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New interview clip with Rosamund Pike about recording The Eye of the World

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 

The Dusty Wheel YouTube channel has posted a clip from an interview with Rosamund Pike about narrating The Eye of the World. Both The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt have been released by Macmillan Audio with narration by Pike. The video is a clip from an interview that was included in full with the audiobook version of Origins of the Wheel of Time by Michael Livingston.
 
During the interview Pike explains she has to use the full range of her voice for all of Robert Jordan's characters, and uses cues from the books to add unique touches to all our favorite characters. She says narrating The Eye of the World is "like acting out the entire first season singlehandedly." 
 
Watch the interview below and check out Origins of the Wheel of Time audiobook to hear the full interview.
 
 

 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Rosamund Pike discusses recording for the new audiobooks.

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Dragonmount's 2022 Holiday Gift Guide

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
 
Welcome to the 2022 Dragonmount Holiday Gift Guide! We’ve rounded up all the best Wheel of Time themed gifts from artists and small businesses. We've also opened up the brand new Dragonmount Merchandise Shop with lots of cool new gear. 
 

 
 
Books & Official Merchandise
First up is licensed merch and books. Origins of the Wheel of Time ($ 14.99) delves deep into the lore that inspired Robert Jordan. A must-have for anyone who loves to re-read the series.  
For those book collectors located in the UK , Orbit is publishing this gorgeous version of The Eye of the World (£85).  
There are two versions of the Aes Sedai Great Serpent rings. The first Aes Sedai ring by Badali Jewelry is the original ring approved by Robert Jordan ($85). (Available from the new Dragonmount Merchandise Store!)  
The second is the gold Aes Sedai ring  by Jalic blades inspired from the TV series on Prime Video ($60). Plated gold with semi-precious stones for each ajah.  
For sword collectors, there’s Rand al’Thor’s Heron Mark sword from The Wheel of Time on Prime Video (Jalic Blades - $360, preorder, expected to ship in Jan 2023).   
The last piece of official merchandise is this incredible, limited-series serpent watch from Tockr ($449). Engraved with The Wheel of Time logo on the back. (Currently out of stock, but perhaps returning soon?)  

 
Dragonmount Merchandise & JordanCon
Next up are a few items from the all-new Dragonmount Merchandise Shop! You can start with a gift card, but there's a great selection of headwear like this dad hat ($19).  
There's clothing like this cute muscle tank ($24).  
Also, lots of drink vessels to choose from. Our favorite is this epic beer stein ($29).  
Another fantastic gift is a three-day membership to JordanCon ($55). JordanCon is a small fantasy literature convention started in honor of The Wheel of Time author, Robert Jordan. JordanCon 2023 is taking place April 21-23 in Atlanta, Georgia.  
Finally, for those who've finished reading The Wheel of Time we recommend checking Dragonmount founder Jason Denzel's Mystic Trilogy book series (ebook format:  $9.99, $11.99, and $14.99). Also available in print and audiobook. Check Jason's personal website for more details.  
 

 
Unofficial Merch Inspired by The Wheel of Time
For anyone who has the full hardcover The Wheel of Time collection, these book jackets from Juniper books make an incredible statement on your bookshelf ($225).  
If you've always wanted your own twisted ring ter'angreal, you'll want this Möbius strip ($35). From the description: Mobius Strip is a surface with only one side (when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space) and only one boundary curve.   
This fox head pendant looks a lot like one we imagine a trickster gambler wears ($161). We think Mat Cauthon approves.   
If wolves are more your spirit animal, this wolf brother candle is inspired by our favorite Blacksmith ($23).   
Artistic types will enjoy this new Unofficial Wheel of Time Coloring Book ($14.99).  
 

 
The Wheel of Time has inspired many wonderful artists. Serena's print entitled "Cleansing" shows an iconic scene from the middle of the books ($11.95)  
The Oath rod shirt is great for fans of the Moiraine and Suian relationship ($28).   
Fans of the new The Wheel of Time TV show will appreciate this cute Green Ajah mug ($14.50), and this greeting card with Daniel Henny's Lan ($6).   
Lan fans can also request personalized book pendants with their favorite characters or text from the books.   

 
These handmade bone dice are just the Pips for your favorite gambler ($20).   
Wheel of Time fans love to cosplay, and you can't play Moiraine without the kesiera, the pendant with a blue stone that Moiraine wears in her hair ($19.99). Anyone looking for a simple Warder cosplay can pop on this I'm her Warder t-shirt and be in character ($23.20)  
If you need to fill your home with Wheel of Time art, you can drink your tea (or ale) out of this Aes Sedai Tankard ($43).  
The last recommendation we have is Corey Lansdell gorgeous art inspired by the TV show. We especially love Rosamund Pike as Moiraine ($46.94)  
What Wheel of Time gifts are on your wishlist? Let us know in the comments below! 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    We've found the best gifts for the Wheel of Time fan in your life (even if that's yourself)! 

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Rajiv's Threads In the Pattern: Origins of the Wheel of Time Review

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found catalogued at his website.
 
Around the time The Shadow Rising was published, a friend turned me on to Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time by raving about the Easter eggs. It was epic fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, he said, but throughout, there were veiled references to mythology, legends, and history from all around the world. This was during a time when the internet was still text terminals and UNIX command lines, and he wanted his friends to read along and help catch all the references. Soon enough, I was on dial-up Compuserve and Usenet with all the other amateur scholars, not only trying to decode the real-world tales in Jordan’s Pattern, but trying to predict the shapes the Pattern would take with the next book. And the next.
 
Now, The Wheel of Time is complete, an accessible internet has crowd-sourced an enormous volume of amateur scholarship, and professional scholar Michael Livingston has written an official version of our Easter egg hunt in Origins of the Wheel of Time. For the nerdiest segment of fandom (myself included), it’s a delight. Livingston parses out the multitude of references with evidence from Robert Jordan’s own notes and known influences. But even for fans and admirers of Jordan’s world building craft, Livingston sheds light on the themes and writing process that garnered so much love and acclaim. He also shows why the Easter egg hunt is central to understanding what Jordan was trying to achieve, and perhaps even why Rand could light his pipe in the end.
 
Origins contains a concise biography of Robert Jordan, a contextualization with J.R.R. Tolkien’s methods behind The Lord of the Rings, and a look at Jordan’s practices as a writer. It concludes with a large section, similar to the glossaries at the end of The Wheel’s books, that go through names and terms from the story. Here, Livingston provides insights into what those names reference, and even reveals some lingering mysteries. Origins is probably not for the casual reader. But if you’ve ever engaged with The Wheel of Time on a deeper level, hunted for literary Easter eggs, studied how writers build an imaginary world, or pondered how epic fantasy--like the Wheel--spins a myriad variations on eternal themes, Origins may spark beautiful revelations. It’s also an illustration of how meeting your heroes can be a wonderful thing.
 
Mortality and Change
 
Through Jordan’s own writings and stories from “Team Jordan,” Livingston reveals a Robert Jordan who was vigorously physical, endlessly curious, and a lover of stories real and imagined. He was also a man profoundly affected by his military service in the Vietnam War, a subsequent accident in civilian life that didn’t kill him only by luck, and finally a disease that ultimately ended his life. Awareness of mortality weighed on Jordan’s entire adult life. As he wrote:
 
And more succinctly, “Life changes. Deal.”
 
Though Jordan was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, his attitude was far less nostalgic. The inevitability of global change was a theme in his first fantasy novel, Warrior of the Altaii, and ran strong in The Wheel of Time, where the world fundamentally changed in the process of being saved. Returning from home, you have changed, and so has the place you left. You can’t go home again. And maybe that’s for the best.
 
