- Prologue was good, but the meeting of the remaining Forsaken at the end was SUPER cool.
Let's see, at that point Aginor, Balthamel, Be'lal, and Ishamael are all dead and Asmodean is captive. Lanfear, Mesaana, Graendal, Semirhage, Moghedian, Demandred, Sammael, and Rahvin remain at large. Huh, now that I think about it it's rather interesting how the casualties are uniformly male at that point, and there are enough of them to reverse which gender holds the majority among the Forsaken.
-Siuan, Min, Leane, and Logain managed to escape the trouble for accidentally burning down that barn. Not sure exactly where their story is going but it's still interesting to see how Siuan and Leane live without the Power.
Four lonely travelers, no less than three of them stilled or gentled. Quite a reversal for the whole lot of them, yet they still manage to make something very interesting of it. Just wait a bit longer.
-Moiraine explains balefire to Rand. How it doesn't actually obliterate, but erases from time whatever it hits. Depending on how powerful the wielder is, the amount of time you actually erase the subject from changes. Erase too much, and other events linked to the victim are subject to change. Even the Forsaken rarely used it for fear of this. AWESOME concept. I'm glad it isn't just another sonic boom or some crap like that. It's nice how RJ didn't explain EVERYTHING about all the Powers in one book, but stretches it out over the series. That keeps the excitement up because it means there's a lot more to learn.
As I recall it is mentioned at some point that, for one year, both sides in the War of Power used balefire without restriction. At the end of that year, both sides unilaterally stopped using it roughly simultaneously without any discussion or agreement. Try to imagine Rand wielding
Callandor and shooting the strongest beam of balefire he could straight at a city. Now think about the chaos that would result from an
entire city being retroactively annihilated for
multiple days in the past. That kind of damage on that scale is, apparently, capable of threatening the Pattern itself and potentially causing the end of the world if repeated enough times, and even the bad guys wanted the world to still exist so they could rule over it.
-Apparently, Couladin has gathered quite an army and is traveling across the Waste to cross the Dragonwall to attack Carhein I think. Rand immediately makes it his mission to take his army and catch up with them.
Four clans sought King Laman's head and no army Carhien and all its allies could field could stop them before they accomplished their goal and turned back of their own accord. Couladin and Rand between them are now leading all twelve clans across the Dragonwall. It's going to get messy. Fortunately, most of them are following Rand.
BTW, I just want to thank all you guys for your responses. Especially douglas, whose post really helped me. You must have spent a long time on it and I appreciate it!
Glad to be of assistance.
