Re(Visiting) the Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm (analysis)

[This is part of a series analyzing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels. Previous installments can be found under the tag. Comments on old posts are welcome, but please, no spoilers for books after this one.]

And now we talk about structure.

I don't envy Sanderson the challenge he faced, picking up the end of this series and trying to wrangle it into something like order. Jordan may have insisted that by god it was going to be ONE MORE BOOK, but I don't see any way in hell that could have ever worked -- and I say that without even having read Towers of Midnight yet, let alone A Memory of Light. There's enough here in this book that unless both of those are Crossroads of Twilight-level bogs of plotlessness (which I very much doubt), a single volume would have read like the Cliff Notes version of the finale.

But Sanderson didn't have a terribly good foundation to build on, structurally speaking, as he went into the final stretch. Card-weaving would make an ideal metaphor to describe the situation here, but since very few of you know how that works, we'll go with architecture instead: he, as the construction manager, inherited a building with four good, solid stories at the bottom, three or so dodgy levels above that, three ramshackle levels held together with increasing quantities of baling wire and duct tape, and then one that makes a valiant attempt at being structurally sound. Atop this mess, he had to build one (eventually three) final levels, and make them as habitable and pleasant as possible.

( Spoiler-cut time, as I start dissecting this book to see what makes it tick. )

In terms of analysis, that's all that leaps to mind. If there's anything I've mentioned in earlier posts that I ought to follow up on, or things you guys would like to hear me opine on, let me know. ToM commentary will probably come in late November and early December, and then in January . . . A Memory of Light.

Banned Books at BVC

No, not our books being banned. (Though some of them may have been. And writers always joke that a banning attempt is fantastic publicity. Can you imagine if some parent challenged Lies and Prophecy for promoting witchcraft? I mean, it really kind of does, except for the bit where we haven't undergone a minor apocalypse that left half the population with pyschic powers. But trying to keep a book out of the hands of kids is a great way to get them to read it.)

Where was I? Oh, right. It's Banned Books Week, and over at the Book View Cafe, we're celebrating with a bunch of posts on the subject. Sherwood Smith kicked it off with a look at censorship through the centuries, and there are other posts about 50 Shades of Gray, the mechanics of banning, torching books for fun and profit educational purposes, and a church-sponsored burning, along with cheeky pictures of BVC authors with dangerous books.

I believe there are more planned throughout the week. I think it's fascinating, looking at the entire phenomenon of censorship and the means by which people try to pursue it. Fascinating, and scary. Because I have grown up in the absolute belief that suppressing the written word is wrong-headed at best and evil at worst, and try as I might to understand the position of those who seek to do so, I'm never going to sympathize with it.