In which I take a break from rambling about metadata to rambling about something I don't have to think so hard about while I wait for my head to stop killing me.

So I did a blog search just now, and was a little surprised that I've never really talked about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, considering that, not only have I been reading it for fourteen years now, coming up on fifteen by the time Book 12 comes out, it was and remains a pretty big influence on the way I look at world creation, fantasy, and what have you.

I recently started rereading the books - I needed something to read on work breaks, and in any case I hadn't read one since Knife of Dreams in 2005, and hadn't done a full readthrough in a little longer. I was also a little inspired by Brandon Sanderson's doing of the same thing, being as how lots of things have happened in my life over the past few years, and I could use a fresh look at the series, having had a chance to not sit around marinating in fandom as I used to be.

So a few notes on the first four books thus far. There are spoilers. You have been warned.

[EDIT for Sarah] THERE ARE ENORMOUS WORLD-ENDING SPOILERS HERE. [/EDIT]

The Eye of the World

I remember, very clearly, getting this book in paperback for Christmas in 1994 at the same time Dad got the brand new hardcover for Lord of Chaos, the sixth book. I still have them both - LOC's a little worn now, and my TEOTW paperback is disintegrating, which I guess tells you something, but I have to admit that the first time I read the prologue, I went "What the crap is this?" and stopped reading. Years later that same prologue is one of my favorite scenes - we really know nothing of what went on in it at the start, but over many years and many books everything gradually becomes clear, and knowing what lies behind that prologue makes it very powerful. Take Ishamael. We don't actually know who he is right then, but we will later. And then we're going to find out that he's been running the world from behind the scenes for the last three thousand years, and in effect a lot of things the characters thought were true were actually huge lies. Amazing.

That aside, I'm sort of coming full circle on this book. I started reading younger than Rand, Mat, and Perrin, and I really identified with them, and now I'm Nynaeve's age, and weirdly enough I identify more with her and Moiraine. And in any event knowing what I know now, getting chased by some Trollocs just isn't as exciting as it once was, and really how dumb do you have to be to go haring off into Shadar Logoth by yourselves?

Still, the fun bit now is all the little moments when you look at a character, or you look at a scene, and you say "Oh! I know about this! This makes sense now!" Like the prologue, or the Green Man and the Eye of the World, which made no sense to me at the time I first read it, but now I know who Somesheta is, and the Nym, how they tie together with the Aiel and the Aes Sedai, and that's really cool.

The Great Hunt

I'm not ambivilent about this book at all. I didn't much enjoy it the first couple times I read it, and I'm not sure why, because it's one of my favorites now. Getting chased by Trollocs isn't super fun, but chasing Padan Fain's Trollocs who have the Horn of Valere which you need to win the Last Battle? Awesome. We get to see Sheinar, and that's fun, and I wish we could go back there. Seeing how Cairhein works is neat. The Seanchan show up, and they're awesome.

Sanderson mentions this, and I must agree, that this book shows Jordan is really really good at compressing a lot into a few pages - I remembered the girls versus the Seanchan being super long and super good. It's still super good, but it's not that many pages. Ingtar barely gets any page time, and yet "The Light, and Shinowa!" remains an iconic and heartbreaking moment for me, one of the best in the series.

A few "Oh, snap!" moments, too. I spent my first time through wondering who Selene was. Then you go back and say "Wait, that's Lanfear. Shit."

I found myself liking the battle at Falme more than in times of yore, too, and that was nice.

The Dragon Reborn

Second best cover art in the series here.

I always thought of this as sort of a "And then stuff happens" book, and it still sort of is. My favorite part is still the White Tower stuff with the girls, and this is back when I can still like them a whole lot. I've always liked Min a fair bit - she's the most sensible of them in many ways, but Egwene's growing on me, I think. I used to hate her, now I like her a lot. As always, Mat is fun.

I think that I wish there had been a lot more Rand POV. This is kind of his decisive change in character, and most of it is totally offscreen, or only comes out in book 4.

I feel like Be'lal was sort of wasted. For somebody named the Netweaver, he didn't really weave many nets, and his whole purpose was more showing and getting balefired by Moiraine. Lots of wasted evil potential there, but I suppose when you've got 13 Forsaken plus the Dark One to go through, and you end up recycling 3 of them anyway, you need to have some red shirts here and there.

As I was saying about page count earlier, I remembered the Stone of Tear part being a lot longer, but about half of what I remembered is actually in the next book.

The Shadow Rising

This is, bar none, accept no substitutes, the best book in the series, and considering what has come before, maybe one of the best I've read. It's chock full of payoff from earlier scenes in the last 3 books, and most of them turn into iconic moments:

- Rand uses Callandor to blow up a whole army. This will happen again, but it's shocking here. Still.

- Rand amongst the Aiel is always awesome. Rand and Mat in Rhuidean, especially Rand reliving the history of the Aiel, is very deeply profound to me in ways I am unsure if I can express. Probably this is the single best-written chapter in the series.

- Perrin goes home. There's something strangely cool about the Two Rivers, and it's fun to see people from the first book again. I think the only way this will get better is when Rand and Tam hopefully finally get to see each other again in Book 12.

- The Tanchico subplot with the girls suffers a little bit, but only in comparison to everything else that's going on. I still enjoy the girls, although Elayne grates a little. She's lost some of her compassionate edge, and is kind of whiny and annoying, except when she's not. I fear that will get worse. I also fear that I will grow to love the circus bits from Book 5 less now. Hopefully not.

- Also on an Elayne note, I'm still pondering the romance scenes from all four books. I remain unsure if they're just deeply annoying or kind of right on, now that I've experienced a few of the more annoying scenes first and second hand. Dunno. I do know that I'm with Rand concerning the greatness of Min, and the Nynaeve/Lan story is very understated and quite well done.

