An Ending: Miscellaneous

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

I am so sorry, you guys, about posting this a week late. Work has been crazy. But that's not what you came here to read about. You came to read about my thoughts on the Wheel of Time. 

I've already covered  most of the major players of A Memory of Light: Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Demandred, Tuon, Rand's Ladies, and Androl & Pevara. But those are just the players I had major reactions too or the ones I had a lot to say about. There are other big players that fall into one of two categories: (1) though they were big players in the Wheel of Time over all, they didn't play a big part in A Memory of Light or (2) I didn't have strong reactions because they pretty much did what I expected. 

Well, without further ado let's talk about my reactions to some of the miscellaneous characters of A Memory of Light.

no WoT today

So I've totally failed you, my dear readers. I have not written my last Wheel of Time post yet. I hope to do it soon, but I can't even feasibly promise tomorrow, considering my schedule for today. It's going to be one of those weeks, you know? The kind where I pull 12 hour days at work and spend all my time at home doing work. This is what happens when you're trying to get a satellite ready to launch into space.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you today. But I will post again! Never fear!

Pitch Madness!

So today on twitter (which I am now on, follow me @Brown_Ajah ) is a little pitch contest called Pitch Madness where you tweet your pitch in 140 characters. So just in case someone thinks my pitch is interesting and comes to my blog I wanted an easy place to view my query and first 250 words.

Also, if you have thoughts feelings opinions on the query and first 250, post them in the comments!

New and Improved Query:

Chris Chapell is doomed to life as a Norm--a normal 17-year-old, that is--until his wizard father develops an amulet that grants even the most un-magical of people wizard powers. After years of being the family pariah, Chris has the power he always wanted and his father is finally proud of him.

Officially a wizard, Chris is eligible to attend Southeast Paranormal High School with his siblings and best friend, Jeremy. At Para High, popularity and power are instrinsically linked, and after Chris saves his classmates from attack by a vicious spirit, he takes his place as the most popular student at the school.

However, not everyone is impressed with Chris's limitless powers. Marilla has a sixth sense for dubious use of magic, since she's the granddaughter of the U.S. Secretary of the Paranormal Department. Plus her ghost-but-not-a-ghost best friend warned her that Chris is dangerous. But the more time Marilla spends with Chris, she finds her defenses weakening.

When Jeremy discovers Chris's powers are unnatural, he demands that Chris give up the amulet, which is a threat to both Norm and Para kind. But Chris will not go back to the way life was before: being a reject in his own family and a second-class citizen. And now he's the most powerful wizard to ever live--powerful enough to tweak the minds of those who confront him.

After all, what's a little mind control between friends?

THE DESCENT OF CHRIS CHAPPELL is a YA paranormal fantasy complete at 81,000 words. A villain origin story told from the viewpoints of both Chris and Marilla, it is a stand alone with series potential.

First 250(ish):

Chapter 1--Chris Chappell

Sweat beads on my forehead and drips down my face as I sit in my car. I clench my fist around the keys, considering shoving them back into the ignition and driving off. Anywhere would be better than here.

I glance into the rear view mirror and wince at the sight of my bloodshot gray eyes. If only freshman girls weren’t so vain. Honestly, who freaking uses hair spray in the middle of the band locker room? It’s a room to store expensive musical instruments, not get freshened up after a hard day. And I doubt the piece of my mind I gave her will be good enough to stop her from doing it again in the future. Freshman girls have less sense than drunken were-hyenas.

With a sigh I rest my head against the steering wheel. Cursing freshmen girls won’t get me anywhere. It’s not really her fault. She doesn’t know my family is insane. She doesn’t know that I don’t wear contacts for sight and that having to take them out because my eyes are on fire is a huge deal that could result in my family getting sanctioned by the government.

 No one does. Well, no one except my insane family.

Sitting in the car isn’t going to help. I need to man up and just go inside. Odds are no one will even notice me slipping in. Dad’s probably in the basement. Mom’s car isn’t even here so she must be at work. And the twins know better than to get me in trouble—especially about this.

Oops

I nearly managed to post every day for two weeks. Two weeks! And then yesterday I forgot to write today's post. *sigh*

It will be posted! I will write it! It will either be posted later today or tomorrow morning. Sorry about that, guys!

For a sneak peak, it'll be talking about Nynaeve, Lan, Alanna, Moiraine, Thom, and other Wheel of Time characters who I couldn't find enough words to write a whole post about. 

An Ending: Androl & Pevara

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

Androl & Pevara, I have one question for the two of you:

Where have you been all my life?

