The other issue is the apparent lack of stakes and tension, due to overpowered characters. It is pretty much a book that can be summed up as “meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, here are some characters scheming that have no impact on the current plot and just talk about other people.” It means the most of the book feels like vignettes that aren’t moving the story along any place, even more so than previous books. At this point, the series’ cast is so big I’ve completely lost all ability to tell the 30-odd Aes Sedai apart, the numerous inconsequential nobles flapping around Rand (added to every time he conquers a place), not to mention all the Aiel, Windfarers, and men-who-channel (and there’s probably a few groups I’m missing!) However, these characters (the ones we know and care about) are interspersed with dozen of other characters. There’s no Matt at all, and I’d forgotten Perrin was in it until the penultimate chapter. Of the dozen main characters in the series, this book is mostly an Elayne, Rand, and Egwene.

There are over 20 narrators in this book, probably closer to 30 (I lost track around page 400), and most of them don’t have more than a scene. This is a book, more than the others so far, where there’s a lot of nothingness happening because there are simply too many spurious narrators who add nothing to the book. It’s not as much of an oxymoron as it appears. On the other hand, the shortness just highlighted the combination of nothing really happening but there being too much to pay attention to. On the one hand, this was a nice surprise after trudging through the nearly 1000 page entries recently.

Add to your shelves here.Įxcluding the prequel, NEW SPRING, THE PATH OF DAGGERS is the shortest book in the series. If they cannot remove the Dark One’s taint from the True Source then none will survive to fight the Last Battle against the Shadow.Īnd as Rand struggles to maintain his sanity the Seanchan launch their counter-strike. And Egwene al’Vere, leader of the exiled Aes Sedai, marches her army towards the White Tower.īut Rand and the Asha’man that follow him are slowly being corrupted by the madness that comes to the male wielders of the One Power. Nynaeve, Aviendha and Elayne have broken the Dark One’s hold on the world’s weather and are poised to retake the throne of Andor. Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, has conquered the city of Illian, struck down Sammael the Forsaken and shattered the armies of the invading Seanchan.

The path of daggers