Everytime she is in mortal danger she miraculously escapes at the cost of a character I actually LIKE. With Rolan I could tolerate it a bit because he was a new and minor character, and his unrequited love (or at least desire) could really only go one way once Perrin showed up with his stupid knotted cord to rescue her. Raging protagonist vs. restrained minor character; not hard to anticipate how THAT conflict ends. Sure, that was what made me actively DISLIKE a character who had previously just been annoying (albeit from the very start,) but I could at least understand.

Then she and the rest of Perrins army (and that detestable F--KING AVATARs Knights Templar) were rescued from the dreamspike trap at the cost of Hopper dying AGAIN, this time PERMANENTLY; no rebirth, nothing: Just gone forever and irrevocably.

The final volume was the capper though: Faile "rescues" the Horn by carrying it into the Dark Ones backyard for Mat (who is not even there, as she well knows, and no longer bound to it anyway,) promptly losing it. On recovering the Horn, she entrusts it to a child sent off on sweet, underappreciated and overperforming little Bela, who has carried every helpless "hero" from danger since the series began, with each of them thinking her slow and useless every time. Standard Bela scene, like we have seen ever since Moiraine led her adolescent champions out of the Two Rivers in the first chapters of TEotW—except this time, after saying flat out Bela is faster than racehorses (yet having Olver complain at her one last time,) she is cut down in screaming agony and slaughtered by Trollocs. Faile, of course, is miraculously saved just before death when Perrin happens to find her dreaming her dying self into Tel'aran'rhiod (even though we are repeatedly told throughout the series normal humans rarely go there, and never for more than a few seconds.)

I will give Olver this: He at least shed a few tears and mourned Bela a nanosecond before our fierce fearless little warrior fled into a hole in the ground that offered no concealment since his pursuers could just follow the urine trail left in his wake. That is not much, but more than Siuan ever did (to be fair, she was already dead by then, too,) and Egwene rarely thinks of the sturdy long-suffering mare with whom she grew up and who saved her life just as assuredly as Siuans, Failes and Olvers. Saving Faile was, of course, Belas one fatal mistake, if inevitable in one so loyal. Hopper could have told her that much, except, of course, he never had the chance....

Seriously, did Jordan have any pets? That is, "beloved animal family members" not "vivisection subjects." Faile is like TWoT Wesley Crusher, except the writers not only refuse to kill arguably the least popular Lightsider, even when the narrative calls for it, they torture innocent, loyal and lovable animals to death in her place. By the end of the series I half expected an incidental mention of a passing random coach in the Two Rivers running over Scratch, then hearing the pathetic mewling and backing up to finish the job. When Farstrider appeared astride a horse to save Olver (who is pretty annoying in his own right, and thus inviolate) I faintly hoped it would somehow turn out to be a PONY bound to the Horn, but, no, screw that; she is just some stupid slow mare: Save the homely, lecherous and bratty Aiel-bigot.

At least it made some kind of sense with Hopper, a predator, but what kind of sadistic SOB keeps shoving Bela in front of Shadowspawn?

Really, torturing animals to death is how serial killers start; between this and Aginor I cannot help wondering what (or who) is in Jordans backyard....