The Wheel of Time Reread: Book 6 - Lord of Chaos
*SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THIS AND OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES*
Find the full list of posts in my full re-read of the series HERE
Book six done, and we’re almost halfway through the series. In the last book, The Fires of Heaven, it felt to me as if Jordan was taking a breath before setting up the next round of story arcs. Now, with Lord of Chaos, things start to get moving again.
Let's start with the two big events that occur in this book.
The Healing of Logain
First, the Healing of Logain. What makes this significant is that we are now far enough into the series that established elements seem just that; established. The main world building has been done, and so things like Stilling/Gentling have been set in our minds. Nynaeve's attempts at Healing Logain and the others originally felt to me like a distraction that would somehow lead to some other revelation to character growth. When she succeeds, we realise that those six books of world-building are going to get turned on its head!
Parallel to this, I love how Jordan changes our view of the Aes Sedai. This is a group that has spent literal millennia constructing its image of infallibility. But after their civil war, we start to see inside the organisation. For the first time, we see that the Aes Sedai are human. While they do all they can to uphold their united front to outsiders, on the inside they have all the insecurities and internal politics as any other group.
Dumai’s Wells
Even more significant to the story, and still one of my favourite moments in the entire series, is the Battle at Dumai’s Wells.
Up until this point, the Asha'man have been shown as a half-trained group of misfits. Rand has created them in a desperate attempt to have another weapon for the Last Battle. And after masterfully setting our expectations low, Jordan pulls them out to burst onto the scene and fighting force powerful enough to significantly change the balance of power in the world.
The existence of the Asha'man changes every power existing power dynamic. In the course of a single day, the world has to accept the existence of a military force that can, and does, use the One Power in battle. And considering attitudes to men who can channel, we know the Ashaman are going to terrify the entire world.
The events Dumai's Wells are also the point that crystallises who Rand is becoming.
After almost taking a back seat in the plot for a while, Rand is now taking full hold of his destiny. (Although not full control, as we will learn.) He knows who he is, what he has to do, and what will happen to him afterwards. But now, he has to cope with the trauma of his kidnapping. He nearly lost all control. And going forward, he's not going to allow that to happen again. Everyone in the world has their own agenda they want him to follow. To a greater or less extent, they all want to use him for their own ends, and the kidnapping shows just how far some of them are willing to go. From now on, he feels he can't afford to trust anyone.
And it's going to take a character who hasn't come into the series yet to show him he's going about this the wrong way.
It's easy to forget that Rand is meant to be more than 20 or so. This isn't a man confident in himself. He is barely out of adolescence and desperately trying to live up to be the man he has to be. A man, we have to remember, his society and culture have feared for over three thousand years.
Praising Jordan’s world-building and foreshadowing (again)
On to the actual writing.
I seem to do this with every book, but once again, I'm going to pour praise on Jordan's skill at foreshadowing and world-building. The way he uses Matt's memories to fill in the history of the world. The way Elayne and Nynaeve's time in the rebel camp allows us to see the Aes Sedai as more human. The way Pedron Niall dismisses a series of reports that seem unbelievable as they don't fit his worldview, while we the readers know at least some of them are correct. The way the kidnapping scene is set up, with subtle elements added to preceding scenes setting things up so that Rand would not suspect anything before it was too late.
I also want to highlight that at one point, one of the characters has a Foretelling that literally spells out the end of the final book (but we wouldn't know that until we've read it). That's book fourteen! Jordan may not have meant there to be that many books in the series, but it really shows how much he had planned so far ahead.
I'm excited for A Crown of Swords. So much is set up in Lord of Chaos to be fulfilled in the following book. Unfortunately, one of those is going to be very Elayne heavy, but that's just something we need to live with. We're still in the first good arcs of the series for the dip around book ten, so I'm currently excited to keep going.