As a veteran and a scholar of military history, Robert Jordan based many of his fictional battles on historical ones. In the glossary-style final section, Michael Livingston also gives references to the military references Jordan uses to inform the tactics and movements he describes so well. 
 
Books, Lists, and Ramblings
 
As an amateur fiction writer myself, I was especially interested in Robert Jordan’s writing process. Through Jordan’s notes and interviews, Michael Livingston gives us a look at the writing process that created The Wheel of Time. Jordan was a voracious reader, and Livingston makes several references to Jordan’s collection of more than a thousand books. Jordan was inspired to write by an irony that many writers will recognize: he wanted more from what he read.
 
 
This is a sentiment echoed by the great Alan Moore, who actively encourages aspiring writers to consume the dreck along with the greats.
 
 
Robert Jordan set out to build his world by compiling lists from what he read and elsewhere. Of character and place names, certainly, but also “of vegetation, of jobs, of songs, of idioms and sayings.” He would annotate these lists with the aspects of their meaning that captured him, and connect them--physically, with lines--to combine them into new ideas or acknowledge possible connections. A list of names became a cast of characters with interesting attributes, and the interactions in various combinations suggested plots. And once he had an idea for a character or scene, he would just start writing, interrogating the ideas on paper as he went.
 
 
As an occasional fiction writer, I recognize this sort of brainstorming as a wonderfully creative, generative technique, where a strict plan-then-execute approach usually fails to produce results as deep and rich.
 
But it is his starting point, the lists of proper nouns culled from stories and the world around him, that reveals that Jordan was stitching together ideas from disparate sources into something ambitiously coherent. He was weaving a sort of conspiracy theory, implying that all the stories we know are rooted in this story, the one Robert Jordan was telling, with echoes that go backward and forward in cyclic time.
 
Syncretism, the Grand Conspiracy Theory
 
While I’d gleefully engaged in the great Easter egg hunt for veiled allusions to other stories across many fan properties, I only found a name for the practice in the last few years, reading Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum: syncretism.
 
 
Both Tolkien and Jordan were syncretics in the same way as the three conspiracy theorists in Foucault’s Pendulum: they connected real details to imagine a common source underlying them. Tolkien explored this through linguistic vectors. Jordan’s vectors were stories. “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” All the stories were true, and shall be again.
 
Michael Livingston names three primary influences on Robert Jordan: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, his canon for the legends of King Arthur; and Robert Graves’ The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. This last book, recommended to him by his wife and editor Harriet, was itself syncretic, claiming that the legends and myths we know were patriarchal stories pasted over the real stories of a primordial matriarchy that featured a tripartite goddess: the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. This goddess could be glimpsed in the background of every story that tried to draw focus to a newer, male god or hero. But the palimpsest was never fully cleared. Hints of the real story still showed through. Jordan not only culled many names for his lists from The White Goddess, he was inspired by the premise that there was a single myth that underpinned all others.
 
 
Fan excitement in hunting for Easter eggs is the tracing of a diaspora of tales, of recognizing the secret origin of something familiar. Of course, Michael Livingston warns us not to take it too far. Jordan allowed himself to be inspired by these tales, but did not feel himself bound to them. Sometimes similarity is coincidence. Or as the narrator of Foucault’s Pendulum puts it (echoing my thoughts when I try to speculate on the Marvel Cinematic Universe):
 
 
Mysteries Revealed
 
While Origins of the Wheel of Time is a book that mainly tackles issues that inform Robert Jordan’s story rather than the issues in the story, Michael Livingston gives us a few interesting revelations from the notes.
 
If you speculate about the Prime Video adaptation of The Wheel of Time, this detail may interest you when you consider how showrunner Rafe Judson reimagined the Eye of the World.
 
 
We know of the Ring of Tamyrlin from the prologue of The Eye of the World, but that artifact, and the term “Tamyrlin” remained things we could only speculate about. Jordan’s notes reveal that it was not only a sign of office, but Tamyrlin was a person.
 
 
One of the big mysteries is the character Nakomi. Most of us who’ve speculated on her hit close to the truth, but Brandon Sanderson provides some interesting details about her background. I think there’s an opportunity for Rafe Judkins to weave her into the Prime Video adaptation as a recurring cameo.
 
 
Finally, there is the mystery of Rand’s pipe.
 
 
The notes contain no answers, and Brandon Sanderson cites this as one of the things he will never reveal. Perhaps it’s for the best. Some things ought to remain in the realm of mystery.
 
For my part, I think the answer reaches back to Hindu mythology, one of the mythologies Jordan incorporates into his syncretism. Consider this, from Livingston’s entry for the Amayar.
 
 
“Maya” is the divine illusion that is the world we perceive. It veils the ultimate truth of what is, and enlightenment is the process of piercing that veil. In Hinduism, we are not separate from the divine, but continuous with it. It is Maya that prevents us from realizing this.
 
In Jordan’s epic, the Amayar people awaited the end of illusions, just as the Aiel expected to “wake from the dream.” When Rand fought the Dark One, he stopped weaving the One Power and True Power, and started weaving the threads of the Pattern itself, his visions of reality competing with the Dark One’s. He and the Dark One vied to remake the universe. When Rand returned, perhaps it wasn’t that he could no longer touch saidin, but he now saw through its illusion. For all that everyone reminded Rand that he wasn’t the Creator, in the end, he re-wove the universe, human free will intact, and excluded the Dark One outside the Pattern. As it was once, at the moment of Creation, so it was again. Rand, who was once a character in the story, transcended to become the Creator, the storyteller. This is the ultimate enlightenment in a world created from a gleeman’s patchwork cloak of stories: awareness of being in a story. In his new body, Rand’s first desire is to follow his curiosity and see the rest of the world. Unshackled from being ta’veren, he can enjoy the free will he won for the rest of the world. The creation, the story, had a life of its own, and the free will of its characters must be respected. But much like Nakomi, Rand could give the story a nudge. He is now the author of his own story.
 
 
It fits, doesn’t it?
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    How did Rand light his pipe? The answer may lie in the grand “conspiracy theory” underlying The Wheel of Time, as described in scholar Michael Livingston’s Origins of the Wheel of Time. SPOILERS for all the books.

MahaRaj
MahaRaj

Origins of The Wheel of Time is now available

Today is the release date for Origins of The Wheel of Time: The Legends and Mythologies that Inspired Robert Jordan by Michael Livingston. The book explores Robert Jordan's inspiration for the epic The Wheel of Time series. 
 
Here's the book description: 
 
 
Fans are also anticipating the reveal of Nakomi's backstory, one of the remaining mysteries from The Wheel of Time. The book also includes a new world map with changes to the Seanchan continent from Robert Jordan's edits that were never before incorporated. 
 
Origins of The Wheel of Time is available for order in ebook format from the Dragonmount store. You can also order print and ebook copies from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your local independent bookseller. The audiobook is available from Macmillan Audio. There's also special UK editions from Broken Binding and Inkstone Books. 
 
 
If you missed our interview with Michael Livingston check it out:
 

 
Who's looking forward to reading this book? Please let us know what you think in the comments below (but please avoid spoilers for now). 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    The new book about the myths that inspired The Wheel of Time is published today.

