Wheel of Time reread

Just finished Knife of Dreams, and after Crossroads of Twilight I was ready for the series to pick itself back up. It does, immediately and decisively. This is Robert Jordan’s last full solo entry in the series, and if he knew it might be, it shows, because there’s an urgency here that’s been missing for a couple of books, like every thread suddenly remembered it needed to actually go somewhere.

Perrin finally deals with Fain

Perrin’s storyline gets the closure I’ve been waiting on for what feels like forever. Padan Fain has been a constant, twisted presence lurking at the edges of this story since The Eye of the World, poisoning wells, whispering to Whitecloaks, showing up wherever misery could be maximized, and watching Perrin finally corner him and put an end to it is deeply satisfying. It’s not a clean, heroic fight either. Fain’s been warped into something genuinely dangerous and pathetic at the same time, carrying pieces of Mordeth and the cursed dagger’s influence twisted through him, and the confrontation carries the weight of a decade-long grudge finally getting settled. After the Faile rescue defined Perrin for so many books, this felt like the real final beat of his arc as a hunter, not chasing Faile anymore but closing the door on the thing that’s been haunting him since he was a teenager.

Faile gets real material of her own in this book too, dealing with the aftermath of her captivity in ways that go beyond just being relieved to be free. There’s a hardness to her now, a wariness that wasn’t there before the Shaido took her, and I like that Jordan lets her carry visible scars from the experience instead of resetting her back to exactly who she was. It makes the Perrin and Faile relationship feel earned rather than just restored to factory settings.

Mat and Tuon tie the knot

Mat’s storyline delivers something I genuinely didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did: he actually marries Tuon. After a book and a half of them circling each other, testing each other, neither one willing to fully trust the other, watching Mat commit to her, and watching Tuon in her own controlled dynastic way commit right back, is a great payoff for a relationship that’s been more interesting than a lot of the series’ romances specifically because neither of them is soft about it. Mat’s been the reluctant hero for ten books now. Watching him choose something for himself, messy and complicated as it is, is a nice change of pace. The wedding itself is handled with exactly the right amount of chaos, very on-brand for Mat, who’s spent the entire series having enormous things happen to him while he insists he just wants to be left alone. There’s real tenderness under the comedy of it too, and it’s a nice reminder that for all his luck and bravado, Mat’s one of the more emotionally honest characters in the series once you catch him off guard.

Elayne’s fight for Andor gets genuinely dangerous in this book, with real military threats to her claim rather than just political maneuvering. It’s a good escalation after a couple of books where her storyline felt more like paperwork than peril, and watching her have to actually defend what she’s been building, not just argue for it, gives her chapters a sharper edge than they’ve had in a while. Birgitte remains a steady, grounding presence through all of it, and their partnership continues to be one of the more reliable relationships in the entire cast. Egwene’s rebel Aes Sedai finally move on the White Tower directly here, and the tension ramps up fast. She’s spent several books building support, playing a long political game, and this is where that patience starts converting into real action. Without spoiling exactly how the book ends for her, I’ll say the last stretch of her storyline is genuinely nerve-wracking, and it’s a strong reminder of how much Jordan’s willing to put his characters through right when they seem closest to winning. The Seanchan as a faction get real depth here too, beyond just being an invading force with strange customs. Tuon’s own position within Seanchan society, and the internal politics she has to navigate even as a member of the ruling family, make them feel like a fully realized culture with its own tensions rather than a monolithic threat. I like that marrying Mat complicates her standing rather than simply elevating his, and it sets up an interesting tension between two people who each have real power in very different systems that don’t recognize each other’s rules.

A book that remembers to move

What I appreciated most on this reread is just how much actually happens. After Crossroads of Twilight spent most of its length on reaction and administration, Knife of Dreams reads like Jordan cutting loose, resolving old plot threads and escalating others and generally reminding me why I got hooked on this series in the first place. Perrin’s arc closes a chapter that’s been open since book one. Mat’s relationship reaches a real milestone instead of just simmering. Egwene’s slow-burn strategy finally pays off in a genuinely tense sequence. This is a book that understands its job is to deliver, and it does. There’s also a bittersweet quality to it knowing this was Jordan’s last completed entry before Brandon Sanderson took over finishing the series from his notes. It’s a strong note to end on, and rereading it with that knowledge made me appreciate it even more than I expected to.

Rand’s chapters here are brief but pointed, and there’s a coldness to him that had been building for a while finally starting to genuinely worry the people around him rather than just the reader. It’s unsettling in a productive way, because after so many books of watching him hold himself together through sheer will, this is where the cracks start to look less like a phase and more like a real crisis waiting to happen. I don’t want to oversell how much page time this gets, since it’s genuinely a small piece of a very full book, but it’s a well-placed piece, and it left me uneasy in exactly the way I think it’s supposed to. A few smaller threads keep building nicely in the background too, with Elayne finally consolidating her position in Andor and the Seanchan’s internal politics getting more complicated now that Tuon’s married into a very unconventional situation by her own culture’s standards. None of it demands the spotlight the way Perrin, Mat, and Egwene do here, but it’s the kind of patient plot maintenance that makes the bigger payoffs later feel earned rather than sudden.

After the slowest entry in the series, Knife of Dreams is exactly the course correction I wanted: old grudges settled, real relationships committed to, and momentum building hard toward whatever’s coming next. Easily one of my favorite entries in the back half of the series, and a much better use of a book than The Path of Daggers managed a few years earlier.

Just finished Crossroads of Twilight, and I went in braced for this one. It’s got a reputation, and having read the series before I remembered roughly why. Coming off the one-two punch of the Cleansing and Perrin finally getting Faile back, this book downshifts hard, and on a reread you feel that shift immediately.

Everyone Reacts to the Cleansing in Crossroads of Twilight

A big chunk of Crossroads of Twilight is spent on other characters finding out what happened at the end of Winter’s Heart — the Cleansing specifically — and reacting to it. That’s a legitimate structural choice. News that saidin might not be a death sentence anymore is genuinely world-changing, and different characters hearing it and processing it in their own ways is worth exploring. The problem, at least for me on this pass, is that it’s spread across so many different POV chapters that the book spends most of its length on reaction rather than new forward motion. You can feel Jordan wanting to honor how big a deal the Cleansing is. I just wanted a little more to actually happen alongside all that processing.

