The Wheel of Time: The Shadow Rising

The fourth book of The Wheel of Time has an ominous name -- The Shadow Rising -- and I was expecting something similar to The Empire Strikes Back; the bad guys seem to be winning and not so nice things happen. And I guess stuff did happen eventually, to a certain degree.

The Shadow Rising starts slow, or rather, in a standstill; everyone is waiting for Rand to decide what he's going to do after conquering the Stone of Tear and grabbing Callandor. And he does take his time, trying to find guidance from the Prophecies of the Dragon. It takes an incident of magic going wild and a trolloc attack, until things get going, and the book splits into three main storylines; one following Rand into the Aiel Waste, the second following Elayne and Nynaeve in their hunt for the Black Ajah, and the third following Perrin who returns to Two Rivers.

The character perspective changes more than in the previous books. It deepens the various characters but it also leads the reader knowing more than the "main" characters (Rand, Perrin, and Mat) and might cause moments of frustration. Thus, I'm not a big fan of that but it seems to work alright. Also, Rand's perspective isn't ignored as it almost completely was in The Dragon Reborn. This alone leads me to like The Shadow Rising more than the previous installation.

Mat follows Rand into the Three-fold Land and apart from his little adventure in Rhuidean, that's almost all he does. I predict he will become a warlord or something similar in the future like Perrin now has. Egwene's premonitions suggest that he gets in some sort of trouble with the Seanchans, though, and that's obviously what will happen. That doesn't exclude becoming a warlord, however.

Perrin rallies the Two Rivers folk against the trollocs and the Children of the Light. People start calling him Lord Perrin Goldeneyes, which he hates, of course. I wish there were wolves in this book but some Slayer guy has been killing them. The Slayer's identity is revealed later; who would've guessed who he was. I wonder if Robert Jordan even tried to surprise with these things; no revelation has yet been really unexpected.

The White Tower experiences a coup when the current Amyrlin Seat, Siuan Sanche, is stilled by a group of Aes Sedai led by Elaida, who might or might not be of the Black Ajah. Elaida becomes the new Amyrlin Seat and the Aes Sedai are split in two; the Blue Ajah decides to take their leave with most of the Green and Yellow Ajahs. Egwene will be raised to lead the rebelling Aes Sedai and unite them once more, as has been seen in her dreams -- Jordan definitely liked spoiling the reader.

The Red Ajah (Elaida is one them) are a weird bunch. They probably have started from a noble cause to prevent channeling men (who go mad due to saidin's taint) breaking the world again, but have grown to hate every man, regardless of being able to channel or not. The Red Ajah may not be the Dark One's minions, yet they seem to cause trouble like they were.

Another such faction are the Children of the Light, of which I'd like to read more from WoT's wiki but there are way too many spoilers in there for me at this point. They seem overly zealous in their quest to defeat darkfriends, and nigh implausible. But I guess they represent some extreme part of the world's population. I wonder if they have some area where they draw most of their new recruits.

Once again, the Forsaken seem to get less scary; evidently, they are no more than strong Aes Sedai who just have had time to hone their skills. Nynaeve holding Moghedien trapped a while proves this. Also, their link to the Dark One apparently prevents the male Forsaken going mad. Tough luck for Asmodean whose link Rand severs. Lanfear, however, hasn't shown much weaknesses thus far, and I guess she will be around till the very end.

I'd say The Shadow Rising isn't as grand as The Great Hunt was; Perrin's stand in Emond's Field is a great one but it doesn't quite reach the scale of the battle in Falme. And it isn't the final ending of the book; The Shadow Rising ends like The Dragon Reborn; Rand running about, doing his thing. That being said, the novel is still a great read and the Aiel -- the People of the Dragon -- are quite interesting. I hope there's more of them in the next one -- The Fires of Heaven -- which I have already started.