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Exclusive new UK edition of The Eye of The World

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
Orbit Books, the UK publisher for The Wheel of Time will be publishing a limited number of leather-bound editions for The Eye of the World. Only 1,000 copies will be sold worldwide. The hardback book comes with gold foiled illustrations by Stephen Player on the slip-case and book cover. It also features green and yellow head and tail bands, dark green sprayed edges, and a gold ribbon. The 1,000 copies are hand numbered. It's definitely a special book to add to your collection! 
 
 
The book also features gorgeous new front endpaper illustration from Martyn Pick depicting the iconic flight from the Two Rivers scene. 
 
 
 
According to Orbit's announcement, the UK retail price will be £100, or £85 if you preorder. The publication date is December 8th, 2022. These limited editions will not be available in the United States or Canada. The edition is an Orbit website exclusive and is ONLY available via the Orbit store.
 
 
 
 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    UK fans can preorder the Deluxe Collectors Edition before the December 8th release

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Check out our Interview with Michael Livingston

Everyone here at Dragonmount is excited for tomorrow's release of Michael Livingston's Origins of The Wheel of Time. Thom interviewed Michael Livingston back in April 2022 while at JordanCon and we are finally able to share it!
 

 
The Origins of The Wheel of Time comes out November 8th, 2022 and explores Robert Jordan's inspirations while writing The Wheel of Time.  Livingston wrote an article for Dragonmount about holding the first copies of his book. The Origins of The Wheel of Time features a new map drawn specifically for Livingston's books, using Robert Jordan's notes and Livingston's updates. Along with the physical versions of the book, there will be an audiobook version published by Macmillan Audio.
The audiobook versions will include some very special pieces that were recently revealed. There will be a foreword written and read by Harriet McDougal, Robert Jordan’s widow and editor, a letter read by Michael Livingston, and an interview with Rosamund Pike about her inspiration for Moiraine on the Prime Video TV series. In addition, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer will be reading parts of the audiobook as well. 
 
Origins of The Wheel of Time is available for pre-order in ebook format from the Dragonmount store. You can also pre-order print and ebook copies from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, or your local independent bookseller.
 
Make sure to share your thoughts over on the YouTube video or in the comments below. 
 
 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Interview with Michael Livingston, author of Origins of the Wheel of Time (which comes out November 8th!)

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Review: The Art of Prophecy

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian SFFH writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, an Ignyte and Shirley Jackson award-winning magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.
 
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TL;DR: The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu is the first book of the War Arts Saga trilogy. Set in a secondary world inspired by wuxia, it's an exhilarating, action-packed start to a very promising series. It’s perfect for fans of subverted tropes and wuxia/martial arts, and readers who enjoyed The Stormlight Archive, She Who Became the Sun, and The Unbroken. 
 
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The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu follows the story of a Chosen One: Jian, who has been foretold to defeat The Eternal Khan, a warlord from the adjoining Katuia nation, and lead the Zhuun nation to victory by a five-hundred-year-old prophecy. But when Taishi, an old, ornery, one-armed war arts master, goes to check on Jian's training, what she finds is a spoiled, petulant boy taught so many different styles that he has learned nothing at all. Worse, news of the Eternal Khan of Katuia's death arrives soon after she does. The prophecy is broken, and Taishi must help Jian flee for his life from the political machinations of the dukes of Zhuun.

The premise of the series is an excellent subversion of the Chosen One trope as well as an absolute love letter to wuxia, a martial arts genre typically set in ancient China. The magic that features in this story is martial-arts-based; specifically, individuals have an inner energy (jing) that they can learn to master with training (as an aside, I think that the jing here is the same as the one of traditional Chinese medicine, making up the Three Treasures along with qi and shen. Based on my limited knowledge, I think qi is used more frequently; I’d love to hear why the author went with jing here instead). Many schools of martial arts exist, each with different jing-based abilities. For example, Taishi's school is Windwhisper, which lets her manipulate air currents to attack, defend, and—most excellently—fly using her jing. There are some other fantasy elements in the story, such as reincarnation, but it's all generally more subtle than, for example, channeling in The Wheel of Time; I would say it's much more similar to books like She Who Became the Sun, which has limited magic but still feels very much like a fantasy novel.

I absolutely loved reading this book, especially with Taishi as the point of view character. She's no-nonsense; she's highly skilled and knows it and yet, people continue to underestimate her both because of her age and because of her physical disability—one of her arms does not work. She's the kind of character I would be thrilled to see more of in fantasy. In fact, I loved her so much that I was deeply disappointed to learn that there would be other POV characters in the book! I didn't much care to enter Jian's head at first, since Chu manages to make him so deeply irritating from the start; the book also follows the stories of Salimande, an elite Katuia warrior and one of the Wills of the Khan, and Qisami, a ruthless, sardonic, and deeply chaotic bounty hunter I kept picturing as Awkwafina for some reason. 

While I was initially disappointed to be breaking away from Taishi, the multiple perspectives in the book let us get a much deeper, fuller picture of the world, especially the conflict between Zhuun and Katuia and all of the political forces at work. Katuia itself is a fascinating culture; they are a nomadic people within the Grass Sea, a dangerous land of monstrously large grass and ever-shifting landscape. The culture appears to be steampunk-esque, with moving cities that rely heavily on machinery and, I think, steam. Without giving anything away, I really can't wait to see how the world and all the people within it grow and change over the next two books; one of the final scenes of the novel has me more excited for a sequel than I’ve been since I can remember.

Furthermore, the reader sees a promising start to Jian’s evolution as a character, from annoying child-warrior who needs to learn something of the real world to… well, not a hero, not yet, but someone with the potential to be. I appreciate Chu’s restraint in not making Jian the golden boy right away and—to my great surprise, given my initial distaste for him—I’m excited to see how the character I genuinely found deeply annoying grows. 

The one thing I'll note: while the book was full of both tension and action, I did feel it sagged a bit in the middle. This might partially be my fault—I got absolutely knocked out by COVID when I was about two-thirds the way through and didn't pick this book back up for two weeks—but there is also some amount of setup and moving about in the middle of the book that slows the pace down. If you feel yourself getting a bit bogged in the details, I highly urge you to keep going—the parts that felt a bit unnecessary for me when I was reading them are, I think, going to be major parts in the next books, and I'm really excited to see where they go. 

I've been really hesitant about committing to series for the last little while, especially when it comes to long books (The Art of Prophecy clocks in at 528 pages in the hardcover edition, which is on the shorter side of "tome length", but still a big time investment!), but I find myself so excited to keep going with this trilogy. And, I was thrilled to learn while preparing this review, the series has been optioned for television, with The Wheel of Time's very own Uta Briesewitz set to direct. No word yet on the series premiere, but the next two books in the series are coming out in 2023 and 2024 so you don't have to worry about unpredictable years of waiting between the books after you start the series.
In all, I give my highest recommendation for this book, especially for anyone who is looking for an awesome, action-packed martial arts fantasy with multiple strong female leads. It's perfect for fans of She Who Became the Sun and The Unbroken, as well as those who enjoyed The Stormlight Archive with its sprawling world and battle scenes. And if you don’t know if any of those things are up your alley, trust me and give this book a chance. I’d love to hear what you think.
 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    A book that's perfect for fans of subverted tropes and wuxia/martial arts, and readers who enjoyed The Stormlight Archive, She Who Became the Sun, and The Unbroken. 

Ola Aleksandra Hill
Ola Aleksandra Hill

The Wheel of Time "ReWOTch"

Join Dragonmount for our episode by episode "ReWOTch" of season one of The Wheel of Time on Prime Video.
 
