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The Dragon Reborn

by Robert Jordan

Reviewed by Coral


Rand is determined to finally find out the truth about himself once and for all; is he the Dragon Reborn? To do this, he must confront the prophecies about the Dragon alone.

Left behind by Rand, Perrin finds himself with Moraine and Lan once again. Unsure how far he is willing to trust them, they make their way uncomfortably after Rand.

Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne have returned to Tar Valon. Once there they learn that the Black Ajah have moved from the shadows. Thirteen sisters have revelead themselves to be allies of the Dark One and have fled Tar Valon with objects of unknown power. Finding themselves to be amongst the few people the Amyrlin Seat trusts, they are tasked with learning all they can about the Black Ajah and what they’ve stolen and revealing any remaining hidden sisters in Tar Valon.

I enjoyed this book mainly because this is the book where Mat’s story line finally starts. Having spent the majority of the last two books suffering from the curse of the dagger, I enjoyed finally getting chapters from his point of view.

I found the book to have too much crammed into it story wise, though at the same time we didn’t really get to see a lot of those stories. The author tells us that Rand will cause change wherever he goes, just by being there. That seems to be the truth here, where a war between two cities is resolved, a foreign invader is thrown back and a city’s political games implode into chaos through his actions, no matter how small. But a lot of this is only briefly touched upon. I would like to know more about these, instead of endless chapters of the heroes journeying from place to place as they follow the Horn.

Considering the title of the book, Rand really wasn’t a feature in this book. Perrin came across lots of evidence of Rand’s effect as he moved towards his goal, but we didn’t really get a lot of chapters about Rand.

In the same vein, Min kind of disappears from the story early on. I’ve come across this in a couple of fantasy series, with characters coming in and dropping out and I am not really a huge fan of it. It can work in some case, though I remember being frustrated with Terry Goodkind, because a lot of his absences didn’t make any sense story wise. I will wait and see what happens here, as I don’t really remember as much of the series as I thought I did.

Three books into the series and three books about epic quests. Seriously, three books and mostly everyone spends each of the books journeying one place or another. So much seems to be crammed into the end of each book. I’ve read a lot of epic journey books and have become a little more jaded against them since I first read the series, which is off because I love the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, which are both epic journey stories.

I am also not a big fan of prophecies which all fantasies stories seem to have. Although I find it funny that in this book one of the things everyone thought was clear in one of the prophecies had a meaning no one could have guessed.

 

Grade: B