What did I get from The Wheel of Time?

Posted on 30 April 2025 by tony

Does someone, anyone, finally realise that if you don’t just talk openly and honestly with your allies, you don’t get anywhere? – No.

This is a post I made in 2014 on another site. The links currently still go to the original site on the wayback machine, but I’ll change those as I move content across.

While I was reading the series, I made this blog post. I made some kind of promise to go back and update it, which I didn’t really do. I did post some questions that I hoped got answered. There are major spoilers coming up for the series if you’ve not read it, so beware!

Here are the things I wanted answered, and whether we got them.

Does Moiraine survive, who rescues her if she does (does she rescue herself)?
Answered. Mat, Thom and Jain rescue her from the Snakes and Foxes.
What did Moiraine see in Rhuidean, and how much of that is ever revealed to us?
Partially answered. Not revealed to us in great detail, other than she saw her own rescue, and her fight with Lanfear.
Mat – just everything about Mat. What does he end up doing, does he end up using the Horn? Does his death mean he’s no longer linked to it? Does anyone else realise that?
Answered. He died due to the balefire ‘incident’ and was brought back to life, and so is no longer linked to the horn. Olver blows it.
Who is Olver, and is he Gaidal Cain?
Strongly implied but never answered.
What is the taint on Saidin? Does it ever get explained?
Not really answered.
Just exactly what is going on with the seals?
Not really answered, although there are implications. Dark Ones touch, not quite in exactly the right place, etc.
How important was Herid Fel and which of the Forsaken did him in?
Not really answered. Min takes up Herid’s research. We don’t really know who killed him.
What is going on with Lews Therin inside Rand’s head. Are they really talking to each other? Does Lews hear Rand in his own timeline?
Answered. Rand is Lews, Lews is Rand. It’s a long story, but it works out beautifully.
What happens in general to the Aiel after it’s all done.
Implied but not really answered.
Do the Tinkers ever find the song?
Not answered. Jordan said in interviews that they never will though.
Do the Tinkers and the Aiel ever forgive each other?
Not answered.
Do Moiraine and Thom end up together?
Answered. Yes.
Does Elayne ever work out Mat’s fox-head medallion and does that play any role later?
Answered. Partially and yes, very much so.
Do they ever relearn the art of healing without having to use energy from the patient (i.e. can they heal with just the One Power, like in the Age of Legends)?
Answered. This is what Nynaeve has learned to do.
Just what the hell is Verin really up to? Who is she, how old is she, and how long has she known about the events leading up to where we are in the books?
Answered. She’s accidentally Black Ajah. It’s a long story.
Does Elayne ever work out how to make angreal and sa’angreal?
Not answered. However, Rand gives her an angreal seed, so she may be able to use that to learn.
Does someone, anyone, finally realise that if you don’t just talk openly and honestly with your allies, you don’t get anywhere?
No.
Does someone, anyone, finally realise men and women must work together and trust each other to succeed both in the battle and in life afterwards?
Partially answered. Although I asked this in jest, there’s a clear implication that the cross Ashaman / Aes Sedai bonding that’s going on will lead to some kind of reconciliation at some stage.
What happens with Lan’s heritage, and does it play any role?
Answered. Yes, gloriously so. Ahh Lan.
Do the Ways ever get cleansed?
Not answered. Implied that they don’t.
Does the taint get removed from Saidin (I’m cheating, I know the answer to this one already, one of the few things I remember from later books)?
Answered. Yes, Rand cleanses it with the help of Nynaeve.
What’s going on with Moridin (again, cheating, I’m not sure he’s been introduced yet)?
Answered. It’s Ishy innit.
Are some of the characters meant to be stupid for a reason?
Not answered.
Is it ever explained that the ability to channel is genetic and hence killing male channellers before they have kids is the reason why fewer people in general can use the One Power, or is it only ever alluded to?
Not answered.
Does someone chop Nynaeve’s braid off to save us all from ourselves?
Answered. No.
Does Elayne ever take up the Throne of Andor?
Answered. Yes.
Does Rand end up with all three girls or does that dream ever get abandoned / explained?
Answered. Yes, he gets the girls.
Does Perrin hold out and remain human?
Answered. Yes but it’s more complex than that, and his story is one of the best.
Does the Tower become whole? Do they stop using the Oath Rod? Is that ever fully explained?
Answered. Yes, and no, they continue to use it, even though they understand it’s side effects now.
Padan Fain – what happens to him?
Answered. Sanderson ran out of space, but Fain gets an ending.
Who does and doesn’t survive the last battle (people, nations, structures, cities, etc.)
Kind of answered. It’s a bloody mess by the end.
Does Rand fully seal the prison, so that it looks like the bore never existed, is this the age in which that happens, or is it just another patch?
Answered. Sealed, no patch.
Once again, who’s Moridin?
Answered. Still Ishy.
Who’s in the second mindtrap?
Answered. Moghedian and Lanfear.
What was going on with Liah in Shadar Logoth? How did she survive so long?
Not answered.
Do we ever know what happened when the two balefire beams touch?
Not answered. Implication that it brings Moridin and Rand somehow ‘closer together’ so that they can affect each other’s bodies or feel each other’s pain.