Every Monday at 9pm eastern we will be streaming to YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Twitter. Join Rebecca, Thom, and Ebony as we experience the first season again. 
 
If you missed last weeks episode, you can find it here. Just press play on your prime video episode at the same time you hit play on our stream. There's a countdown on Dragonmount's stream that will help you align the two videos. 
 
Showrunner Rafe Judkins said he’d answer one question that came up during the live stream, so make sure to tune in and help us determine which question to ask!
 
After episode one, we asked Twitter to help us choose the question.
 
 
Our fans on twitter picked - What is something you think no one has noticed or commented on from this episode?
Rafe replied with a little help from book consultant Sarah Nakamura. Warning, there are some spoilers for future plot points. 
 
 
Our next rewatch is episode two on Monday October 23 at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. Come watch Shadows Waiting with us!
 

 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Join us every Monday as we "ReWOTch" the first season of The Wheel of Time

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Promises and The Wheel of Time

Thirty years ago, I fell in love with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.
 
Today, I opened a box.
 

 
As I’ve said before, it has been the honor of a lifetime to write ORIGINS OF THE WHEEL OF TIME, to put my thoughts beside Jordan’s, to touch in my very small way the thing that he built. 
 
I’ll write later about what it feels like to have worked on this — honestly, I’m still trying to get my head around it — but as I’m seeing the book and holding it today I want to point something out. 
 
When you pick up your copy, you’ll want to look inside the covers, front and back. This is where you’ll find what’s called the “end papers.” In most Wheel of Time books, they feature a glorious map of the Westlands. 
 
We could have done that in ORIGINS, too, but we didn’t. (And, no, we didn’t use the new map of Randland that appears in this book, either.)
 
What we used instead is a glorious image of the symbol of the Wheel of Time: the interwoven snake and wheel. I tried not to make many requests in the production of this book, but using this imagery was very definitely one of them. 
 
It’s for Harriet. 
 
In 2013, you see, Harriet — Jordan’s editor and widow — gave an interview with Tom Doherty, then the publisher of Tor Books. Talk turned to many things — it’s a great interview — but among them was the Wheel of Time. Towards the end of the conversation, Harriet said there was something she’d always wished she could do in the Wheel of Time books but never did:
 
 
The simple truth is that the Wheel of Time does not exist — this world we love would not exist — without Harriet. And neither would ORIGINS OF THE WHEEL OF TIME. She gave the book her blessing. She read it and checked it. She was supportive from the beginning to the end and back again. 
 
And no one needs me to tell them that aside from being one of the greatest editors in the history of science fiction and fantasy, Harriet is also a truly wonderful human being. 
 
So when I read this interview, when I saw that she’d had this dream unfulfilled … well, by the Light, I was determined to fulfill it for her. 
 
When you get your copy of ORIGINS on November 8, go ahead and open that front cover and look at the Snake Wheel on the end papers. Then, for good measure, do the same with the back cover. It’s there, too. Now hold them both open, like so:
 

 
There are neither beginnings nor endings in the Wheel of Time. 
 
And so it is. 
 
I’ll have more to say about ORIGINS as the weeks pass. As I look at it now, for instance, I see how my words are framed by this image, how my book “fits” within the Wheel of Time, how I’m a part of it now. 
 
It’s a lot to think about it.
 
So for now, I’ll focus on this:
 
Today I opened a box. I opened my book. For me, it was full of cherished words and a promise fulfilled.
 
Soon, very soon, you‘ll open yours, too. Perhaps you will come to Charleston for the book-signing with me and Harriet and Jordan’s amazing assistant, Maria, on November 8. If so, we’ll read a few of those words together. 
 

 
But wherever you are, wherever I am, those words will still connect us. To me, that’s the greatest gift of the Wheel of Time, after all: that across time and space and even the spans of existence that might separate us, we can open our books and be there together, you and I, with Rand and Egwene and all the rest — and with Jordan and Harriet, too. 
 
It’s magic. And it’s real. 
 
I can’t wait. 
 
Visit Michael Livingston's website or follow him on Twitter. 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Michael Livingston discusses the upcoming release of ORIGINS OF THE WHEEL OF TIME.

Dragonmount.com
Dragonmount.com

Adam's Wheel of Television: Season 2 Preview Video Breakdown

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.
 
Prime Video revealed footage as part of a sneak peek for the second season of The Wheel of Time. We still don’t have a release date, but we now have a bit more of a clue as to what stories we’ll be seeing in the sophomore season.
 
According to showrunner Rafe Judkins, the second season will draw heavily on The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn, the second and third books in the series. His plan is to arrange things so that the already-greenlit Season 3 can focus on more closely adapting the fourth book in the series, The Shadow Rising, the favourite book of many readers.
 

 
The video opens in a somewhat desolate landscape with eleven riders heading down a road. It’s probable that this is Perrin and Loial travelling with Lord Ingtar’s party in search of the stolen Horn of Valere, since the terrain is very similar to what we saw for Fal Dara in Season 1.
 
We then see Rand (Josha Stradowski) staring out of a window whilst we hear Moiraine (Rosamund Pike) saying that they did not defeat the Dark One, but released his strongest lieutenant (Fares Fares, presumably playing Ishamael). That lieutenant is now awakening the Forsaken, the Dark One’s most powerful servants.
 

Rand's tribulations have certainly been good exercise.
 
We see a figure with long hair hands covered in blood being awoken before cutting to a table with twelve figures sitting around it, with their faces hidden apart from Ishamael. Based on the dialogue you might be expecting this to be a council of the Forsaken. However, there are twelve rather than thirteen figures and the figures have somewhat distinctive clothing, including the white gloves and sleeves of a possible Child of the Light, and one Aes Sedai ring. This may then be the “Darkfriend social,” a fan-favourite event in the second book when a group of high-ranking Darkfriends from across the land gather to hear of the Dark One’s plans.
We then cut to the arrival of a detachment of what appears to be Seanchan troops in a village. They have imprisoned Uno (Guy Roberts), one of Ingtar’s men. He is forced to kneel before several damane whilst Perrin (Marcus Rutherford) and Loial (Hammed Animashaun) watch on.
 
We then cut to Mat Cauthon, now played by newcomer Dónal Finn, before seeing a member of the Seanchan nobility, the Blood, complete with an ornate face mask hiding her features and long, lacquered fingernails (based on the books, this is possibly the High Lady Suroth). Moiraine then warns Lan (Daniel Henney) that he has “no conception” of the power “they” wield, as we see Seanchan soldiers assemble. Moiraine may be talking about the Seanchan or, maybe more likely, the Forsaken.
 

The Seanchan are a strong focus of the preview.
 
The camera cuts to Nynaeve (Zoë Robins) standing in a field, Lan practicing his sword forms, Nynaeve practising sword combat with Alanna’s Warders, Moiraine hiding with a drawn dagger, and several Seanchan soldiers lowering their spears alongside what might be a Seanchan nobleman. We see Egwene (Madeleine Madden) a stone room, Mat looking at a flame, Loial restrained by ropes, Moiraine in a bath, Rand tied to a wheel (maybe a dream sequence?), Perrin looking scared, Uno defeating a Seanchan in combat, and the Amyrlin Seat Siuan Sanche (Sophie Okonedo) descending from a carriage. Over this, Ishamael intones that “the only way to stop all this suffering is to stop the Wheel itself.”
 
We then see more scenes of combat; Egwene screaming with a metal collar around her neck; the Children of the Light assault the Seanchan stronghold; a cloaked figure with a long, serrated blade; a group of soldiers charging into battle; and a man being engulfed in flames.
 

