Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In some ways, it’s hard to envy Sanderson. For this penultimate novel of the series, he had to start wrapping up at least a dozen plot lines and convincingly moving all of the main characters (And armies. And nations.) to the spot of the Last Battle so that that Battle could be the focus of the final volume. That had to be tough.
It’s a credit to him that he managed it at all, let alone as well as he did.
He managed to avoid a lot of the traps that Jordan started writing himself into like an abundance of politics. While there was some unavoidable politicking going on (most of the main characters are queens and emperors and lords, after all), Sanderson kept it to a very basic level. Part of that might be that the characters are all pretty powerful as rulers at this point so they wouldn’t necessarily be forced to engage in the tedious Daes Dae’mar they used to gain that power. But I think Sanderson made the authorial choice to leave all of that behind.
Instead, every political scene is short and and sandwiched between two good action scenes. It really helped this book be a page turner.
Unfortunately, while it may have been the lesser-of-all-possible-evils, that relentless focus on action also costs this book half a star from me. One of the things I like most about the Wheel of Time is the magic system. Sure, it gets a little expositionial at times but I’ve really enjoyed the more technical discussions of the One Power over the course of the series. This book skipped all that. When characters channel, magic just happens. It’s fine, but it’s a bit of a letdown since so much of the magic system in the series so far has been written directly to my taste.
The other half star loss (compared to its predecessor, “The Gathering Store” which got 4 stars from me) comes from the breakneck pacing. As I noted, Sanderson was given the unenviable job of wrapping up 12 giant novels worth of plot lines. He managed it by speeding through all of them one after another. I didn’t feel like I got to spend much time in the heads of anyone (with the possible exception of Perrin and somewhat less so of Mat). And that’s a shame. But I suppose that’s what happens when you have so many main characters: some are bound to get lost. I just think too many got lost this time around.
Still, Sanderson has finally managed to make me a legitimate fan of the series. I thank him for it.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I get sucked in to a piece of fiction, I often find myself mirroring the style of the text in my private thoughts. This can manifest in something as simple as altering my vocabulary a little to finding myself unconsciously mimicking the characters.
So it’s a great compliment to this book when I say “Over the past weeks, I’ve kept having to stop myself from thinking I was Rand or Egwene.” This is not something that has been a problem for the other books in this series. I guess whatever that ineffable something is that fantasy authors have, Sanderson brought it.
The major complaints I’ve had with Jordan’s work were all solved by Sanderson. He kept the main characters and villains in the forefront and the secondary characters on the sidelines so I was never overwhelmed with names. He avoided tedious and complex political maneuvering in favor of strong action scenes. Most importantly, perhaps, he didn’t spend chapters on spankings. Thank the Light for that.
Some of the other problems, especially in established characterizations, he avoided by the simple expedient of sidelining the worst offenders.
Instead, Sanderson focused on magic and action: the meat and potatoes of high fantasy. I don’t know that it was strictly his doing (perhaps Jordan had always intended to change the focus for this part of the story), but it was a welcome change. The only real complaint I have with this book is that it’s too far into the story to serve as an introduction to the series.
Hopefully, the next two volumes will continue in the same vein. If so, the entire series will be worthwhile.
Bravo.
Thomas Jefferson by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve done a disservice to this book: I read it over the course of two months. It’s not a long book or a particularly challenging book; but things kept coming up and I didn’t get to spend as much time on it as I’d have liked.
As a practical effect, this means that I jumped from chapter to chapter with weeks between them. This is not conducive to either retention or reflection. So I am left without much to say about Mr. Jefferson or his times. And that’s almost a tragedy since, while I was physically reading it, I thought that this book offered several insights into both of those subjects.
Of course, this is far from an exhaustive volume on the subject. It’s short and Hitchens jumps around in the timeline, skipping great swaths of Jefferson’s life and cutting out many (undoubtedly important) details. Instead, Hitchens picks and chooses what he writes about to focus on Jefferson’s place in American morality and spirituality.