And there you have it.

The Wheel of Time – Is It Worth Reading?

Posted on 30 April 2025 by tony

This is a post I wrote in 2014 on another site, archived here.

The first book in the Wheel of Time (The Eye of the World) was published in 1990, the 14th and last book (A Memory of Light) was published in 2013. Close to a full 23 years between the two books (it was 22 years, 11 months and 24 days). If you include the short story / prequel ‘New Spring’, then there are 15 books, totalling 4.4 million words, and almost 12,000 paperback pages (all data from Wikipedia).

I can’t really remember when I read the first book. I guess I might be able to find out if I dredged enough Internet history or e-mail, but if I had to take a stab, it would likely be between 1993 and 1995. That feels right, and puts me around Fires of Heaven or Lord of Chaos as the last one published at the time I was reading them. I probably had to wait therefore for either A Crown of Swords or The Path of Daggers, maybe both.

Waiting for new books isn’t anything new, and anyone who’s read a ‘live’ series will know the experience. Waiting for a Wheel of Time book though, became a lottery. It killed a lot of fans, because the ‘middle’ books were so slow, and made so little progress. Some people didn’t mind, and obviously, it didn’t kill the series, but many, many people were put off and couldn’t go on.

I was one of them.

Waiting a few years to find out what your favourite characters were up to, only to find out they weren’t in the book because there wasn’t room, despite the 300,000 words, and you had to wait another two years was hard. Finding out the main plot didn’t advance, but new characters and threads and complexity turned up, was hard. Finding out that you didn’t find anything out was hard. So I stopped reading them. My wife still bought them, but even she gave up in the end. I read some on-line summaries for one or two of the books and then put them out of my mind.

Sadly, Robert Jordan fell ill and passed away in 2007. At that stage, I pretty much gave up hope of finding out how the story ended, which against the loss of another person’s life is a tiny inconvenience.

Eventually, news started to circulate that Robert and his wife Harriet had picked someone to continue and in fact complete the series after he passed away – Brandon Sanderson. I’d never read anything of his, and I wondered honestly, how much of my problem with The Wheel of Time was Jordan and how much was just the source material.

Then more news – the single book was going to be three, the first one due in 2009 and the last one, well, sometime after that. I refused to end up waiting to read another Wheel of Time book and I pretty much forgot all about them (or pretended to).

I made the occasional blog post, threatening to go back and read them all, and be ready for the new ones, or go back and read them all when the new ones were out, but I wasn’t reading fantasy really. Or much at all. So those plans never came to fruition.

Then, a few months into 2014, a friend on Facebook mentioned having just finishing listening to the series on audio-book and that the boring stretches weren’t as bad as he remembered. Either audio book made them better, or the pain had eased with time. I resolved then to re-read the whole series. The final book was out, it had come out in 2013, so there was nothing stopping me reading them end-to-end and finally getting some answers.

