It was irritating. As I understand it, from the notes or something Jordan intended Mat to return a bit to his youthful self as a kind of reaction or way to cope with his wedding and becoming a prince, but overall I think Brandon handled that aspect very badly. In Jordan's hands older Mat trying to act like teenage Mat could have been funny in a slightly pathetic kind of way, especially by showing Olver more mature at the same time, but Brandon really missed the target. In his hands, Mat just feels dumb. Jordan's version of the letter to Elayne would probably have been hilarious. All it needed to feel right was to get rid of almost all the spelling mistakes, have an even more sarcastic tone and perhaps include one unintentional bad use of a word to destroy a bit the effect of the sarcasm...

The badger scene was another "over the top" one (as if Mat would have gone to all the trouble of catching a badger just for that...), so was the prank on Joline (as if Mat was in the mood after the killing of Lopin and the face-off with the gholam to go and have the Band's cooks make special pastries - at night - just for a joke on Joline the next morning....).



A lot of people have not even realized that Elayne too jumped on the timeline a lot in TOM, even more crucially than Tam (that's how badly Brandon handled the timelines...).

Elayne interrogated the Black Ajah before she met Egwene and learned of the BA purge, even though the scene is placed long after in the book (that's why she still has no notion that Duhara is BA, and never even think about the Seanchan attack on the Tower). Elayne catches up to Egwene's timeline only toward the end, with her scenes with Gawyn etc. Her presence in the early Egwene scene was a flash forward for Elayne, but not for Egwene nor Nynaeve... which is one reason why the whole thing shouldn't have been structured this way.


Elayne had overstepped herself by making Tower initiates prisoners as Queen of Andor, but that mereley continues the trend set in KOD, when she pointed out herself that by taking away the Great Serpent Rings of the black sisters, she was usurping a prerogative of the Amyrlin. There's something building up about Elayne and the Amyrlin's authority since KOD or so, this and her unilateral decision to offer the Kin to tie themselves to Andor are just new steps in what might well become an open issue to solve between Egwene and Elayne. Elayne sees herself as Queen or Aes Sedai as it suits her. She pursued her royal agenda by pretending to speak only as Aes Sedsi to the Borderlanders, for instance. Egwene will probably have to draw her a line not to cross - when she presents herself as AS in political matters, or deals in matters of the Tower like the Kin, she can't be the Queen. Elayne is starting to violate the Tower's official neutrality.

To conclude, most of Elayne's storyline with Mat takes place before the Tower is reunited and before she meets Egwene again. When Teslyn and co. went away, the rumour they picked on about the Tower was just that: a rumour.



This didn't bother me. She has not really "healed madness" IMO, she's rather found a way to dispel the grasp of the DO's taint on the male channellers's minds. In other words, that's not "mundane insanity" she healed, and probably couldn't heal that. Even Graendal couldn't do that, and healed the mind without the OP.



I rather liked that, especially the aspect that he forged it himself, where Rand got an ancient weapon that was destined for him, and Mat got his almost by accident. I really like the fact Perrin built something new. It fits his themes very well, Perrin is like Elayne and Egwene already a few steps into the fourth Age.



I don't really like how Brandon writes him. I found him rather cool in the old prologues, but now he feels wrong. I'm not a fan of Brandon's battle scenes so far. I preferred Jordan's style of handling those.