We begin with the book pointing out that it's beginning, or at least that it's a beginning, which is an important distinction to begin with. Even though the book had a prologue already, I guess it's technically true with this being the first chapter. The impact there is still lost though, and it comes off sounding rather pretentious. What's worse is that it's about wind, which reminds me of this:
Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world (Eragon p1).That said, the instance in Wheel of Time gets a pass because of the Grandfather Clause (or maybe just the Father Clause, since it was only published in 1990), and because it isn't shamelessly ripping off plotlines from superior stories. Or so it seems ...
Anyway, then it goes off into a tangent that makes me wish I hadn't given that pass, because it goes into loving detail about how and where the wind blows. Does the fact that the wind ends up beating at a couple of plot-important guys make the wind important? Well, it seems like it does, since it's actually a sign for us readers that the late spring has yet to arrive. Then the wind goes off whistling to wherever it's going, and suddenly we're dumped in the lap of Our Hero.
Rand al'Thor (don't you think I didn't see what you did there, story!) wonders why he didn't wear more to keep warm in this weather. I wonder why he didn't, too. Wouldn't he know it was going to be cold by now? I know some people are more resistant to the cold and sometimes they underestimate how much they need to stay warm. Heck, I'm one of those people. But I know my limits pretty well, and I live a cushy life with heaters and hot water. Maybe Randy here is just too comfortably numb sometimes.
But back to our story. He's got an arrow on his bow ready to fire, and for some reason he has to double-check whether his father Tam is there or not. (I'm going to bet twenty dollars on Tam not actually being his father. We all know how
We get a description of Tam having "a solidness to him" as he "stump[s] down the road impassively," which undoubtedly marks him as a soldier. He probably found little orphan Randy in the unforgiving snow in a vicious battle aftermath far from these farms. Rand seems to realize that his attention to the details of Tam's appearance is rather awkward and looks away, and then we get a description of Rand himself that reveals he has "little of Tam in him physically." Well that confirms that. There's a bit about how he puts flowers on his outlander mother's grave, but that's probably just a sham. We'll see whether anyone at the town mentions her while they go deliver apple cider to the inn, just like they do every Bel Tine, which is a festival that nobody would miss for anything it seems.
Rand starts to get the feeling that he's getting watched. Does anyone else find it odd how protagonists like Rand tend to be slightly psychic this way? Like they can always intuitively tell who's on their side and who's not, even before (or especially before) they set out on their Epic Journey. Or maybe it's just him thinking there are wolves prowling nearby, but since the feeling only grows stronger as it lingers I'm thinking it's the psychic option.
Suddenly, he looks around to see a rider in black following them and are we really going down this path, story? Are we going to have ravens perching on the roofs next? I might not be sure whether the Grandfather Clause okays this, but I do know that at least Lord of the Rings gave us some neat world-building before launching into sinister black riders. Apparently the Rider really hates Rand, and he even starts to feel nauseated because it has "hatred for him most of all, for him above all things." Can't go wrong with a little redundancy, I guess.
Then he stumbles over a rock and the Rider vanishes from sight. Tam wonders what's up, and when he hears about the Rider the first thing he does is ask where it is. When it doesn't obligingly pop up again, he says that that he believes it was there anyway, which is a huge relief because I hate it when adults decide to treat kids with worrying news like they're obnoxious nuisances. He offers to go back and see if there are any hoof prints, and after a couple paragraphs on the unlikelihood of strangers coming into Emond's Field Rand decides to say there's no need, he was probably imagining it and they need the precious few seconds to get to the village and out of the wind (as if there weren't wind at the village).
There's a bit where Tam teases him about wanting to see the Mayor's daughter, a girl named Egwene. (Egg Wean? How are you supposed to say that?) Rand's hormones can't shake the feeling of hatred though, and Tam tells him to remember the flame and the void, which is actually a neat concept - burning away all emotion to become one with a weapon or something - so it probably won't be explored much more after this. Apparently Tam's a great archer with his flame and his void. Too bad we'll never actually see it.