I don’t think this makes it a bad book exactly. It’s more that the ratio feels off compared to everything before it. Even Path of Daggers, which I found thin in places, moved the overall story forward more than this one does.

Mat and Tuon on the Run

The best material in the book is Mat and Tuon slipping out of Ebou Dar together, trying to stay ahead of the Seanchan while Mat tries to figure out exactly what he’s gotten himself into with her. Their dynamic is genuinely fun — Mat constantly convinced he’s got the upper hand, Tuon constantly demonstrating that she doesn’t need him to have it — and this thread has more forward momentum and more personality than almost anything else in the book. If the whole novel had this energy, I don’t think it would have the reputation it does.

Thom and Noal round out the traveling group, and there’s a real found-family warmth to these chapters that the rest of the book doesn’t quite match. Mat’s crew bantering their way across dangerous territory, needling each other and clearly caring about each other underneath it, is exactly the kind of low-stakes character chemistry this series does well, and I found myself wishing Jordan had let a couple of the other storylines breathe the same way instead of staying so procedural.

Elayne’s Long Fight for Andor

Elayne’s chapters cover her ongoing push to claim the Sun Throne, dealing with rival claimants, a forged letter plot, and the general mess of Andoran succession politics. It’s competent material and it matters for where her arc is headed, but it’s also some of the driest political maneuvering in the series so far, and I found my attention drifting during a few of these stretches in a way it hadn’t during the equivalent chapters in earlier books. Birgitte’s there as a steadying presence, which helps, but this storyline needed either more urgency or fewer pages, and on this reread I felt the absence of both — the stakes never sharpened and the plotting never tightened.

Egwene’s chapters inside the rebel camp are similarly procedural this time through — more logistics of running a splinter Aes Sedai movement than any real forward drive. She’s still compelling whenever she’s actually making decisions, but there’s less decision-making and more administration in this stretch than I remembered, and it’s another symptom of the same pacing issue running through the whole book.

Egwene, Still Playing the Long Game

Egwene’s chapters here continue building her position among the rebel Aes Sedai, and while I flagged this as procedural earlier, there’s real craft in how patiently the groundwork gets laid. She’s not winning through any single dramatic confrontation in this book. She’s winning through accumulated small decisions, favors extended and remembered, alliances quietly shored up. It’s not thrilling to read in isolation, but it’s consistent with who she’s been established as since Lord of Chaos, and I trust it’s building toward something substantial even in a book where I wanted more happening around it.

Perrin, Waiting

Perrin and Faile get a quieter aftermath here too, dealing with the fallout of the rescue and Perrin’s own guilt over what he did and became to pull it off. It’s decent character work, but after the intensity of the rescue itself, spending more time processing it rather than moving forward made this stretch of the book feel like it was treading water alongside everything else.

Small Pleasures Along the Way

It’s not all a slog, to be fair. There are individual scenes scattered through the quieter stretches that work well in isolation — a few sharp bits of dialogue, some nice character-voice moments for side characters who don’t often get the spotlight, and the world continues to feel lived-in even when the plot itself isn’t sprinting anywhere. Jordan’s prose craft doesn’t dip just because the momentum does, and on a paragraph-by-paragraph level this is still clearly the same writer who gave us The Shadow Rising. It’s specifically the big-picture pacing that struggles here, not the sentence-level writing.

Being Honest About This One

I’ll say it plainly: this is the weakest entry in the series so far on this reread, and I don’t think that’s a controversial take. It’s not badly written — Jordan’s prose and character voices are as sharp as ever — it’s that almost nothing changes state by the final page compared to where things stood at the start. For a series built on momentum across huge casts and multiple continents, a book that mostly pauses to catch its breath stands out precisely because everything around it moves so much.

I still don’t regret the time. Mat and Tuon alone were worth it, and I trust the slower stretch is setting something up rather than just spinning its wheels for no reason. But if you’re doing this reread yourself and this is the book that tests your patience, you’re not imagining it.

Part of what makes it a tougher read is just contrast. Fourteen books is a long time to sustain momentum, and a single quieter entry wouldn’t stand out nearly as much in a shorter series. Sitting right after two of the most eventful books Jordan’s written just makes the slowdown here more noticeable than it might otherwise be.

Rand, Offstage

One choice I have mixed feelings about is how little Rand actually appears in this book. After carrying so much of the last few entries, stepping back from him almost entirely lets other characters breathe, and I understand the structural logic — you can’t keep every book centered on the same person without the rest of the cast withering. But it also means the book’s biggest ongoing tension, Rand’s stability after everything he’s been through, gets left completely unaddressed for several hundred pages right when I most wanted a check-in. It’s a defensible choice. It’s just one more way this book prioritizes breadth over the momentum I was craving after Winter’s Heart.

Wrapping Up

A quiet, transitional entry after two of the biggest books in the series. Mat and Tuon carry it. Everything else mostly waits. On to Knife of Dreams next.

Just finished Winter’s Heart, and after The Path of Daggers being the quietest entry in the series, this one swings hard in the other direction. Two of the biggest payoffs in the entire Wheel of Time land in this single book, and I closed it feeling like the series had suddenly remembered how to deliver a gut-punch.

The Cleansing

I have to start with the Cleansing, because it’s one of the most purely satisfying moments in all fourteen books. Since the very first pages of The Eye of the World, we’ve known that saidin, the male half of the True Source, is tainted by the Dark One, and that every man who channels is slowly, inevitably driven mad and rotted away by it. It’s the reason male channelers get hunted down. It’s the reason Rand has spent nine books with a ticking clock hanging over his head. And in this book, using the male and female Choedan Kal together at Shadar Logoth of all places, Rand and a task force of Asha’man, Aes Sedai, and Wise Ones actually manage to burn the taint away.

