The Dragon Reborn was incredible
Hello all, wanted to share some feelings about this amazing book.
Long time ago I finished The Great Hunt (made a post about that too if you're interested), and I was intent on continuing the series. I am listening to an audiobook though and one does not always have the time to continuously listen to it, hence the time gap.
My memories may be a little hazy, since it has been couple of weeks since finished TDR, so sorry if the text is a bit erratic, but here goes.
To start, I must say I loved it. If TGH was an 8/10 for me, this is 9, damn near 10. Boy I did not miss Rand at all :D (yeah not the biggest fan of him yet), on the other hand, I now love Matt and Perrin.
**Perrins wolf sections** are so well written it's unbelievable. I feel like I'm right there with him every time. Like at the beginning, when they're ambushed in the camp and he faces a myrddraal. At first he's scared as hell but as he locks in, bares his teeth and gives into it a little, I nearly jumped out of my chair. Later I loved his chemistry with Fayiel
**Matt's chapters** were always great. His paring with Tom was a great choice too, and him having the power of luck and slowly coming to understand how it works was so much fun. The highlight of his chapters is for me his fight on some bridge, where he just goes "Time to roll the dice", grabs the other guy and throws them both of, only to land on the guy with no injuries. Oh and him going 1v2 against two warders in training. I was not familiar with his game, because before the fight I went "Nononono Matt what are you doing stupid, you are sick and even if you weren't it's 1v2?!?!?!"
**The girls' story**, chasing the black aja, is so gripping. Anything connected to the black aja is really. But Siuan girl, you really could have taught these 3 prodigies how to protect themselves from being shielded from the power. You really didn't have 10 minutes to spare? Sending them to hunt full aes sedai while being so vulnerable could have backfired tremendously.
Bit of a side tangent, but when they were captured by darkfriends and Aiel saved them, they were so cool. "Dance with me, Shadowman" "No, dance with me!". They are like a culture full of warders if they were battle junkies.
Anyways, we got to see **Egwane's trials** and just like with Nynaeve, they are a highlight of the whole book
While first two are heartbreaking, Egwane leaving a world where she has a daughter with Rand and leaving Rand stuck under some rubble to be potentially turned to shadow, but the third one was even more gutwrenching. Nearly being turned to shadow herself, then rushing to save Rand from being stilled...I was so angry when the silver arch appeared, I did not want to leave Rand there, I wanted the story to continue so bad.
Just as in the last book, all plotlines lead to the same place, this time it's Tear. Matt, Aiel, Moiraine's group, girls, Rand. A proper grand finale. I got a glimpse of what the "power ceiling" looks like I think, when Rand wielded Kalimdor and made Ishamael i suppose run like a scared little girl. Straight up reality bending. That whole sequence felt like a fever dream.
**Some closing random thoughts>**
I felt so much dread finding out the forsaken are already in the world, ruling over nations. In Tear, Illian, potentially in Cairhien...
Belal is such a fraud. Bro thought he would kill Rand wielding Kalimdor (even Ishamael couldn't), only to get murked in one shot by an aies sedai. The dark one must be turning in his prison. Props to Moiraine though, no crazy once-in-an-age kind of power or talent, just wisdom, patience, mastery of what she is capable of.
Speaking of Moiraine, I did listen to New Spring first (not a great choice i know), so I know she is 100% doing her best to help the dragon and stop the dark one, so whenever they doubt her or don't listen to her, it really grinds my gears. I could probably empatize better had I not known she really is dedicating her whole life for the cause.
Celine's omnipresence seems to be because she uses the dream world to travel? It seems she is not fully on the dark one's side, which explains why she doesn't jsut clear the whole white tower during a single night, which she totally could as crazy as it is.
It was so frustrating when the girls are telling Siuan about the Seanchan and she is like, oh that's awful, anyways...I have seen the paralel futures in the last book, in most of them, they conquer the whole continent. They are an existential threat to everything you know, but she mostly dismisses them as some faraway inconvenience. And I like how the news from Toman Head travel through the world and get distorted over time.
And yeah, the Goatchan are not in this book, but I can't wait to see them again. I was very distraught by them in the last book.
Also
They are so useless my goodness. They have a Grima Wormtongue equivalent damn near twirling his evil mustache and their leader just trusts him huh.