Rand tries to use the same technique to forget about the Rider, but he can't shake the feeling that it's not just imagination, that there really was something inexplicably evil following them, but apparently that's not as important as the geography of Emond's Field. The narration goes into a sudden explanation of how the land is just so fertile and the river that flows nearby and how there are so many farms except for close to the mountains and it's just oh so fascinating. I get that Jordan loves his world-building, but I can't understand how he manages to pack so little meaning over the span of so many words. And I also get that he's trying to characterize Emond's Field by describing how the land close to the mountains is too rocky for most people, but I don't see how going out of his way to tell rather than show helps make the fact relevant.
It goes on about how everyone's so excited in Emond's Field and how it must be Bel Tine affecting them. I didn't pay a lot of attention here to be honest because when you try reading a page about a dinky little town and it doesn't get interesting on the fourth read-through, it turns into a waste of time. There's also the fact that there's an entire world that's going to get the same treatment. I have a migraine already. Nobody minds if I kind of skip over these "the grass was green" type monologues, right? Unless of course it mentions something that irritates or impresses me in there of course.
So after it goes on for a while about Two Rivers people being extraordinarily tough (which I don't doubt means they're descended from kings the way the little backwater place in Eragon was), a supposed troublemaker named Wit Congar confronts the two as they make their way to the inn. The narration pauses again to sneer about the Congars and the Coplins being notorious inbreeding whiners. It then remarks that sprawling on the front steps of his house is odder than sprawling on his badly-thatched roof, which makes less sense the more I look at it. Why would someone climb up on the roof in winter, even in late winter? Wouldn't that risk slipping on ice and breaking half their bones? Where is the sense?
However, Wit's complaint is legit: he says that the Wisdom (soothsayer?) of Emond's Field predicted a mild weather, which of course is invalidated by the very late spring. Considering that she's supposed to be predicting the weather correctly, which is actually possible in this story, he has a point that she's awful at her job. It's at the point where he says that "you ask her what she hears on the wind, and she just scowls at you and storms off." I know showing would beat telling here, but the fact that someone brings this up makes it quite likely that this Nynaeve girl is nothing more than a privileged brat. (The fact that her name looks like Nigh Naïve unintentionally confirms this.) Tam and Wit's wife snap at him to leave the Woman Circle's business to the women, even though this problem is impacting the men more directly. Do the women in this world have to spend hours outside working on their farms, or do they sing kumbaya around a cozy little fire inside and worship Nynaeve? Jeez, we haven't even met this girl and I hate her already.
They pass on and the narration suddenly and briefly switches gears to Tam's hitherto unforeseen status as a very eligible bachelor, then uses that to segue into the stubbornness of Two Rivers people again. Can't you just show us how this information could play out, story? Or are you trying to limit yourself to just a few pages per scene? Because if it's the latter, I don't think it's going to work, what with you happily going into a loving description of the Village Green and the customs of Bel Tine and how it's like a spring equinox celebration and blah I'm losing interest already. Focus, self! Get your head in the game!
Anyway, after two whole pages of this they finally reach Winespring Inn, where they meet with Bran al'Vere, the innkeeper and Mayor. He wears a special medallion in the form of a set of scales for the upcoming occasion, which obviously ties in with the One Power thing somehow because of *~symbolism~*. Bran basically ignores Rand and makes meaningless small talk with Tam about things we've already been told.
Then old Cenn Buie the thatcher comes by from out of nowhere and points out the obvious: that things are going to get worse. Tam makes fun of him by comparing him to the Wisdom, and puts in a reference to the wind from the beginning, which is a cute little callback or something. Cenn puts in a practical retort that if spring doesn't come soon people will begin to starve, and that he doesn't care for Nynaeve at all. I like this guy. There's a rivalry implied between the Women's Circle and the Village Council, which is undoubtedly made up of men because balance is a theme here, and it seems that there's an unfair bias in favor of the Circle. I sense that people acting like idiots to keep this unsavory status quo will also be a theme here.