It started out okay, like greeting old friends. The Jordanisms weren’t too bad, and the first three books were enjoyable. Then the rot set in. Oh, not straight away, there are still some good moments after book 3, and in fact, some very good books by Jordan after book 3. Knife of Dreams, the last he completed on his own is excellent in fact. Sadly though, many of the middle books are dire in parts or their totality.

This is obviously my personal opinion, and different people will have different views about the books. For me however, Jordan was too interested in telling us how the world looked, smelled, sounded and felt, and not interested enough in telling us what was going on and making progress. Major plot threads stalled and vanished for entire books, we spent a lot of time being told what people were wearing and why it was or wasn’t appropriate, how men and women just couldn’t get along, with all men being stupid selfish children and all women being bitchy hags at heart.

It grated and it dragged.

But I knew there was some light ahead, because I knew no matter what happened, there would be a final battle and the good guys would win. As I said in the review for A Memory of Light, the truth of epic fantasy is that the good guys always win, the only question is the cost. So I knew Rand would beat the Dark One, somehow, and that the Wheel would continue to turn. What I wanted to learn along the way, were the answers to questions Jordan had posed early on, and the cost of that victory.

All I had to do, was to keep reading.

Then something odd happened. Book eleven, Knife of Dreams, was really quite good. Jordan had recaptured the magic. He drove the story forward, he wrote emotional character pieces. He answered some questions, sure he posed a bunch more, as normal, but he actually answered a few. I really enjoyed Knife of Dreams, and that made me even more angry. Robert Jordan can write superb fantasy. He can put down complex and detailed plot threads, weave lots of ideas together, deliver complex political and military situations, and make us feel like we know people through limited PoV writing.

He proved it in book eleven. So where the hell was he in book 10, or the other dire books?

Anyway, with book eleven behind me, I read the first of the Brandon Sanderson books, and it was also excellent. Book thirteen was good, and the finale, book fourteen, A Memory of Light is as good as you can expect given the constraints.

Books 12 and 14 were particularly emotional in parts. Book 13 slightly less so for me, due to the nature of what is going on, but none-the-less it was very enjoyable.

I’d done it, in just over a month I managed to read all fourteen books, I’d pushed through the hard times and got my reward at the end.

Was it worth it? Is it worth it? I’ve you’ve tried before, or never read them, should you pick them up from book one and give them a shot?

My answer is, maybe.

They’re very long books. They’re very, very slow in places, even the good ones, and they have a lot of characters. Despite his best efforts, Sanderson can’t close down every thread properly, and some are left hanging. There’s no grand epilogue telling you how everything works out at the end (something I felt I might have enjoyed), and so you’re going to need to fill in some blanks if you get there. Some of the characters are irritating beyond recognition, your gender may affect which you find more irritating.

Sometimes the characters are stupid. Sometimes you wish they’d just sit down and tell each other what they were thinking or doing and everything would be a lot easier. Sometimes you wish they would just jump off a cliff and let the Dark One win.

But.

You can’t deny the genius of Jordan at times. The complexity of some of the plot threads, the groundwork laid down in early books come to fruition in later ones. The complexity of the world, the colour, the depth of vision, and the varying political landscapes. Despite their annoyances, the characters are often engaging and interesting. Some are just superb, Lan for example. It’s fantasy on a truly epic scale. Sure, it draws on a lot of sources, but it blends them into a unique and ultimately engaging story.

I’m happier for having finished them, and if I had never read them at all, I’d be poorer for it.

The Wheel of Time is epic fantasy like no other. It divides opinion, and it’s hugely variable in quality as the series progresses. It is though, one of the great pieces of art of our generation and it would be a shame not to at least give it a shot. There is an end in sight, you just have to keep your head above the water during the choppy bits and keep going. I did it, you can too.

My reviews of the books (reviews are spoiler free, but the sections below the reviews are not, reviews for later books may spoil books before them).

These will be migrated to this site one at a time, and the links updated away from archive.org.

