From: mforget@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Michel Forget)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: The Shadow Rising (no spoilers)
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 92 03:38:06 MDT
Organization: Edmonton Remote Systems #2, Edmonton, AB, Canada

dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

- 2. Loial appears to be suffering from the Longing, and will probably start
-    sickening visibly in the next book.

I'm not so sure about him suffering from the longing.  He has only been
away for a few years (less than ten) and in that time he has visited
two Steddings.  There is always that abandoned Stedding that he and Perrin
were at (which is where Perrin killed those whitecloaks a few books ago).

- 3. The implication from this book and the earlier ones is that The Dragon
-    went mad almost immediately, while The Dragon Reborn is expected to go
-    mad over a period of months and/or years.  There are a number of ways
-    to rationalize this, but it strikes me mainly as a matter of plot
-    convenience.

Rand does appear to be losing his faculties steadily.  His personality is
also changing.

- 1. A sprinkling of the names used have a heavy freight of association
-    from our own culture, and I think it was a mistake on Jordan's part
-    to use them here.  The most blatant examples are Artur Paendrag,
-    Shai'tan, Sammael, Shayol Ghul.  It could be argued that this is
-    the author's way of showing the persistence of the greatest legends
-    or influences from one age, or even turn of the wheel, to the next,
-    but to me it came across as a distracting lack of originality.

I have to wonder about this.  Most of the names seem to be corruptions of
names we are familliar with.  Could the world Jordan is writing about be our
own, but far into the future (or past)?  I would think the future because Thom
(the Bard) makes a number of references to the Age before the Age Of Legends
(to a modern-seeming world, it would appear).  Even the names Thom gives the
heroes sound a little like names we know.  Or perhaps not...:)

- 3. Darell K Sweet doesn't seem to have put a lot of thought into the
-    details of the cover art.  The clothing and hair appear to be an
-    amalgam of nineteenth- and twentieth-century western styles.  The
-    bow is supposed to be a longbow, but it isn't, and if the holder is
-    a righty (as I infer from his stance), he's going to find it very
-    hard to use that bow with a left-side quiver.  His companion is
-    holding a mug in his right hand, which suggests that he's got his
-    sword buckled on the wrong side.  (Sweet is going for composition,
-    of course.)  For a pseudo-medieval culture, there's an awful lot
-    of iron-mongery being mistreated on the ground or over that extremely
-    stupid and dangerous fire.  (It's not a cooking fire, and the
-    branches holding the pots aren't going to last long enough.)  And
-    I'm not sure of this, but isn't having a glass bottle like that for
-    the brandy (or whatever) an unlikely luxury for the implicit
-    technological level -- especially on the road?
-

The cover was awful.  It looks decent, but nothing on it seems correct (as you
pointed out) and I cannot recognize any of the characters.  It would be easier
if they had some of Matt's knives, or Perrin's axe.  Does anyone know WHO they
are supposed to be?

- -----
- Dani Zweig
- dani@netcom.com
-
-    'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
-    Go alike, yet each believes his own
-               --Alexander Pope
-

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<<        mforget@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca          >>
<<  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  >>
<<               Michel Forget                  >>
<<   The Key:  Spirit over mind over matter.    >>
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