I'll try to move through this quickly since no one responded to my question & therefore I'm guessing not many care, BUT I said I'd post this so here I go:
Prologue (about 10% of the book -- I read it on my Kindle so I view it in percentages): pretty much I'm OK w/this. The Logain / seals stuff is all I remember, but nothing else felt like it detracted from it. I'd do some light editing; even RJ's best stuff could use about a 10% edit, in my opinion, but overall, no problems.
Before I dig in to the next section, let me say something I think it's important to keep in mind. My three least favorite characters in the series, in order: Nynaeve, Faile, Egwene. You'll see why this is important coming up.
What people were doing during the climax of book 9 (about 60% of the book):
First 3-4 chapters, Mat: What happens here? Nothing that I can tell. Mat gets flustered around women, and I guess it's supposed to be funny? I finally figured out why I'm not a Mat fan: He's JUST as bad as Nynaeve or the AS when it comes to self-reflection. Every now and then it's amusing (generally in reference to something Olver does--I say this because it's usually at least 5 or 6 pages before Mat does the same thing so it's not AS BAD as the lines like 'they always got so violent! nynaeve wanted to slap some sense into them!') I'm absolutely fine with a novel being about character building & setup, but this tells us nothing about any of the characters we didn't already know before, or couldn't have explained away in a paragraph (which he does later in the book when we return to Mat). That first chapter is wonderful setting up mood and atmosphere, but overall I'd trim this down to two short chapters.
Next 3-4 chapters: Perrin. This section is tough. I love Perrin, and I find it kind of fun to read his whole 'i've gotta be smarter, dammit!' stuff, but again, it feels like stuff we've seen before. we get a bit of the false prophet here (i'm already forgetting names---taim?) and that's cool, but overall it just feels like it could've been trimmed, again, to either one or possibly two short chapters.
Oh, also in here (not sure of their placement) we get a chapter each of .... Farukk Derudde (??? - pretty sure he's a Seanchean on the trail of Tuon?) and a chapter of Faile. The Farukk guy chapter, I totally didn't get, but it didn't overstay its welcome & I assume it was important in some way. Again, I'd throw about a 10% edit onto it and call it good. The Faile chapter: remember how I said she's one of my top 3 least favorite characters? This chapter is BY FAR the best chapter of the first half of the book. We get more insight into Faile, how she operates, while raising a question or two (why does she want to escape before Perrin finds her? Is it because she fears him giving over to his wolfen side? is it some perverse sense of honor? I don't know, but I assume the former, which is the first time I've seen her show anything but lust or contempt toward Perrin). The chapter is short yet gets a LOT done, and it actually made me curious to read more about her. Practically no editing required here.
3-4 chapters with Elayne: This section is also frustrating because, on one hand, there's a LOT being set up here with the Houses and their meeting with the kids who want to be heroes. On the other hand, who cares? Seriously, it feels like RJ suddenly begins writing another novel with this section. like, if i felt like any of it mattered, i would have done more than skim this section, but it DOESN'T. either elayne will win the throne or she won't; that's all i give a shit about at this point. i could seriously care less about who's on her side in THIS much debt. and the dinner w/the kids i totally skipped b/c i KNEW he was just going to give us all the relevant information the next chapter when they talk about events that just happened, as he's wont to show us REPEATEDLY. i was not disappointed. also, again, elayne's treatment by birgitte & aviendha: nothing new. this could've been one short chapter, a bridge and nothing more.
3-4 chapters with Egwene (again, as a reminder, one of my least favorite characters): FINALLY, we have a glimmer of character building where you can see characters "becoming who they need to be for the final battle." I know a lot of people have made this argument about some of the later (now middle, i guess) books, but this is the only place where i see it in this book. egwene seriously seems to be stepping up to her role as amyrlin in a way that's believable and follows from what came before, rather than seeming hammered in (as did rand taking callandor back at the end of book 3, since his whole transformation happened OFFSCREEN). the halima mystery deepens (did we already know she was a male forsaken reborn in a female body? maybe we did so what i thought of as a reveal is actually old info, but still, it worked for me!) and we get another annoying council meeting. in any case, i found this section fairly solid. maybe cut about 20% of it out & it's fine. (oh, and some FUCKING PLOT DEVELOPMENT, TOO, the fact that the renegade tower is planning to treat w/the ashaman? awesome)
i think we have a chapter in here about AS in the tower, and a chapter (possibly the same one) about a black ajah WT chick. again, these little one-chapter interludes felt fine & didn't bother me (tho i just skim over the WT horseshit; i've since lost track of ANY of the names & assume that black ajah will be revealed in time, and i'll just trust that he's put time into building up suspicion & reasons it's not surprising that so-and-so is black ajah; hell, we get two reveals this book & i'm like, 'ok, cool. whatever.')
So overall this section of the book, about 45%, could've been somewhere around 40% as long as it was, MUCH shorter & gotten the same points across.
The last 30% or so of the book: Mat's sections are just painful, BUT at least I see a bit of character development here (as I THINK we're seeing Mat & Tuon develop feelings for each other, though it's so egregiously vomit-inducing I'd almost rather it happened offscreen).
Perrin's stuff is ... okay, but like ... OK, the So Harbor chapter (is there a No Harbor? a We Harbor?). works totally fine as like a short story, but does it really belong here? we get a few mentions of ghosts running around in this book, but it didn't feel like it went anywhere or meant anything. if there's a payoff in book 11 it just really reinforces my theory that 10/11 should've been one book, since so much of 10 could just be cut. and then of course the chapter where perrin gives up his axe. way overwritten but still, just awesome stuff. FINALLY it feels like this is for real, this isn't just a game, and we've totally entered into a gray area with wondering if perrin really is just a likable oaf. good stuff.
the rand stuff: eh. i mean, none of it's bad, but i didn't really feel like we got much out of it. again, a little more loial so woo! and another black ajah reveal, which was like, whatev, but i guess good that it's there. and then the epilogue, which i'm like, 'was that a cliffhanger? i don't even know if they were lying or not. i assume they're lying b/c if mat & pals had gotten kidnapped we would've seen that, right? or maybe tuon ISN'T the daughter of the nine moons? so that's why they keep telling mat not to call her that?' it just left me more thinking 'odd he didn't explain that' rather than OMG!
in general, however, the last third of the book read a lot easier. it was actually somewhat annoying; i'd gotten so used to skimming that i was like 'two more hours and i'm done!' but suddenly i'd actually get decent writing or character building & it was like, 'sigh. DAMMIT.' so it'll be a while before i pick up book 11 (it's so close to the crippled god's release i'm currently trying to power through my malazan reread anyway) but i can at least say i got through CoT now.
differing opinions are welcome, but as an editor myself, i strongly feel like this book was just, in so many ways (much like book 8 especially) unnecessary material. it really feels like RJ himself is bored w/the series as a whole here & he's mostly just trading inside jokes w/his wife by this point. I guess I'm glad they're enjoying themselves, but ...
Oh, also, as a general note, I thought the double-sided sexism of the series (women are shrill, evil harpy bitches & men are ignorant louts) was WAYYYY less apparent here, to the point that I wonder how much of it was simply in Kate Reading's inflections (I've read most of the books via audio books checked out of the library)
This post has been edited by zenMichael: 16 February 2011 - 03:08 PM
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Illuyankas, on 24 January 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:
