The theme of the various good guy vignettes in the prologue appears to be "It's time to Man Up." Man Up is an understated, Everyman's version of the virtues of honor and duty and courage. In a lot of ways portraying people who face a point of decision to Man UP is a lot more evocative and affecting and at the same time relateable for the reader. The hero who charges into certain danger with his badassness smiting the enemy effortlessly is admirable, but also somewhat inaccessible. On the other hand, the 'little' choices that don't seem like so much in the grand scheme of things, but on a personal level amount to a man or woman putting all they have on the line to do his part, no matter minute...these the reader can feel more clearly and in some ways, if we are honest with ourselves, admire more, because we can understand just how hard it is to go through with that choice in that situation. We can't really grasp the scope of the choices and burdens of the Dragon Reborn, because in some ways, he has the power to go with that responsibility and is removed from the normal person. One reason perhaps why it is difficult for me to appreciate Egwene's achievements and through them her virtues is that they have all been in the context of the White Tower struggle, which is far too abstract and alien a thing for me to accept as a thing of value, or worth it, liking risking your life for a corporate takeover.

But more and more as it becomes a case of overwhelming odds and absolute destruction bearing down on the world and people, everyone in the world of WoT is going to be called upon to Man Up, and do so in an immediate sense, rather than the daily grind which is just as admirable, if harder to romanticize (as Charles Bronson alludes in the Magnificent Seven when he reprimands the kids for denigrating their fathers). This, then, is the problem with the writing. Sanderson is not actually BAD at writing or completely inept at portraying WoT and its characters. It is a different flavor of WoT, and if it doesn't feel like we are still seeing things behind the same characters' eyes, it is still a story of what they are doing and what is going on with them. However, where Sanderson is looking more and more inferior to RJ is in his ability to convey the Man Up notion, which seems to be getting more and more important. It is a thing of understatement and subtlety rather than brazen and obvious, like the more overtly heroic deeds and virtues. It's not about the hero who holds the line against overwhelming numbers of the Shadow, but about the lord who realizes he has to do right by his people and take up the job he thinks he is unequal to, about the leader taking the full brunt of suffering and consequences so his followers can be spared to effect the goals toward which he led them, about the man who chooses to do stay in danger because another could do more good with his honorable ticket to safety. And while Sanderson does an adequate job of portraying these scenarios so that we understand the stakes, he can't really make us feel them, and sometimes gets a little obvious or heavy-handed. I don't really think he can be blamed either. He's a rather young man who hasn't nearly had the scope and breadth of life experience that RJ had. RJ fought in a war and one that is generally held to have been rather nasty even by the standards of that most unpleasant activity. He held down jobs and raised a family. He raised another man's kid. He lived Man Up. Sanderson might understand it very well. He might even, when all is said and done, be a better man than RJ. But none of that means he knows from the inside out, with the kind of understanding that comes from first hand experience, and he does not have the skill with words to convey that same understanding and make the readers feel it the way RJ did in the scattered examples of his characters having to Man Up in previous books.

There is a reason they say "write what you know," and while on the one hand that advise is less relevant for a fantasy author who possesses the sum total of all there is to know about his world and characters, on the other hand, what enables the readers to relate to such a fictitious universe is the realism and coherence of the human experience as shown in these worlds. In that sense, the WoT books are not about life in the World of WoT, they are about Life, as it happens in the world of WoT. To write the former story, you only need to know about WoT. Such a book has been published, and we call it the BWB. To write the latter story well, you need to understand Life well and thoroughly and I worry about the capability of a relative tyro to convey it with the personal awareness and understanding that made the characters so real to us in the first 12 books.