I loved the first three books. Then I think Jordan went off the rails a bit. IIRC (it’s been 20+ years) he kept adding stuff when he could barely hold together what was going on as it was. It was hard to follow multiple character story arcs since one book would seem to focus on one arc mostly. And, he got weirdly detailed. Like, there were not enough pages to describe a dress.
I actually did enjoy reading the books. If it had been a completed work, or if they had come out more quickly, then I probably would have read them all. As it was, with it being 2+ years between books, I kinda lost interest in between them.
If I had time, I would probably actually enjoy going back through the whole series.
I thought we were talking about Thom, not Mat.
Sorry, I think I’ve been guilty of a bit of that myself. I will try to limit spoilers from future books. Though… with as much deviation from the books as we have already seen, I don’t know that knowing how they go is so much spoilers as much as general background information.
Something that was never even mentioned in the books was the possibility that the Dragon Reborn could be a woman, or that it could be a group of more than one. It may very well end up being the case that they make a drastic change from the books, where Perrin and Nynaeve combined are the Dragon, and Rand’s just some guy that can channel.
Yes, I noticed that too. Still no “woolhead”, though.
Pretty much. I don’t think it was necessary to explain his pacifism, but maybe they felt the need to be more ham handed in the show than the books were as to his motivations.
One fantasy series at a time. I’m sure they will get to it, but I assume that Wheel of Time has a significantly larger fanbase.
Yeah, I was actually thinking that they had cut her out of the series for the show.
Crap, sorry about that. I can’t even keep track of my own conversations. Mat was the one I knew was replaced and I must have skipped over the rest.
That was one of the things I wondered about earlier, when I assumed Rand was too obvious to be the Dragon.
Overused descriptions in the books, I assume?
Keep your fingers crossed. If it’s available to me, I’m willing to give it a try. I’ve watched a lot of crappy tv in my time, one more show won’t kill me.
I was looking at maps online to get a feel for the geography. Is there an official Jordan endorsed map, or should I just stick to the largest one with the most detail? I’m guessing a lot of place names will mean nothing to people who only know of the tv series.
Overused does not begin to convey the amount of braid tugging going on in the books. Jordan seems to think that is the only reason women have hair.
[quote=“mordecaiB, post:172, topic:954636”]
I thought his mom died giving birth to him on the battlefield, and his father adopted him.[/quote]
That was, so far, the best scene in the show. I was sort of disappointed when they revealed that badass produced Rand.
In the books, Nynaeve tugs on her thick-ass braid of hair that is draped over her shoulder to show that she is angry/disappointed/what-have-you. And Nynaeve is almost ALWAYS angry at something or someone, so there is a lot of braid-tugging.
https://images.app.goo.gl/BZDa72mSc5mze1Vp6
This is the original that was in the inside cover of the books.
Yep, that was a great fight sequence. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a fight that ended in a birth before.
Thanks! It always helps me to have a map in my mind of place names that I can look up as the story moves about.
Quick questions. Are the stargate things called Waygates in the story, who can open them, and can they go to any gate they want or just one gate in particular.
They are called “Waygates.”
In the books, anyone can activate one by moving a part on the outside of the gate.
Once in the gate you walk a pathway to another gate. There are more than one pathways which can take you to more than one exit (like paths through a forest). While it takes some time to traverse the paths inside the gates it is MUCH faster than making the trip in the real world.
As noted in the show the Ways have been tainted and a very evil force lurks inside called Machin Shin (black wind). It is not a sentient force but it will seek out and kill anything it can find. IIRC there is no fighting it either…you just run from it.
The Ways were tainted along with the male half of the One Power (Saidin). Prior to that travel through the Waygates was a pleasant stroll.
What I forget is if they are of Ogier manufacture or built by wielders of the One Power.
The Waygates were created by male channelers after the War of Power, after which saidin (male half of the One Power) was tainted by the Dark One. Some of the male channelers took refuge in the stedding (areas where the True Source can’t even be sensed, let alone used) to escape the taint. As a gift, some of the channelers created Waygates on the outside of the stedding, and created the Talisman of Growing, a special ter’angreal used to grow the Waygates.
The Waygate is supposed to be a stone archway, carved in intricate vines and leaves; to activate it, one just moves a particular kind of leaf (the trefoil leaf of Avendasora) to the appropriate place. No channeling necessary.
Thanks for the replies. There is a similar device in the Kane books by Karl Edward Wagner, but they only go to one destination.
IIRC, Moraine did a bunch of handwaving magic stuff to open the gate in the tv show, no? Or was that to open a particular pathway once they were inside the Waygate?
That was just to open the gate (and inconsistent with the book.) Unless they’ve changed something else, that particular door will always open to the same place in the network.
I’m sensing you may be a genuine fanboy of the books. 
I wonder if that will rule out just anyone opening a Waygate, tv show wise.
