wow, the comprehensive and rabid answer I expected
alrighty, some of the plot holes were a bit meh, but some of the answers are a bit meh as well, we'll call it a draw (as for verins delving not requiring channeling, horseshit shes never shown propensity for this natural alent elsewhere, RJ fucked up and backtracked to cover, and I maintina the forsaken keep fucking up to protract te series, nothgin to do with underestimation, only a few of the 3rd agers are powerful enough to BE underestimated, the horn of valere was locked up because RJ realised it was virtually unstoppable and so had to be shelved, its ridiculous, when learnign suiane and leane are going to be executed should verin not frak out as shes the ONLY person who knwos where the most powerful pro good object is lying? what is she fell and split her skull? The horn is never mentioned by the forsaken anymore either, they're conveniently forgottne about this mamoth threat) And theres to many forced plot developments, and really, in 3000 years of military history, not one, not one single person, though to take the stone of tear via stealth and subterfuge? Julian sandar can figure out away in but military minds cannot. Interesting
By the way, while I was discussing this situation with a friend he pointed out another startling fact (I have not confirmed it yet but he says that it is true). When Galina is first brought to Perrin in the prologue she gives her name as Alyse but later while sending his people through the aqueduct into the town Perrin wonders if "Galina" had mentioned the time when Shaido went to sleep. How did Perring know Alyse's true name is Galina? Oops!!
The seanchan(what a stupid name SHAWN-CHAN??? lame ) left a thousand or more years and came back speaking exactly the same language.
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a big one htat i really like
------That brings me to another problem concerning the Shaido clan itself. I am sure everybody who has read the series must have wondered, at least once, that there is something fishy about the large numbers of the Shaido. I mean how many times have they been comprehensively defeated. Thousands of them have been made Gai'shain and you all must remember the slaughter at Dumai's Wells. Add to this the fact that when Sammael scattered them throughout the land, a lot of them died at the hands of Rand's forces who were proceeding towards illian. After all of this, there were still about a hundred thousand of them in the camp that Perrin attacked and two large parties were going to join them from North and South. Since, that Seanchan general called them large parties so one can safely say that each party was around ten thousand strong. Seems strange. I do not have the hard facts with me. I wanted to dig them out but decided against it as I do not have the time or the energy to go track the Shaido numbers through all the 11 books. But next time when I read the series again I will keep a close eye on the Shaido numbers, as I am definitely sure that there is something not right there.
Here are some numbers that were easy to find.
From book 5 (TFoH: Chapter 42. Paperback pp 662)
At the battle of Cairhien, there were 160,000 Shaido spears.
The four clans who had not decided whether to join Rand or Couladin also had 160,000 spears among them. That makes 40,000 spears in each clan.
The seven clans with Rand had about 320,000 spears, meaning approx 45,000 each, if you divide them equally.
This means that Rhuarc's clan the Taardad Aiel had about 45,000 spears. It makes sense, as the Aiel Waste is a barren land with very little water, so it is not expected to have a large population.
But previously in book 4, (TSR: chapter 57, paperback pp. 945), when the Taardad Aiel were following him to Alcair Dal, Rand thought that there were more than 15,000 Taardad Aiel behind him. Lets make it 20,000 to be on the safe side. He said that they represented 2/3 of the total clan. Each Sept had left 1/3 behind to guard the Sept hold. If 20,000 are 2/3 of Taardad then this means, after simple computation, that the total Taardad Aiel are about 30,000. Lets make it 35,000 to be on the safe side.
Since the time span between the statement in book 4 and the one in book 5 is only about 2 months and all the clans with Rand, including the Taardad, were losing small numbers to bleakness, it is strange that the number of Taardad Aiel actually rose from 35,000 to 45,000.
Since the numbers are mentioned as approximates so I will give Jordan a little bit leeway here. Also, let us take the number of Taardad to be 45,000 for the sake of this discussion. So, the above numbers mean that every clan has about 45,000 fighters except the Shaido! They have 160,000. This is just ridiculous. I do not understand how one clan can have such a large number as compared to all others. Since all the Aiel clans were usually at each other's throats and raided each other continuously, a clan as large as the Shaido should have wiped off at least one or two clans during the three thousand years they had been in the waste.
