The Dragon Reborn by: Robert Jordan: Fault and Rejection (Chapters 4 to 6)

 

“What I do, I do because there is no other way.  He is hunting me again, and this time one of us has to die, I think.  There is no need for those around me to die, also.  Too many have died for me already.  I do not want to die either, and will not, if I can manage it.  There are lies in dreams, and death, but dreams hold truth too.  That was all, with no signature.  There was no need to wonder who Rand meant by “he.”  For Rand, for all of them, there could be only one. Ba’alzamon.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 90.

 

My introductory post to The Dragon Reborn looked at how the prologue and first three chapters shifted the writing and story away from the insular towards the wider world as the third installment in The Wheel of Time is integral in allowing the series span its fourteen books.  That frame shift continues in the following three chapters as the reader stays in Perrin’s head while the quote above reveals where Rand’s headspace is, on running away.  Rand is ready to rush into the Last Battle, leaving all of his followers and more importantly friends behind to chase after him because he knows that he is going to have to face Ba’alzamon again, and this time it is going to end in death.  The contemplation of this fact became the cover of this installment when the entire series was reprinted as trade sized paperback format in the United States.  This is brought on by, like the opening of The Great Hunt, Trollocs and multiple Fades attacking Rand’s camp and leaving the Tinker woman dead which affects both Perrin and Rand greatly, Perrin being the point of view character for this section.

 

Rand is motivated by his own perceived inaction, in the wake of the attack saying “Do you know what I did during the fight?...Nothing!  Nothing useful.  At first, when I reached out for the True Source, I couldn’t touch it, couldn’t grasp it.  It kept sliding away.  Then, when I got hold of it, I was going to burn them all, burn all the Trollocs and Fades. And all I could do was set fire to some trees.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 82.  There is the pain of saidin always calling him with its taint and that’s what pushes him over the edge into leaving his camp and people behind.  He will not be seen again until near the very end of the book outside of one or two chapters which feature his point of view, putting this book firmly in the goal of finding it’s title character, further supported by Chapter 6 being titled “The Hunt Begins”.  Rand is still running away from his responsibilities here though subconsciously, he is leaving everyone behind because he doesn’t want to see people hurt, but people Perrin meet on the ground in his camp show a different story.  Masema, a Sheinaran warrior introduced in The Great Hunt, becomes important here as a member of Rand’s camp who places the Dragon Reborn as a deity, reacting to Rand running off thusly ““You’re from his village,” Masema said hoarsely.  “You must know.  Why did the Lord Dragon abandon us? What sin did we commit?”” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 88.  Rand is rejecting this deification as a natural progression of his character throughout The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt where he is rejecting the Aes Sedai’s (mainly Moiraine’s) attempts to make him a false Dragon, but now is rejecting what comes with being the Dragon.  He has not been marked by herons and has fulfilled few of the prophecies.  This book implies a heading towards the Stone of Tear where a sword called Callandor is placed, the falling of the Stone of Tear being a prophecy Rand must undertake, but that has not happened yet.

 

Ba’alzamon is not only tempting Rand, goading him to leave, but also he and Lanfear, as well as two other yet unnamed of the thirteen Forsaken, are coming to Perrin, and presumably Mat, in their dreams.  In Perrin’s he is specifically playing on the internal struggle of Perrin and his axe, as well as his connection with the Tinkers.  Leya’s death is something that pushes him into a wolf-like rage, being referred to in the text for a period of that chapter as Young Bull to indicate the potential loss of humanity.  This does allow the wolves to come to the aid of the camp which may have been overrun had it not been for their timely arrival.  Perrin, being this novel’s primary viewpoint character, is meant to be paralleling Rand who has run off to fulfill his destiny while Min tells Perrin some of his, including the danger of a beautiful woman, a falcon and a hawk on each shoulder fighting, a Tinker with a sword, and an Aiel in a cage.  Perrin and Min’s conversation is interesting as Jordan establishes a relationship to make Min more important, although being mentioned for her visions throughout The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt, she has been supporting for other plots while here she is briefly important as a messenger heading towards the White Tower once again on Moiraine’s orders.  Min has grown to care about both Rand and Perrin as she has spent time in the camp, feeling a brotherly love towards the later which Perrin reciprocates (though it takes a minute for him to get it) in one moment where a man and woman work together to bring Rand to a place of momentary calm.  While that has not lasted, the entire section is all about Perrin and Rand coming to fault and rejecting their roles to a various degree.  This is something which has been building for an entire novel, and the coming to a head is one which will remain the thrust of the novel for each of the three plotlines, this first continuing for the next three chapters before the next storyline can begin.  Perrin will face a choice, a similar choice to Rand, but that is a choice for another day.