These seem at odds if I’m reading them right. Say there are gates A, B, C, & D. Will A always come out at B? Or could A come out at B, C or D, depending on which path you take once inside the gate?
IIRC you can enter one gate and leave at any of several other gates. This makes sense otherwise you would need numerous gates next to each other where one went to A, the next to B and so on.
Also, if there were only one route inside then Machin Shin (the evil indie the Ways) would need to be several entities.
The Wiki on this says there are navigational islands inside the Ways which suggests you can exit at numerous points.
Travelers may walk for a day in the Ways and emerge hundreds of miles from their starting location in the outside world. Paths link areas known as Islands. Each island contains a navigational marker; a large slab of stone covered in Ogier script called a Guiding. SOURCE
No. A in the normal world comes out at A in the “Way” world. You then walk from A to B and exit B back into the normal world. Just like you could have walked from A to B in the normal world. It’s just shorter through the Ways, and you can only travel along constructed paths, which do intersect. There was a scene where Loial reads a sign at a crossroads/island to make sure they’re taking the right path.
So more like your 2nd option.
Yeah, I’m wondering if the waygate thing will be explained by Fain having a dark-aligned channeller perhaps one of the Forsaken open the gate for him. I don’t know why they changed it to have channeling be required to open the gate.
Overall, I’m loving the show more and more. Like the braid tugging, for me it was “Blood and Ashes” that finally made it feel completely real. 
The Tigraine (Rand’s mom) scene was incredible. My wife (non-book reader, but actually likes getting spoilers) was in awe. “She’s amazing… I love her”, she says. “err… don’t get too attached, sorry,” I replied. 
Hopefully, Aviendha will be at least half as cool and fill the void when she shows up.
I could have done without the manufactured drama with the Perrin/Eg/Rand love(?) triangle. Hopefully that is settled for good. Looking forward to the finale, but dreading the wait for S2!
I thought the finale was probably the weakest episode other than the first one. I get that they’re not trying to tell the same story as the books, but I liked the direction they were going mid-season more. The first and last episodes were the only ones written by the showrunner, which is not a good sign for the future.
I thought the finale was pretty confusing at times. I wonder if it was confusing for first time viewers with no book knowledge?
Some random gripes and thoughts:
- They’ve done very little with Rand in this season considering he’s supposed to be the Dragon Reborn. I think spreading the focus over more characters is good, but they may have gone too far in the other direction. I’m hoping they’re going for a more slow burn and building his story up more over future seasons.
- Having 5 untrained channelers wipe out an army of 10k trollocs just like that does weird things to the power balance of the magic system, even if a few of them ended up killing themselves. It makes the Dark One and his armies look weak. We’ve seen Moiraine struggle with even smaller number of trollocs. Even if Nyaneve and Egwene are suppose to be exceptionally powerful, this scene didn’t work for me. I don’t like this style of solving battles in Fantasy, and it reminded me of the the ghost army in Return of the King in a bad way.
- The final scene with the tidal wave was cool, but what is it supposed to accomplish in that empty countryside? Putting the same scene at some harbor of a major city would have looked cooler and made more sense.
- They’re using way too many fakeout deaths.
What I don’t get is, who reads a story and thinks “Boy, I’d sure like to make a tv series or movie that isn’t this, but uses some of the same names!”
I would give the first season a very high rating. Like 8 out of 10.
I have not read the books(too many!!!). I do agree with anyone that says Rand is “generic young man”, but I liked his hero-moment of having to reject the fake reality. Does Rand ever speak to the Dark One like this in the book(s)? I was kind of surprised that the Dark One would resort to a pretty generic bad guy or Satan-like temptation gimmick.
There are too many fake-deaths. When the braid-lady, who I really like, died…my wife and I actually believed it for about a minute. I kept telling my wife, “Umm…I think she goes further in the books…” then she gets resurrected.
Can Egywene bring people back from the dead or are we to believe the other lady was not fully dead? She certainly looked dead.
This season, we have seen a ton of people “die”. Morgaine, Braid-lady, quite a few others it seems.
Anyway, I absolutely love the show and I will re-watch this season at least once before season 2 drops. I hear that the first couple of episodes of season 2 are already done and have been shown to Amazon, so they are in progress for sure. I hope that this show runs for a long time…but not 14 seasons like the books would seem to suggest.
For me - this is just falling flat - what could be very interesting, just isn’t. It moves too slow and it seems to skirt on the overall idea that ‘you’ll just get it’.
The ending battle against the trollocs - why not start with the magic users and have the archers backing them up? Even with the trollocs defeated , they now have no standing army OR magic users or leaders for whatever comes next.
I know he explained why he was always around - but I still don’t follow the purpose of the white box or the 3 that came in to steal it.
What did I doze off and miss between the opening (3k years ago) and the end -that made that particular person the dragon? Was he supposed to be the original dragon or a reborn one? What happened 3k years ago?