A Crown of Swords Review

We all manipulate people.  Oh, we might not think of it using that term – a friend of mine once was quite distraught at my invocation of it in this way – but it is what we do.  We manipulate people as surely as we manipulate the cell phones we can’t seem to put down, and the knives in our kitchens.  While being manipulative has a negative, scheming connotation, it is an inevitable byproduct of how we interact with each other and the diverse goals we all have in those interactions.  If you approach a colleague in conversation with the goal of arranging a business lunch together on Thursday, you will choose words and gestures suited to the purpose, which is a form of manipulation.  When an author writes a scene to evoke a particular emotion, that is also manipulation.  Manipulation is innocuous…until it stops going both ways.

Essentially since Moraine’s battle with Lanfear, Rand follows a difficult character arc based on attempting to implement ideas of leadership, fulfill the prophecies of the Dragon, and make himself “hard enough” to do what must be done to defeat the Dark One.  Combined with the looming shadow of his potential (or actual) madness, this makes Rand’s development through the middle books of the series probably the most difficult of any character in the series.  This may be why I had a vague memory in my head from the first time reading through of Rand being lost in the desert for significant portions of these middle books, despite him not literally being lost in the desert with the Aiel.

We don’t get a lot of Rand’s perspectives in Crown of Swords, perhaps for this reason.  Increasingly, Rand believes he has to manipulate people, in the negative sense because it is often again their will and using his overbearing power – positional, physical, magical, political, Ta’veren – to bring them to do what he thinks necessary.  It often seems obvious to the reader that he is making mistakes because of this, because of his perceived need to be “hard enough,” and because of his arrogance, however understanding it might be, yet Jordan also manages to make his decisions continue to seem reasonable, sympathetic, and human.  This is best seen when Rand is reacting, instead of acting, such as his obvious, though unadmitted, discomfort with confined spaces following his treatment in book six.

Perhaps because Rand’s perspective can become difficult to read, Jordan gives us more from the other characters in Crown of Swords.  Perrin has a bit more of a role, but mostly to set him up for future books and plot points.  The main plot of the book is probably the events in Ebou Dar, with Mat, Elayne, and Nynaeve.  Their dynamic is amusing, and the plot well-spun…until the end.  Really, both “endings” to the book were a little lackluster.

There are two main endings to the book.  One, the resolution to Ebou Dar, ends by introducing new abilities and reintroducing a key opponent without much resolution.  The other, with Rand battling one of the Forsaken, is a return to form in some respects, as many of the earlier books featured a similar conflict, but this one is different.  The way Jordan writes it, the entire battle comes off as very confused and erratic, perhaps because Rand is confused and erratic at this stage.  This leaves the whole climax feeling less than satisfying, with no real resolution and no real certainty of exactly what happened.  In other words, the book very much ends without really ending, leading you to want, almost immediately, to start the next book.  This is understandable in this most middle of middle books (Crown of Swords is book seven of fourteen), and I suspect I won’t be going so many books between finishing this one and picking up The Path of Daggers.

Jordan’s long format plays perfectly to his strengths in character development and worldbuilding.  Unlike some of the early books in the series, Crown of Swords finds him fully extending his character arcs, really bringing the people in the world to life and full texture across multiple installments.  Both the characters and the world can truly come to life when given so much room to breathe, which is, in my opinion, what makes Wheel of Time such an excellent piece of writing, and why it served to remake our understanding of what’s possible with secondary world fantasy as a genre.  Moments that come later in the series, or even in this book, are made far more satisfying than they could ever otherwise be because of all that we’ve personally seen come before.

The Ta’veren concept continues to play a significant role, perhaps even more so in this book.  Jordan has it directly and explicitly causing characters to do or say things they would not otherwise have done (or rather, would have been exceedingly unlikely to do).  While I still think the Ta’veren concept is brilliant in addressing one of the core dangers in writing a story like this, having it be so direct and almost deliberately wielded by the characters does not work as well in this book as does it seeming to happen like a force of nature, inadvertent and at random (and sometimes to the characters’ detriments).

With Crown of Swords finished, we are halfway through our reviews for, and my reread of, Wheel of Time.  Seven more books to go, although the last three should perhaps be thought of as one, extremely long, installment.  More on that when we get there.  For now, I hope that you, too, are continuing to read through this monumental series in the history of genre fiction, for it continues to prove itself more than worthy of its elevated place in the fantasy pantheon.