Thanks.

I wouldn't call it criticism, no, because he doesn't explore most very deeply, merely includes them. The primary focus still seems Manichean to me, a world plodding along balanced between moral poles that are very powerful but ultimately limited, if only by each other. I've no doubt elements of many other religions are only present superficially, because Jordan doesn't want to pigeonhole us into Zoroaster (which is definitely the trendline in TWoT) or Christ. At the same time, if he wants to maintain the conceit of Randland as a past/future Earth he needs some basis for why there are more than just those two.

It's an element, I strongly agree the Tinkers are more representative of Gypsies, but I'm aware of no prohibition against violence among Gypsies. That'a legacy of the Tinkers Aiel ancestry, and the original Aiel fit the Jain mold much better, particularly when we consider there's a reason they seek the Song even if the Tinkers themselves don't recall what that is.

And, y'know, Baalzamon, Amon Baal, whatever you wish to call him. Perhaps the names resonated a little too strongly with me, but I'd say it's more like five than three. You're the linguistics scholar; how would you translate "Lilitu" from a Hebrew text? I believe "Daughter of the Night" is preferred, and I also believe there's a Forsaken who bears that title.

I disagree at least partly, largely based on Baalzamon and Lanfear. The latter is the stronger case, but better addressed below so I'll just say Baalzamon's flame mouthed pursuit of the young ta'veren reminds me of an infamous baal of the Pentateuch. I think it's more likely Jordan didn't want to be too heavy handed with his name dropping among the Forsaken than that he just randomly chose the ones we recognize. You insinuate your themes, you don't bludgeon people with them.

Lanfear might as well be Lilith (though I tend to think of her as blonde mainly because opposed to Eve, whom I naturally imagine as Semitic and thus dark haired) who has strong associations with Ishtar and thus the psuedonym "Selene" only reinforces that rather than being a tangential mishmash. Not so much an archetype of a lunar deity as lunar aspected; we wouldn't expect the Daughter of the Night to be strongly associated with the sun. I don't see that I'm picking and choosing though; that implies I'm deliberately ignoring qualities that don't fit the trope, and I'm not. It's not like we can point to some element of Lanfear and say, "this is totally incompatible with traditional interpretations of Lilith."

Whether due to my own preoccupation with origins or distasteful personal experience, when I think of metempsychosis, I think of the mystery religions that produced that term and, later, the Gnostics who used it so heavily. That's not the element on which I prefer to focus in Rand's struggle there, but I can't deny that element is present, and don't believe I was the one who identified it. Likewise, I must agree with the assertion Ishamael's motives are rather Buddhist, he's just so tortured and mad they have a very warped expression.


I fail to see the problem. On that basis it seems like their psychic value lies in being recognized and addressed, rather than being simply negated by that.



My fantasy reading doesn't run the gamut so I can't say no previous author so completely warps and alters the standard tropes from their traditional roles for no other reason than to do it (Bradley certainly offers a different take on the Arthurian characters as well as Homer's, but that's in the service of her feminist agenda, not for the sake of reimagining them.) I can say I'm not aware of any prior equivalents. I'd not read Sanderson until TGS. He's a year younger than I and shamelessly adores Jordan, so perhaps it's just remotely possible what you celebrate in him here was inspired there. Martin... I'm sure you've heard my thoughts on his characters. I can't read him.

I never said it was. Are you saying Jordan made the comparison? I didn't follow his blog of the Q&As, but concede that would be a bit hubristic. You can't predict TWoT on the basis of existing Arthurian tales though, and Jordan sets you up to get egg on your face if you try. As he does with most of his tropes, I believe.

Really? You don't recall Mat's disdain for marriage, Perrin's for battle, the Wonder Girls longing for home? It's Rand who silently reflects on the choices and fates that led Tigraine to the Waste and back again, but it's she, Janduin, the al'Thors, the Damodreds and the Trakands, among others, caught in the web. The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills, we are told, but that doesn't make any of the characters slaves to it, and most of them resist at various points. And for each of them this tends to change the details but not the outcome. No, there's a great deal more to it than Rand simply playing the reluctant hero.

Let me reiterate: I wasn't speaking of romantic Love, or at least not solely or primarily of it. Re-read the paragraph, please. What Rand needs is agape Love, and the lens of Ilyena is just a vehicle for that. There's more to saving the world than just missing his sweetheart like some mopey schoolboy on summer vacation, even if that does provide the trigger.

The only place where I think Jordan threw things into a blender was in his treatment of archetypes, and in particular Arthurian tropes, where the action was intentional and calculated. It happens to serve the fate vs. free will question nicely, because the actions we expect of the so terribly familiar characters are the ones typically fated for them, while the deviations in TWoT are almost purely the result of their conscious decisions to go another way.

However, I think I've made a fairly strong case TWoT is more than just a story. Calling it literature would raise the stakes of the debate to a level at which I'm not willing to play, especially with contemporary writing, but I think I've made a strong argument this is more than a spell opera.