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Comments
Wheel of Time reread, Day 7
days remaining: 93
chapters read: 61
total progress: 9.73% complete
status: The Eye of the World finished. Much farther ahead of schedule than I'd anticipated.
The end of TEotW kind of struck me with how it... didn't really fit in with what comes later. I wouldn't exactly call it bad, but it was all a lot more... dreamlike? Metaphysical? than the tone of the books that come later. Like Jordan hadn't really figured a lot of stuff out at that point, which seems like a very real possibility.
I dunno. Just weird. And kind of clumsy? Like this is the third time I'm going through the series, and I'm still not sure I really get the importance of the eye, apart from the horn and the banner and the seal being stashed there, or why it was so important that they go there right then. And Aginor ands Balthamel kind of go down like bitches.
I'm a little tipsy, so this may or may not be coherent.
I think the Eye is going to be important in the last book again, as they're taking the fight to the Blight now.
Aginor and Balthamel did go down really easily, though. Kind of disappointing, for all-powerful Forsaken and the creator of the Worms, Trollocs and Myrdraal.
I hope it comes back, but in the end it's not much more than a pool of saidin, right? I don't see that doing much more than what Callandor's being built up to to in the last battle. Plus it hardly ever gets mentioned again.
It's also kind of jarring, since a)the Forsaken are built up as horrible horrible bogeymen throughout the book, but they end up feeling less threatening than a Fade when the first two show up in person, and b)I feel like most of the time when we see Forsaken after this they're a lot more dangerous, if not competent.
Just feels like Babby's First Boss Fight or something.
It's a pool of pure Saidin. That's kind of an important point; if someone channeled said Saidin, I don't think Shai'tan would be able to corrupt the Power through it.
Yeah, Jordan kind of fucked up there.
Myrdraal are consistently built up as these horribly deadly monsters, but that impression is actually built up, because at this point in their development, Rand, Mat and Perrin are seriously not good enough to properly stand up to Fades.
This gave the Myrdraal a real sense of dread, because whenever one showed up, it was like, holy crap, shit's actually getting real, if the boys survive this it's going to be because they got lucky.
But then, at the end, an even bigger threat showed up, but Jordan forgot to give them additional boosts to actually make this a credible fight. Instead, he had to have them go down like sissies, because if they actually acted to their capabilities, they would have roflstomped the entire band.
The Great Hunt carries this out better. Rand can actually somewhat stand against the Myrdrall, making them still credible threats, but giving him a real chance of surviving against one. And when he fights one of the Forsaken in that book, it actually feels like a fight could have plausibly born out like that- partially because the Forsaken wasn't really there, partially because Rand did something incredibly stupid that threw the Forsaken off-balance, and partially because of Rand being ta'veren.
If Jordan had waited to have Aginor and Balthamel to have shown up until the third book or later, they could have plausibly been threats.
I think it was mentioned that neither Aginor nor Balthamel had fully escaped from the Bore yet, but still.
I guess there needed to be some kind of showdown at the Eye, but I think the book would probably have worked better if we kept Ba'alzamon as the major Shadow player until later.
But wasn't the whole reason that the first attempt to seal the DO during the AoL failed that only male channelers were involved? You need both Saidin and Saidar. From what I remember (its been four whole years since my last complete readthrough) I'm fairly sure that we're going to see Rand using Callandor while linked with two female channelers (my guess is Moiraine and Nyneave) to reseal. Assuming that we don't get something more cycle-breaking as an ending.
That would have been a much better idea- although then we wouldn't have ended up with genderbent!Aginor.
It's not been made clear.
Only male channelers were involved, and that's why it failed, but we're not sure what would have happened if female channelers were involved too. The Bore could have been sealed more effectively- but Lews Therin mentions, at one point, that he's not sure if the Dark One would have corrupted both Saidin and Saidar or not.
oh
Anyway, I'm not sure how the pure Eye Saidin would be less taintable than normal, since the DO did manage to metaphorically completely cover the surface of saidin with the taint the first time around.
Oh, right; he was Dashiva, Balthamel was Aran'gar.
IIRC, the pure Saidin is entirely seperate to the regular One Power.
I am probably recalling incorrectly though.
A bit over 200 pages into The Great Hunt.
Hurin is adorable and I completely forgot that he existed.
But... the latest book reminded you that he existed.
It's been two years since I read Towers of Midnight. I forget the little things.
Of course now that I've been reminded of him I remember his return from TGS, which is pretty much the most heartbreaking thing in the entire series.
Man, now that I think about it, for such a long series, there are very few sad moments in it.
Normally there's a bunch more than can even be explained by that though...
Best paragraph I've read all week.
That is a pretty great paragraph.
Anyway, I've discovered something about The Casual Vacancy.
They're all so perfectly loathesome that I don't mind seeing them fail and be made miserable, but... I just can't seem to find a reason to give a fuck about anything that's happening.
There's just no incentive for me to continue to reading the book, because... well, I don't give a fuck.
Reading Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill. It's good and perfect Halloween-time reading, but I think prose is the hardest medium to be scary in.
Oh, hey, I have that book. Or, it's at home, because I wasn't sure if I'd get around to it and I didn't know how much room my bookshelf has (it has plenty, so once I go home for a break, I can grab a few more books, or just save some room for others I'd like to get (if I ever finish the ones that are already there)).
