thebookishowl.com

It’s always hard to compare the last books in a series to the earlier ones, mostly because it’s in the last ones that all the climatic battles will take place and all the storylines will come to an end. You cannot have a third act without an act one and two, yet the third act will in almost every case be seen as ‘the best part’. That is very much how I feel about The Wheel of Time right now. It has dragged out for eleven books, and when Brandon Sanderson now takes over after the unfortunate death of Robert Jordan he has the honor of wrapping up all the story lines, kill all the characters, and write out all the battles. Question is: is he up for the task?

The tone of the novel is set right from the start in the prologue, with a loaming black storm and a sense that the battle is upon the world. I knew since the last DragonCon that part of the prologue was done by Robert Jordan himself, but where Jordan stopped and Brandon Sanderson begun I couldn’t tell at first. I did notice his style later during the reading, and Sanderson is definitely less free with his descriptions, instead preferring a tighter writing that still paints pictures satisfactory. Several times during the reading I entirely forgot that I was reading a different author than Jordan, only to be reminded later by noticing how “fast” things seemed to be moving.

Moving plots constantly forward has sadly been one of Jordan’s lacking feats, but something that Sanderson apparently has no trouble with. The book slows down a bit in the middle, but it is barely noticeable and no way near as painful as in some of the later books of the series. Yes, Winter’s Heart, I’m looking at you.

With only a few chapters about Mat, and Perrin only with a few pages, the entire book is more or less only about Rand and Egwene. Elayne and the Black Tower are completely absent, which is somewhat annoying, especially considering the ending of Knife of Dreams. One of the bigger faults of the Wheel of Time series is that it tries to do too much with too many people. If you let every character – and there is a lot of them – have their share of pages not much will happen, and if you only focus on a few you will miss the others.

While The Gathering Storm only focuses on two storylines it manages to do so wonderfully well. Rand struggle with his madness as he gathers his forces for the Last Battle and desperately tries to force the rest of the world under his banner. As people around him continue to worry about the Dragon Reborn’s sanity, he himself turns even more inwards as he tries to find a way to actually defeat the Dark One. Meanwhile, Egwene does all she can to reunite the shattered White Tower without breaking it completely, but even from within it’s no easy task.

Unlike the other books in the series, you can actually feel the Last Battle loaming over the world, instead of it being something everyone just talks about. The book is definitely a lot darker than others in the series, and I only expect it to get darker from here. It will be a scene with Rand in the middle of the book that will shock you deeply. You will get the impression – very strongly – that the Dark One is not just sitting and waiting, and that he is deviously cunning.

Since I hadn’t read anything of Sanderson’s work previously I was a bit concerned that characters would feel unfamiliar, but I felt that he nailed almost every one of them perfectly. The “almost” is there because of Mat, who I felt wasn’t entirely familiar. He was more humorous – up to the point where I actually laughed out loud on several occasions – but while he had previously been more of a sardonic rogue he was almost too much here. I didn’t dislike him – I actually liked him very much – but I didn’t recognize him as the Mat from previous books.

Sanderson does a wonderful job on all the other characters, and even does a fairly good job on most of the women. I didn’t notice any who complained about the sweetness of their tea, Aes Sedai didn’t think so much of themselves (they still do, only a bit less), Nynaeve kept her braid-pulling to a minimum, and Egwene didn’t want to box someone’s ears all the time. He even managed to make Cadsuane into a slightly more understandable character, and that is no small feat.

Although the Forsaken are having appearances and clashes with Rand, they are not providing the usual action-filled climatic endings like in previous books of the series. Instead (I don’t think I spoil anything here) there is a very powerful and emotional scene with Rand, standing at the top of Dragonmount, where he begins to doubt the very cause he is committed to, the futility, and why he fights. It is very possibly the best scene in the series, and a perfect ending that sets the tone for the remaining two books.

So to conclude, The Gathering Storm might have a new writer, but the series remains true to its vision and there is not a single time I felt that Jordan would have done differently. It is extremely well written, and it’s nice to see storylines that has kept going throughout the series come to conclusions in most satisfying ways. The Gathering Storm is without a doubt the best book in the series so far, and it strongly shows that Sanderson is committed, and perfect, for the job of finishing the most epic fantasy series of them all.

Quilldragon

The William Blake Archive <www.blakearchive.org> has announced the publication of electronic editions of Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion copies E and I, in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, respectively. They join copies a, A, B, C, J (1793), F (c. 1794), G (1795), and O and P (c. 1818), previously published in the Archive.

Visions, extant in seventeen complete copies, consists of eleven relief-etched plates executed and first printed in 1793. Copies E and I were produced in Blake’s first printing session. Probably to lend variety to his stock of copies on hand, Blake used three ink colors in this first printing: yellow ochre (as in copy A), raw sienna (copies B, C, and E), and green (copies I and J). Like all early copies of Visions, copies E and I have the frontispiece printed on one side of
a leaf, but all other plates are printed on both sides of five leaves.

With the publication of _Visions_ copies E and I, the Archive now contains fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of 75 copies of Blake’s nineteen illuminated works in the context of full bibliographic information about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies.

Romantic Circles Blog

New @ The Weekly Standard:

BBC Arabic’s Jerusalem correspondent Ahmad Budeiri claims that were it not for “hostile environment training,” he might have been beaten and kidnapped by “an angry mob” of Israelis in Ashdod in response to his reporting on the Free Gaza flotilla raid.

In an online dispatch for the BBC World Service, Budeiri describes a scene in the Israeli port city as something out of Somalia or Waziristan. Only by his own quick-witted recourse to the BBC’s safety-first self-preservation seminar, Budeiri insists, did he and his crew narrowly escape being assaulted or taken hostage by a violent gang of Ashdod residents. He writes:

“I remembered what I was trained for in a kidnap situation and used the exact process during the mob incident. The cameraman and I had a password that, if used, he will start packing and I would be on the phone for more than ten minutes. By doing this the mob lost interest in me and gave us a gap to leave the location without being spotted. Other Arab crews were beaten when they all left as one big group and were slow departing because of their equipment.”

Budeiri says that the Ashdod police merely looked on with indifference and “never reacted to nor stepped in to prevent the threats” – an odd disclosure in that these “threats” were evidently backed up by real actions and yet our correspondent doesn’t explain what the police response to those might have been. Also, assuming others saw and reported on the Ashdod “chaos,” why is this first-person testimony the BBC’s first and only statement on the matter?

Even as a primer on institutional methods of journalistic precaution in the field, Budeiri’s piece does little to avoid a descent into macabre self-parody:

“The course also taught me to avoid any confrontation, but at the same time not to be seen as a weak person. While I was on air, the mob tried to distract me and some then even blocked the camera. I tried to get them to speak on air and show I was not weak, but also fight back in a positive way to gain respect for a moment – other reporters did not do that which resulted in more fury.”

It seems almost cruel to inquire of Budeiri how a furious mob of would-be kidnappers were first approached for on-air testimony, or to what secret location in Israel’s fifth largest city they might have repaired with a foreign stringer from a multinational news organization. Other daunting obstacles standing in the way of Budeieri’s broadcasts that week included “having to charge my mobile phone four times a day” and tolerating the beastly heat and unreliable bus schedule of Beersheva.

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