"We'll drink the wine till the cup is dry,
and kiss the girls so they'll not cry,
and toss the dice until we fly
to dance with Jak o' the Shadows."
In case it wasn’t noticeably obvious, this fantasy is deeply and profoundly influenced by the Tolkien’s template. Yes, of course, that is true of probably more than ninety percent of fantasy novel series, but it more true of some than others and in this case, it is about as true as it gets. One the influences extends to the prevalence of songs. Creating an entire world from scratch that has no immediate connection to our own means, of course, that there are no songs to which one can allude much less quote lyrics form. And so part of the writer’s job is to endow the work with that texture which makes its realism more vivid and tangible. This job extends to becoming, in effect, a lyricist for songs of old. The Jak there at the end is a metaphor for death so the meaning of the lyrics should be clearer out of context.
“Think of the effect on the Pattern of a single thread, one man, removed from hours, or days, that have already been woven, like one thread picked partly out of a piece of cloth. Fragments of manuscripts remaining from the War of Power say several entire cities were destroyed with balefire before both sides realized the dangers. Hundreds of thousands of threads pulled from the Pattern, gone for days already past; whatever those people had done, now no longer had been done, and neither had what others had done because of their actions. The memories remained, but not the actions. The ripples were incalculable. The Pattern itself nearly unraveled. It could have been the destruction of everything. World, time, Creation itself."
An entire mythology must be constructed within fantasy worlds like this. Throughout the series are terms which will be used repetitively but which may not be clear to a reader picking up at randomly any particular book. One will find references to many ancient prophecies, to items of great significance, and practices and beliefs. Among the latter that pops up often as a topic of discourse in this particular volume is the concept of Patterns. It should be too difficult to extract the basic idea from this extract. Consider it a fundamental tenet of a philosophical school centered upon the inexorability of fate and destiny. As asserted elsewhere, nobody has the ability to break free from what has been decreed by the Pattern, only various levels of wiggle room within to make decisions within that overarching pattern.
“He isn't a horse, Elayne. You don't own him.”
Where this series takes a hard left turn and breaks almost completely with Lord of the Rings is in its focus upon romantic entanglements and sexuality. One cannot completely separate the undercurrent of gender-related discourse which is persistent in the novel from its multiple subplots focusing on relationships that are imperfect to say the least. Although by no means one of the defining quotes attributed to this particular novel, much less the series as a whole, it may be one of the most telling relative to the complex way in which romance is introduced. Elayne’s response, by the way, is as utterly expected as it is almost certainly not entirely true: “I never said I did.”
The facts, however, are these: it was in just the very book preceding this one that Elayne and Rand share a kiss after she confesses her love. That was also the entry in the series in which Rand is told by Egwene that she is no longer in love with him and he confesses to the same. So, what is going on here is a story older than time: there is more than one jockey in the stable and Elayne is saddling up. This is how real love stories work all the time and what is most unexpected is to find it playing out more realistically in a fantasy novel than most other genres. In the world of competitive romance, yeah, actually, she does kind of own him. But it’s cool, because the horse owns the jockey just as much as the other way around. Unless the two are working together, one or the other is going to be in for a world of hurt.
