“We can’t go back, Mat. The Wheel has turned, for better or worse. And it will keep on turning, as lights die and forests dim, storms call and skies break. Turn it will. The Wheel is not hope, and the Wheel does not care, the Wheel simply is. But so long as it turns, folk may hope, folk may care. For with light that fades, another will eventually grow, and each storm that rages must eventually die. As long as the Wheel turns. As long as it turns…”
It is hard to determine if this is supposed to be postmodern meta-narrative irony or actual sincerity. The dialogue being spoken here sounds exactly like the kind of writing in the series that is usually relegated to ancient texts or simple descriptive narrative by the author. It is definitely worth nothing that this patch of dialogue is immediately preceded by two important words: “Thom chuckled.” That chuckle on the part of Thom seems to signal that what is about to unfurl from his mouth should not be taken seriously as something that anyone anywhere under any circumstances would actually say. But then again, some people are excessively verbose.
“He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one.”
A complex creation of a background mythology is central to the playing out of the narrative. This is pretty much standard procedure for the fantasy genre to a point; Tolkien filled his interminable tale of Frodo throwing away a ring with all manner of songs and poetry and biographical information about his invented world. But Jordan (Sanderson who took up the task of completion following Jordan’s untimely death) takes things to a whole new level in which it becomes certifiably impossible to tell the tale if any of this mythology were extricated from the text. It would be writing living in a world where Shakespeare’s plays exist but none of the historical sources from which he drew up or any of the analysis written afterward were available. This particular quote becomes troubling for Min as she tries to decode what others have missed in their own analysis. In this instance, it does become a bit meta as the sureness of Min that something has definitely been missed is an accurate reflection of the varied viewpoints toward meaning in the books in The Wheel of Time series itself.
“They could put up a warning sign or something. Hello. Welcome to Hinderstap. We will murder you in the night and eat your bloody face if you stay past sunset. Try the pies. Martna Baily makes them fresh daily.”
This book, this series and this entire genre are not exactly famous for the humor. That is not to say that the book, the series and the genre doesn’t produce laughs, it is merely to observe that producing laughter is not one of the major goals. How much laughter do you remember filling the theater during sixteen hours it took to watch Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings. And the movies are a laugh riot compared to the books. That said, there are many laugh-out-loud moments in just this book than Tolkien ever produced. The problem being, of course, that in a book with nearly 800 page even the relative plethora of funny moments like the one quoted above represent only a tiny fraction of the overall word count. Of course, another way to look at this ratio is that when something funny is said or occurs, it is perhaps even more memorably comedic.
