We don't, I merely used Brandon for this as it's his name on the cover. Read "Team Jordan" if you wish. It's quite possible, likely even, that Harriet is heavily involved in the process, though most editors will make suggestions about more than impose chapters order on a novelist. Harriet or Brandon, the decision to move scenes to places Jordan would never have put them (if he did for dramatic purposes, he would have adjusted the timelines to accomodate it, that is). I don't have a problem with the fact a Tuon chapter fits better mid-book, I just have a problem with the fact Brandon didn't adjust things accordingly so the scene didn't happen the day after her return since that was completely out of synch with Rand and a character involved in the scene had an appearance shortly before that was put in the prologue. That's a big departure from Jordan's style of storytelling, and one I find hard to justify.

All I recall is Brandon mentionning after the decision was made to split the book, that he went and came back with a proposal of a book structure that Harriet accepted.

As for TGS, I stand by all the good things I said about it. It's an impressive success, better than I expected (something Brandon really "got", like themes and symbolism, really impressed me - I had expected this would be largely gone), and was quite enjoyable. I don't have any major gripe with the fact it was divided as it was. I wished, and said in my review, they had more time to edit, and polish it up some more after the major change (book split) in RJ's planned structure was decided. That aspect in TGS is still a bit on the rough side. There are of course some things that I wished were done differently, and I'll probably have more of those that will surface after I read book 2 (and forcibly, can put more of the "whole picture" as I feel Jordan might have told it together). It's inescapable - for many years I've had a passion for aspects of WOT like themes and symbolism, so when I see the leitmotiv of the storm that forms with the "missing" prologue POV, or a great scene like Fain's that mirrored Rand's path in TGS so well but now comes too late to introduce that, and the paralleling of blacksmithing in the farmer scene with the Perrin dream scene... I can't help but be a bit saddened that the more literary effects and aspects planned by Jordan are gone. Oh, I guess I have good enough a nose for these to reconstruct many of them in my head, but I still wished I could read those scenes prior to TGS.

Another aspect of TGS I didn't like much and criticized from the start, and which TOM might alas emphasize for me is how much the secondary scenes were evacuated from TGS and moved (possibly) to TOM. That would include, for instance, Pevara scenes, any build up to the BA escape etc. That most definitely include Graendal's new scene which really rubbed me the wrong way. That belonged right after Rand's POV in TGS. It's in my original review of TGS: I really didn't care for the way Graendal's involvement in AD in TGS was largely evacuated to make Rand's story line faster paced, and I really disliked, massively so, how her demise was handled, with no counterpoint POV, not prior set up, nothing. What a bad exit for one of Jordan's better characterized, and most present Forsaken. It thought it was one of the worst episodes in TGS, and still do, and the fact we do get the missing stuff (some of it) now don't change the bad taste it leaves in TGS. Now to see that there was a proper set up and a climax planned but this was butchered to get a cliffhanger (useless... if it can be revealed in the prologue, it could be revealed in TGS) that I didn't like and still don't really displeased me.

Another decision I don't agree with was to include Perrin and Mat chapters in TGS, especially now that it's more apparent what Jordan had planned: kill Masema and jump 20 days ahead after Malden. Mat's chapters were fun enough, though I suspect a great deal Jordan planned to introduce him again with Verin's visit. Perrin's... well... I hasten to point out Perrin is a favourite of mine, and that I thought the "voice" quite good. But I thought his scenes in TGS were useless. They were obviously "prequels" (and now it's apparent why: Jordan's very likely intro scene for him, incidentally very very good to my taste, kind of kicked things in a new direction. Incidentally, the impact of the laughter would have been better if the Perrin scene came not long after that of Masema and his visions in the prologue. Again, it sounds like what Jordan planned, especially when you consider this fits more or less the timeline of the Tylee prologue scene. So my conclusion: Masema, then 20 days ahead to the dream scene) and they where no good prequels, mostly - and sound rushed, as if written at the last minute to have something with Perrin in TGS. The preparations at Malden are a continuity error, the whole issue of the news the Asha'man are unable to travel is another (Perrin was perfectly aware of this in KOD - it's why he sent non-combattants ahead on foot and wheels and told them he might join them only at the road, and if he didn't come, to send Alliandre's people west, and to move east via Remen and north into Murandy..). I would have given awat those ackward "I must silence folk by putting Perrin and Mat, any Perrin or Mat in the book" scenes any time to get any extra scene vaguely connected to Rand or Egwene instead (Alviarin, Mesaana, Graendal, Pevara and so on). Of course, TOM only will tell if this could be done or not. I think the surprise that before getting to Egwene Verin left letters to others would have worked even better if we saw her with Mat early in TOM.

