Challenge Tuesday – 42 and 43

Before I start, I have to apologise. Again. I am just feeling the need to carry on with this set of books right now…

Book 42 – The Shadow Rising, by Robert Jordan
Book 43 – The Fires of Heaven, by Robert Jordan

As I am not going to give away the storylines, I thought I’d focus on the writing itself, over both these books.

I said before that the female characters are a little frustrating, and that feeling has become stronger through these two stories. They have great strands in the tale but are often incredibly irritating to read. Egwene in particular is arrogant, manipulative and bullying and I really don’t like her. Elayne is often ridiculous and Nynaeve, who started as the strong-willed overbearing one, becomes increasingly undermined. The frequent sights into their thoughts showing how they feel about their clothes, hair and looks simply make them sound like prissy schoolgirls rather than powerful, brave women facing horrors that they didn’t even know existed a couple of years earlier.

The men, on the other hand, are obsessed – by hardness and control (Rand); dicing and women (Mat) and trying to deny fate (Perrin). They have their own thoughts and experiences and Jordan writes them to become increasingly different from each other, despite their similarities in age and background. They are growing as characters and you can almost see their faces change as they develop. There are frustrations but they are in no way as extreme as the females.

This is the downside of the series really – I love the intricacy of the story and find as a whole that the books are very good entertainment but they are long, and if some of the strands had been better controlled (and less repetitive) they could probably be significantly shorter and tighter. Having less silliness in the story of the three key women would make them more likeable and less clichéd.

Still, it is a strangely engaging series and I will finish it… I have just bought 5 (completely unrelated to Robert Jordan) books though, so that’s where I’ll be picking my next one from, honest!

Happy reading,
EJ
🙂