Seriously, I love these two. I want an entire series that is just the adventures of Androl and Pevara. I can see the tagline now. "He was destined to go insane. She was destined to hunt him down. Together they will stop the forces of darkness."

Something like that. Something that says "these shouldn't be friend, but they are, and they're pure awesome."

Yep. Androl + Pevara = Awesome.

An Ending: Aviendha, Elayne, & Min

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

I feel the need to say this every time I talk about these ladies: Rand al'Thor has way too many women. Seriously. Waaaaaay too many. I mean I get that he's ta'veren. I imagine that makes him ridiculously attractive, since the Pattern is sort of pulling everyone towards him. We see that with all our boys to a certain extent. Perrin has Faile and Berlaine fighting over him; he just had the good sense to pick one of them and stick with her. Mat has always had a lady on arm, but even he had the good sense to settle down with one. But Rand? No. Our Rand can't settle with just one lady. That would be much too easy. He has to make his life super complicated by having three. Silly boy. And silly ladies for going along with it.

Anyway, moving on from Rand's love life, let's discuss our three ladies.

An Ending: Tuon

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

I thought I had a lot to say about Tuon, which is why I wanted to give her a post separate from Mat's, but upon thinking about it, I realize I don't really have that much to say. Tuon is who she is. That crazy, silly Empress of Seanchan who needs to get over herself. 

But I do have a few comments, though most of them relate to other characters. So this may actually end up being an extenuation of my Mat post. Sorry guys. Maybe I should have just made my Mat post super long. 

Anyway....

An Ending: Demandred

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

Let's talk about Demandred for a moment. 

An Ending: Egwene al'Vere

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril. 

Oh, Egwene.

An Ending: Perrin Aybara

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril. 

Perrin has never been my favorite character. I never hated him, like I hated Rand, but Perrin's just always been a little flavorless as a character. He's just not very exciting. In real life, I'm sure I could be friends with someone like him, but as a character in an epic fantasy he's just always been sort of blah to me. 

Regardless since he is one of our main three, one of our Superboys if you will, he had a big part to play in this story. 

An Ending: Mat Cauthon

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril. 

I've made no secret of my love of Matrim Cauthon. I'm also one of those people who when I read The Gathering Storm was immediately jarred because Brandon Sanderson got Mat wrong. In Towers of Midnight, Mat got better, but there was still something off about Mat's personality, about his humor. So I was a little worried about how Mat was going to play out in this final book. 

An Ending: Rand al'Thor

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light. 

Read at your own peril.  

An Ending: The Wheel of Time

This post contains spoilers for A Memory of Light.

Read it at your own peril.

I am writing this on Saturday, January 12, 2013, though it won't post until Monday. I got up this morning at 8 am, promptly opened A Memory of Light for the first time, and continued reading it until 9:45 pm. I think it's safe to assume that between meals, bathroom breaks, and dealing with my dogs, I actually read it in under thirteen hours. I think that's a new record for me. 908 pages of small font in thirteen hours. But man, I couldn't have stopped if I wanted to.

It's finally over.

I didn't actually cry at any point, mainly because when I'm reading I'm so engrossed in a story that I rarely feel anything. It's not like watching a movie. It's more immediate than that. I'm just so in it that there really isn't a me sitting separate from it to cry. Which is weird and hard to explain. But my eyes did burn at several point, and when I got to the end, when I read those last words, I almost did cry.

I closed the book and sat there for a moment, leaning over it. I just...the ending...I...

No words.

It's hard to sum up how I feel as a whole, other than every time I read those last words of the book, I want to cry, though I can't explain why.

Maybe it's because for so long we've talked about how there are no beginnings, but it was a beginning. And finally, it was an ending.

I really can't express all the different things I'm feeling in one post because there are so many! So what I'm going to do instead is write a post about how I feel about each of the major character story lines and then probably a post about a whole much of miscellaneous characters.

I'll post one a day for the next two weeks, because I don't want to spend the next month drawing this out for people who don't care about the Wheel of Time. I think I can get it all done in that time. Right now I'm thinking the following schedule.

Tuesday (1/15): Rand
Wednesday (1/16): Mat
Thursday (1/17): Perrin
Friday (1/18): Egwene
Monday (1/21): Demandred
Tuesday (1/22): Tuon
Wednesday (1/23): Aviendha, Elayne, & Min
Thursday (1/24): Androl & Pevara
Friday (1/25): Miscellaneous
  
But now I also intend to re-read the whole series. Why? Various reasons, but mainly because I like to read a whole series with knowledge of the ending as I start from the beginning. 

And maybe just maybe I'll do it because I want to believe: "There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time."