So full confession here, I’m on a podcast with a group of friends where we started off talking about the Wheel of Time TV show. We loved the TV show so much and it was such a disappointment when it was cancelled.
So we decided to to read the books and talk about them together. I’m going to split these posts up based on how many chapters we read before we get together to talk about them.
I picked up the whole series when it was on sale on Humble Bundle. I will warn you, most of my initial reading will be comparing the book to the show.
Link to Podcast
Chapters: Prologues to 13:
The first thing I found out, is that the current versions of this book have an extra prologue that takes place when Egwene is nine years old. And in that prologue, one of the first things that we find out is that Egwene has the job of carrying water for the villagers who are working and she is going to be the best water-carrier ever. So I know that the show absolutely nailed her character.
You get much more description of the village residents in the books and there is definitely more attention paid to the side-characters. Rand is much more central to the story, it focuses on his journey through the woods with Tam for example, instead of on the (much more visually exciting) battle that takes place in the village. They also made Egwene the same age as the boys, which made it less clear which one of the four friends was the Dragon and added some intrigue to the first season.
I use the term “friends” loosely, because although the boys were all friends Egwene and Rand seemed to barely know each other. In fact there seemed to be a big divide between the men and women of the village in a way that seems frankly weird to me. Having different “Counsels” OK, having different jobs, sure that’s not unusual… but to never even talk to each other? Socialize at all? Maybe that’s what the maypole was for, I dunno. In spite of that, the matrons seem to be all about fixing people up together. Everybody was saying that Egwene and Rand would be getting married already when she was only nine. And Rand learned to avoid the women of the town because they would immediately start trying to get his father to meet somebody.
I liked how Padan Fain was barely there at all. It makes his return all that more shocking.
Thom reads as a different character too. He’s less “mysterious travelling man with secret skills” and more court jester.
Link to Podcast
Chapters: 14 to 25:
It could be because of the age difference between the books and the show, but man, Matt is not smart here. It gets to the point where Rand is seriously considering getting out of his bathtub long enough to thump him just to get Matt to stop talking about Trolloc’s. Fortunately Lan is everybody’s grumpy dad and chases the servant out of the room. And then later of course it’s Matt who tells Padan Fain exactly where they are staying in town.
Then the incident with the Whitecloaks – these people are genuinely dangerous and Matt decides to play a practical joke on them. Not smart.
The dream they all share is dead rats instead of the bats in the show. I’m just glad we didn’t get a description of Rand pulling a dead rat out of his throat when he woke up.
We meet Min much earlier in the book. And man, she is creepy. That whole “you can’t escape me” thing. I did kind of prefer her personality in the show, she is much more somebody who is plagued by her visions rather than the cackling witch she is in the book.
Nynaeve joins the group at the inn, and she wants to take her people home. Unfortunately Rand runs into a Fade in the middle of the night and they are running away again. They have another encounter with the Whitecloaks at the gates and I have to assume that Morraine casts some kind of a glamour to make herself look bigger. This is a very different type of magic than in used in the show as well.
I found it interesting that when they have to fight the Trollocs in the woods, Perrin and Rand were shouting “Manetheren” but Matt yells something in the old tongue. We know from the show that Matt turns out to be a Hero of the Horn, so I bet that’s a bit of foreshadowing.
Shador Logoth is described ad being much bigger and more intimidating in the book. They also encounter Mordeth, who was not included in the TV show. I gather he was something like a Wormtongue character, somebody who gradually corrupted the personalities of everybody in the city until Mashadar manifested.
The team is still split up after they escape from Shador Logoth, and Nynaeve ends up with Lan and Morraine. But this time Rand and Matt end up on Bayle Domon’s boat along with Thom. During the initial struggle Rand almost gets captured by a Trolloc and is saved only when the ship’s boom knocks the Trolloc off the boat. I have to wonder if that’s Rand channelling without realizing it. He also starts already displaying a bit of mental instability when he climbs up the mast and starts playing around as if he can’t fall.
Perrin and Egwaine end up together just as in the show, but the sequence of events is different. They run into Elyas instead of the Whitecloaks. Book Elyas is much more forthcoming about how the Wolf Brother connections works and he’s the one who takes them to the Tuatha’an, who know him and all about his wolf friends.
Perrin doesn’t seem to like Aram much in the book, and doesn’t approve of how he flirts with Egwaine. I have to say that this is completely different from TV Aram – TV Aram flirts with both of them.
Link to Podcast
Chapters: 26 to 35
We don’t spend a lot of time with Nynaeve, Morraine, and Lan in this set of chapters. Most of what I took away from it is that Nynaeve is experiencing an emotion and she Does Not Like it.
One of the things that struck me about the Fades in the book compared to the show is that even though they look more like humans that almost makes them creepier? Because one could be standing right next to you and you would never know. Tom ends up fighting a Fade and they think he’s dead, just like in the show but in the book it happens right in the middle of a town square. And he shoves his things at the boys before he jumps into the fight, so they have his flute for earning a place at the various inns they pass. We spend a lot more time with the boys on their journey, and man they are not having a good time. Matt is blind for part of it, Rand is sick, and they keep running into darkfriends who try to kill them. Matt’s growing paranoia seems entirely earned.
Another thing I noticed about book vs show, it’s described very clearly that there are huge numbers of people walking the road into town specifically to see Logain. In the show when Rand and Matt approached Tar Valon there were lots of pepole on the road with them but I just assumed the roads to Tar Valon are busy all the time, not that people are tourists.
