Long time no see!




I get the feeling he was hoping in a way to draw the Forsaken to SG, relieving the other battlefronts.

But the whole thing was stupid. Why bother having armies fight to block the narrow pass to Shadowspawn, when a decent circle could simply have come and collapsed the canyon's walls, making the valley unreachable except through Traveling?



In their case we at least know where they were and what they did.




The Kinswomen were apparently too tired. A pitiful and oft used excuse through the book, when all they had to do was fetch some of the 1000+ channelers in Mayene and use circles.

Part of the reason Elayne acted as she did is that they wanted the Shadowspawn to follow and try to cross the river. They were sitting ducks then, and they left part of the army there to deal with them and moved on, after they learned of a new army advancing on the city (from the Portal Stone at Shangtai, based on the direction).

Supposedly, that was a plan of the Shadow all along. That's why Brandon had Hessalam show up in a BT scene, to contrive Logain finding out about the plan and arriving to save the day. Why exactly Taim would have written down that Hessalam has compelled Bashere to order a flight over the two rivers to Cairhien, only Brandon knows..



She was presumably in Ebou Dar all along.



I agree it's one of the better parts, and long foreshadowed. I think the execution was a bit lackluster at times though - a POV of Graendal daringly entering one of the camps with an inverted MoM and reaching one of the Great Captains would have been awesome (suddenly giving her Lanfear/Moghedien's tricks was a bit "meh", though I really quite like the unleashed demonic monster Graendal turned into at SG. It just lacked a little something to be really frigthening). We really didn't get enough POVs from the Shadow in the book, not only from the Forsaken but even DF. We didn't even get to see how they felt about the "Day of Return" - Alviarin and co. The ghosts are others that completely vanished, the ta'veren's colour swirls too by mid-book or so. The book strongly gives the feeling Brandon was quite overwhelmed by the scope of the thing.





Demandred sent her back to the Aes Sedai to give Rand his greetings. That was hilarious, by the way, Demandred showing up too late, a few days after Rand had already entered SG.



A good number of those who stood aside apparently didn't return after the reunification. Many joined Dragonsworn etc. The WT also lost many sisters in the fight against the Seanchan, both casualties and prisoners. Then 200+ BA. Nearly all the Yellows went to Mayene. Egwene had around 200 with her in Kandor, the rest went to Lan and to SG. She didn't offer any to Elayne, a fact Brandon kind of underplayed (the whole resent of Elayne by the WT leadership, I mean. They sort of pulled a Testuan with Eldrene, stopped using her title of Queen to refer to her as Elayne Sedai, and they left her with just the Kin and presumably Perrin's two AS).




It's hard to be sure, but Brandon's numbers seemed on the low side, and he didn't tell us how many died in the (frustratingly) offscreen battle at the BT. Logain had 40 with him at Merrilor, IRRC (that number might be wrong, I'll need a reread). Lan had a few Asha'man, Egwene too (and extra bonded AS with them). Elayne had none before Logain arrived. Aviendha had very few, those tied to Cadsuane's followers like Flinn it's implied, but not even all of them (Narishma and Merise were with Lan, for e.g.).