This large numbers of Shaido could be due to the Bleakness. But considering that less than 2 months had passed from the time Rand started this Bleakness by telling the truth to the Aiel to this present day in book 5, are we the believe that more than a 115,000 Aiel succumbed to the bleakness and joined the Shaido? (Assuming, that to begin with, the Shaido also had 45,000 spears like all other clans)
Let me refresh your memory what actually is this Bleakness. It was defined as a state of mind that befell an Aiel after learning from Rand that all the Aiel had actually been violating ji'e'toh all there lives, as they were not supposed to do violence or use weapons, so a lot of Aiel from each clan just dropped their weapons and left. However, instead of returning to the waste and assuming a life without violence some of them went and joined the Shaido! This does not make any sense as the only reason for them deserting Rand was that they were violating ji'e'toh by being with him and they joined Shaido who were violating ji'e'toh even more, as they were enslaving wetlanders and making them gai'shain, taking on wetlander customs, openly spying on Rand and his Aiel and their Wise Ones were taking part in battles. The ones who thought that they could not accept Rand, a wetlander, as their Car'a'carn were not the same as the ones affected by bleakness. The former never joined Rand in the first place. Okay, let us accept that the Aiel for reasons unknown were joining the Shaido. In less than two months, a reasonable number would be around 10,000. Let's make it 15,000 defectors to be on the safe side. That would mean that the Shaido were 145,000 to begin with, which is an alarmingly large number for one clan to have and still live peacefully with its blood enemies (the other clans). Were the Shaido given such large numbers so that they could give Rand a decent fight? I think yes. There is no other sensible reason for the Shaido to have such a large number.
Now read this, somewhere in book 4, when Rhuarc tells Rand about the Shaido, he said in answer to Rand's question that though there was bad blood between the Shaido and the Taardad but it had never come to a point of it turning into a blood feud. At that time, Rhuarc made it perfectly clear that it was due to his (Rhuarc's) peace loving nature and friendly disposition that there was no blood feud between the Shaido and the Taardad. Now I ask you, was Rhuarc MAD! He was about to start a blood feud with a clan that outnumbered his 3 to 1. This just doesn't make any sense.
In the Aiel war, just 4 clans were able to defeat every army sent against them. Going by the statement on (TFoH: Chapter 42. Paperback pp 662), 160,000 strong army had not been seen since Artur Hawkwing's time, so the 4 clans in the Aiel war had less spears than this. They were still able to defeat the every army sent against them. Now after this with 160,000 spears, Couladin could not take Cairhien even after seven days. Keep in mind that this time around Cairhien was considerably weakened and ravaged by a civil war, not to mention it was over run by the Tairens who were not friendly with the Cairhein. In fact, the Shaido did not even manage to breach the outer wall. Strange don't you think?
Anyway, moving on. Initially we were told that all the Maidens of the Spear were with Rand, even those belonging to the Shaido, as the society came before the clan and Far Dareis Mai carried Rand's honor. But later, not only were there maidens with the Shaido but there were actually thousands of them. There were Shaido maidens among the dead in Dumai's Wells, a large number of Shaido maidens were taken prisoners after Dumai's Wells and there were Shaido maidens in the camp when Perrin attacked to rescue his wife. I ask you, how come there were so many maidens with the Shaido when they were all supposed to be with Rand? They might have joined them after suffering from bleakness but still... so many of them. And even if they suffered from bleakness how did they join the Shaido considering that, the Shaido were well over a week's march ahead of Rand before the battle of Cairhien and aferwards the Shaido were scattered everywhere. I think this was just done to further the point of how Rand hates women dying. There is no other possible explanation for there being a large number of maidens with the Shaido.
Now we are told that there were well over a thousand Shaido Wise Ones and about 500 of them could channel. In order to become a full Wise One, one has to walk through the same rings that Rand did and learn the history of the Aiel. All Shaido Wise Ones knew that Couladin could not be the Car'a'carn as he was raised by the Aiel and the Car'a'carn was supposed to be raised by outsiders according to the Aiel prophecy. However, they still chose to believe him as the Car'a'carn. In fact, none of them even saw Couladin enter Rhuidean, they just took Sevanna's word for it, contrary to the Aiel custom of having two Wise Ones bear witness for the person having entered Rhuidean and they knew that Sevanna was not a Wise One. I can imagine that most of them were morally corrupt but all thousand of them! Not even a single one of them commented on the fact that Couladin could not be the car'a'carn. Car'a'carn was supposed to unite the Aiel, every Aiel knew this, but Couladin died without doing so, and still none on the Shaido realized that something was amiss, not even one out of more than a hundred thousand! Conclusion, they were just being kept against Rand for a simple reason, that Jordan needed a credible military threat to Rand in order to make the story interesting.