The issue of morality, of course, is overwhelmed by Jefferson’s feelings an actions around chattel slavery: the great moral evil of my people. Hitchens paints a picture of a Jefferson at war with himself over his own innate selfishness, his drive to be a force for good and justice, and his fear of what would happen to powerful white men like himself if the slaves were freed and able to take revenge for the cruelties they’d been subjected to.
Hitchens never draws Jefferson as an exonerated saint or a cartoon villain: instead, he shows Jefferson as a flawed human trying to deal with a complicated situation and making the wrong choices.
In contrast, Jefferson’s rational and Enlightened view of religion is much more inline with Hitchens’ own views. In discussing Jefferson’s religious activities, he does not intend to bury Jefferson and instead uses his own words as counterexamples to modern demagogues attempting to usurp Jefferson for their own causes.
And that’s largely where the book ends. It contents itself with slavery and religion (and, to a far more minor degree, Federalism and Republicanism). If you want more about Jefferson, you’ll need to find it elsewhere.
But, even if this is will be only a short stop in your Jeffersonian education, I do recommend it. The topics that Hitchens explores are important and Jefferson did a lot to shape modern America in regards to them. It’s also a well-written book: it’s charming and funny while never being dry.
I look forward to re-reading it again some day soon. Hopefully, I will find myself able to devote more attention to it then. Because I think it deserves it.
Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the final Wheel of Time book to be penned solely by Robert Jordan, so it seems like it’s worth pausing to consider the series as a whole at this point before diving into Sanderson’s take on the work.
And as a whole, the series works. It’s entertaining. I’m not sure I would actually recommend it to anyone, but I don’t have to: it’s popularity recommends it for itself.
There is some interesting room for discussion. Jordan’s treatment of female characters is often remarked upon. But I think he mis-writes his women in the exact same way he mis-writes his men. I don’t think it’s misogyny so much as an ability to write rational adults. Everyone in this series is a manipulative, conniving, un-trusting and largely untrustworthy idiot. Everyone has secret plans for everyone else. Everyone is certain that they deserve special treatment above everyone else. Everyone goes out of their way to not reveal important information to everyone else. It goes on and on.
But this behavior stands out for the female characters more-so than their male counterparts because this is how shrews and bitches have been long portrayed in our society. The exact same behavior doesn’t ping for the men because men never need to prove that they aren’t all of those things.
So I think it’s too simplistic to say “Jordan can’t write women.” or even “Jordan hates women.” I think it’s closer to “Jordan can’t write anyone at all, and he never notices that his privileged position means he has to try harder for the women.” I don’t say this to excuse him, but merely to point out that his literary sins extend far beyond “She folded her arms beneath her breasts.*”
And then there’s the spanking. I don’t even know what to think about the spanking. Again, spankings (and the threat of spankings) are used by both men and women in these books; but it’s way creepier when a man suddenly throws a non-consenting woman over his knee. My own take on it pretty much stops at “Adults do not solve their personal disputes in this manner!” but if you want to read a deep-seated misogyny into it, I won’t argue with you. It’s really disturbing.
Aside from that (which is a pretty big aside!), the story feels too complicated in general. There are enough characters that I don’t really know who is who or where they are or what they’re doing anymore. I’m constantly having to look up minor characters on the Wheel of Time Wiki just to get the basic facts about them when they show up in the story.
In a previous review, I believe I complained that there were too many villains. Now there’s too many characters in general. There are also too many main plots and subplots and small plots and who knows what else. I think I have the general outline of what’s happened over the past eleven books, but I wouldn’t be able to sketch it out for anyone.
At this point, I’m enjoying the books scene-by-scene and not worrying too much about how those scenes interconnect. For everything else, there’s the wiki.
And I don’t think there was ever an actual Knife of Dreams: if there was, I completely missed it in one of the subplots. The titles of the books have all been pretty literal plot-points until now. I don’t know what that means going forward, but it feels like a sudden change.
* Although, that’s a pretty big literary sin. He uses that construction fifteen times in this book alone.