A Memory of Light Sucked:

Wow, what a letdown.  I waited twenty years for this?  Yet again, the world of art outside of Japan falls flat on its face.

I'm done reading the final book of the Wheel of Time, but who could have guessed it would also be the worst?  Where do I start with my problems?  There are so many.

Okay, for one, how often do I have to watch Perrin fight Slayer before I'm finally allowed to stop reading?  They started fighting each other in The Shadow Rising.  It was cool then.  Now, ten books later, it's really not cool anymore.  The fact that I had to read not just one but multiple more fights with Slayer in this book ten books later is simply torture.  Just let one side or the other win already.  If you have nothing better to do with Perrin than for him to fight Slayer, then just don't write Perrin into the books anymore.  Ugh.

Second, why is it that this book breaks the rules of every previous book set down in stone?  One of the most important rules of fiction, and fantasy in particular, is that it must be self-consistent, since it can't be consistent with the outside world, this is its only strength and only claim to legitimacy.  There were way too many inconsistencies here.  When Demandred fought Rand in Winter's Heart, he came alone, didn't have a sa'angreal, and ran away as soon as possible, exhibiting maximum caution.  Now he shows up a few books later with a giant army of channelers, carrying a sa'angreal, and fights in the most wildly reckless manner possible.  He stands around in sight of everyone and keeps calling out challenges to Lews Therin, while happily engaging in personal one-on-one duels with random footmen he has no business fighting.

If Gawyn had succeeded in sneaking up and simply killing Demandred from behind with his ter'angreal stealth rings, that would have been an awesome moment, showing that invisibility trumps all other powers.  But Gawyn's plan failed.  He should have been killed by the power instantly afterwards.  Instead Demandred gets in a sword fight with him?  Why?  Why would a Forsaken randomly decide to fight a one-on-one duel with a guy instead of fry him with the Power?

The next time was even more ridiculous.  Galad rides right up to Demandred, apparently unhindered by the entire Shadow army, and demands a sword duel.  Yes, he's immune to direct attack by the Power, but I can think of a dozen ways to kill people with the Power indirectly.  For instance, you could heat the surrounding air until the person simply boiled in it.  Or you could create an explosion and have the shockwave/shrapnel kill the guy.  Or you could conjure something through a gateway and make it fall on him.  You can throw things with the Power at him.  But my favorite technique would have been to create a wall of Earth all around the guy and then just smushed the walls together with the one power.  Simple, undodgeable, unbeatable, and also defends you against him lunging at you to boot.  I could think of all of these answers to a guy immune to the One Power, but apparently Demandred couldn't think of any of these answers?  And no, throwing pebbles at a guy that he can dodge is not thinking well.  Remember, Demandred is in a full circle, with 72 channelers, and has a sa'angreal.  He can throw mountains at people if he so desires.  Why a rock that can easily be dodged?

Then this repeats a third time, with Lan using the same anti-magic medallion, that has the exact same answers.  Again Demandred decides to get in a sword fight with the guy instead of using the strongest One Power collection of all time, and so this time he finally loses the sword fight and dies.  Again, the entire rest of the Shadow army just sat around gawking as this one-on-one duel was fought out at the very center of the Shadow army camp.  It's just ludicrous.  Why did Demandred allow himself to be put into danger, a guy who has every reason to preserve himself?  Even if we are to believe that he is driven with rage to fight Lews Therin, he wouldn't endanger himself to fight anyone else.  So why did he get into a sword fight with Lan?  Why did he tell the rest of his army to stand back and not interfere?  It's madness.  It's completely not in keeping with the caution the Forsaken, and Demandred in particular, have shown up until this point.

Which leads me to my next issue.  In between Demandred's dumbass sword duels, he was still sitting around with a sa'angreal and a circle of 72 channelers.  Presumably, he was at this point stronger than Lews Therin was when he turned himself into a giant volcano.  He was weilding more of the One Power than anyone except when Rand cleansed Saidin.  Remember, when Rand and Asmodean were fighting with each other in Rhuidean holding just half of the super sa'angreal, they were delivering blows on each other that each could level mountains.  Recall, Rand al'thor using just a normal Angreal was able to take out an entire army of tens of thousands of trollocs at Maradon all on his own in a matter of minutes.  Now we are to believe that Demandred had all day and all night to assault the fields of Merrilor, with far more of the One Power than Rand ever had, and he was completely ineffectual?