2025 Updates (March)

Posted on 28 March 2025 by tony

A photograph of a turned wooden vase, being held in a hand against a black background. The vase is turned from apple wood, and shows swirling grain patterns. I really like wood turning. The shed has become a workshop, and I’ve had to buy a Keter Darwin shed to store the stuff that was in the shed (gardening tools and the like). I’m still obviously learning, but the process of turning wood requires so much in the moment focus, that everything else fades away, but at the same time, it’s relaxing.

Poppy ended up having an MRI and a 3 month course of antibiotics. She’s still slightly unstable, and probably has a polyp, but she’s back to loving life and doesn’t let it slow her down. She had another possible flare up a few weeks ago, but is over that too. We’ll need to take a decision soon about surgical intervention, but even then the polyp could just grow back.

Garden is a tip, but we’ve planted a tree in the front garden, and three in the back garden, to replace the ones we’ve cut down over the years. We chopped the willow down in the back garden, it was growing almost horizontally after tipping over a while back without us noticing. The new ones have stakes and we hope they’ll perform better but it looks a bit bare while they’re getting established.

I made a bowl(s)

Posted on 28 August 2024 by tony

I’ve really been enjoying the wood turning, it’s so nice to take something raw and rough and turn it into a useable object, or even just something nice to look at. I have a long, long way to go, but I’ve made some things I’m really proud of.

I’ve not photographed everything (almost, but not quite), and there’s a few spindles missing (nostepinne) among other things. I’ve included some photos of explosive failures too!

It’s great to get out into the shed after a tough day at work, and just make something pretty. Stuff I need to work on.

Tool sharpening
Tool handling (bowl gouge especially)
Getting better surface finishes off the tool, and understanding which tools work best on different grains
Getting the inside of bowls as nice as the outside
Getting the bottom of bowls as nice as the outside
Not settling for ‘good enough’ when doing a bowl
Also, thinner. I love me a chunky bowl, but I think I’m taking it too easy and need to make some thinner pieces.

Making a lathe bench – part 2

Posted on 15 April 2024 by tony

I did not build the lathe bench in the first post, but I did build a bench. The more I looked at the drawing, the more I thought the angled legs were going to be annoying to make, and I’m not patient or good enough to do that yet. So I simplified the design, thus.

Square 90 degree legs, with lap joints. I got some of those joints done, but then I decided not to worry about the others. This is the result.

It’s on castors which you can lift and drop so that you can rest the base on the floor when you’re not moving it, and I reinforced the base with a couple of cross-members including one which extends past the width of the top to give it more stability. It works fine! It’s pretty stable (although I’ve not turned anything very lopsided yet), and it can be moved around (just about!). Very happy with it overall, it’s functional.

And so far, I’ve made one oak bowl and one mahogany bowl on it.

Super relaxing and a lot of fun.

Pets

Posted on 29 March 2024 by tony

One of our two cats, Poppy, has an inner-ear infection (suspected) and is breaking our hearts by being unsteady.

Wouldn’t want to live in a world without pets – but when they’re ill the stress levels just go through the roof.

Making a lathe bench – part 1

Posted on 25 March 2024 by tony

The lathe needs a bench. I can’t keep it on the main bench in the shed, it’ll need it’s own stand. At some point, I may want to think about making it mobile, but for now I just want something stable so I can actually use the lathe before I go back to work next week. I’m desperate to have a shot at turning a bowl on it!

I’ve built / made a few things now, some of them I just made up as I went along (bird table), but some things I want a better idea of what I’m doing before I start. That includes the garden steps I built and an elevated planter for my mother-in-law. It also includes this lathe bench.

3d plans showing a raised planter I have used Sketchup Free for the various projects I wanted to plan and it works out great! It’s not easy, but it isn’t terrible and it really helps. What it doesn’t do is help visualise how big something will be (the planter turned out massive), but that’s also my achiles heal anyway (cooking too much food, building things too big, buying too much decorating stuff, etc.)

Here’s the plan for the lathe stand.

