Following on from the end of The Great Hunt, the third book in The Wheel of Time series starts with Rand now knowing that he is indeed the Dragon Reborn. Consequently, he leaves the other characters to do what he thinks he has to do. This makes the book quite different from the first two, because you don’t actually see that much of Rand, with more of the story being about the rest of the cast following after him and having their own adventures.
One of the storylines I enjoyed reading about was Mat being taken to The White Tower in order to be healed of his corruption. As always, I enjoy anything about the Aes Sedai, and it’s good to see Min, Egwene, and Nynaeve making their way as novices. Meanwhile, Mat starts to get back to his old self a little (which was good to see, because I never liked his evil/weakened selff) and he even gets to reunite with Thom Merrilin, with whom he has a good dynamic.
Moiraine, my favourite character in the series, gets to play a larger role in this one than she did in The Great Hunt (which was a welcome development), and Verin becomes a much more important character too. The more Aes Sedai the better, as far as I’m concerned and these two both enhance the novel.
The book also introduced a new character called Faile, a hunter of the horn who joins Perrin and the gang in pursuing Rand. Though there’s nothing too bad with this character overall, she mainly seems to have been introduced in order to be a love interest for Perrin, and, gosh, is it an obnoxious romance. They’re both endlessly bickering and disrespectful towards one another, and yet for some reason we’re supposed to accept that they love one another. Why? They’re both so awful to each other that there’d be no time for a romance to grow.
The Perrin/Faile romance is probably the most annoying part of the book, but it really embodies the slight issues that start to rear their head in this one. While the first two books have men and women thinking to themselves “gosh, the opposite sex is impossible to understand” which is kind of silly, but perfectly harmless, this one seems to make a point of showing all romantic relationships as being based on endless arguments. It also starts to seem like every woman who meets Rand falls in love with him, which feels too silly to me.
Overall, this was a good book. I’m invested in the characters and world, so seeing what happened next to them all was great. Meanwhile, there are little things like a further exploration of the parallel worlds that I found absolutely fascinating, and which make the setting even more interesting. Rand goes off the rails a little as well, and questioning whether or not he has maintained his sanity adds some good tension. It all comes together in a satisfying climax as well, it’s just a shame that there’s a fair share of rubbish annoying bits sprinkled in, which was never really a problem in the first two books.
Rating: 8/10
