I know that Rand is actually going a bit crazy, the signs and hints are so obvious that I don't understand how I could ignore them before. Being able to look for and interpret the signs adds some depth. Spoilers may not be good if you haven't read the books before, but reading both the speculations and the confirmed explanations makes the second reading much richer. It's like the leitmotifs in Wagner, you can enjoy the show without knowing them but things turn more interesting if you do.
The Fires of Heaven is packed with action. Lord of Chaos is more or less the opposite. Everybody just sit on their hands waiting, or do small things that don't seem to lead anywhere. When things finally started happening, I was both surprised and disappointed to realize there were only a few chapters left. Most of the book is about building up the events and schemes - threads? - that lead to the battle at the end. If this is a miniature of what the complete series will be like as a whole, I expect major fireworks in the entire book 12.
There's a sonata by Mozart, I can never remember the number of it, the one that ends with the "Alla Turca". It starts out with a bunch of variations of a theme, each a separate piece but they fit together quite well. Then there's a second part, one piece, and finally a third part (Alla Turca) with an oversized finale. Well, the finale of the Alla Turca is oversized if you play only the third part, but when you play all three together it is just the right size. That's what I hope book 12 will be like. An Alla Turca with an oversized finale. Anything less will be an anticlimax.
Nice, I've just managed to compare Jordan to both Wagner and Mozart. I didn't expect to do that.
After reading the WoT FAQ a while ago, I know more of what is going on. Now that I know that Rand is actually going a bit crazy, the signs and hints are so obvious that I don't understand how I could ignore them before. Being able to look for and interpret the signs adds some depth. Spoilers may not be good if you haven't read the books before, but reading both the speculations and the confirmed explanations makes the second reading much richer. It's like the leitmotifs in Wagner, you can enjoy the show without knowing them but things turn more interesting if you do.
The Fires of Heaven is packed with action. Lord of Chaos is more or less the opposite. Everybody just sit on their hands waiting, or do small things that don't seem to lead anywhere. When things finally started happening, I was both surprised and disappointed to realize there were only a few chapters left. Most of the book is about building up the events and schemes - threads? - that lead to the battle at the end. If this is a miniature of what the complete series will be like as a whole, I expect major fireworks in the entire book 12.
There's a sonata by Mozart, I can never remember the number of it, the one that ends with the "Alla Turca". It starts out with a bunch of variations of a theme, each a separate piece but they fit together quite well. Then there's a second part, one piece, and finally a third part (Alla Turca) with an oversized finale. Well, the finale of the Alla Turca is oversized if you play only the third part, but when you play all three together it is just the right size. That's what I hope book 12 will be like. An Alla Turca with an oversized finale. Anything less will be an anticlimax.
Nice, I've just managed to compare Jordan to both Wagner and Mozart. I didn't expect to do that.