My pre-TOM fear is that there might be too many flashbacks à la Graendal. Very un-Jordan like, those. He did it with Sevanna in ACOS, but it's not quite the same, and was a prologue to returning right where LOC ended.



Well, that fear about bashing turned out mostly wrong - about the book split anyway. Discussions were good enough, and there wasn't much of a pro-Brandon anti-Brandon dividing line (the kind I had seen destroying the Dune communities I was part of, when the prequels came out). Largely, it's because Brandon pulled it off, simply enough!



For the most part I do, though I have far less time than I once used to for WOT discussions.

I guess... actually, I know that it's the "misplaced" Graendal POV which triggered my peeves with the chronology (that I had not mentionned in quite a long time) and my worries about this aspect of TOM. I sure didn't like how Brandon handled this in TGS (I know he agreed after the fact he should have included more time markers, more precise, and made the various timelines clearer in TGS. He was a little sheepish when told Steven and everyone had massive problems putting together a chronology.. especially that Maria and him tended to rely often on it as they found Jordan's chronology file rather more complex to follow!)



Yes and no. Sweet's covers I throw away and that's it. The way the chronology is handled.. well, this aspect definitely reduces my reading pleasure, so occasionally I feel the need to vent.

Honestly, after TGS I blamed a lot of this on the fact the decision to completely change the book structure came fairly late. Normally, in a book this complex, I'm pretty sure the final chronology was established by Jordan at the very end, after he's decided on the final chapter order etc. He was terribly cautious with this, leaving plenty of clues to situate us in any story line, and where they stood with one another. A rumour heard here, a time reference, a moon seen there. I thought the radical change in how Brandon approached this in TGS (he said it's mostly Maria who keeps it straight, Brandon gets lost in both geography and timelines and doesn't bother much with this while writing, leaving Maria to adjust that for him) was due to lack of time. I had fairly high hopes this would be solved in TOM (again, especially since Brandon acknowledged weaknesses in this aspect of TGS) and in part I still have them. I must say, though, that what is surfacing about Rand's story line starting right at the beginning of the book (when he's weeks ahead...) and the irksome Graendal flashback make me worry quite a bit about the structure. I was really hoping for something more chronological, with "cut scenes" appearing on the right general timeline in TOM, and with the book starting with Perrin and Mat, with no reappearances of Egwene or Rand before Mat and Perrin caught up to them, or at least almost did.

The untimely rumour in Caemlyn that the Tower is reunited, when the Mat is clearly set weeks before the 30 days limit set by Verin is also worrying. If those who think this isn't a rumour but news are right, then there goes all chronology coherence (though this sounds like such an obvious and major error that I still doubt the news is more than a rumour - especially since there's no news of the Seanchan attack to go with it, and THAT will stir pigeons owners to write even more than any news of the end of the Tower conflict... and Teslyn would have reacted to any news like this).

The other aspect of the book split that worry me I have more reservations to discuss much for now. It concerns the fact there is forcibly in AMOL many things Jordan planned for us to read over days, on our own, without a hundreds of others to theorize. I wonder how much on the one hand some things might be a bit too obvious (three as one, Justice seems an example to me, but we'll see), and on the other hand how much of the little things will have had to be displaced, or omitted, because if you leave us a year or more to dissect them they're too obvious for the "new" AMOL. But well, better wait for the third book for this. For now, the one example of this I see is that it seems obvious the first part of the Graendal scene was originally a prologue scene (replaced by the Moridin/Graendal scene in TGS, IMO). My guess is that this was evacuated and moved to TOM (where it feels very flat, to me), because Brandon wanted his cliffhanger. I've discussed elsewhere what I think Jordan had planned to do with that, and how it fit his foreshadowing from KOD.