It’s hard to overstate how big this is. This isn’t a battle won or a city taken. It’s a fundamental law of this world getting rewritten in real time, undoing something that’s been true for three thousand years. The sequence itself is chaotic and dangerous, since nobody involved is entirely sure it’ll work and there’s real tension right up until the moment it becomes clear that it has, and the fact that Rand pulls it off using an enemy’s captured artifact and a coalition of people who don’t fully trust him or each other makes it land even harder. I got chills rereading it, and I already knew exactly how it ends. The ripple effects are just as compelling as the moment itself. Men who channel don’t have to be a walking death sentence anymore. The entire structure of fear the world has built around male channelers, the entire reason gentling exists, potentially just stopped making sense overnight. Most of the world doesn’t know that yet, and I’m looking forward to watching that news spread and land differently depending on who’s hearing it.

I also love that Jordan doesn’t let the people involved trust it immediately. Nynaeve, who’s there for the whole thing, spends the aftermath testing and re-testing whether it actually worked, because three thousand years of certainty doesn’t just dissolve because one attempt went well. That skepticism from the person best positioned to verify it grounds a moment that could have easily tipped into pure spectacle. It earns the weight it’s clearly meant to carry.

Perrin rescues Faile

And then, finally, Perrin gets Faile back. After books of hunting, tracking, and getting angrier and colder with every setback, watching him actually catch up to the Shaido and pull off the rescue is enormously satisfying. It’s not a clean, easy victory, because Perrin’s willing to burn down a lot to get her back, and there’s a ruthlessness to how he handles the Shaido camp that shows exactly how much this hunt has changed him. But it works, and after so many books of this thread simmering in the background, having it actually resolve here rather than dragging out even further is a real relief. What I like most is that the reunion isn’t just triumphant. Perrin’s not the same person who lost her, and there’s an honesty to how Jordan handles that, because the cost of the last few books doesn’t just evaporate the second Faile’s safe again. It gives their relationship more weight than a simple rescue-and-reunite arc usually earns.

Looking back at the whole arc now that it’s resolved, I have more appreciation for it than I expected going in. It took a long time, longer than it probably needed to, but the payoff of watching a fundamentally gentle character choose to become someone harder because the situation demanded it, and then have to live with that choice once the crisis is over, is exactly the kind of character work this series does best when it’s firing on all cylinders. I want to spend a moment on Rand specifically too, because his chapters here carry a different kind of tension than the Cleansing sequence itself. Pulling off something this dangerous requires him to trust people he has every reason not to fully trust, and there’s a real vulnerability in watching him hand that much control to a mixed group of Asha’man, Aes Sedai, and Wise Ones who don’t even fully trust each other. It’s a good showcase for how far he’s come as a leader, not by doing everything himself but by finally being willing to depend on other people at the exact moment it matters most.

Mat, Elayne, Egwene

Mat’s storyline takes an interesting turn here, tangled up with Tuon, a young Seanchan noblewoman who is very much not what Mat bargained for when their paths crossed. I love watching Mat, of all people, get thrown by someone, because he talks his way out of everything and reads every room instantly, and Tuon is the first person in a long time who seems to be several steps ahead of him instead of the other way around. It’s a fun dynamic, and I’m curious to see where Jordan takes it, especially given how much history the Seanchan carry as a faction.

Elayne’s own storyline keeps building in the background of everything else, with her claim on the Sun Throne of Andor inching forward even while she’s stuck dealing with pregnancy complications and the general chaos of trying to run a claim to a throne from a distance. It’s not the flashiest material in the book next to the Cleansing and the Faile rescue, but I appreciated how grounded it felt, with actual governance problems and actual logistics instead of everything being solved through raw power. It’s a good reminder that this series cares about the boring, load-carrying parts of ruling almost as much as it cares about the magic and the battles. Egwene doesn’t get the most page time in this book, but what she does get shows how much command she’s built over the rebel Aes Sedai by this point. Coordinating something as delicate as the Bowl of the Winds effort from her position takes real political capital, and watching her spend that capital confidently, without the second-guessing that marked her earliest chapters as Amyrlin, is a nice quiet marker of how far she’s come. It’s easy to let a character’s growth become background noise once it’s established, and this book does a good job of still making it visible.

This is the book I’d point to if someone asked me why I keep coming back to this series even through the slower stretches. The Cleansing alone would make Winter’s Heart a standout, and pairing it with Perrin finally getting Faile back makes this one of the most rewarding entries since The Shadow Rising. After A Crown of Swords and Path of Daggers felt like the series catching its breath, this is Jordan reminding me exactly why I fell for these books in the first place.

Diving into Crossroads of Twilight next.

Just finished The Path of Daggers, and I’ll say up front that this is the shortest book in the series and it reads like it. That’s not automatically a bad thing, because after A Crown of Swords ran a little long in places for me, having a leaner entry wasn’t unwelcome. But this is also the first book on the reread where I finished it and had to sit for a second to figure out what had actually changed by the end.

Rand’s rage problem

The strongest material here is what’s happening inside Rand’s head. He’s leading a real war now, dealing with Seanchan forces pushing into the continent, and the toll of everything he’s been carrying since Dumai’s Wells is starting to show in dangerous ways. There’s a real, growing fear, his own and increasingly everyone else’s, that he’s losing his grip on his temper in ways that could get people killed. Watching him flirt with using balefire, a weapon so destructive it doesn’t just kill you but unmakes your recent existence from the Pattern, is genuinely unsettling. This isn’t a hero having a rough week. This is a man with terrifying amounts of power whose judgment is visibly eroding, and Jordan doesn’t let the reader look away from that.

The Seanchan fights themselves are tense, and I like that Jordan doesn’t present them as easy wins even with Rand’s forces having the edge in raw power. The Seanchan are a genuinely different kind of threat than the Shadow, disciplined and organized and playing a long conquest game rather than an apocalyptic one, and every engagement with them carries a different flavor of danger than fighting Trollocs or Myrddraal. What makes it land is how isolated Rand feels through all of it. Moiraine’s gone. Asmodean’s dead. The people around him now are mostly there to manage him, watch him, or use him, and there’s a real loneliness to his chapters in this book that I don’t think gets talked about enough. He’s arguably more powerful than he’s ever been, and more alone than he’s ever been, at the exact same time, and Jordan sits with that discomfort instead of rushing past it.