While the grownups are busy talking, Rand's friend Mat pulls him away and mischievously brags about how he and some other kid caught a badger and are planning on setting it after the girls. I'd admire his bold actions against the norms of society in the name of making a stunning blow to open everyone's eyes to the blind inequalities between the genders, but it would be wasted on this childish prat. Rand even thinks that Mat will never grow up, and if there's one thing I hate it's characters who have no chance of growing and developing. I dread the appearance of Rand's other friend.
Mat mentions seeing a mysterious Rider just outside of town, and Rand immediately jumps on the chance that he wasn't hallucinating ten minutes ago. He reveals his fear that someone might actually want to kill him, and Mat says that for a moment he thought the Rider was actually the Dark One aka Shai'tan, which is kind of pathetic. Rand decides to pause the plot by reciting a little thing about how the Dark One and the Forsaken are bound forever in Shayol Ghul (there can be some pretty cool names in this story, I've got to say), so Mat decides that it might have been the Dragon instead. I was super excited about this until I realize that it has to be a metaphorical dragon, which isn't the greatest idea to have in a fantasy series because metaphors don't work well when they could easily be interpreted literally. I guess that's just as well, since calling a dragon "the Dragon" is pretty redundant anyway.
Rand pretends that Tam brushed him off, saying that nobody believed that there was any Rider, and thinks that nobody would believe Mat because he's such a troublemaker, which is something I can believe. Speak of the devil, Tam joins the conversation and lets Cenn keep getting lectured by Bran all by himself. What a guy. He says good morning to "Matrim" and I take back my earlier compliment, because is Mat supposed to be a normal or bizarre name? You can't have it both ways!
Tam mentions a gleeman and the two boys get excited. I'm not sure why. When I see the word "gleeman" I think of my ten-year-old brother in a jester's costume riding a unicycle on a tricycle on a pogo stick. If he's a bard, just call him a bard, please. Calling him a gleeman doesn't make him cool or exotic.
Bran's pleased as punch by this development, saying that a gleeman (ugh) is just what Emond's Field needs to get its spirits up again. If this turns into a Best Christmas Ever type of storyline, I am quitting this forever. Cenn proves himself awesome again by saying that the Council or whoever didn't need to send off so much money to bring him down from Baerlon, which the handy dandy map in my book tells me is a decent-sized city. If a gleeman is exotic enough that one only shows up once every several years, how did they get one to come down to their little podunk paradise? I can't imagine any of these stubborn-as-mules Two Rivers folks going much farther than a couple hundred feet past their farms for any reason.
Tam and Bran insult Cenn again, and Cenn decides he's tired of this crap and retreats into the inn. Wise decision. Tam tells the boys to keep the gleeman's coming a secret, since it's not set in stone and they don't want to bring up people's hopes only to crash them down again, while people will be especially excited at his appearance if they didn't know about him previously. I'm smelling an "Ignorance is Bliss" message here.
Tam guilts Mat into helping Rand unload the cider, calling him Matrim again and I still can't take that name seriously. Mat decides to go through with it for a reason that should be obvious but just kind of hangs in the air unsaid. It might be that he wants to tease Rand about gazing after Egwene sooner, and Rand thinks that despite his wariness at seeing her, the idea of her not showing up doesn't make him feel better.
That's how the chapter ends. Is that supposed to be a cliffhanger? Instead it just leaves me wondering whether Egwene is worth that worry, because if she turns out to be a Nynaeve worshipper she won't be worth the mud on my shoes. Maybe it would have been better to have Cenn leave on a more ominous note and cut the chapter off there, because Cenn is a cool old guy and if anyone's going to be the inevitable wise old mentor I kind of hope it's him. Then again he'll inevitably die if he is, so I hope he's not.
Next time, chapter two! Hopefully things will grow more exciting.
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