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sorry, needed to post all of it
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You see, Jordan wanted to write a trilogy, when he first started writing the wheel of time. He wrote the first two books together and then divided them into two parts just for making it easier to publish. He has mentioned this himself somewhere. You can even feel this after reading the first 2 books, as the writing is coherent and has a similar look to it. Book three was to be the final book. This was the reason that whole of book 2 was spent in the hunt for the Horn of Valere. The Horn was supposed to be found just before the last battle. This was also the reason that Jordan had Rand's heron marked sword destroyed at the end of book 2, as Rand was to use Callandor in the final third book and his heron marked sword had no useful purpose left. However, after the success of the first two books, (they really deserve it as they are probably 2 of the best fantasy books that I have read in my life) Jordan realized that he can now make money by expanding this series beyond three books. Now Jordan had one big problem, he could not go back and change his already published work, so the Horn was dumped in the tower and forgotten, Callandor was left in the stone by Rand. It was too early for these two things to be found. Had Jordan known from the beginning that he was going to be writing a 12 book series, he would never have let the Horn or Callandor be found this early and had he written everything down before publishing it, his work would not have been suffering from all these inconsistencies.
Being Tower trained is against the law, Pedron Niall said it and whether one can channel or not is not a requirement. Being trained in the tower is all it takes. Look up FoH(I think) when Morgage first speaks to Niall - politics aside, Niall is breaking the law twice over, and arent the whitecloaks all for tha law?
About Mat. What I was trying to point out was that throughout the series Mat is never attacked by shadowspawn when he is alone. I mean shadowspawn other than Fades and Trollocs. Why do you think this might be? The only reason is that Mat would probably die if he came across a shadow spawn like a grayman, drahakar(sp?) or darkhound, at his own. The incident that I mentioned when some Aiel came through the gateway to attack Mat, I did not mean that Sammael or who ever ordered that should have sent trollocs instead, which of course we know after reading book 11 is not possible. (which by the way is sort of lame in my opinion and is clearly an after thought from Jordan, probably in response to the rising criticism why the bad guys not send trollocs through gateways to surprise Rand and Co. Had it been so from the beginning I am sure Jordan would have told us this fact quite early.) Anyway, let me get back to the main thing. What I was trying to say is that instead of sending Aiel, the Forsaken could easily have sent a grayman, not through a gateway but through normal means. Since Mat is an ordinary human being, he would not have been able to either sense or see a grayman and the grayman could have easily put a knife in his heart. This would be the most logical thing to do. But for some unknown reason whenever Mat is attacked it is always by darkfreinds that he can handle, or fades and trollocs that he can fight. Another attempt on the life of Mat was also done by a darkfriend maiden. Instead of choosing a time during which she was sitting on top of Mat massaging his back she chose a time when Mat was not only alert and but also armed.
Using Aiel to kill should have been for Rand and Perrin, as both cannot detect normal dark friends but can easily detect shadowspawn. Rand was an easy target as he was always surrounded by Aiel. An Aiel could have easily put a knife in his back. But instead, they use Graymen to attack Rand and Perrin. Since both can detect Graymen so there is always no harm done. Remember in book 3, when six graymen came to kill Perrin, he was able to sense them long before they actually reached him. Also, in Rhuiden, had Rand not been there Mat would have certainly died at the hands of the darkhound. But later when Rand was nowhere near to protect him, Mat is never attacked by these shadowspawn. This looks childish story telling to me.
And the Forsaken do not know about Mat's foxhead medallion. Anyway, it only protects Mat against channeling done by female Aes Sedai and has no other properties. Interesting thing is that Mat does not even know that the medallion does not protect him against male Forsaken as he always thought, in Rand's presence, that the medallion would protect him if Rand went crazy on him. In case you have forgotten, Mat died when Rahvin's lightning struck him in book 5.
