Picking favorites is often a futile, or at least a challenging, exercise. People will ask me what my favorite food is, or my favorite song, or my favorite book, and the answer is almost inevitably that it depends, because to choose just one, constant favorite from such broad categories supposes a constancy in my own preferences which does not hold true even day to day. More, how can one compare a classic fantasy masterpiece like The Lord of the Rings to an ancient epic like the Oresteia, or the tragedies of Shakespeare, or a physics book like Charge? There is such diversity between these works, they are written for such different purposes at such different times, that comparing them becomes all but meaningless. If you ask me my favorite Wheel of Time book, though, my answer is immediate and certain: book thirteen, Towers of Midnight.
Does that make me a traitor to Robert Jordan, that my favorite installment in his magnum opus isn’t even his own writing? I don’t think so, because it is not the writing, per se, that makes Towers of Midnight stand so definitively above its compatriots. Some of the roughness that characterizes Sanderson’s first outing in Jordan’s world is improved in this second effort, but it retains his tendency for short, partial statements, diminutive paragraphs, and a sparser descriptive approach. These are stylistic differences, not negatives, but I do prefer Jordan’s style in most cases, for all both authors utilize transparent prose. Truthfully, between being a book removed from the last of Jordan’s writing, and Sanderson’s increased practice and experience, the differences are less noticeable.
What makes Towers of Midnight my favorite in the series has much to do with why I enjoy reading a long series like Wheel of Time: immersivity. We’ve been immersed in these characters’ lives since Moraine first came to the Two Rivers (a scant couple years ago in book-time), seeing them evolve and mature as they stumble through and overcome challenges. From a writing perspective, it is perhaps inevitable that this thirteenth book would see the culmination of many character arcs in order to position the characters appropriately for the Last Battle, but the effect is not reduced for recognizing this, for the characters’ journeys and decisions are not presented in an inevitable way. The reader does not feel there is a guarantee, per se, that Rand will make it to the Last Battle in a fit condition to fight the Dark One, that Perrin will resolve his issues with the wolf and with leadership, that Aviendha will come to terms with the changing of Aiel. In fact, the previous books have done much to show, convincingly, how unlikely a confluence of circumstances will be required to see the Light prove victorious in the final confrontation.
Thus, Towers of Midnight is replete with some of the most powerful, meaningful, and significant character moments in the series, all of them feeling well-earned after twelve books of conflict, striving, and burgeoning self-awareness (in most cases – self-awareness as a character trait is a slider which Jordan makes masterful use of throughout the series and is one of the primary lenses through which readers can approach his characters). Some of these are the culmination of character arcs, like Perrin’s, while others see less character change (Mat), but significant plot events for those characters or opportunities for those characters to demonstrate how far they’ve come and the kind of people they’ve become. Perrin’s evolution is, to my mind, the book’s centerpiece, and includes what might be the single most satisfying moment in the entire series, an interaction between Perrin and Egwene in Tel’Aran’Rhiod. Rand’s interaction with his father also remains an especially memorable and vivid scene, one of those that stands out as more substantial in memory than it really is from the number of words on the page.
The previous book saw a kind of climax for Rand’s character arc, so his appearances in Towers of Midnight should feel a bit like the sigh of relief after that pivotal moment. And they do, for the first few scenes, like when he’s walking down the slopes of Dragonmount, but as the book continues and he makes further appearances, his transformation starts to feel a little too extreme, his powers a little too unfounded. The way his presence weighs on the Pattern to essentially un-spoil food, push away the clouds, and generally relieve suffering goes beyond what’s been established as the range of Ta’veren effects, and his maturity and wisdom seem on too certain of footing for something so recently earned. It’s not unearned, but it feels unrealistic that he could so entirely expunge his previous attitude and convictions in favor of the new.
Knowing Sanderson’s preference for tightly linked climaxes all occurring near-simultaneously in his books, one must acknowledge that he did well resisting that tendency in this one, with major, climactic moments happening throughout the second half – again, this is a feature of where the book sits in the series, but made no less satisfying for that basis. Other structural decisions driven by the same consideration do not play as well. Temporally, Towers of Midnight might be the most confusing book in the series, which is easy to miss if you read it in isolation from the others, but becomes overt when reading sequentially as I am doing in this instance. Especially in the first half, there are several instances where Tam is in Perrin’s camp, which I at first thought to be a mistake since he’d left for Tear to meet with Rand at the end of the previous book, until I eventually realized those scenes were supposed to be taking place before the end of the previous book. Add this and other, similar instances of jumping back and forth in time to the fact that the entire book transpires over the course of just a handful of days, and it could really benefit from some clearer authorial signposting regarding when the various events are supposed to be occurring in relation to each other.
Towers of Midnight’s most powerful scenes and sequences come from its position as the penultimate book in the series, an opportunity for climaxes to occur and plots to be concluded in anticipation of the main conflict scheduled for A Memory of Light. However, this should not suggest it is only a book of closing parentheses, to use the parenthetical analogy of opening and closing plots and subplots. It is not a book, to use Sanderson’s plot terminology of promises, progress, and payoffs, consisting solely of payoffs on promises. A novel, and certainly a series as sprawling and complex as Wheel of Time, should not be symmetrical in that sense. Even as many major plots are resolved or come to a head, like Perrin’s character climax, new plots are being opened or complicated even to the novel’s terminus. Egwene’s conflict and confrontation with Rand about the breaking of the Seals, for instance, is seeded prior to Towers of Midnight, but only flowers here, with its resolution to come in A Memory of Light. The Seanchan remain an unresolved point, and the book leaves Mat far from where he will need to be for the Last Battle. For all that is resolved or satisfied, the book still leaves a sense of tension and anticipation regarding the imminent Last Battle.
If all of this sounds grandiose, Mat’s plot in Towers of Midnight offers a kind of small-scale grounding, for all it takes most of the book for him to even get to the point of acting on his plan. It is also a prime example of what a longform series like Wheel of Time can do that would be exceptionally difficult to do as well in a shorter work. That plotline is powered by character development and callbacks to the very beginning of the series, and its seriousness, power, and impact on both the characters and the reader are inextricable from those connections. This can be achieved in shorter forms, but not with quite the level of immersivity, and not for something that is essentially a tangential, supporting adventure, not the main event.
Not that it’s a mere “side quest.” It’s part of a larger effort to bring all the major pieces into position for the Last Battle. It’s fair to say that some of the minor pieces are dropped or allowed to happen off-page, and there’s an argument to be made on a macro-level that Sanderson doesn’t emphasize the darkness as much as Jordan did; some of the tension of the threat from darkfriends and the Forsaken that made earlier books feel like the Light was only hanging on by its fingernails is absent here. Still, Towers of Midnight does what it needs to do to manage an immense amount of plot that must occur before we can go into A Memory of Light, and it does it in a way that is immensely satisfying. Now, to the Last Battle.
IGC Publishing 