Father Time by: Lance Parkin

 

Father Time is an experience of a novel.  The penultimate installment of the amnesiac Eighth Doctor trapped on Earth and Parkin approaches this differently from any of the other novelists, instead of taking a single event, Parkin’s work spans the entirety of the 1980s where events on Earth drive the Doctor into adopting a daughter who is also a Time Lord stuck on Earth as a child with two human adopted parents who are killed when alien agents come after her.  This is a dense novel, only coming in at 281 pages, but each page is packed with Lance Parkin’s lyrical prose making each word feel deliberately chosen to make the story work.  The timescale of the entire 1980s makes the book and the arc it’s a part of feel for perhaps the first time, like the desperation the Doctor’s situation should be.  The Doctor as an amnesiac here is where Parkin shines the most in characterization, as he captures this ethereal nature to the character, especially unique to the Eighth Doctor, the breathless romantic epithet not being used but embodied to a man who doesn’t understand himself but puts that aside when a little girl is in trouble and needs to be taken in and cared for.  Parkin makes him feel small in an uncaring universe as while he has been having these adventures throughout history, he is becoming increasingly frustrated with the mystery of who he is, who Fitz is, and why the note asking him to meet Fitz seems to be from a woman.  The opening chapters before the character of Miranda is introduced, puts the Doctor at the heart of this mystery where a man is injured, subsequently killed, and onlookers do nothing perplexing Debbie Castle, a woman who wishes to help this injured man.

 

The aliens here are from the Klade and Parkin imbues Father Time with the idea of the War in Heaven and its after effects on the universe.  There is an intergalactic empire implied to be the remnants of the Time Lords and the last of the Time Lords is not the Doctor, but poor, young Miranda Dawkins who is just trying to grow up.  The book is split into three sections corresponding to the early, mid, and late 1980s so the reader is in the seat of the Doctor as he watches his daughter grow up and strike out on her own, the second act climax having Miranda being forced to travel the world to escape Ferran, the books main villain.  Ferran is essentially a horror film stalker attempting to kill Miranda and the Doctor (but mostly Miranda).  He finds himself worming his way into Miranda’s social circle just to torment her and build up towards the kill just to make her squirm.  There are some 1990s tropes used with this character which I find fascinating because Parkin uses them to his advantage in making the character feel slimy even if he doesn’t become the primary villain until about the halfway point, but when he does there is this real menace to the character.  There is this subtle underplay of sexual desire towards Miranda, who is portrayed as a mainly asexual character which is important for what eventually develops.  There is this predatory bent throughout the middle of the book which may put off some, but is done with taste from Parkin who never goes down an edgy, or dark and gritty route with this type of character.

 

The character of Miranda and her interactions with the Doctor are incredibly interesting.  When she is introduced, there is a lot of discussion of Miranda as acting odd for a child.  It never feels like Parkin is just writing a nerd, but a true alien who has been raised on Earth.  Miranda is a character who develops over the course of the novel to be a woman who never quite understands why people act in the way that she does, and feels more at home with the Doctor, but ends the novel in a position of power because she can see herself doing good in this role which makes for an interesting development as the reader feels her growing up across this decade.  The finds normal human thinking and activity to be odd, but still participates in society.  As a child and teenager she has friends, friends she does care about even if she doesn’t always understand why they drink, smoke, and rebel as teenagers.  She is incredibly empathetic and leaves the UK when the time comes to save her father.  She leaves Earth in the end to become Empress which is an unexpected, but understandable development as Parkin teases brilliant ideas for where the Eighth Doctor Adventures can go from here.  While Justin Richards’ The Burning which begun this arc could be a mission statement, it is Father Time that feels the most in line with any sort of mission statement for the Eighth Doctor Adventures going forward.