Halima(male forsaken in a female body, but still channels saidin) channeled at Mat at that dance in Salidar. His medallion got cold. Perhaps another flaw?
It is clearly mentioned in (TFoH Chapter 54 paperback pp 916) that Mat was toasted by the lighting strikes coming out of a cloudless sky, meaning generated only by Saidin. After this Rand regretfully mentions, "so Mat's Foxhead medallion did not protect him from a man's channeling."
And it is also clearly mentioned in (LoC chapter 44 paperback pp 777) that Halima channeled at Mat and Mat's Foxhead medallion got cold. Halima was shocked, as she did not expect her/his channeling to have no effect and Halima can only channel Saidin.
If you remember, Perrin and Egwene were marked out for being darkfriends because they knew a warder. Anything to do with the tower is anathema to whitecloaks. You go to the tower for advice or to be healed and you are a darkfriend. Go there to learn from an aes sedai or a warder. It doesn't matter, associate with anything tower, capital T or not and they accuse you of being a darkfriend.
They are rabid fundementalists, you even say anything in support of the tower and a whitecloak hears it, you best run fast. Otherwise you are going to be arrested for a darkfriend I think it is you that is going beyond what is said. Morgase tells Niall that she can't channel, Niall says it doesn't matter because she is tower trained. That is an explicit admission that being tower trained is illegal there. Egwene tells Bornhald(sp?) she heard about Shadar Logath from a warder and is labelled a darkfriend. I could go on, but the point is that any association whatsoever with the tower is against the whitecloaks. Capital T or not, it doesn't matter. Show me where it explicitly says Tower trained means trained to channel, and tower trained means trained in something else in the Tower.
That a zealot like Valda(who recruited Galad) would approach someone currently in the tower, much less currently recieving training from the evil warders strains credulity. That he would recruit him and make him an officer break all bounds of credibility, even for someone as loose with logic as Robert Jordan is. Capital T or no.
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and anthoer big one for funsies
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You mention that all these super weapons in the wheel of time have costs involved with them. I ask you, what was the cost involved with the Horn of Valere. I mean all Rand could see was that the Horn was blown and these 100 odd blokes showed up and they destroyed a full Seanchan army, an army that had just destroyed a full legion of whitecloaks within seconds. What can be better than this? I mean if US had a horn that they could blow in Washington and some dead heroes could do their wars for them, do you think they will dump such a weapon in a secret locker and send regular troops and suffer causalities on the daily basis. No sane person would do that. Your statement that Rand would be wary of over using the Horn also does not make sense as there is no indication anywhere that the Horn could not be used multiple time before the last battle. Of course, I have fully explained the reason why Jordan did not let Rand use it, so I am not going to go into it again. You know I am expecting that Jordan will think up a stupid reason explaining why Rand did not think about using the Horn, in book 12, just as he thought up the stupid problem with Callandor to justify Rand leaving it. But since Rand did not know the problem with Callandor before leaving the sword so, the explanation of flaw in Callandor does not solve anything.
While mentioning the costs involved with these super-weapons you also gave the example of Callandor. But you see Rand did not leave the sword because he could not handle the costs involved with it. He did not even know the sword was flawed up until book 8. He left it because of the following three reasons that were created by Jordan to facilitate his leaving the sword. First, he thought he could not handle this much power. Second, because he read a prophecy and third because wanted to leave a reminder of himself for the Tairens.
First, the point that he could not handle that much power does not make sense as the first time he used the sword at the end of book 3 to kill Ishi; he had no problem handling the power. It was only later in book 4, when Jordan knew that he has to write more books than originally planed and thus he needed to get rid of the damn sword that Rand suddenly could not handle the power. Now, even then, instead of practicing it again and again so that he could handle the sword he decided to leave it! Did he expect to master the sword by leaving it in the stone? Why would any sane person leave the most powerful weapon in the world back home when he knows he is going to war? Please remember that at this time Rand does not know there is anything wrong with the sword.
Then Jordan also invented a prophecy. When Moiraine asked why Rand has become such a buffoon, Rand replied that he is doing it in accordance with a prophecy. Since it was Jordan who invented the prophecy in the first place, so this was a lame reason if you compare it with all the other reasons for NOT leaving the sword behind.