The Bowl of the Winds

The other big beat is the payoff to a thread that’s been building since A Crown of Swords: Egwene’s rebel Aes Sedai, working with Elayne and Nynaeve, finally use the Bowl of the Winds to break the unnatural weather the Dark One’s been inflicting on the world. After books of endless summer heat wrecking crops and fraying tempers across every storyline, watching the seasons actually turn again is a genuinely satisfying payoff, and it’s a good reminder that Jordan does eventually cash in the slower setup chapters, even if it takes a while to get there. It’s a quieter kind of climax than a big battle, and I appreciated it for exactly that reason, because not everything in this series needs to be settled with swords or the One Power.

Egwene continues to impress me in this stretch. She’s using the rebel Aes Sedai’s resources more confidently now, and there’s a sense that she’s stopped merely surviving as the Amyrlin and started actually wielding the position the way a real Amyrlin would. Watching her direct something as significant as the Bowl of the Winds effort, coordinating multiple factions of Aes Sedai who don’t fully trust each other yet, is a good showcase for how far she’s come since being raised as what everyone assumed would be a puppet. Nynaeve gets a nice moment here too, finally healing stilling on a full scale, reversing damage that was previously thought permanent and that nobody thought was even possible. It’s a huge deal for the world of the story, and Jordan mostly lets the implications ripple outward rather than making a huge production out of the scene itself, which I think was the right call.

Aviendha gets a striking, difficult storyline in this book, undertaking something dangerous and deeply personal within Aiel tradition that I won’t spell out in detail, but that forces her to confront exactly what her connection to Rand is going to cost her long-term. It’s some of the more emotionally raw material in the book, and I like that Jordan treats Aiel culture and its rituals as genuinely alien and serious rather than window dressing. Aviendha’s not a passive figure in Rand’s story. She’s actively wrestling with what she’s willing to sacrifice for it, and this book gives that wrestling real weight. Perrin’s storyline finally shifts gears here too. He’s been mostly reactive since Faile was taken, but this is the book where his hunt for her stops feeling like wandering and starts feeling like an actual campaign, tracking the Shaido with real purpose and a coldness of his own creeping in that mirrors what’s happening to Rand on a smaller, more personal scale. I’m ready for this thread to pay off, honestly, and this book is the first sign that it’s finally moving toward doing that. Elayne’s storyline, meanwhile, leans further into her claim on Andor, and she also starts working more directly with the Kin, the community of women who channel outside the Tower structure that got introduced back in A Crown of Swords. I like watching her treat them as a genuine resource instead of an oddity to be managed, and it’s a good example of how the more pragmatic, forward-thinking Aes Sedai in this series tend to be the ones who actually get things done. Min’s viewings keep circling around Elayne and Rand’s relationship too, in ways that are more teased than explained, and I always enjoy the chapters where Min’s gift gets to do real narrative work instead of just sitting in the background.

The shortest book, and it shows

I want to be straightforward about the pacing here, because that’s the whole point of talking through a reread like this instead of just hyping every entry equally. The Path of Daggers is a transitional book. A lot of what happens here matters more for what it sets up than what it resolves in the moment, and there are stretches, some of the political maneuvering around Elayne’s claim to the Sun Throne of Andor in particular, that felt more like homework than momentum on this pass through. It’s readable. It’s competent. It’s just not firing on the same cylinders as The Fires of Heaven or Lord of Chaos, and I don’t think that’s just me being tired of the series. I think it’s genuinely one of the thinner entries.

Part of it, I think, is just how the book is put together. This one picks up plot threads mid-stride rather than opening any of them fresh, and it ends on rising tension rather than a real climax of its own. That’s a legitimate storytelling choice in a series this long, since not every book needs its own complete arc, but it does mean The Path of Daggers reads more like a bridge than a destination, and bridges are rarely anyone’s favorite part of the journey. The Bowl of the Winds payoff and Rand’s escalating rage are both real highlights, and Perrin’s hunt finally getting real momentum has me more invested in his thread than I’ve been in a couple of books. But this is the shortest, quietest entry in the series so far, and it felt that way while I was reading it, not just in retrospect.

Just finished A Crown of Swords, and this is the first book on the reread where I had to actually push through some sections instead of racing through them. There’s still good stuff here — genuinely good stuff — but this is where I started feeling the difference between a Wheel of Time book that’s firing on every cylinder and one that’s mostly setting the table for later.

Rand Moves on Illian

The strongest thread by far is Rand’s campaign against Sammael in Illian. After a whole book of Sammael working through proxies and staying just out of reach, watching Rand finally move directly against him is satisfying in a way this particular rivalry has been building toward since The Fires of Heaven. Rand takes the city, and the way Jordan stages it — political maneuvering as much as open combat, Rand having to actually think about what ruling a conquered city means rather than just winning a battle and walking away — makes it feel like a genuine turning point rather than another fight scene.

What I like most is how it forces Rand to start acting like the ruler he’s going to have to become instead of just the weapon everyone keeps trying to point at the Shadow. He’s got a city to run now, on top of an army, on top of the Aiel, on top of trying not to go insane. You can feel the job getting bigger than any one person should have to carry, and Jordan lets that show on the page instead of just telling us Rand is stressed.

There’s a real cost to how Rand handles the aftermath too. He’s not gentle about consolidating power in Illian, and the reread made me notice how much colder his decision-making has gotten since the early books. This is the guy who used to agonize over every hard choice back in Emond’s Field. By this point he’s making calls that would have horrified that version of himself, and mostly justifying it as necessary. It’s good, uncomfortable character work, even when it’s not always comfortable to read.

