• abraxas@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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    1 year ago

    part of why I say the whole thing is a bit on the nose

    Pretty quickly you’re realizing that Lanfear is simultaneously the most devious of the forsaken and the most immature. She wanted to be the princess swept off her feet by the reincarnation of her old jilted lover. I know “princesses” like that, and I’m sure you do. Imagine if that princess had a 150 IQ and was the most powerful sorceress in known human history. Jordan practically invented the modern practice of turning fantasy tropes on their head, and that’s what he did here with Selene… In a way that I think he intended to be really obvious. But maybe could have been a bit less obvious anyway.

    The reason I called it a dream land of some sort was I figured it might have even been a special construct of Lanfear’s.

    Ahhh… I never thought of it that way. You’ve probably already realized from our conversation that it isn’t a construct of hers, but it would make a lot of sense if it had been.

    It’s not clear (at this point in the book) why they’re zig-zagging around

    My opinion is that he’s playing possum. But also… the fade nailed to a wall was meant to be an obvious change of leadership (which means change of plans).

    and what it means that Hurin could pick up they’re scent in the portal world at what seems to be ahead of their actual arrival.

    A regular idea of Jordan’s is that “time works differently in other worlds”. It genuinely may be no deeper than that, consistent throughout the books. We don’t get too much info into the workings of sniffers, unfortunately.

    As to how Rand ended up a portal stone … that seems way too spoilery for me at this point!

    Yup :). I can say that it’s all theory and never specifically said. So mere chance (with Lanfear being opportunistic) is possible. Like waygates, portal stones are somewhat common. Unlike waygates, the commonness of portal stones doesn’t matter much. Waygates are important to the story in ways that I know Jordan had already considered when he introduced one in book 1 (spoilers through aMoL, so stopping there).