3d plans for a lathe stand

Imagine that diagonal brace in the middle being mirrored on the other side (I couldn’t be bothered to draw it). The different colours are for different sizes of lumber, 14cm, 9cm or 6cm wide (all 3.8cm thick). Hopefully that’ll be strong enough to hold the 85kg weight of the Record Power CL2, and keep it stable. We’ll see (it’s going to be sitting on a shed floor with a lot of bounce, which isn’t going to help!)

Wish me luck.

So I bought a lathe!

Posted on 24 March 2024 by tony

Well, this is actually my second lathe. My first one was the Parkside lathe from Lidl, which I bought probably two or three weeks ago. I’ve used it (the Parkside one) to turn two pieces of wood (other than some very quick tests). I made a bowl out of sycamore and a cup / goblet / thing out of apple wood (from a tree we cut down in our garden).

Plain wooden bowl on a black background I had read bad things about the Parkside lathe, but I really wanted to give turning a go, and as they re-appeared in the middle of Lidl I purchased one in a moment of weakness.

Super easy to set up, made mostly of plastic and aluminium, the lathe sits nicely on a bench. But it’s flimsy. The spindle wiggles, the tool rest doesn’t lock fully, the tailstock actually lifts up from the lathe ‘bed’ (I use that term loosely) if you apply it hard enough to keep your piece in place.

But, it does allow you to turn wood, even someone like me who’s never turned anything his life. I made the bowl and the other thing (chalice?) and it was only mildly frustrating and painful. But, by the time I’d finished the second piece, the lathe was even flimsier. The wobble on the spindle was worse, the tool rest is chipped and dented and no longer locks, and the tail stock is as useful as a piece of wet fish. It was clear I was doing stuff it was never intended to be useful for (which begs the question, what was it intended to be used for).

Anyway, I’d been watching Facebook market place for months for various second hand DIY items (more blog posts coming about all that stuff I suspect) and yesterday I spotted a bargain. A Record Power CL2 lathe, for a really good price, not too far away and in good working order. I collected it today.

Turned wooden goblet Fuck me it’s heavy. I mean, it didn’t look that big in the Facebook marketplace photo. But it’s heavy. The two metal bars which form the bed are heavy. The motor and spindle are very heavy. I really should not have been lifting that onto the bench on my own. It came with loads of accessories including an unused four jaw chuck, which I’m super excited about.

Now I just need to build a stand for it (it can’t stay on the bench, it’s too high for one thing), and then enlist the help of someone to move it (not making that mistake again).

I am excited to give it a whirl – the two things I’ve made were hard, but I don’t know if that was technique, the lathe or the tools (or all three). It can’t be the lathe next time I make something, so we’ll hopefully see if it’s tools, technique or both!

Oh look …

Posted on 24 March 2024 by tony

Another year went by after me saying I was going to start blogging again, without me actually doing any blogging.

So, what happened?

Posted on 24 May 2023 by tony

In November 2019 I wrote a blog post, saying it had been two years since I last wrote a blog post. In it, I described everything that had been going on. You can read it here, but it’s not exactly a happy post. There was a lot of shit going on at the time, and that was before Covid hit.

It’s now been over 3 years since I last blogged seriously (I wrote a couple of posts over the time between that one and now, a few about Covid) and plenty has happened.

A key part of that being my diagnosis of depression. I know, I hid it really well.

I don’t really understand why I didn’t blog the shit out of the pandemic, but instead I bought a shed load of old D&D stuff on eBay. We also started sorting out the house a little bit, said farewell to Fizz (our cat) and hello to Pippa and Poppy (our new second hand cats).

I also started doing a lot of DIY, I’d previously been terrified of making things worse or fucking up the house or destroying a wall, but it turns out a lot of that was depression, and once the anti-depressants kicked in, I found I was able to worry less about that and get on and do things. That’s an ongoing process since there was *so much* that needed doing, and there still is.

But, I’m keen that I get back to blogging, even for no other reason than it gives me another minor creative outlet and keeps my brain busy.

Here we go then, another attempt at running a blog.

Perception is Truth

it's back, no better than before

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