Princess Not-Appearing-in-this-Video.
 
Putting these pieces together, it looks like mostly material from The Great Hunt. The Seanchan conquering the town of Falme, consolidating their control, and then being attacked first by Ingtar’s Shienaran soldiers and then the Children of the Light, with Egwene’s captivity hinted at. Notably missing from the preview video is any sign of Elyas (Gary Beadle), Elayne (Ceara Coveney) or Aviendha (Ayoola Smart) or the Aiel in general, or other storylines linked to The Dragon Reborn (apart from Rand’s solo adventure), so there’s obviously huge amounts of material from the season missing from this brief teaser.
 
New material is hinted at, such as Nynaeve learning to fight physically, possibly a result of her learning more about her wilder’s block and needing another way of protecting herself. We also know that the pursuit of the Horn is going to be somewhat different, with neither Mat nor Rand taking part, but what exactly they’ll be getting up to in the meantime is unclear. I suspect we’ll be getting some of Mat’s adventures in Tar Valon from The Dragon Reborn and some of the material from Rand’s solo adventure from the same book.
 
As usual, please continue to follow developments on our casting and news pages, and the forum, and stay tuned for more info as we get it.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Prime Video revealed footage as part of a sneak peek for the second season of The Wheel of Time. We still don’t have a release date, but we now have a bit more of a clue as to what stories we’ll be seeing in the sophomore season

Werthead
Werthead

The Wheel of Time Panel at New York Comic Con

At the New York Comic Con today, Prime Video hosted a joint Wheel of Time and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power panel. The Wheel of Time started off first. It was streamed live on the popverse site, but to watch the full panel now that it's over you'll need a digital ticket. Just a warning, the clips were blocked so only those in the room could see them. 
 
Actors Marcus Rutherford, Madeleine Madden, and Daniel Henny were joined by showrunner Rafe Judkins and two new actors for season two - Dónal Finn (Mat Cauthon), and Ceara Coveney (Elayne Trakand). 
 
The panel began with a short introduction from Rosamund Pike, followed by some discussion of Perrin, Egwene, and Lan’s character arcs in season two. The clip from Rosamund was shared to instagram.
 
The next clip was the cold opening for Season one, Episode 7: The Blood Snow.
 
Then, they introduced Dónal Finn as Mat Cauthon. Dónal is taking over the character after actor Barney Harris left the show during filming of the first season. The clip was only shown to folks in the room, but The Wheel of Time social media channels posted a photo of Dónal as Mat.
 
 
Donal joined the group onstage to discuss his role as mat in season 2. Next they began to discuss a major new character - Elayne Trakand, Daughter Heir of Andor, played by Ceara Coveney. The group at the comic con were shown a clip of Elayne in the White Tower, and again The Wheel of Time social media accounts posted a photo of Ceara as Elayne in novice white.
 
The final clip was a sneak peek of season two. The Wheel of Time also posted it to YouTube, so check it out here: 
 

 
There's a lot there for fans to dissect and discuss! 
 
Finally they ended the panel with some audience questions. Stay tuned for our full breakdown of the panel! What did you guys think? Let us know in the comments below what you can't wait to see in Season Two. 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    New Character Introductions and a Season Two sneak peek!

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Rajiv’s Threads In the Pattern: Back to the Garden

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found catalogued at his website.
 
The New York Times published an article, “Hobbits and the Hard Right: How Fantasy Inspires Italy’s Potential New Leader,” about how Italy’s fascist movement has used J.R.R. Tolkien’s work as their core myths.
 

Author and neuroscientist Benjamin C. Kinney noted in a Tweet:
 

Of course, many social and political movements present a romanticized past as a nostalgic ideal, all the way back to the major religions. In the Old Testament, humankind’s purest state of grace was in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were exiled for their Original Sin, humanity’s long road took them further and further from God. Time and distance from Eden was a vector of corruption.

Hinduism has a similar view in its great cycle of ages. The first age of the cycle that begins with creation is the Satya Yuga, or Krita Yuga. It is considered a Golden Age. It degrades through three subsequent ages, and the last, the Kali Yuga, is an age of darkness. At this stage, the universe must be destroyed before being created again in a new Golden Age. Again, the further from the original divine action the universe moves, the worse off it is, and the best times of any given cycle are in its past. (I wrote a story published in Translunar Travelers Lounge, “Don’t Make Me Come Down There,” where the Hindu gods challenge this cycle.)

Tolkien, like his friend C.S. Lewis, crafted fantasy with Christian themes. It’s not hard to see the Shire, a place of innocence and pastoral bliss, as a thematic representation of the Garden of Eden. Factoring in The Silmarillion, Tolkien’s world stretches along a moral West-East axis, with Valinor in the absolute west, the blessed realm of the angelic, undying Valar; to Mordor in the east, stronghold of the diabolical Sauron and the corrupt races who serve him. The “fundamental layers of conservatism” in Tolkien look very Christian--the King who returns to Gondor is a blood descendent of the Men of Númenor, who lived halfway between Middle-Earth and angelic Valinor. Those closest to the source of creation--physically, temporally, or spiritually--are the world’s salvation from evil. The final reward, reserved for the holiest, is leaving Middle-Earth altogether to reunite with the divine source in the ultimate West.

I call these stories “Entropic Myths.” They’re tales that cast the primordial state as morally closest to the divine. Perhaps there is an inciting incident, a fall from grace or a Big Bang, or perhaps it’s simply the grind of time and human nature, but humanity drifts away from the divine ideal and thus diminishes. Humanity can redeem itself, but it needs to look backward, to the past.

Entropic Myths, and the conservatism that uses them, rely on a concept coined by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, “anemoia,” a nostalgia for a time one never experienced. The world of simplicity, innocence, and bliss that we yearn for was in a mythical past. We can find our way back if we stop recklessly moving forward. We can go back to the Garden. It’s a fantasy that captures hearts and minds with its long cultural history.

Progressive SFF writers, of course, responded to the New York Times article by warning their peers that conservative fantasy tropes need to be interrogated and challenged. In my terminology, progressives are calling for “Enthalpic Myths” where the future can be better than past or present. Where the best is yet to come. The future is usually the domain of science fiction more than fantasy, and utopian futures like that in the Star Trek franchise do a great job of painting futures that progressives would like to live in.

In fantasy, The Wheel of Time transforms a story that began as Tolkien-esque into an Enthalpic Myth. I’ve written about the contrast Robert Jordan makes between the Wheel’s conception of “home” compared to Tolkien’s. In Jordan’s epic, you can’t go back to the Garden, and you won’t want to. All the promise lies in the world before you, the world you can have a hand in creating. Jordan also put a twist on the Chosen One trope, where it was never about a single savior, but the world having the will to move forward and together. 

If there is a single, overarching theme to The Wheel of Time, it can be summarized by Rand al’Thor’s epiphany at the summit of Dragonmount.

 

The past remains important in The Wheel of Time, but not as something to embrace uncritically. We learn from the past so we can forge a better future. The Golden Age is always ahead. That’s a great mythology to embrace.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    For some, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth has become “conservative mythology” that puts the Golden Age in our distant past. In Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, if we can learn from the past, the best is still to come.

MahaRaj
MahaRaj

Tor Books reveals new world map

Tor books, posted a blog post from author Michael Livingston discussing the brand new world map. The map will be included in Livingston’s upcoming book Origins of the Wheel of Time. Livingston used notes from Robert Jordan and worked with artist Ellisa Mitchell to create a map incorporating Jordan’s original vision for the world.
 