What was he doing with all that One Power?  If Demandred had simply flicked his wrist, he could have exploded the entire enemy army into a puff of smoke.  He could have delivered multiple nukes worth of payload onto the enemy army and simply annihilated it.  He had all day with a sa'angreal and a circle of 72 channelers, men and women combined, which is supposed to be far more powerful than men or women alone, and he did virtually nothing with it.  He would occasionally kill some artillery, or a pikeman or two, and then would just sit back and wait for his next sword duel.  It was absurd.  I've never seen such stupid writing.  You give this villain ultimate power and then he never uses it, not even to save his life, but just engages in sword fights instead for fun.

One hilarious scene is when Logain decides to get in a One Power duel with Demandred, just a page or so after it talks about Egwene channeling twelve different weaves at once with her sa'angreal, without anyone linked to her at all, to kill bad guys.  So Egwene, who is much weaker than Demandred, can weave twelve spells at once.  But when Demandred fought Logaine, he was weaving two, maybe three at once.  What?  Hello?  Demandred has a thousand years of channelling experience, he was the great commander of the Shadows army even an Age before this one, so why can some pipsqueak girl weave four times as many spells as him with far less of the One Power than he had?  Demandred is so pathetic that he can't beat even one measly Asha'man, when he's linked up to 72 freaking channelers and has a sa'angreal.  Instead Logain decides he's losing the fight and escapes via a gateway.  Really?  So you have the power to level mountains but nope, can't beat an Asha'man by putting a shield on him or countering all his spells at once. . .  Really?

It was established that dreamspikes make it impossible to form gateways, and yet Androl formed a gateway in the middle of a dreamspike.  That was really dumb.

It was established that balefire turned back time.  This means that Mat never died in the new timeline, and therefore it's impossible that his link with the horn was severed.  You can't turn back time to before Mat died, and then say the Pattern somehow 'remembers' this alternate future and takes what happened there into account with this, the new timeline.  That's just not how time travel works.  In the current timeline Mat never died from any of Rahvin's traps.  That simply didn't happen.  So how was his link with the horn severed?

Also, really?  Every spell has an answer?  It was established that nothing could block balefire except Cuendillar.  I can kinda see people countering the spell before it is ready and cast.  But there's no way Egwene could just think up a new spell that magically overpowers balefire at the last moment if no one in the age of legends, who had practiced magic for centuries, nor any of the Aes Sedai who came before her in this third age, could ever find the answer.  How do you just pull tricks like that out of your hat in the middle of a battle?  It's unbelievable.

Plus, the Dark One doesn't want to undo the pattern, he wants to control it.  If he had wanted to undo the pattern with balefire, why even fight enemies?  Why not just sit at home in Shayol Ghul and blast away at the pattern, left and right?  They could have done this at any time in the last two years, without ever engaging anyone.  They could do it on the far side of the world, in Shara, or wherever.  So why did they suddenly decide to use balefire now, when they agreed not to use it in the age of legends, right in the middle of a fight?  If you're going to unravel the entire world why even battle over it anymore?  I can see some forsaken using some moderate amount of balefire in order to get an advantage, but just wholesale blasting away the pattern?  No.  The Dark One wouldn't have given them permission to do that, nor would they, who wish to rule forever, would have wanted to do it to the Pattern either.

Furthermore, there's no way a few prisoners and new recruits could have overthrown Taim's control of the black tower.  That's just ridiculous.  I don't care how super duper cool Androl is, he's not strong enough to beat Taim, Graendal, and all the Asha'man of the black tower all on his own.  That's absurd.  I was hoping to see Logain triumphantly seize back the black tower with his band of friends and a bunch of Aes Sedai -- after all, Elaida had foretold that the black tower would be destroyed and 'sisters would walk its ground.'  But that prophecy never happened.  Whoops!  Let's just forget about vital prophecies why don't we?  Instead this random nobody appears and single-handedly defeats a million dreadlords and two forsaken on his own.  Okay. . .