 

Overall, Father Time’s lyrical prose makes it a slower read, especially for a Doctor Who novel published by BBC Books, it is perhaps the best piece of Eighth Doctor content to come from this era, and may be the highest in any media for the character.  It uses its page count incredibly well to convey this mystery about what it means now that Gallifrey is destroyed without ever really name dropping Gallifrey.  The subtext is incredibly important and is what elevates the novel above what has already been an amazing run of books to bring Doctor Who into the 21^st century by looking back at what led to the end of the 20^th.  10/10.

The Moderator by: Steve Parkhouse with art by: Steve Dillon

 

The Moderator is written by Steve Parkhouse with art by Steve Dillon.  It was released in Doctor Who Monthly issue 84 and Doctor Who Magazine issues 86-87 (December 1983, February-March 1984) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The Tides of Time by Panini Books.

 

It is sometimes interesting when pieces of media end up thematically connecting or developing in parallel without any sort of crossover.  The end of the Fifth Doctor’s Doctor Who Magazine run ends with The Moderator which wraps up the fallout from 4-Dimensional Vistas and does some setup for the first story of the Sixth Doctor’s run and is a critique on late stage capitalism by introducing the character of Josiah W. Dogbolter, a businessman who is intent on conquering the galaxy for capital and sending assassins after those who stand in his way.  Much like The Caves of Androzani this is a critique of the politics of the 1980s through the lens of alien worlds that ends with a prominent character death and the Doctor being stuck unable to actually save anything.  The Doctor’s plot here is essentially attempting to get his companion Gus home, which he does, but the twist ending of The Moderator is that the titular moderator, an alien hired to deal with wrapping up Dogbolter’s schemes.  The story is simple, with Dogbolter sending the Moderator to Celeste where a link to Earth is being made to invade, the Doctor interferes and ends up stopping it.  He gets Gus home to Earth, but the Moderator tracks the TARDIS and fatally shoots Gus, but not before being wounded as Gus has enough time to get one shot off to also wound the Moderator.  This is where it is revealed that the narration which has been running through this story is the Moderator relaying the story from a hospital bed to Dogbolter’s robotic assistant, who promptly turns off the life support before quietly leaving.  This means the Fifth Doctor’s run ends on an incredibly dark note which adds another layer of menace to Dogbolter, setting up nicely the Sixth Doctor run.

 

Steve Parkhouse will continue to be the writer for some of the Sixth Doctor’s run (he’ll stay on the strip until March 1985 when editor Alan McKenzie steps in for a year long run followed by the switch to alternating authors for the strip going forward as a single author is quite a lot to ask for a Doctor Who strip.  Parkhouse’s style throughout the Fifth Doctor strip may have put the Doctor in the background more often than not, even in the long stories, but even with The Moderator’s three issues the pushing to the background feels more earned here with the framing device.  The story is also paired with art by Steve Dillon, who would later go on to work on Hellblazer and Preacher, doing his only main strip here and it is a shame he did not stay on as an artist.  Dillon’s work as artist began with the backup strip way back when the magazine was Doctor Who weekly, but him coming in for essentially his last strip here is a great sendoff.

 

Overall, a sendoff is basically what The Moderator is.  It’s bringing in a new era with a new Doctor, who will have longer in comics format than a sadly cut short television run with the 1985-1986 18 month hiatus.  It’s also the perfect capstone to the Fifth Doctor’s run making it the only Fifth Doctor comic to earn a perfect 10/10.

