Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, ‘A Memory of Light’ (2013)

 

Some time ago, I read the whole of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. You can, should you be interested, see what I wrote in reaction to those many, many books in this volume (a mere £3.51 in paperback, it seems). Long story short: I was not a fan, and said a number of disobliging things about how derivative, badly-written and increasingly madly plotted, or non-plotted, these eleven fat tomes are. As the series proceeds each 800+-page instalment covers less and less ground in terms of narrative. It seems The Eye of the World (1990) was originally planned as the first portion of a Fantasy trilogy, but as Jordan went on commercial success and his ego extended the work according to a hyperbolic-curve Achilles-and-the-Tortoise logic.

Jordan’s fantasyland is a retread of Middle Earth: the ‘third age’ of a quasi-European landscape divided between bourgeois societies and older pre-modern ones, a great city ‘of the White Tower’ instead of Minas Tirith and a Volcanic ‘Mount Dhoom’. There are humble folk living in small villages menaced by sinister dark riders and trollish orcs, here called ‘trollocs’. There are colour-coded wizard castes, blue, white, brown, grey and so on, including ‘Black Ajahs’ who serve the dark lord. As in Tolkien the world is the staging place for a great war between the forces of evil, led by ‘the Dark One’, and the forces of good. For the sake of variation, Jordan rings superficial changes on his template: for instance, his wizards are exclusively women, the ‘Aes Sedai’ (aes aes baby—said I). Magic in this world is a kind of standing-reserve, an aquifer that can be tapped by various people, deriving ultimately from the One Power that turns the mighty wheel of existence from which the series takes its title—but with this hitch, that although women (or: some women) can use this magic for good, when men do so it inevitably drives them mad and turns them to evil.

In The Eye of the World the novel’s gender-swapped Gandalf, Moiraine, and her Strider-like warrior companion al'Lan Mandragoran come to the distant village of Edmond’s Field. Here the main characters are living their humble lives: young Rand al-Thor, a sheep farmer, and his friend Thom (not Sam) and their friends Merry and Pippin—by which I mean to say Mat and Perrin. But the village is attacked by trollocs and dark riders. Moraine, who believes one of this group to be the prophesied ‘dragon reborn’, the hero who will lead the battle against the Dark Lord, hurries them away to safety, along with a young girl with healing powers called Nynaeve and a couple of others. From here the adventures spool out at immense length, characters travel all over the map (with which each volume is furnished), they separate, they reunite. Some narrative tension is provided in the first volume by a studied uncertainty as to which of the various friends actually is ‘the dragon reborn’, although this is resolved by the end of the book: it's Rand.

The first book, whilst nothing special, is pretty readable. But by volume 4, The Shadow Rising (1992), the momentum of the series begins a pronounced deceleration. As individual volumes grow longer (1993’s The Fires of Heaven is over a thousand pages) less and less actually happens. Instead characters are shuffled about, fixtures, fittings and costumes are described at enormous length, women tug on their braids and adjust their skirts, people drink tea and drink more tea. From time to time, Jordan stages his particular sexual kink, and women are tied up and briskly spanked. But in terms of advancing the story: nothing, again nothing, the inevitably impending final battle between the Dark Lord and the Dragon Reborn is deferred, and endlessly deferred. In the seventh volume A Crown of Swords (1996) a parching drought afflicts the world, which can only be ameliorated with a magic bowl. Nynaeve, Elayne and Mat go looking for this bowl, which they finally find at the end of volume 8, The Path of Daggers (1998); otherwise the story treads water for one and a half thousand pages. In volume 9 Winter’s Heart (1994) the story freezes altogether, as its title might imply: a winter grips the land, and nothing happens. And then, after volume 11, Knife of Dreams (2005), Jordan himself shuffled off his mortal coil, tugged down the braid and joined the choir invisible, and it looked as though the deferral would be eternal.

This is how I summed-up the whole series, in the above-linked Sibilant Fricative book.

Mostly I was reminded of a line from Tibor Fischer's celebrated, or notorious, Daily Telegraph review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog: “the way publishing works is that you go from not being published no matter how good you are, to being published no matter how bad you are.” I can't think of a clearer illustration of that baleful truth than these novels. The first is pretty good; the last are staggeringly, stupefyingly bad.

But the series was, and continues to be, hugely successful; selling millions of copies annually, adapted into an ongoing Amazon TV show with a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. Go figure. At any rate, Jordan's publishers commissioned Brandon Sanderson, not a master of laconic concision, to complete the sequence and write the final, twelfth installment. This he did at characteristic length, over three enormous, puddingy books: The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010) and A Memory of Light (2013).