Winning back the Black Tower was supposed to be a major plot point.  I had thought it would have been an epic battle that took a lot of manpower and time.  Instead, fwoosh, problem solved.  That kind of letdown happened twice more in the book as well -->

Padan Fain, remember him?  Starting from the very first book, the third power, as great as the Dragon Reborn and the Dark One?  He was planning to kill the Dark One and Rand?  Remember?  Oh, no problem, nothing Mat can't handle with a dagger.  Oh wait, that dagger doesn't work on Padan Fain, who repeatedly cut himself with it just for fun, because Fain IS THE DAGGER so the dagger has no poisonous effects on him.  Did they just forget that?  Why the hell would his body melt by getting stabbed with his own dagger?  I can kind of see if the dagger had made him bleed to death, though by then he had become this crazy mist entity that even the One Power couldn't hurt in previous books, but the poison of the dagger killing Fain?  No.  And it taking like two sentences to kill off Fain, who was at this point as strong as the Dark One?  No.  That's not acceptable considering all the build-up given this character.

The worst of it has to be the Seanchan though.  Rand al'Thor goes back to Tuon, that he just spoke to a week ago or so, offering the same peace terms as before.  He wants the war with the Seanchan to end and for her to join him in the Last Battle.  Last time she was like, no, the Dragon Reborn must serve the Empress as prophesied, he can't just run around doing what he pleases as my equal.  A week later he comes back and makes the same offer, and she's like, 'Sure, why not?'  It doesn't take any effort to persuade her at all.  Mat says Rand's a cool guy and apparently that's enough.  All of her previous objections, her entire previous way of life and culture, just apparently vaporize since last week, and the last time she rejected his peace offer.  It's madness.  I thought winning peace with the Seanchan would be some extremely difficult task, instead it was done in a couple pages.  A problem that began in the second book, an enemy stronger than the Dark One when you get down to it, resolved in a couple pages.

Another letdown:  What happeend to the Aiel?  Recall when just three clans crossed the Spine of the World and sacked Cairhein, marching all the way to the gates of Tar Valon, against the entire united Wetlands?  Rand had control of eleven clans, a force four times as strong as the entire united Wetlands, but they had virtually no representation in the last battle.

The Aiel, who are supposedly five times as strong as any normal Wetlander soldier, were also four times as numerous, but they had virtually no presence in the Last Battle.  Where did they go?  What were they doing?  They had this almighty army of Aiel fighting some evil shadow Aiel, who couldn't have been more than a couple thousand people or so, since they all just lived in a village in the blasted lands, and a few references to them fighting elsewhere, but otherwise nothing.  No regiments or divisions of Aiel, never relying on them in a pinch to accomplish anything.  They simply disappeared from the plotline.  There were supposedly as many Wise One channelers as there were Aes Sedai, but they virtually didn't appear in the plot either.  Just a few were mentioned fighting at all.  The windfinders were similarly ignored, thrown away on some stupid plot contrivance about all having to channel into the bowl of the winds to preserve the weather.  Why?  The Dark One had failed to destroy the world via weather for years up until now, even though he had been trying his best all this time, but suddenly it takes all of the windfinders' efforts at full blast all day every day just to prevent a weather problem now?  It doesn't make sense.

Likewise the Seanchan army.  The Seanchan had fought on numerous occasions with vast armies, hundreds of thousands strong.  They lost at least a hundred thousand men fighting against Arad Doman.  But in the Last Battle, they barely appeared.  There were enough Seanchan forces and damane to battle Rand Al'thor head to head in Path of Daggers.  Mysteriously, though, at the Last Battle, they're just considered one tiny force among many, about as important as say Tear or Andor.  That's absurd.  They were as strong as the rest of the world combined, but like the Aiel, they barely showed up at all in the Last Battle.  Instead it was all about Tairen pikemen and the wolf guard and crap.  In all the previous battles the Seanchan had relied on vast auxiliaries from Amadicia, Altara and Tarabon.  This time none of those forces were to be seen.  They had apparently vanished into thin air by the time of the Last Battle.  Hello?  What?

The inconsistencies were everywhere.  Forces, characters, and factions that were built up to be critically important turned out to be totally unimportant instead.  They made this big deal out of saving Moiraine in Towers of Midnight, but she didn't do anything important in this, the book she was saved for.  She talked Rand and Egwene into negotiating more at Merrilor, but they should have been able to do that on their own, it's silly for such wise monarchs to start getting fussy with each other in the first place.  Min was supposed to have done more research on the seals after the philosopher was killed by the gholam while researching it.  She never was any use, though, so she couldn't explain to Egwene why the seals must be destroyed.  This is a travesty.  So much importance was put into preventing the philosopher from understanding the issue by the Shadow, and trying to figure it out by Rand and Min, but by the end of the book it just became a non-issue and somehow Egwene just 'knew' it was right to break the seals.  I just don't understand this sequence of events at all.