Nthing the prose comment. I honestly don't know if an author will be able to scare me through fiction; at least with non-fiction, you can be scared because this actually happened to someone/some people.
Have you found much, or any, fiction that actually scared you? I'm curious because I'm legitimately starting to wonder if it's possible to do it solely through events. I mean, I guess, if something was depressing enough to invoke an existential crisis within me, that might count, but I mean, just through events and showing the reader that something's happening, I have my doubts.
I don't know. I think things like House of Leaves are meant to be scary? I tend to avoid reading horror, so I can't comment, although I definitely think that it's possible for people to scare you with prose.
Well, admittedly I don't have much experience with horror aside from a brief binge around Christmastime. All I know is that Pet Sematary and The Shining couldn't do it, and if seminal works of horror failed, what won't? What's missing? Genuine curiosity, of course; the first author to send a chill down my spine earns my eternal admiration.
I don't know. I'm hardly going to give myself even more nightmares trying to find out.
Of course, you may just be not very affected by horror in prose in the first place, the same way some people are just not very affected by horror in cinema.
That's probably it. But I'd love for that idea of mine to be proven wrong.
You could try reading Lovecraft, but I don't think his stories are actually that scary, from what people say.
I dunno. Give House of Leaves a shot?
>Have you found much, or any, fiction that actually scared you?
World War Z is a pretty up-and-down novel but there's one bit that I found legitimately creepy. (It's the one with the kid going up north to camp away from the zombie apocalypse with his father) There was also The Color Out Of Space was pretty creepy as well, and Lovecraft never really scares me aside from that.
I think Poe has a really good voice and can be creepy but I think it's very mood-based.
While it's comics so technically only partially prose but the comic issue Hellblazer #56 'This is the Diary of Danny Drake' is probably the scariest thing I've ever read.
Admittedly I don't read much horror stuff. I mean, I love horror, but I do think it's more natural in visual and interactive mediums.
I've read my fair share of Lovecraft, and I'm also of the opinion that he fails spectacularly at being scary. His language is too damn beautiful for its own good. In fact, I mostly read him for the twisted-but-not-scary mythos and his mastery of the art of Putting Words On Paper (As Long As You Ignore The Dialogue). In terms of sheer prosaic skill, he and McCarthy are probably my two favorites; unfortunately, they're offset, in that one's a snowflake, and one occasionally let his bigotry slip into his work.
Sounds good.
Hmm. Noted.
I definitely need to read more of him, too. Dunno when that'll happen, though.
House of Leaves is really...interesting. I'm not entirely certain I'd call it scary per se, but it was definitely interesting.
The "architectural features" bit in House Of Leaves made me genuinely uncomfortable, but it didn't so much scare me as unsettle me. There is a difference. I prefer to be unsettled.
As for horror...
I already mentioned Ligotti a while back—what a fun conversation that was—and I will reassert that you should find a copy of Songs Of A Dead Dreamer. Specifically, I would recommend that you read "The Music of the Moon". It's a gem of a tale, particularly resonant if you suffer from insomnia. If you'd prefer to start smaller, however, the overview collection The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is, maugre the silly cover, just spiffy.
Another writer that I adore in the field of horror is Ramsey Campbell, who is distinctly more realistic in tone than Ligotti but is often equally (if not somewhat more) warped. The retrospective collection Alone with the Horrors is as good a place as any to start, with the eerie "Mackintosh Willy" and the oblique Lovecraft tribute "The Voice of the Beach" being particularly excellent introductory tales.
Another somewhat less well-known (but certainly well-respected) writer is T.E.D. Klein, whose novella "Black Man with a Horn"—another kind of riff on the Lovecraft mythos, if a very unusual one—actually frightened me enough that I found it difficult to sleep. You can find it in the collection Dark Gods, which also contains the fabulous and peculiar "Children of the Kingdom". I also recommend his only novel, The Ceremonies...
...which leads me to another author, to whom Klein is sometimes compared: Peter Straub. Get Floating Dragon. Read it. It is the framework for every Stephen King novel ever, but even more insane and with a more interesting narrator.
On the older end, if you haven't read any Arthur Machen, rectify this immediately. The House of Souls is probably your best bet—the presence of "The Great God Pan" and "The White People" in the same book is a buy in and of itself—but really, any collection of his short stories will do you well, and most of them are online for free anyway.
As for general compilations/anthologies, I highly recommend Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (ed. Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Herbert A. Wise), Dark Forces (ed. Kirby McCauley), and Prime Evil (ed. Douglas E. Winter). I would also suggest that you seek out Dangerous Visions and Again, Dangerous Visions (ed. Harlan Ellison) which, while strictly speaking not "horror anthologies," contain some wonderfully uncomfortable speculative fiction. (In particular, Samuel R. Delany's "Aye, and Gomorrah..." and Joan Bernott's "The Test Tube Creature, Afterward" are both quietly horrifying in completely different ways.)
And speaking of Ellison: Deathbird Stories. 'Nough said.
P.S. Oh, I almost forgot Neil Gaiman! Read Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things. (Note: One of my favourite Gaiman stories, the unbelievably creepy "Feminine Endings", is sadly in neither of these...)
P.P.S. This is a long post.
is that a challenge
No. It is simply a statement of fact, at least relatively speaking.
But regarding that Gaiman story...
Neil's own reading of the story is a lot funnier than how I'd initially read it, but it's still a really tense, discomfiting little tale.