Enter Cadsuane

And then there’s Cadsuane, who shows up determined to take Rand in hand whether he likes it or not. I have complicated feelings about her on this reread. She’s clearly meant to be a formidable, no-nonsense counterweight to a Dragon Reborn who’s getting colder and more dangerous by the book, and there’s something satisfying about a character who simply refuses to be intimidated by him. At the same time, her introduction is the start of a dynamic between them that I remember taking a while to really click, and on this read I found myself wanting her to just say what she means instead of playing quite so many games with a man who’s already surrounded by people playing games with him.

Nynaeve and Elayne in Ebou Dar

Nynaeve and Elayne spend a good chunk of this book in Ebou Dar, chasing down leads on the Bowl of the Winds, the ter’angreal that might be able to undo the unnatural weather the Dark One’s influence has been causing across the whole continent. It’s solid material, and I like the introduction of the Kin, ordinary women who left the Tower or never made it past novice but kept using the Power quietly on their own for generations. It’s a nice bit of world-building that fills in a gap I hadn’t thought much about before — what happens to women who can channel but never become Aes Sedai.

Thom and Juilin round out that group nicely, and I appreciate that Jordan keeps at least one or two non-channelers embedded in every major storyline. It would be easy for a series this focused on the One Power to lose track of why anyone without access to it still matters, and having Thom’s street smarts and Juilin’s thief-taking instincts driving parts of the Ebou Dar plot keeps that from happening. Small thing, but I noticed it more on this read than I ever have before.

Mat, Waking Up

Mat spends most of this book unconscious or recovering, which sounds like a strange thing to highlight, but the chapters around his condition and slow recovery give some of the supporting cast, particularly Thom, real room to show how much they care about him without Mat’s usual deflecting humor getting in the way. It’s a quieter use of his storyline than usual, and it works specifically because we’ve spent six books watching him charm his way through everything — seeing him vulnerable and dependent on other people for once adds a dimension that a more typical Mat chapter wouldn’t have provided.

Where the Pace Really Shows

I’ll be straightforward about this one, since that’s the point of doing a reread out loud like this: A Crown of Swords is where I first felt Jordan spending real page count on scenes that could have been tightened up considerably. There’s a stretch in Ebou Dar that meanders more than it needs to, and a few chapters elsewhere that feel like they’re marking time rather than moving anything forward. None of it is bad writing exactly. It’s more that the plot-to-page ratio starts to feel different here than it did across the first six books, and I noticed myself checking how many pages were left in a way I hadn’t been doing before.

Faile’s situation with the Shaido also starts turning genuinely dangerous by the end of this book, and I won’t pretend I’m not a little worried about where that’s headed. Perrin’s been mostly reactive for a couple of books now, and I’m ready for that thread to demand something more from him.

The White Tower schism keeps grinding along in the background too, more maneuvering between the Salidar Aes Sedai and Elaida’s loyalists than any real resolution. I trust it’s building toward something, the way everything in this series eventually does, but this is the first time on the reread where I caught myself wanting Jordan to just get on with it rather than trusting the process completely.

Egwene and the Rebel Aes Sedai

Egwene’s chapters in this book are mostly consolidation work, shoring up her position among the rebel Aes Sedai and continuing to build the case for legitimacy that’s going to matter enormously later. It’s quieter material than Rand’s storyline, and I noticed it more as connective tissue than as a highlight in its own right this time through. That’s not a knock on Egwene as a character — she’s still sharp and still growing into the role — it’s more that this particular stretch of her arc is doing setup work rather than delivering its own payoff, which is a pattern I noticed repeating across a few different threads in this book.

Faile’s Situation Turns Serious

I mentioned it above, but it’s worth sitting with for a minute: by the end of this book, Faile is genuinely in danger, captured by the Shaido in a turn that lands like a gut-punch precisely because so much of the rest of the book has kept Perrin at arm’s length from the main action. He finds out what’s happened almost too late to do anything immediate about it, and the helpless fury in those last few chapters is some of the rawest writing Perrin’s gotten in the whole series. I closed the book genuinely rattled on his behalf, which is exactly the reaction an ending beat like this should get.

Wrapping Up

Rand taking Illian and finally confronting Sammael directly is a real high point, and Cadsuane’s a compelling enough addition that I’m curious where Jordan takes the dynamic between them. But this is the first book in the series where I’d call the pacing a genuine issue rather than just a matter of taste — there’s a good three-hundred-page book in here surrounded by some material that could stand to move faster.

Onward to The Path of Daggers. Hoping the momentum from the Illian campaign carries forward.

Just finished Lord of Chaos, and I have to say straight away: Dumai’s Wells might be my favorite single battle in the entire series. I remembered it being good. I did not remember it being that good. Everything else in this book is a mixed bag for me, honestly, but that one sequence alone makes the whole thing worth it.

The Aes Sedai Try to Leash the Dragon

The setup is brutal and effective. A faction of Aes Sedai, convinced they need to control Rand rather than support him, engineers a plan to capture and leash him like they would any other male channeler. It’s a genuinely disturbing idea presented completely matter-of-factly — these are supposed to be the good guys, or at least the neutral ones, and watching them justify treating Rand like a dangerous animal is uncomfortable in exactly the way Jordan wants it to be. It reframes the White Tower as something scarier than the Shadow in a lot of ways: an institution convinced of its own righteousness, willing to do almost anything in service of that conviction.

Dumai’s Wells

And then the rescue happens, and it is glorious. The Aiel show up to save Rand, and just when it looks like it still might not be enough, the Asha’man arrive — the men Rand’s been secretly training at the Black Tower, revealed to the world in the most dramatic way possible. Watching male channelers show up in force, after thirteen hundred years of every male channeler being hunted down and gentled on sight, is one of those moments where you can feel the entire shape of the world shifting. The battle itself is chaotic and brutal and genuinely thrilling, and the aftermath — Rand’s fury, the fear radiating off everyone who watches what the Asha’man can do — sets up so much of what’s coming. I went in remembering this as a good battle. I came out thinking it might be Jordan at his absolute best as an action writer.