It’s a relief when they finally get to Caimlyn and Innkeeper Gill puts them up based on knowing Thom. He also tells a little bit about Thom’s background – I had always theorized from the show that Thom was somehow involved with the Queen, so it was cool to have that bit confirmed.
Meanwhile, Perrin and Elyas decide to leave the Tuatha’an and I was impressed by how quickly Egwaine announced she was going with them. In the show she was with them when they were attacked by Whitecloaks, so she knows the downsides of traveling with them, but in the book she’s only really exposed to the good parts – dancing by the fire, everybody singing, a hot guy giving her attention. But she still doesn’t even consider staying with them for a second, she’s going with Perrin no matter what.
The Stedding was not what I expected at all – I assumed they would always be forests.
The statue of Artur Hawkwind reminded me of the poem about Ozymandeus. In the show it’s implied he travelled overseas to the lands of the Seanchan, but the book makes it cleared he died in the Westlands and his kingdom was torn apart.
Then Perrin and Egwaine are captured by Whitecloaks and holy shit those people piss me off. They are just so arrogant, they meet some stranger on the road and they right away assume they have the right to demand your papers. The arrogance is just unbelievable. I have zero regrets about Perrin taking one out, although it was obviously traumatic for Perrin.
Link to Podcast
Chapters: 36 to 45
In this series of chapters we meet Loial. I honestly thought they did a pretty good job of capturing his personality in the show. Physically in the book he was much larger, and I pictured a Minotaur from the text. One difference I absolutely did love was that in the book Loial accepts Rand word that he’s not an Aielman, while in the show Loial’s reaction is “An Aielman who says he is not an Aielman! How fascinating!” I honestly thought that was hilarious.
I also enjoyed the reaction of everybody who met him in the Inn. In the show Perrin and Egwaine first met him at the Waygate and they barely reacted.
Elayne was very well captured in the show. She comes across as very self-assured and also somebody who knows her own mind. She also has a moral code, at one point she told Rand that she didn’t agree with Elida keeping the palace gardens green – that effort should be going towards the farmers. In the show her brothers are pretty much interchangeable, but the Gawyn of the book is much kinder and gentler.
Elida is creepy. I already disliked her from the show, but in the book she has an added level of creepy. Also she now knows Rand’s face, which seems like the kind of thing that can only come back to bite him in the ass.
We get to see more of Queen Morgase here, and I have to say I really liked her. She listens to all her advisors and then clearly makes up her own mind, going against what Elida wants to do. One of the things that the “rebel” side in the city complain about is having an Aes Sadai in the court becasue they believe it means that the Queendom is being run by the White Tower, but once in the throne room it’s clear who is really in charge. I really liked that.
The rescue of Perrin & Egwaine from the Whitecloaks is very different – the wolves were present but they weren’t the main driver for the escape. Also the “encourage the prisoners to escape so we can kill them in the act” plot was pretty horrifying. We also find out that Elyas was a former Warder. (Hilariously lots of the characters were suggested as possible former Warders when we were watching the show, but not one person picked Elyas.)
Matt gets a temporary reprieve from the dagger, but not a cure. I do wonder if that was a large part of why they changed his childhood so much. In the book he is continually tortured by his infection from the dagger. In the show the dagger is treated as addictive, but the real cause of his problems is his trauma. It’s an interesting change and honestly I think it makes him a much more interesting (and relatable) character.
I loved the description of the Waygate in the book. The beautifully carved wall and somebody just says well, it’s in the way, let’s stick a shop on it. Poor Loial was so offended and I don’t blame him.
They have to break out of the Ways when they leave and it occurred to me then that we haven’t seen Nyneave channel yet. We know she does minor channeling when she heals, but in the show she does a big explosion and it’s her second one.
One thing that I really do love about the books is that we have so much more time to spend with the “everyman” characters. Rand and Matt had a horrible experience on the road being chased by Darkfriends, but they also got rides from kind people who gave them a lift just because they needed one. Including one guy who knew they were being chased but decided to help them anyway. Innkeeper Gill is a prime example, he gives shelter to an Ogier and helps some strange kids who can only bring trouble to his door. So many stories have one enemy after another, but so few show the ordinary people who just want to help each other out, and they are definitely out there in the world. This hits particularly hard right now with everything that’s going on.
Also, an area where the book wins, the show did not have nearly enough cats.
Link to Podcast
Chapters: 46 to 53
The finale of the book is incredibly different, with several characters that just didn’t exist in the show. I completely understand why they didn’t incorporate the Green Man – it would have been a huge effects cost for somebody who dies almost immediately.
The blight itself is described as much more hot and dank than it appeared in the show. One of the special features explained that they had planned to film in a dense rainforest in the Canary Islands but that was prevented by lockdown, so they instead built the spidery trees and filmed on set. The impression from the show was that the forest would just absorb you slowly if you stopped moving for too long, while in the book it was full of eldritch horrors and trees that would just straight up Venus Flytrap your ass.
We got the little love speech from Lan to Nynaeve. I do think that being able to spend more time in Faldara did allow for us to really see them falling in love after skirting around it for so long.
We meet two of the Foresaken, who get killed almost immediately. They are pretty gory, one of them seems to be wearing somebody else’s face.
To be honest I found the entire battle very confusing, most of it seemed to take place in a vision state. I really prefered the way that was handled in the book, as more of a temptation than a fight.
I won’t lie, if I had read the book before the show I’m not sure I would have kept it up after the first one. I know it gets better though, so I’m keeping going.