Anno Dracula by: Kim Newman

 

Dracula is perhaps the one classic novel I find myself coming back to the most.  It’s a tale representing several things that has resonated through the years, skyrocketing vampires to popularity as well as having several interesting and valid readings.  British journalist Kim Newman is one such person who has his own readings of Dracula as well as dedicating much of his work to horror fiction and film history, the 1931 Bela Lugosi led Dracula being responsible for his love of horror.  In the mid-1980s, he and Neil Gaiman came up with an idea for what if Dracula won and what an alternate history telling of Dracula may be like, something they might work on together.  Ultimately that never came to be, but in 1992, Newman published Anno Dracula, playing on the same idea.  The book is set in 1888 where Dracula has killed Abraham Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and Quincy Morris, fully converted Mina Harker into a vampire, and found himself marrying Queen Victoria.  Vampirism has now essentially become a status symbol of the upper class with the lower classes essentially becoming food for the upper classes, Newman pulling a class narrative throughout the book but through the eyes of the upper class for the majority.  Those who are rich who don’t turn such as Charles Beauregard and Penelope Churchward are pressured into doing so, and those who are turned from lower classes are generally prejudiced against.  The main event of the novel is the investigations surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders, still prostitutes, but all done with silver knives as silver kills vampires.

 

As this is a sequel to Dracula and thus already set in a fictional universe, Anno Dracula also blends history with several pieces of Victorian and post-Victorian fiction.  This is a universe where Sherlock Holmes exists as well as several other fictional vampires, both in and outside of the public domain (Barnabas Collins from the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows makes a cameo).  Adam Adamant from the cult 1960s Adam Adamant Lives is name dropped, showing just how obscure Newman would go.  I am certain there are references that I am not catching, and Newman is skilled enough to not make the references feel distracting to the narrative.  This is at least for the most part as the original characters don’t always feel as if they have their own authorial voices.  The narrative is an exploration of society, not a murder mystery, as it’s quite obvious who Jack the Ripper is going to turn out to be from the very first page.  Newman is interesting as you don’t entirely want the Ripper to be caught, the vampires while acting as if they have made society better have only brought much of the seediness of Victorian times to the forefront while still keeping the British stiff upper lips.  People deciding to become vampires willingly is an interesting idea for a book which Newman explores throughout Anno Dracula, with Dracula himself being a background figure who has wormed his way to the heart of Britain, but as with much of the monarchy finds himself not actively participating in the plot.  This makes it interesting as several other vampires are explored, both fictional and historical figures who have given themselves over.

 

It’s also a book that moves along at a really nice pace, with Newman switching points of view from vampires to still living humans who want to be vampires to those who despise the vampires.  Beauregard in particular is interesting as he has come to terms with what life is while his fiancé Penelope wishes to maintain their status as the upper class by becoming vampires.  Beauregard works for the Diogenes Club from Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter and is one of many investigating the murders which call into question London’s lifestyle, much like the historical Jack the Ripper case would inevitably do.  He is a fascinating main character as he interacts with vampires and humans both of whom he has formed deep, impactful relationships with as vampires especially are both inhuman and human monsters who find themselves in society.  Penelope as a socialite is also guarded by Victorian England’s views on women which Newman also explores, vampires integrating themselves into society not immediately causing a level playing field for women.  There are still societal revolutions to come for progress and adding vampires in the mix may have even slowed down that progress with humanity slowly becoming a minority in London and indeed the rest of the world.

 

Overall, Anno Dracula is a fascinating idea for an alternative history tale adding in the fantastic and horrific together for what’s a bloody good time.  It isn’t perfect and has an issue of Newman’s own voice not quite matching that of the characters he takes from other stories, at least for the non-historical characters.  It also doesn’t quite work as marketed as a mystery, but is something that shines in the ideas that it plays around with throughout the book.  8/10.