What makes it land so hard is everything Jordan’s spent five books building toward it. We’ve watched Rand get cornered, outmaneuvered, and underestimated by people who think of him as a problem to manage rather than a person. Dumai’s Wells is the moment all of that pressure finally erupts, and it erupts in the most satisfying way possible — not with Rand simply overpowering everyone through raw strength, but with allies nobody saw coming showing up at exactly the right second. I was practically cheering by the time the Asha’man banners came into view, and I already knew what was about to happen.

Rand’s reaction afterward is just as important as the battle itself. He doesn’t come out of Dumai’s Wells triumphant so much as furious and shaken, and that gap between how the reader feels watching the rescue and how Rand feels living through it is one of the smarter choices in the book. This isn’t a clean victory for him. It’s a reminder of exactly how many people are willing to see him leashed or dead, and you can feel that knowledge hardening him further.

Egwene Takes the Amyrlin Seat

Away from all that, Egwene gets raised as the Amyrlin Seat by the rebel Aes Sedai in Salidar, and I love how Jordan handles this. She’s supposed to be a figurehead — young, inexperienced, easy for the older Aes Sedai to control from behind the scenes. Instead she starts actually leading, outmaneuvering women who’ve had decades or centuries more experience than she has, and doing it through sheer stubbornness and genuine political instinct rather than raw power. It’s a slower burn than Dumai’s Wells, but I like watching Egwene grow into real authority instead of just being handed it.

What I appreciate most is that Jordan doesn’t make it easy for her. The women who raised her expecting a puppet don’t just roll over the moment she starts pushing back — there’s real friction, real anger, genuine scheming against her from people who feel outplayed by someone they still think of as a girl. Egwene wins those fights by out-thinking people, not by having some hidden reserve of power, and on a series-long reread that’s one of the more satisfying character arcs to watch develop from this early a stage.

Taim and the Black Tower

Quick shoutout to Taim, because he’s exactly the kind of character this series does well. He’s the man running the day-to-day training at the Black Tower, and he’s also a former false Dragon who once tried to kill Rand’s father. Rand keeps him around anyway, because he needs someone who can actually train Asha’man and there’s nobody else remotely qualified. Every scene with Taim is laced with a low hum of “is this a terrible idea,” and I love that Jordan lets that tension just sit there unresolved instead of resolving it neatly. It’s the same instinct that made Asmodean’s arrangement with Rand so uncomfortable in the last book, and it works just as well here.

Where Things Start to Sprawl

I want to be honest about something, because this reread is as much about noticing what doesn’t quite work as what does. This is the book where I started feeling the page count in a way I hadn’t with the first five. Perrin and Faile’s stretch in Ghealdan, dealing with the self-declared Prophet Masema and a mess of Whitecloak politics, drags in places for me this time through — it’s setting up things that matter later, but in the moment it felt like a lot of motion without a lot of movement. Moghedien slipping out of captivity due to a moment of carelessness is a frustrating beat too, mostly because it undoes a hard-won victory from the last book almost as an afterthought.

None of that ruins the book. It’s more that Lord of Chaos is the first one where I could feel Jordan juggling more plotlines than he’s got hands for, and a couple of threads get thinner attention as a result. Asmodean’s death happening entirely off-page is a good example — it’s a huge plot development, one of the Forsaken permanently removed from the board, and we don’t get to see it at all. I understand the instinct to keep some mysteries mysterious. I still wanted more.

Mat, Sidelined

One more honest observation: Mat barely features in this book after being the clear standout of The Fires of Heaven, and I missed him more than I expected to. He gets pulled into a mission escorting Elayne and Nynaeve back toward the Tower-adjacent politics, and while there are a few good moments in it, it’s clearly not the A-plot the way his generalship was last time. It’s a reminder that even a series this good at juggling its cast can’t give everyone the spotlight in every book, and on this reread I found myself impatient for his chapters in a way that surprised me a little.

Wrapping Up

Dumai’s Wells alone earns this book a strong recommendation from me — it’s a genuine series highlight, maybe a top-three moment across all fourteen books. Egwene’s rise to the Amyrlin Seat is a great slower-burn complement to it. But this is also the first book on the reread where I noticed the story starting to spread out wider than any one plotline can comfortably hold, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t cost it a little momentum compared to the run of books four and five.

There’s also just a lot of scene-setting in this one that pays off later rather than now — Elayne and Nynaeve maneuvering around the White Tower schism, more Black Ajah hunting, Aes Sedai from both factions circling each other warily. None of it is bad. It’s just quieter, table-setting work sandwiched between two of the loudest, most memorable sequences in the series so far, and it makes the book as a whole feel a little uneven even when individual pieces of it are excellent.

Still deep in it and still enjoying myself. On to A Crown of Swords next — curious to see how some of these threads start pulling back together.

Just finished The Fires of Heaven, and this might be the book on this reread that surprised me the most. I remembered loving it, but I’d forgotten it was specifically Mat’s book — this is where he stops being the lucky rogue with a fancy spear and turns into one of the best military minds in the series, and watching that happen properly for the first time in years was a genuine treat.

Out of the Waste

The book opens with Rand leading the Aiel out into the wetlands for the first time, and there’s an immediate sense that the scale of everything just changed. This isn’t a small band of friends anymore. It’s an army, and armies have politics, logistics, and rivals. Couladin and the Shaido refuse to accept Rand as Car’a’carn, and watching that fracture spread through the Aiel as they march is genuinely tense — Jordan makes it clear early that not every Aiel spear is pointed the same direction, and that’s going to matter a lot before this book is done.

Rand himself is getting harder to read here, and I mean that as a compliment. The weight of Rhuidean, the constant threat of the madness waiting for every male channeler, and now an army that expects him to actually lead it, is visibly wearing on him. He’s still Rand, but there’s a coldness creeping in at the edges that wasn’t there in the earlier books, and it’s unsettling in exactly the way it should be.

Sammael’s fingerprints are all over the chaos in Cairhien too, working through proxies and stirring up exactly the kind of political mess that lets him stay comfortably out of sight while everyone else bleeds. I like that the Forsaken in this era of the series aren’t showing up to throw fireballs in every chapter — they’re playing a longer, dirtier game, and Sammael in particular feels like a real threat specifically because you barely see him do anything directly.