Credit: Ellisa Mitchell
 
The original version of the world map was published in The World of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (also known as the Big White Book) in 1997.
 
In the blog post on Tor’s website, Livingston explains that while going through Robert Jordan’s notes in preparation for the new book, he found notes marking errors in the previously published version of the world map. The two main errors were a name change, and a change to the shape and size of the continent of Seanchan.
 
 

Credit: Thomas Canty
 
Livingston proposed to Tor books & the Jordan estate a new map incorporating Robert Jordan’s edits. Tor and the Jordan estate gave Livingston permission to oversee the changes himself.
 
 
The new map was drawn by the same artist who drew the first map of the Westlands included in the Eye of the World in 1990 - Ellisa Mitchell. Livingston worked with Mitchell to include Robert Jordan’s suggestions and create a map closer to Jordan’s vision for the world.
 
The updated map will be published in Livingston’s upcoming book, Origins of The Wheel of Time: The Legends and Mythologies that Inspired Robert Jordan.
 
Origins of The Wheel of Time is available for pre-order from Tor books for print and ebook, as audiobook and in the EU only Broken Binding is publishing a special edition. Inkstand books also has a limited edition.
 
What do you think of the updated map? Let us know in the comments below. 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    A brand new world map for the Wheel of Time is revealed on Tor's website.

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Review: The First Binding

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.
 
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TL;DR: The First Binding by R. R. Virdi is a South-Asian-inspired epic fantasy that builds heavily on the traditions of Tolkien, Rothfuss, and Jordan to create something startlingly original. Recommended for fans of The Kingkiller Chronicles and She Who Became the Sun. The first book in the Tales of Tremaine series, it’s a promising start to a complex, intriguing world.
 
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The First Binding is a hefty book, clocking in at over 800 pages. Those who are familiar with the genre will immediately recognize the structure of The Kingkiller Chronicles: a figure shrouded in magic and conflicting legends, myths, and tales tells—we think—his true story.
 
And that story is something. Ari, our protagonist, is now known as simply the Storyteller: a magician who wanders the world telling stories with hefty doses of magic both in them, and used in the performances thereof. Yet he once was an orphan working in the understage of a theater in the bustling city of Keshum. He knew nothing of his family or past, but does know stories: the legends of the creation of the world and the great heroes of lore, which are inspired from Hindu mythology/cosmology. It is clear how much the author loves both his source material and storytelling in general, and how deeply meaningful both are to him. Early on in the novel, Ari says: "I don't know if you're aware of what it's like to be deprived of your past, your parents. The idea that there is nothing connecting you to anyone in this world apart from your work. There is a certain hollowness, singular and all encompassing [sic], that fills you. The notion that you are all that is—nothing more—and when you're not much on your own, it's a rather crushing thing." (p.89). The manner in which Virdi weaves stories-within-stories-within-stories in this book is an absolute pleasure both in how they snuck up on me as a reader and how well they fit both the narrative and the philosophy: that a story, fuzzy as it is, is both identity and truth. 
 
Eventually, Ari encounters magic for the first time. When a Binder arrives at the theater, he learns not just that magic exists, but that he may learn it, too. In this world, magic is enacted through five pairs of Bindings, where each member of a pair acts as counterbalancing force to the other. These bindings are controlled by the "folds" of the mind—a compounding of your thoughts to create your own version of the world, reminiscent of the Mythbusters' quip of "I reject your reality and substitute my own." More folds result in stronger magic, or a stronger counterbalancing: if I use six folds to lob a stone at your head and you use eight to imagine yourself dodging it, then you will be safe; less, and you will probably end up with a lump on your forehead. Before Ari can learn any of the Bindings, he must learn the folds; before he can learn the folds, he must learn to settle his mind. The exercises he is first set to—the candle and flame—are strongly reminiscent of the flame and void that Tam teaches Rand in The Wheel of Time. Ari is promised the opportunity to study at a magic school named the Ashram if he works hard with his new teacher.
 
And he wants to learn: 
 
Yet, before Ari can do so, tragedy strikes and he must put of his dreams of the Ashram a little bit longer. Perhaps the most marvelous part of this story is not the magic system (which I greatly enjoy), but the combination of Ari’s absolute determination to survive and succeed and his utter inability to hold his tongue—to the point of seeming to have a death wish at times. He's reminiscent of Matrim Cauthon in that sense: someone you can't help rooting for despite the fact that you're certain you'd want to thwap him over the head if you had to spend any time with him in person.
 
His personality is also perfect for the magic that exists in the world: he is hungry and ambitious in a way that I felt in my bones; he wants more viscerally than almost any character I’ve ever encountered. And that means that he lives on the edge of a knife. “There is a cost to magic—old magic especially,” a teacher tells him. “If you wish to enforce your will on the world, shape it—shift it—make it—break it, what do you think will be the cost, hm? If you wish to affect it, do you think you will be spared its effects on you? There. Are. Costs.” (p. 573). As Ari comes closer and closer to wielding magic as a child, the reader feels the tension rising, knowing that he can’t possibly fathom the costs and that there is a very real chance that he might not think about them until it’s too late. 
 
Though I found myself breathlessly reading many parts of this book, I do have to note that it was a very slow start for me. While it seems many readers found the prose compelling from the first page, I found it somewhat overdramatic; it eventually settles into competent, very readable writing. In larger part, however, I found Virdi's writing of female characters deeply irritating in a way that was reminiscent of the most outdated parts of The Wheel of Time —a gender essentialism that feels forced and unnecessary and like it belongs in the 1980s/90s. In the “present tense” sections of the book, Ari spends almost the entire time telling the story of his childhood to Eloine, the singer/temptress/’broken thing’ our narrator meets in the first chapters of the book. I flipped to a random page to draw an example: this isn’t the most egregious one I could remember, but it is representative: 
 
 
By this point, I had already annotated "omg, stopppp" in the margin: so many of these interactions feel so cliché that is seems the author is either trying to parody classic fantasy works or prove his own maturity in matters of romance. Eloine is at times coy, at times humourous, at times wounded—but only quietly so, hinting at trauma without ever speaking of it. In general, the various women in Ari's life all feel insufficient, foils for his experience and learning rather than true characters on their own (though, to be fair, many of the male characters are treated in the same way: Ari is, above all, a self-centered figure out of the need to survive).
 
Most importantly, all the past sections of this book (let's say about 500 pages of the total text) are told directly by Ari to Eloine, within the first few days of meeting, while hearing barely anything of her story—which translates to about thirteen hours of speech on Ari's part. The idea of listening to a monologue that long from a person I just met, regardless of gender, is truly horrifying and often pushed my suspension of disbelief to the point of breaking. If I hadn't promised to review this book, I would have likely given up within the first fifty pages, as many folks on GoodReads seem to have done.
 
But, I pushed on—and I’m glad I did. At page 97, I finally found myself pulled deeply into the world. My interest waxed and waned throughout; I inhaled the past tense and found myself often trudging through the present. Ultimately, however, I found myself so compelled by the magic system and the setting that I fell in love with the world. 
 
And, I suppose, Virdi would quote his book right back at me for my gripes:"[i]t's a horrible thing when someone asks for a story and isn't willing to patiently sit through it and listen" (p. 129). This one required a lot of patience for me; for others, I’m certain it will be a breeze. 
 