The King of Terror by: Keith Topping

 

There is a joke in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about two warring factions uniting to find the being that insulted them, that being Arthur Dent.  The punchline being that the two factions of alien races are small, and Arthur never even knows they’re after him.  It is that joke which feels like the inspiration for The King of Terror, Keith Topping’s first solo novel, and third overall, and honestly, it might just be why the book falls incredibly flat.  It’s premise is essentially a cliché, Adams only makes it work by turning it into an absurdist joke.  The book starts out perfectly fine with the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough finding their way into a conspiracy involving UNIT and with UNIT comes Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.  This is a Brigadier post-Battlefield as the book also takes place at the turn of the millennium, something that several Past Doctor Adventures would do.  It doesn’t take long for the conspiracy to lead to California and that’s where the book slows down its pace to essentially a drudge.  The initial chapters are promising, Topping displays the prose that made The Devil Goblins from Neptune and The Hollow Men such enjoyable reads with the only quibble being the characterization of the leads is a touch bland, but hey this is a Fifth Doctor novel, so he tends to be on the bland side at times. 

 

Tegan and Turlough have little to do in the opening chapters and once the action moves to America, their characterization is thrown off-kilter, Turlough especially taking the more annoying aspects of the character and amplifying them to an extreme degree.  He gets drunk and whines constantly throughout the book, and there is a rather unfortunate subplot that is unnecessarily dark for everyone involved.  The central aliens at the core of the book, the Jex and the Canavitchi, could have been fun in a campy B-movie style plot, something that the cover of the book actually looks like it’s going for, but Topping plays them straight as being behind a grand conspiracy to bring their battle to Earth, creating as the Brigadier says at one point a war in heaven.  Topping has some imagery feel like it’s meant to be referencing the Eighth Doctor Adventures’ concept of the War in Heaven, but it isn’t explicit and feels more like Topping attempting to be creative with the imagery in the book.  The pace of the book also is actively working against it, instead of a mystery slowly revealing layers and putting pieces together, the book is a slog to get through.  Usually it only takes me a couple of days to get through a book this size, but this one took me over a week and a half simply because there wasn’t much motivation for me to continue.  There is some effort in the book to make a conspiracy at the American UNIT work and set up some things for a potential sequel (a sequel that Topping would never write due to only penning one more book), but this is a book which had an inkling of a good idea that wasn’t capitalized on.

 

Overall, The King of Terror is a book which should work on paper but does not in practice.  There are scant few moments when it does shine, and it is just a little shorter than the other Past Doctor Adventures.  It is mainly let down by a plot that comes across as cliched, less than standard Doctor Who fair, and characterization that either doesn’t seem to understand why a character would work, or just keeping the bland aspects to a character.  There are a few good ideas, but it’s one of the most skippable Past Doctor Adventures.  2/10.

4-Dimensional Vistas by: Steve Parkhouse with art by: Mick Austin and letters by: Jerry Paris and Steve Craddock

 

4-Dimensional Vistas is written by Steve Parkhouse with art by Mick Austin and letters by Jerry Paris and Steve Craddock.  It was released in Doctor Who Monthly issues 78-83 (June – November 1983) and is reprinted in its original form in Doctor Who: The Tides of Time by Panini Books.

 

This one was honestly a surprise.  After Lunar Lagoon left me quite cold on where the Fifth Doctor’s comic adventures was going, 4-Dimensional Vistas is the final six issue epic from Parkhouse for the Fifth Doctor that wraps a lot of the threads up from the strip and building towards the point where the Doctor is going to regenerate.  The story ends with a character predicting the death, and at the time of this release Colin Baker had already been announced as the Doctor and Peter Davison would have been filming The Caves of Androzani while this story was wrapping up.  It gives the Fifth Doctor one last epic to essentially go out on with the implication being the final story of the strip, The Moderator, being focused on setting up the Sixth Doctor’s run which would begin as soon as The Twin Dilemma finished airing in March 1984.  The story is one that deals with the building towards the end of the universe in a nice parallel with The Tides of Time, where the Doctor discovers that all of the troubles he has been facing since Stockbridge have been the work of the Meddling Monk who is attempting to use Earth and its history to build this crystal with the Ice Warriors to take over the universe.  The twist appearance of the Monk and the Ice Warriors comes right out of left field, as the last time a returning villain appeared in the strip was Junk-Yard Demon and before that was Dragon’s Claw.  The strip makes the wise decision to pass between the Doctor and the Monk, the Monk just doing it for the psychotic joy of being able to change history.