Mat Becomes a General

Here’s the part I really want to talk about. When Rand needs someone to actually run the military side of taking Cairhien, it falls to Mat — and Mat hates every second of it. He complains constantly, insists he never asked for this, and swears up and down he’s not the man for the job. And then he wins. Decisively.

The Battle of Cairhien is one of the best set pieces in the entire series, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Watching Mat read the battlefield, outmaneuver forces that outnumber him, and pull off a genuinely clever victory using terrain, timing, and a scratch army he barely trusts, is just enormously satisfying. It’s not magic that wins this fight. It’s Mat’s brain. All those memories he picked up through the doorway in Rhuidean — centuries of other men’s battles crammed into his head — finally pay off in a real, tangible way, and it’s the moment Mat stops being comic relief with good luck and becomes someone you’d actually want commanding your army. I could read an entire book of just this. He’s easily my favorite character in the series at this point, and this is the book that cements it.

Asmodean’s Leash

While all that’s happening, Rand does something that still strikes me as one of the boldest moves in the series: he captures Asmodean, one of the actual Forsaken, and forces him to teach him how to use the One Power properly instead of fumbling through it alone. The dynamic between them is fantastic — Asmodean resentful and biding his time, Rand cold and pragmatic about using an enemy as a tool because he has no better options. It’s a genuinely uncomfortable alliance, and I like that Jordan doesn’t pretend it’s anything other than what it is. Rand isn’t redeeming Asmodean. He’s using him, and both of them know it.

Nynaeve Finally Gets Her Rematch

The other thread I loved this time through is Nynaeve tracking down Moghedien. After getting outmatched by her back in The Shadow Rising, Nynaeve spends this book hunting the Forsaken down properly, and the confrontation between them is a great payoff. Nynaeve’s biggest weakness has always been her own temper — she blocks off her full strength whenever she gets too emotional — and watching her finally get a handle on that, right when it matters most, and turn the tables on Moghedien using an a’dam of all things, is such a satisfying character beat. She’s spent four books being told she’s not ready. This is the book where she proves otherwise.

Elayne’s right there with her through most of it, and I like how this book keeps leaning on their friendship as a genuine partnership rather than just two characters who happen to be traveling together. They bicker constantly, they doubt each other, and they still show up for each other every time it counts. Between this and Mat’s storyline, it’s honestly one of the better books in the series for pairing characters off in ways that bring out the best in both of them.

The Ending

And then there’s the ending. I knew it was coming and it still got me. Moiraine, cornered with Lanfear at a twisted doorway ter’angreal, makes a choice nobody sees coming — she grabs hold of Lanfear and pulls them both through together, vanishing completely. No body, no confirmation, just gone. After five books of Moiraine being the one adult in the room who always seems to have a plan, watching her sacrifice herself like that, off on the margins of a much bigger battle, is devastating in a way I wasn’t prepared for even on a reread. It’s such a quiet way to write out one of the most important characters in the series, and I think that’s exactly why it works. No last speech, no drawn-out farewell. She’s just gone, and Rand has to keep going without her.

The Supporting Cast Carries Weight Too

A few smaller threads deserve a mention because they’re doing more work than they might get credit for. Amys and the other Wise Ones give Rand’s Aiel storyline a moral seriousness that keeps it from just being about army logistics — they’re constantly pushing him toward honesty and away from the easy manipulations Aes Sedai or ambitious lords keep trying on him, and I like that Rand actually listens to them more than almost anyone else at this point. Bair and the others don’t get huge amounts of page time, but every scene with them sharpens what kind of leader Rand’s supposed to become versus the one circumstances keep pressuring him into being.

Egwene and Nynaeve’s training storylines in the background of all this are easy to lose track of next to Mat’s generalship and Moiraine’s ending, but I appreciated them more on this reread than I have before. Egwene in particular keeps building the political instincts that are going to matter enormously later, and it’s satisfying to watch her learn to navigate Aes Sedai maneuvering by actually paying attention to it instead of just reacting to it.

Wrapping Up

There’s a smaller moment I want to mention too: Aviendha showing up more in this book, still working through what it means to be tied to Rand’s fate whether she wants to be or not. It’s a quieter thread next to Mat’s generalship and Moiraine’s ending, but it’s laying groundwork I know pays off a lot later, and I like how prickly and unresolved Jordan lets it stay here instead of rushing it.

This is a big, confident book. Three or four storylines that could each anchor their own novel, and every one of them lands — Mat’s tactical brilliance at Cairhien alone would make this one of my favorite entries in the series, and then Jordan piles Asmodean’s leash, Nynaeve’s rematch, and Moiraine’s sacrifice on top of it. It doesn’t feel crowded. It feels like a series that finally has the confidence to let its cast carry genuinely separate stories at the same time.

Already looking forward to Lord of Chaos. If you’ve read this one, tell me I’m not alone in thinking the Battle of Cairhien is one of the best things Jordan ever wrote — I could talk about Mat’s turn as a general all day.

Restarted the reread from the very beginning, and finishing The Eye of the World again is always a strange feeling. I know exactly what’s coming — I know who Rand really is, I know what the dagger does, I know where the Ways lead — and it still works. That’s the thing about this book I keep forgetting between rereads. It gets called derivative a lot, and sure, a farm boy getting swept out of a quiet village by a mysterious woman in gray isn’t the newest idea in fantasy. Doesn’t matter. Jordan executes it so well that I fall for it every single time.

Trollocs Come to Emond’s Field

The opening still gets me. Winternight, Trollocs pouring into Emond’s Field, and suddenly Rand, Mat, and Perrin are running for their lives with a Warder and an Aes Sedai they’d never so much as spoken to a day earlier. What I noticed more this time through is how fast Jordan moves once the attack starts — there’s no lingering, no drawn-out setup. One chapter you’re getting a feel for a sleepy farming village, the next it’s on fire and three teenagers are fleeing into the night with Moiraine and Lan. It’s a genuinely great inciting incident, and it earns the “nothing will ever be normal again” feeling it’s going for.