Above all, I believe that what he is trying to do is something excellent: pull something new into fantasy. It builds on familiar foundations while drawing from a well of tradition that has been underrepresented in fantasy. I am deeply curious about the life that Ari leads and how he ends up growing, changing, learning, suffering, loving, losing. If the “present tense” of the story were written as engrossingly as the “past tense” section, I would unquestionably continue on this series and await the next book eagerly. As it stands, I am mildly hesitant but overall hopeful and look forward to seeing where Virdi goes with Book 2.
 
I recommend The First Binding for any reader hungry for an epic fantasy that builds on the tradition of the ‘classic’ greats like Jordan, Rothfuss, and Martin while integrating South Asian lore. I most heartily encourage curious readers to give it a try. I hope to see this trilogy become successful—I want more stories like this one in the world, and I think Virdi is a strong early voice to build on this branch of the genre.
 
The First Binding is available in the Dragonmount eBook store. Find it here!
 
Reviewer Note: Quotations are pulled from the ARC of The First Binding; they may have been updated in the final version of the book.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

     TL;DR: The First Binding by R. R. Virdi is a South-Asian-inspired epic fantasy that builds heavily on the traditions of Tolkien, Rothfuss, and Jordan to create something startlingly original. Recommended for fans of The Kingkiller Chronicles and She Who Became the Sun. The first book in the Tales of Tremaine series, it’s a promising start to a complex, intriguing world.

Ola Aleksandra Hill
Ola Aleksandra Hill

In Case You Missed It: Rafe Judkins answers fan questions on Twitter

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
 

Showrunner Rafe Judkins answered questions about season two of The Wheel of Time on Prime Video. Recent announcements came during the San Diego Comic-Con panel focused on the Wheel of Time Origin shorts. They announced more Origin episodes are coming in August, released a season 2 sizzle reel, and announced that the television show is renewed for season 3!
 
After the panel, Rafe posted to Twitter that he’d answer questions on season two.
 
 
Rafe answered a lot questions (there are over 400 replies to his post), but here are the highlights:
 
Rafe shared thoughts on the general plotting of season two and where the story may take us. Many fans speculated, but Rafe confirmed, that season two will cover book two: The Great Hunt and book three: The Dragon Reborn. The third season just announced will cover book four: The Shadow Rising. Mat’s plot was changed the most, but by the end of season two his plot will line up for the events in book four. This makes a lot of sense, since Mat’s character didn’t really shine until book three.
 

 

 
 
Rafe also expanded on what’s in store for Moiraine and Lan. Rosamund Pike and Daniel Henney are big stars for the show, and it makes sense to give them a bit more to do. This will be a rather large change to the story, so it will be interesting to see how the wheel turns for those two characters!
 
 

 

 
Rafe also gave fans confirmation of a few fan favorite characters and scenes. We will be seeing everyone’s favorite wolfbrother: Hopper. We also will have scenes with Egwene and Renna (which means more of the Seanchan plot from book 2). We will love to hate Kate Fleetwood as Liandrin.
 

 

 

 
 
Rafe gave us some clues about what to expect from the shadow this season. The darkfriend social, which opens book 2, will be in the show. It’s a fantastic scene, and should make for great sleuthing and speculating. Rafe confirmed we will see more than one forsaken, and that they will have an expanded role closer to what we see in later books than what’s in books 2 and 3.
 

 

 

 
 
Rafe also gave us some background on season one. The first was about Uno - that he was breathing. Some fans thought Uno died after he was stabbed with the tainted dagger, but it sounds like Uno will live to swear again.  Many fans had questions about the Egwene - Nynaeve scene in the finale of season one. Rafe shared that the scene was changed at the very last minute due to COVID restrictions, and the original plan was for Egwene to help Nynaeve using Wisdom skills. It sucks for everyone that these compromises had to be made. 
 

 

 
 
Finally, Rafe shared that we will continue to see the cold opens for the episodes as an ode to the point of view chapters in the books. It’s just one of the ways the team has adapted the written story to television. And WE WILL GET LONGER EPISODES. Great news and we can’t wait to see how The Wheel of Time team uses some extra time to tell this beloved story.
 

 

 
 
There's a lot to still learn about season two (we haven't heard when it will premiere), but hopefully this gives everyone plenty to speculate and theorize over until we can watch new episodes of The Wheel of Time on our screens again. What's your favorite answer from Rafe? Anything important that we missed? (400 replies is a lot to shift through!) Let us know in the comments below or in our forums. 
 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    We went through The Wheel of Time's Rafe Judkins Twitter "ask me anything" thread so you don't have to. 

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Rosamund Pike To Narrate New Audiobook Version of THE GREAT HUNT and THE DRAGON REBORN

Macmillan Audio announced today that Rosamund Pike, who plays Moiraine in Prime Video's TV show, will narrate new versions of Robert Jordan's second and third Wheel of Time novels, The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn. The new version of The Great Hunt will be available August 2, 2022, and The Dragon Reborn will arrive sometime in 2023. 
 
The most well-known of versions of these audiobooks were recorded by the real-life husband and wife duo of Michael Kramer and Kate Reading. Prior to them, during the early 1990's, actor Mark Rolstrom recorded both abridged and unabridged versions.
 
Long-time fans can be rest assured that the older versions of both audiobooks from Michael Kramer and Kate Reading will remain available along with these new versions from Rosamund Pike. 
 
It is unknown whether Rosamund Pike will narrate all books in The Wheel of Time series. For now it seems as though she is keeping pace with the story adaptation presented by Prime Video's series.  Season 2 of The Wheel of Time is expected to adapt many of the events in these two novels. 
 
Here's the full tree release from Macmillan Audio:
 
 

The new audiobook can be pre-ordered here on Audible. It's also available on Libro.FM, Apple Books, Google Play Books, and more. 
 
Tell us what you think in the comments, and be sure to join us on our forums and on social media.  
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Rosamund Pike will narrate new audiobook versions of The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn

Jason Denzel
Jason Denzel

Adam's Wheel of Television: Season 2 Schedule Timeline

Adam Whitehead is Dragonmount's TV blogger. Adam has been writing about film and television, The Wheel of Time, and other genre fiction for over fifteen years, and was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 2020. Be sure to check out his websites, The Wertzone and Atlas of Ice and Fire (including The Wheel of Time Atlas!) as well as his Patreon.
 
At the moment there’s a huge amount of hype swirling for the imminent launch of two fantasy shows based on literary properties: House of the Dragon, a forerunner to Game of Thrones, hits HBO on August 21st. Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power follows that up on Amazon on 2 September. Both shows have recently dropped new trailers and started the marketing process.
 
With those two behemoths facing off, it’s understandable that Amazon is holding fire on the marketing for Season 2 of The Wheel of Time. Season 2 of the series wrapped back in May but so far we haven’t had much news about the launch date for the show (although we now have a Season 3 renewal confirmation!). Given that Season 1 wrapped in May 2021 and the show launched in November 2021, it might be logical to assume that Season 2 will likewise appear on Amazon before the end of the year. Indeed, fans and content creators have been debating this point for a while.
 
Looking at the timeline of how Amazon shot and then marketed Season 1 might be interesting:
 
19 September 2019: Season 1 starts shooting 17 March 2021: First brief teaser footage released 28 April 2021: Season 2 greenlit 14 May 2021: Season 1 wraps 30 June 2021: Logo revealed 19 July 2021: Season 2 starts shooting 23 July 2021: Poster revealed 18 August 2021: Publicity images revealed 2 September 2021: First trailer, release date confirmed 9 October 2021: First clip released 27 October 2021: Second trailer released 19 November 2021: Season 1 premiere 19 May 2022: Season 2 wraps shooting 21 July 2022: Season 3 greenlit, Season 2 behind-the-scenes teaser released  
Based on the precedent from Season 1, we might be expecting publicity images and maybe a poster to emerge in the next month or so, followed by a trailer in September and Season 2 to premiere in November. No problem, right?
 