Perhaps the worst scene in the book, however, is when Thom Merrilin is guarding the entrance to the pit of Doom.  A Black Ajah Aes Sedai tries to wear a disguise as a good guy and walk by him breezily to get to Rand, but Thom Merrillin cleverly sees through it and stabs her from behind once she isn't looking.  Then we learn that he's already done this five times before and has a whole cellar of Black Ajah women corpses stuffed away.  Really?  Seriously?  Every single channeler, six in a row, all thought to themselves, hey, here's a guy with no power at all, that I could just zap with lightning or burn to a crisp using the One Power, but I think I'll try to deceive him and walk right by instead, putting my back to a known enemy, cuz man wouldn't that be so clever and sneaky?

Why didn't the very first Black Ajah who approached simply kill him with the One Power, like any sensible person would do?  Why put on a disguise?  Why the farce?  Thom's a powerless old man.  He was no threat at all.  Why would you try to TRICK him into letting you by?  And by six idiots in a row, no less??  Really??  By God, that was stupid.

Or how about this one?  Lanfear could have easily attacked Rand from Tel'Aran'Rhiod on her own, but instead she decides to use compulsion on Perrin to get him to help her.  Despite the fact that she doesn't need any help because Rand isn't a good warrior in Tel'Aran'Rhiod.  Despite the fact that Tel'Aran'Rhiod is immune to magic and whatever you imagine is true becomes true.  IE, anyone who wishes to not be compulsed can simply shrug off your compulsion at any moment.  Egwene, just last book or so, simply removed the collar that was preventing her from channelling against Mesaana.  But apparently Lanfear did not learn her lesson and thought Perrin was trapped as her slave?  I didn't even notice when she compelled him in the first place, but whatever, that she did such a thing against the known greatest dreamer ever, far stronger than any Forsaken or Egwene, and then just turned her back to him and let him choke her to death, is absurd.  It's just one more fatal oversight on top of all the others.  How did the Forsaken make so many mistakes?????????????

That isn't the worst thing about this book though.  The worst thing is that it's 900 pages long of pure fight scenes.  There's virtually no characterization, no dialogue, nothing of interest in the entire book.  It's just 'boom, thwack, pow.'  Over and over again.  Over and over and over.  The names involved change -- Talmanes is thwacking at first, and then Lan is thwacking, and then Androl, but the essence never changes.  You could replace 600 pages or so with just 'bam, thwack, pow!'  And it would read just as well.  You can't tell any of the scenes apart from each other -- they're all essentially the same.

The only situation of remote interest is Rand's confrontation with the Dark One.  But this is also a letdown.  In the beautiful first chapter of Eye of the World, it tells of life in the Two Rivers in all its glory.  There's a wonderful village rich with colorful people and personalities, deeply enjoying life, with a great inner strength that first shows in their work ethic, then later shows up in their resistance to the Trollocs and the biting unnatural winter.  You see bonds everywhere.  From villager to villager, friend to friend, lover to lover, parents to children, everything is connected.  I instantly fell in love with this series because of that first chapter.  It described an alternate way of life, different from modernity, that was better than modernity.  Even without all of our fancy inventions, life in the Two Rivers was happier than our own.  But in the confrontation with the Dark One, Rand pictured two alternate paradises, which were both worse than his own life in the Two Rivers had been.

In one, people had become complete Eloi.  All they did was sing and dance and throw flower petals at each other.  It was straight out of the Time Machine by H.G. Wells.  There wasn't much intellect, or any chance to display any strength of character, left in the world.  I was okay with this world, but I agree it could get a bit dull.  The problem is the Two Rivers did have all sorts of problems, but they were always minor enough that human effort could easily overcome them.  This is more fun.  You have problems, but you work hard and you overcome them, learning a bit about your own strength in the mean time.  Why did Rand want a world with no problems at all, when he had the example of the Two Rivers in front of him, where there were problems, but never so big that people with some honest wits and effort couldn't overcome?  It's tragic when people are helpless to problems, like a car accident or a fatal disease.  It's also tragic when people have no problems, like they're on drugs their whole lives.  I won't argue there.  But couldn't Rand have pictured something inbetween, like, say, his own homeland?  Wasn't that already paradise?