Third Rand claimed that he was leaving the sword behind so that the Tairens will remember him and will not go astray. This does not make any sense. It is like somebody leaving the most powerful gun behind when they go to war. I mean if Rand really wanted to leave something behind, why leave the most important thing, why not leave something unimportant, like his trousers. He could have left his trousers behind. People would look at it and say "look everybody, there... that's the Lord Dragon's trousers, he will be back to claim it, so we should not go astray".
Doesn't it make more sense then leaving the sword behind?
Now Mr. Porter, your comment that I should start this discussion on Wotmania or dragonmount is reasonable, but as I explained somewhere before, I did start a discussion thread some time long ago on one such website. At that time, I had only read until book 6 and had noticed only two flaws in the series. I put them on there and I was mauled. Not that anybody gave me any sensible explanation or anything; most comments were just one-liners. "If you don't like it, don't read it" sort. And more than 23 people responded to my comments in one day. Out of those, only about two at least tried to answer my concerns with reasonable comments, the rest decided to attack me personally instead. I realized then that these websites, Wotmania and dragonmount are strongholds of Jordan's fans. Fan is a short for fanatic. You cannot reasonably expect me to go into a stronghold of Jordan's fanatics, make such statements and not expect to be mauled now, do you? It is not that I think my posts are hollow and would not stand up to debate. It is because I would be just one man and you can be sure that at any given time more than 100-200 people grace these websites.
I mean if you are a Republican and you walk into a rally of Fanatic Democrats and make some statement there, no one will even listen whether what you said makes some sense or not. You will get you head bashed in. I am intelligent enough not to make such a mistake.
I am not a Jordan hater. I do not even belong to any anti wheel of time society. I have mentioned before that I started two other series but as I was not impressed with them so I stopped reading them. Had I disliked wheel of time, I would have stopped reading it too. I like the story a lot. That is why I have read the series multiple times. But there really are flaws present in the series. And Like you and CSH mentioned that some things are best left to the reader's imagination, I have nothing against that. I like books and shows where things are left to the readers/viewers imaginations, like X-files for example. But in these shows and books there is enough information that the reader/viewer can put two plus two together and figure out what the author/director intended to say. In wheel of time, there is no such information present so leaving things to reader's imagination makes it appear that Jordan does not know what to do so he has left it to the reader's imagination. Like Moi pointed out, who tried to get Domon to travel to Tear which made him to travel in the opposite direction and thus reach Tanchico in time to help Nynaeve and Elayne? And like Page Turner mentioned, why did Fain leave Egwene and Mat alive in the dungeon in book 2. Surely Fain is not a loving and kind-hearted man. But this also has been left to the reader's imagination. Since the readers cannot make any sense out of it, so it is not a good ploy by Jordan. It makes it look like that Jordan did not have any explanation for this but he needed his two heroes alive and that is the only reason that Fain did not kill Mat and Egwene. Wheel of time is filled with stuff like this. They are flaws, what else would you call them?
Oh yes CSH, about Rahvin and Belal's reincarnation, you mention the big white book, I am assuming you are referring to that guide thing. Well I have not read it so I can not comment on what is in that but I remember it is quite clearly mentioned in one of the books that Rahvin and Belal are lost forever. It was during that scene where Dashiva and Halima were reincarnated and Halima after discovering that she had been turned into a woman, attacked Shaidar Haran and it was then that Shaidar Haran mentioned that she should be grateful, that she had been given another chance to live and that she is not like Rahvin and Belal who's souls are lost forever. This is from memory, I could not find where this particular scene has appeared but it must be somewhere in books 6 and 7 and as these words are etched on my mind so I must have read them somewhere. I will confirm this later by quoting the exact passage from the books and will update the exact location here after I find where it has appeared. [Updated--- LoC: Prologue. paperback pp. 72. the statement is somewhat similar with different wording]. If what you say from the BWB is true then here we have a beginning of another flaw.
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sorry, had to be done
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for the record, again, I'm not a hater, I enjoyed the books (apart from the middle mind dumps that were 7-9) for what they are and when terez called me on my plotholes quote I felt compelled to jsutify myself, I mgiht actually go back now and study the response to my initial post and see if i can tear them apart.
A big part of the rebutals to raza were semantics and word games, which is ok for the aes sedai but it amounted to fanboys desperately trying to justify that jordan doesnt make mistakes.
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