So here we are. Should (I asked myself) I read these three books? I'm wrapping-up a History of Fantasy at the moment, and Wheel of Time, for all its profound and prolonged rubbishness, is a notable work in the mode just in terms of its popularity. Then again, I thought, I could perhaps invest that time in something less unpleasant, like sticking pins in my eyes or striking myself on the head with a hammer. In the end I compromised: I skimmed The Gathering Storm, omitted Towers of Midnight altogether and went through A Memory of Light. Surely in this final volume, I told myself, something must happen! And something does: the Dragon Reborn and the Dark Lord finally get to have their big battle, the forces of light winning (spoiler, but ... come on). At the same time Sanderson stays true to Jordan's distinctiveness, and his own muse, and piddles around at enormous, draining, rubbishing length.

This is not a well-written book. The characters all speak with the same voice (if you took away the names and just had the dialogue you wouldn't be able to tell who was speaking at any given moment),  description is bland and unvivid, pacing is sluggish, tension is nonexistent. Sanderson has carried-over one of Jordan's quirks as a stylist: that of a writer who jots down the first thing that occurs to him and thereafter never revises or polishes it. What do we have?

Jarid wiped his brow with his trembling palm, then slammed it on his map. [14]

All the best military leaders headbutt their strategy maps before battle. Didn't you know?

Karam began to tie a coin pouch at his waist: the gold coins inside had melted into a single lump, like pigs’ ears in a jar. [15]

The coins were like ... wait, what?

“Unsurprisingly,” he mumbled around her lips, “this is much more fun.” [184]

As I said to my beautiful wife only the other day: “mmMM mmbbMMMM nnmMMMbbb”.

Perrin glanced at Rand, then noticed the smile on Egwene’s lips. He caught the scent of her satisfaction. [215]

What does satisfaction smell like? I was going to check by obtaining a bottle of Chanel's Eau de Satisfaction, but when I got to the shop they had sold out. It's like that Rolling Stones song.

Mat thought eating a meal these days was like going to a dance where there were only ugly girls [326]

Mat should stop eating in the Sexism Restaurant.

Perrin had grown accustomed to—though not fond of—women who looked not a year or two older than he addressing him. [348]

Perrin should do likewise.

Sweat crept down Mat’s brow like ants. [390]

This is such a gloriously bad simile it's actually quite endearing. It's like a small kid trying to write English prose.

He climbed to the fourth level. He could smell the sea on the breeze. Things always smelled better when one was up high. Perhaps that was because heads smelled better than feet did. [391]

I scratch my head at the logic of that because.

Selucia looked out. Her skin was the color of cream, but any man who thought her soft would soon learn otherwise. Selucia could teach sandpaper a thing or two about being tough. [392]

Selucia appears to have some revolting skin condition. She should get hold of some Chanel's Crème Hydration de Satisfaction.

A middle-aged woman entered with her dark hair in a bun. She was squat, shaped kind of like a bell. [483]

On the downside, no arms or legs; but on the upside think of the resonant chiming noise she is able to make! (Seriously though: that kind of is a real tell. No self-respecting writer would leave that in their final draft).

He almost did not notice that the servants were undressing him. [483]

Happens to me all the time, that.

Uno took a deep breath and continued. “I can’t understand it, Mother. Some goat-headed messenger told us that the Aes Sedai on the hills were in trouble and we needed to go up the flaming backsides of the Trollocs attacking them.” [700]

They're not going to win ‘Rear of the Year’ like that.

Rand faced the emptiness. “So,” he said, “this is where it will really happen. Moridin would have had me believe a simple sword fight would decide this.”

HE IS OF ME. BUT HIS EYES ARE SMALL.

“Yes,” Rand said. “I have noticed.” [769]

I have nothing to add to this exchange.

The dragons probably looked busted up something good. [847]

That's an actual sentence, actually in this book. Can you imagine Tolkien writing that? Or Ursula Le Guin? Sheesh.

Honestly. Women. She did have a nice backside, but Mat had only mentioned it to be friendly. He was a married man. [848]

Doesn't Mary have a lovely bottom! Of course they all have lovely bottoms.

[Gawyn’s] eyes clouded with cold perspiration. [876]

Sweating eyeballs would be out of place in a realist novel, of course; but this is Fantasy, and all sorts of magical things are possible.

She was beautiful, with perfect ears and wonderful eyebrows. [1062]

The two things all men look for in an attractive woman.

So, yes: this is not a good novel. On the upside, Sanderson avoids all the creepy spanky-spanky with which Jordan littered his instalments. Indeed, Sanderson's rare gestures at ‘grown-up’ sexiness or swearing are sweetly unconvincing. As with this real, salty, macho-man cussing: ‘“the Amyrlin,” he said. “She flaming wanted a messenger, and I was bloody chosen. Gave Egwene’s bloody report to your commanders, for all the bloody good it will do. We’ve set up our flaming battle positions and the place is a bloody mess.”’ [298] Oooh! Cover the children's ears! It's LDS propriety and conservatism throughout (‘a woman in trousers picked through documents on a table’ [534]—in trousers, do you say?—) coupled to a technical immaturity and clumsiness. I do not recommend.