Moiraine and Lan are exactly as good as I remembered. Moiraine playing her cards close to her chest, giving half-answers wrapped in more questions, sets the tone for basically every Aes Sedai interaction for the next thirteen books. Lan is just Lan — quietly, effortlessly competent in a way that makes you trust him even when you don’t fully trust Moiraine. I love that the story never really explains their full relationship in this book. You just know it matters.

Nynaeve doesn’t get left behind either, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy her introduction. She refuses to just let the village’s young people vanish into the night with a stranger, so she goes after them herself, tracking Moiraine’s party on her own with nothing but stubbornness and a genuine talent for reading the land. By the time she catches up, she’s already established as exactly the person she’s going to be for the rest of the series — furious, capable, and completely unwilling to be told what she can’t do.

Shadar Logoth and the Dagger

The detour into Shadar Logoth is where the book turns genuinely creepy, and I think it’s underrated as a piece of horror writing. A dead city, poisoned by its own history, with something ancient and hungry — Mordeth — still lurking in it. Mat picking up that ruby-hilted dagger without anyone noticing is such a quiet, almost throwaway moment the first time you read it. Knowing what that dagger does to him over the next two books makes it land completely differently on a reread. You want to reach into the page and stop him.

The chaos in Shadar Logoth that splits the group is one of my favorite structural choices in the whole series. Instead of keeping everyone together for a nice, tidy journey, Jordan scatters Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, and even Moiraine and Lan across the map, and the book just… follows them separately. It shouldn’t work as well as it does.

What really sells Shadar Logoth for me is how it doesn’t explain itself much at all. You get pieces — a fallen kingdom that turned on itself out of hatred for the Shadow, something called Mashadar creeping through the ruins, Mordeth’s oily desperation to leave the city inside someone else’s skin — and you’re left to piece the rest together. Jordan trusts the reader here in a way a lot of first-book fantasy doesn’t, and it makes the whole sequence feel a lot bigger and older than the handful of chapters it actually takes up.

Two Paths Through the World

Perrin and Egwene end up with Elyas Machera, and this is where we get the first real hint of what Perrin actually is. His connection to the wolves starts here, quiet and a little frightening even to him, and I like that Jordan doesn’t oversell it. It’s presented almost matter-of-factly, which somehow makes it creepier. Egwene gets pulled into all of it too, and her friendship with Perrin during this stretch is easy to overlook on a first read but really sweet once you know how much both of their arcs are going to grow.

Rand, Mat, and Thom Merrilin take a completely different road through Caemlyn, and I’d honestly forgotten how much fun this section is. Thom is a great addition — a gleeman with more going on under the surface than he lets on — and the busking sequence in Caemlyn gives the book a breather from the constant danger. Min shows up here too, seeing those strange flashes around Rand that she can’t explain, and it’s a nice bit of foreshadowing dressed up as a simple street-fair scene.

Perrin and Egwene’s road is a lot rougher. Getting picked up by the Whitecloaks is a genuinely tense stretch — Geofram Bornhald running things with a kind of weary discipline, while Child Byar makes it very clear how the Children of the Light treat anyone who even looks like they might be a Darkfriend. It’s the first real look at how dangerous the Whitecloaks are, not because they’re evil in some cartoonish way, but because they’re absolutely certain they’re right. Getting Perrin and Egwene free of them, with the wolves circling in the background the whole time, is a nervy little sequence that doesn’t get talked about as much as the bigger set pieces but does a lot of work establishing what this world’s various flavors of danger actually look like.

The Eye of the World

Everything funnels back together in Shienar and then out into the Blight, and this is where the book goes from “solid fantasy adventure” to genuinely epic. The trip through the Ways with Loial is unsettling in exactly the right way — I love Loial as a character, and this is a great introduction to him, all nervous energy and genuine warmth even while surrounded by something ancient and wrong.

The climax at the Eye of the World itself still hits. Rand, Mat, and Perrin facing down Aginor and Balthamel — two actual Forsaken, awakened and unleashed on a handful of teenagers who had no idea any of this existed a few weeks earlier — is a great payoff for everything the book’s been building. The Green Man himself is a fantastic bit of imagery, this ancient, half-forgotten guardian showing up right when things are at their worst, and it gives the final stretch a real sense of scale after so much of the book has been small groups running and hiding.

And then Rand channels. He burns through Aginor without fully understanding what he’s doing, and the book doesn’t soften the moment at all. He’s the Dragon Reborn, he can channel, and he’s going to go mad and die from it eventually unless something changes. Moiraine doesn’t dress it up for him either, which I appreciate on this reread more than I used to — she gives him the truth, brutal as it is, instead of coddling him through it. That’s a heavy note to end a book on, and Jordan doesn’t flinch from it.

Wrapping Up

What strikes me most on this reread is how much groundwork gets laid here without the book ever feeling like homework. The Whitecloaks capturing Perrin and Egwene, the wolves, the Ways, Min’s viewings, Thom’s hidden past — none of it pays off yet, but all of it matters eventually, and I can feel Jordan setting pieces on the board with real patience. For a book this many people call “just a Tolkien knockoff,” there’s a lot more going on under the hood than it gets credit for.

The comparison isn’t even wrong, exactly — there’s a Gandalf-shaped hole where Moiraine stands, a Fellowship-shaped hole where the Emond’s Fielders scatter across the map, a Mordor-shaped hole out past the Blight. What the comparison misses is that Jordan uses those familiar shapes to smuggle in a much bigger, stranger world than one book can show you. By the last page, you’ve barely scratched the surface of Aes Sedai politics, the Aiel, the Seanchan, the Forsaken, or what “ta’veren” even really means, and that’s exactly the point. This is a foundation, not the whole house, and on a reread you can appreciate how deliberately Jordan built it.

Already looking forward to jumping back into The Great Hunt next, where things really start moving. If it’s been a while since your own first read of The Eye of the World, it holds up better than you might remember — go give Emond’s Field another visit.