His other future was even more groan-inducing.  It was just straight out modern liberalism.  It had become the modern day.  It had United Nations peacekeepers, a one-world-nation with open borders, 9-5 jobs, "vibrant, diverse" cityfolk, and most of all schools!  Schools for the children!  Oh, happy days are here again!  World peace, diversity, and schools.  For the first time ever in this book it talks approvingly of homosexuals, too.  I'm sure gay marriage was a central pillar to Rand's new world.  What was wrong with the Two Rivers?  There, everyone learned to read on their own time, from their own parents.  They also worked from an early job doing real things, like carpentry, farming, blacksmithing, or sheepherding.  Children there had their own lives, their own strength, their own capacity that they could prove themselves by.  They didn't all just go to school to rote memorize useless facts about the boron atom and how it combines with nitrogen.  They didn't learn how to take derivatives in order to draw curves on x,y grids to take limits as x approaches 0.  They didn't all have to go to school where they learn absolutely nothing and then promptly forget it again.  That was heaven.  Rand's future paradise is hell.  It's school again.  School as far as the eye can see.  I read fantasy to read about better times when children could work instead of go to school, and pow, Rand creates a future where they have to go to school again instead.  UGH!

I ran to the ends of the universe, to a fictional medieval age, to escape liberalism, and it just chases me down anyway and throws the exact same crap in my face as before.  Liberalism, from sea to shining sea.  Women in the military, yeah, that's a great idea!  They can obviously wear heavy armor and wield heavy lances and swords just like men, right?  No problem!  A classless society with no nobility, there we go!  Slavery is evil, free the slaves!  GoGo Gays!  If I wanted to read about this crap, I could have just looked up the New York Times.  Why is it in The Wheel of Time?

Meanwhile the Dark One created a libertarian society where if you want to protect your property, you have to do it yourself, which seems to have worked well enough -- I mean, he was in a well built city, with well built buildings, and the people looked well fed and all -- but Rand was all aghast and was like, this is worse than everyone being oppressed, because people lack compassion!  IE, to the new, liberal writer of Wheel of Time, a lack of liberalism and the injection of do-it-yourself libertarianism is worse than being enslaved by the Dark One.  Really?  Conservatism is now officially worse than the devil.  Punishing criminals who try to steal from your fruit stand is now officially worse than being eaten by demonic bugs.  Yeah, whatever Rand.

American fiction is a gutter.  All it can think about is how great liberalism is.  It can no longer pose any serious alternate philosophy or alternate reality.  Whenever it attempts to do so, it just pollutes it eventually with the same tired liberalism that exists in the real world as well.  Harry Potter?  Liberalism.  Wheel of Time?  Liberalism.  The same tired notes, over and over again.  The same assertions as I'm always hearing -- 'education is the solution!'  'bring down all the borders, the existence of nations is the cause of war!', 'upwards the classless society!'  Worse, if anyone attempts to write anything non-liberal in their fiction, readers will just reject it as 'obscene' and 'trash,' so western art can't deviate from the script even if it wants to.  If Rand's heaven had been a place where people don't work except at things they like doing, like sports or handmade crafts, readers would have rejected it.  If Rand's heaven had been a place with carefully stratified classes that all showed respect for each other's proper station, like Hindu castes or Confucianism, they would have rejected that.  If his heaven had been a place where men were the head of the family and women and children deferred to them and all went to Church on Sunday to sing praises to God with modestly covered hair, they would have rejected that too.  There is no fiction in America because all fiction must conform to liberalism, so every single possible world is reduced back down to the same, dull non-fiction world of today.  Liberalism now, liberalism tomorrow, liberalism forever.

In the beginning of Wheel of Time, alternatives to liberalism were offered, in a positive light.  The Two Rivers, Caemlyn, Tar Valon, Shienar, the Aiel, even the Seanchan.  There were reasons to like all of these alternate societies, all of which operated under philosophies and cultures hugely different from modern day liberalism.  But by the end of the story all of these societies are destroyed and replaced with monolithic, one world liberalism.  It's a tragedy.  In the end, the Dark One really won this fight.