 

The first issue is a really nice epilogue to Lunar Lagoon which gives us the Doctor on the beach being attacked by Gus, an American soldier who was in the background in the last story, but is upgraded to companion here.  He is not trusting of the Doctor throughout the first issue and we get this great reveal that World War II was not in the 1940s, but in the 1960s in this particular universe, giving the Doctor the first real moment of what has been going on.  There is this utterly charming moment where the Fifth Doctor feels like the Fifth Doctor where he gets lost in thought and wanders off into the sea, nearly drowning.  This partially feels like a little bit of action to keep the first issue moving and get Gus to save the Doctor so he can get a companion for this and the next story.  Gus as a character is a bit one note, he is essentially there to have the companion role and being American is interesting as it gives the Doctor someone to explain things to, but he is not given much character on his own.  That’s where a lot of 4-Dimensional Vistas falls apart in the back half, when a bunch of faceless soldiers are added in to build towards the conclusion as it just becomes some all out action.  The action isn’t bad, it’s still drawn quite nicely despite not having some of the best backgrounds with Austin’s art, yet it still flows nicely from one scene to the next.

 

Overall, 4-Dimensional Vistas, despite continuing the trend of having very odd titles (I think it’s supposed to be a reference to the parallel dimensions featured), brings the Fifth Doctor’s Doctor Who Monthly strip back to what it had been.  The long running threads of time being messed with are tied together mostly nicely with a return from a character who people wouldn’t be expecting at all.  8/10.

The Dragon Reborn by: Robert Jordan: The Shift Begins (Prologue to Chapter 3)

 

“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend.  Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.  In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist.  The wind was not the beginning, there are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.  But it was a beginning.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 31.

 

The Wheel of Time is no longer simply a book series.  As of writing this the first four episodes of the television adaptation have been released and while I do have plans to cover them in essay format, I will be waiting until after all eight episodes of the first season have been released.  In the meantime, The Dragon Reborn is the third book of The Wheel of Time and it’s opening chapters mark the beginning of a shift in Robert Jordan’s series.  The Great Hunt ended with Rand declaring himself the Dragon Reborn, not entirely by choice, accepting that is who he is even if he will still be grappling with what exactly that means, but The Dragon Reborn begins some months after that to properly deal with the fallout of what is a farm boy declaring himself a lord who is coming to save the world.  The prologue begins our shift by following the style of prologue for The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt in following characters who don’t get other points of view, in this case Pedron Niall, Lord Captain Commander of the Children of the Light, reacting to Rand’s declaration of being the Dragon Reborn.  The entire idea is that Niall wishes to use what he thinks is a false Dragon, yet is asking Jachim Carridin to bring him in alive, due to plans to use the political upheaval to his own ends.  This is the first time the reader is able to see the politics of the wider world moving on their own.  Carridin is revealed to be a Darkfriend after the prologue gives us a section from his head (a Fade telling him to set out and kill Rand against orders of Niall, because why would the Dark One be interested in what the Whitecloaks are planning?  It opens up the world oh so much, and while these Whitecloak characters will reappear, the prologue itself is continuing the slight trend of prologues getting longer.  Eventually they will reach a length of approximately 100 pages, and this is where that begins.

 