- Speaking of understated, Moiraine. Funny how you feel like you know her quite well, and yet as I reread I find that I don't, really, and it's all kind of an illusion.

Anyway. Headache gone, back to work. Join us next time for probably books 5, 6, and 7.

In which I am going to continue refraining from actual political discussion on this blog, because I still feel slightly nauseous about things said in 2004, and in any case we have Samson's blog for that. This blog is for discussion of our alien overlords, and perhaps also rabbits and squirrels, who may or may not be the same as the forementioned alien overlords. They are very clever.

That having been said, via Sarah, this bit from the archives was true in its time, just as it's true today.

And in other news, Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for president. I encourage you to spend the fifteen minutes of your time to watch the videos I linked. Not because of the endorsement, though I'm convinced at this point that he got that right, but because of how Powell talks about the way America and American politics ought to be, and does so in very powerful terms. I find the whole thing very moving.

Also on that note, this piece of John Scalzi's on the subject, which sums up maybe the most important bit of what Powell said, and to which the only worthwhile response is a wholehearted "Yes."

An approximate conversation from today:

Sarah: OMG, fall! Pretty colors!

Me: Yes.

Sarah: We should go climb West Rock!

Me: My back hurts.

Sarah: But we've been talking about it for two years! Also, it looks amazing out!

Me: There's that, I suppose.

So after a brief trip to UPS, which is a rant in itself, we paused to admire the view on the local streets, and see that picture of North up there, which is, oh, approximately 50 feet from my house, we headed up to West Rock. And then we froliced in the woods. There were squirrels.

Instead of talking about it, which would be superfluous, I will show you pictures. Most of them can be clicked for bigger, awesomer versions. If you see one you really really like, I have even bigger, super awesome versions I will post for you.

Yes, all of the roads look like that. Yes, I had to winnow through about 10 shots just like it. Yes, New Haven looks sorta neat in the fall.

Take a left at the fork to go up to the top.

The view from the top is amazing. That's mostly SCSU. Downtown New Haven and Long Island Sound are in the background to the southeast. As I was telling Sarah, it's amazing how distances really compress, here. I'm not that far from the water, but because of all the city driving, it seems that way.

South into residential New Haven.

Across New Haven/Hamden to East Rock, which is similarly awesome, only smaller.

Northeast across Hamden to Sleeping Giant State Park. Little known fact: I have 3 or 4 state parks within a mile or two of me. Other little known fact: I've lived here 2 years and have barely seen any of them.

A closeup shot of downtown New Haven and the Sound.

After that visual spectacle, we went on down the hill a ways. There were paths. These were awesome.

That one is actually pretty straight and non-bumpy. Also, it looks really neat.

There was lots of bare rock. We investigated.

ObPeopleShot.

I am lord of all I survey.

Then we went back up and treked over a bit to Judge's Cave. And I quote the sign:

"Here May Fifteenth 1661 and for some weeks thereafter Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, members of Parliament General, officers in the army of the Commonwealth and signers of the death warrent of King Charles the First, found shelter and concealment from the officers of the Crown after the Restoration. 'Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God. 1896"

All of this you English history buffs, of whom I am likely the only one reading, should recognize. Also, Whalley and Goffe are now major streets in New Haven.

And of course the whole area was a lot different, 240 years ago. To quote Sarah, "Yeah, it must have been a lot wilder back then. No houses all over the place. More boars."

That aside, it's admittedly not much of a cave, but the story is really neat. Also, the left side there, where the people are, has a fantastic view to the north.

Whee, fall. I like to diss on New Haven a lot, and on CT a lot, but I have to admit, some days it really makes it worth my while to live here.

My God IV, that totally sucked. I'm too old for this 3am paper writing shit. I'm going to bed. Wake me in a few days.

I wish to do this.

We will perhaps discuss this more later.

Duty is heavier than a mountain; death is lighter than a feather.
---Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors

Apparently, we have learned this evening, this image or images like it, are responsible for something like 17 GB of bandwidth usage on this site. Moreover, if you believe Google, that single image has been linked to on a fair number of gaming forums, not to mention 4chan of all places. Crazy.

Via Googling my site URL, this, which is whatever it is. See about halfway down the page.

The internets. They are watching you.

Via Megatokyo, my computer upgrading experience this weekend:

Remember, kids - when connecting your new IDE drive, you must have one slave, and one master. IDE does not believe in democracy, and doing things such as, say, accidentally leaving the jumper on your new drive set to master and putting it in the slave position ends...badly.

Which is a long way of saying I forgot to set jumpers correctly, and Windows completely failed to see my drive. But I fixed that, and now I have a DVD burner. Ho ho ho. Yes, I realize that I'm about 5 years behind the times here.

However, to make up for that, I now have a shiny new external hard drive. A ONE TERRABYTE external hard drive. Which, it turns out, happens to have more space on it than all of my previous hard drives, for all of my previous computers, put together. Finally, I can get some of my space back. Damn you, mp3s!

In other news, I have decided that I require a computer game wherein I get to construct a castle and associated town/village and pretty much play lord. I also want to have jousts, go on quests to save damsels in distress, fight random dudes, and then get pissed off at the king and own the whole country. Sort of like Sword of the Samurai except with concessions to the 20 years that have passed since that game. It is my contention that such a game would own all time forever, for most if not all concievable values of ownage.

Until then, I guess I'll just have to play Oblivion or GalCiv or something.

...who am I kidding? I'll be playing that new game, Do Lots of Homework. It's pretty crazy. I can't really figure out why I keep playing it, but it's strangely addictive. The end boss fight is really hard. And really long. Be warned.