When the novel begins proper, the frameshift becomes all the more apparent with the point of view being not our typical opening with Rand al’Thor, but with Perrin Aybara just outside of Rand’s camp.  Perrin’s point of view is the point of view for the first eight chapters, until Rand will eventually get some of the ninth to him, before moving to Egwene.  While these may be slight spoilers for what’s coming, it’s actually really important to show just how much the ending of The Great Hunt changes things.  The Great Hunt was a book which didn’t explicitly say the wedge was being driven away between Rand, Mat, and Perrin, but The Dragon Reborn makes that clear.  Mat is gone, away for healing at the White Tower, Perrin is our point of view, Rand is described as a lord, and Jordan has implemented a timeskip into the next year.  Immediately from Perrin’s thought process there’s something there “I am tired o all this waiting, this sitting while Moiraine holds is tight as tongs.  Burn the Aes Sedai! When will it end?...He sniffed the wind without thinking.  The smell of horse predominated, and of men and men’s sweat. A rabbit had gone through those trees not long since…He realized what he was doing and stopped it.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 32.  Perrin is already struggling against the wolves, attempting to not give in to animalistic instincts and is being pushed away from Rand.  It’s Moiraine and Rand who are calling the shots, Moiraine who is waiting for something, while Perrin is just tired.  When his group finds the woman they’re waiting for, a Tinker called Leya, he thinks this “Sad? I’m not sad, just. . . . Light, I don’t know.  There ought to be a better way, that’s all.” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 39.  Perrin is tired from the violence, he’s not a fighter, he’s a blacksmith and because this is where we can actually see an extended period in is head that informs just what is being shifted.  It’s why the Tinkers are being brought back into the story, to look at a possible outcome of this internal conflict.

 

The reader doesn’t actually see Rand until the second chapter “Saidin”.  The chapter has the air of horror looming, Min sees that the Tinker woman is going to die.  Perrin thinks he might be able to work out if that means the camp is going to be attacked, but that’s not how Min’s viewings work on a fundamental level.  It’s here where we get to see what Rand is doing, that is cracking slowly under the pressure of being the Dragon Reborn.  There is a repeat of the prophecy of the herons and dragons which will mark the Dragon Reborn.  Perrin cannot entirely provide the comfort that Rand needs, but does provide someone to confide in.  The reader doesn’t get to see inside Rand’s head here for the first time, so all we have is Perrin being calm and not immediately answering the questions.  There’s the question of if Mat is safe at Tar Valon now, and when Perrin finds the words, this is what happens ““Lately…I find myself wishing I was still a blacksmith. Do you. . . . Do you wish you were still just a shepherd?”  “Duty,” muttered Rand. “Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.  That’s what they say in Shienar. ‘The Dark One is stirring.  The Last Battle is coming.  And the Drgon Reborn has to face the Dark One in the Last Battle, or the Shadow will cover everything.  The Wheel of Time is broken…There’s only me...I have the duty, because there isn’t anybody else, now is there?”” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 51.  Rand is visibly breaking down, not going insane quite yet, but cracking under the pressure because that is just what he is going to have to do.  This isn’t something that he wants to do, he hates it and has barely been keeping it together.

 

The break becomes physical when an earthquake occurs, brought on by Rand grasping saidin and channeling.  This is the point where Rand starts to have the real problem of grabbing saidin as a crutch, like an addict trying to get their next hit, “It is always there.  Calling to me.  Pulling at me.  Saidin.  The male half of the True Source.  Sometimes I can’t stop myself from reaching out for it…I can feel the taint even before I touch it…like a thin coat of vileness trying to hide the Light.  It turns my stomach, but I cannot help myself. I cannot! Only sometimes, I reach out, and it’s like trying to catch air…What if that happens when the Last Battle comes? What if I reach out and catch nothing?...I did not mean to do this.  It was as if I tried to open a tap, and instead pulled the whole tap out of the barrel.  It . . . filled me.  I had to send it somewhere before it burned me up, but I . . . I did not mean this” – The Dragon Reborn, p. 53.  This loss of control will have consequence, Moiraine, in the next chapter which essentially recaps the prologue but for our characters, outright states that this loss of control could bring the Dark One upon them all.  There have been deaths which are never confirmed to be from Carridin from the prologue, but heavily implied as the corpses resemble Rand.  This chapter is simply filling in our characters, but it doesn’t matter as by this point the reader should be realizing just how much everything is shifting.  We are moving away from Rand to other people and their role to play, as Rand only appears here from an outsider’s perspective.  His presence is felt throughout these chapters obviously, and he has actions, but we don’t get to see just what he is thinking.  The ball is rolling, things are building, and are about to burst.