There are, however, two major differences compared to the launch of Season 1.
 
The first is the impact of COVID. Season 1 filmed over twenty months with two shutdowns of production caused by filming restrictions. The longest gap fell between the completion of shooting on Episodes 1-6 and the start of shooting Episodes 7-8 (it was during this gap that Barney Harris left for reasons that remain undisclosed). During these gaps in filming, post-production was able to proceed at a solid clip. CGI, editing, composing, etc all took place whilst the show was on hiatus and is believed to have been partially or mostly completed for the first six episodes by the time the show wrapped in May 2021. Thus, post-production was really only required for the last two episodes once shooting ended in May 2021.
 
Whilst I have no doubt that some editing, vfx work etc started for Season 2 before it wrapped, it does appear that post-production was in a less advanced state then it was when Season 1 wrapped. So, more work and presumably more time is required for Season 2’s post-production requirements.
 
The second issue is more obvious: Amazon are launching The Rings of Power with a double-episode bonanza on 2 September. The remainder of the eight-episode first season will be released once a week, taking them through 14 October (this may be less relevant, but House of the Dragon will release episodes from 21 August through 23 October). Amazon may feel leery about immediately following up The Rings of Power with another epic fantasy show straight away, or even a month later. They also have an additional scheduling problem in that the second season of Carnival Row has been sitting on the shelf for a lot longer than Season 2 of The Wheel of Time (Season 2 of that show wrapped in August 2021). According to Deadline, Amazon has internally committed to releasing Carnival Row in 2022, which would require them to either double-up on original show releases (which Amazon traditionally doesn’t do, at least not in the same genre) or push Wheel of Time to 2023.
 
Although Carnival Row is also fantasy, it’s more of a steampunk fantasy with a 19th Century Victoriana vibe, which would set it apart from the medieval-ish fantasy of both The Rings of Power and The Wheel of Time.
For these reasons, I would guess that The Wheel of Time will not debut in 2022 but instead will launch in the first few months of 2023.
 
On the subject of the renewal, there’d been some ideas floating around from fans a few months ago that Seasons 3 and 4 would be renewed at once. We have seen more and more shows doing multi-season renewals – Netflix’s The Dragon Prince even got a four-season renewal a few years ago – and they’re being seen as a good way of spreading costs around, since shows can now go straight from producing one season into working on the next without an awkward pause (potentially lasting months) whilst the suits crunch numbers behind the scenes. This is both good – you know you’ve got gainful employment for the next two years rather than the next few months – but it can also be limited. When a streamer or network renews a show, they often also assign the budget, and when they renew for two seasons, they sometimes assign the budget for both seasons ahead of time. This is great if you know you’re not going to be ramping up the scale and scope of the project between seasons. If you are, it can be better to be more flexible and go on a year-by-year basis, even if that means a toe-curling wait every summer. Having two seasons renewed can also complicate things if one season goes over-budget: The Wire had its final two seasons approved by HBO in one go, but when Season 4 went seriously over-budget they were not given any more money, but had to “raid” Season 5’s resources to make up the shortfall, explaining why Season 5 was both shorter and had fewer locations.
 
It’ll be interesting to see if Amazon start any marketing moves towards launching Season 2 of The Wheel of Time in the next few weeks, beyond the Season 3 renewal and “sizzle reel” for Season 2. If we get into September and October without any trailer or marketing information, a 2022 launch I think could then be ruled out.
 
The second season of The Wheel of Time does not have a release date yet. As usual, we will keep you informed of all the relevant details. For more information, visit our TV show section of the website. 
 
As usual, please continue to follow developments on our casting and news pages, and the forum, and stay tuned for more info as we get it.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Looking at the WoT production timeline so far, when are we likely to see Season 2, and what factors are impacting that decision?

Werthead
Werthead

Season Two Sizzle Reel

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
At San Diego Comic-Con today, Prime Video released a sizzle reel showcasing behind the scenes of Season Two of The Wheel of Time. There was a panel on the Origins series with panelists including Rammy Park, writer and producer for season two. This is our first glimpse of what’s in store for fans in season two since filming wrapped in May 2022. 
 
 
 
Fans will be breaking this down for months! There are scenes fans might recognize and some that appear new. Anyone spot a fade on a door and a fight in the White Tower courtyard? I’m so excited to see what else the Wheel of Time team has in store for us!
 
They also announced new Origins episodes are coming in August.
 
 
The last piece of news is that Season three of the TV show has been green lit!  Check out the Dragonmount article all about season three.
 
What do you think of the behind the scenes for season two? Let us know in the comments below or in our forums. 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Our first look at behind the scenes of season two of The Wheel of Time

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

The Wheel of Time Renewed for Season 3

Prime Video announced today that The Wheel of Time TV show has been renewed for a third season. This announcement came today, July 21, at San Diego Comic-Con during the "Origins" panel where they showcased behind-the-scenes footage from the forthcoming season 2.
 
The season 2 release date has not been announced but is expected sometime in 2023, probably in the first half of the year.
 
Here's the press release for the season 3 announcement. 
 
 
As always, for full coverage of The Wheel of Time TV show, follow us on social media and check out our TV show section of the website. 
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Prime Video announced that Season 3 of The Wheel of Time has been green lit. 

Jason Denzel
Jason Denzel

Weep for Manetheren reading at WoTCon 2022

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
Kate Reading and Michael Kramer are the narrators of the Wheel of Time audiobooks and were special guests at the first WOTCon convention last week. WoTCon is a Wheel of Time convention created for and run by fans of the Wheel of Time. The first convention took place July 8-10, 2022 in Columbus, OH. During one of the panels, they performed a live reading of Moiraine’s Weep for Manetheren speech from The Eye of the World, the first book of the Wheel of Time series.
 
Weekly Wheel News recorded the live reading and posted it to their YouTube channel.
 
Check it out here:

 
 
Anyone need a tissue? Their voices are so incredible and this scene is such an iconic Wheel of Time moment. Let us know what you think in the comments below or on our forums.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Watch Kate Reading and Michael Kramer read from The Eye of the World at WoTCon 2022.

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Rajiv's Threads In the Pattern: Cults of Personality

Rajiv Moté is Dragonmount’s book blogger with a lens on the craft of fiction writing. When he’s not directing software engineers, he writes fiction of his own, which can be found catalogued at his website.
 
J.R.R. Tolkien said “all stories are ultimately about the fall,” and Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time certainly fits that description. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time, but much like the Hindu cosmology on which the Wheel’s cyclical history is based, there is an Age that represents the apex of human civilization (the Age of Legends), and an Age that falls into the nadir, where the Dark One casts his shadow on the world. Apocalyptic stories chronicle the fall. The stakes are whether there is hope of a subsequent rise.
 
 
While Robert Jordan’s take on the fall of civilization centered around the rise of an evil Dark Lord, it manifested in recognizably political ways. Our own world history shows war and strife following the rise of cults of personality around authoritarian leaders, fanning the flames of a society’s worst impulses. In the story, the road to Tarmon Gai’don was filled with such cults and despots, many of them familiar. Let’s look at a few.
 
The Children of the Light
 
The Children (or Whitecloaks as they’re called when not in earshot) are a military organization answerable to no authority but themselves. Though based in the nation of Amadicia, their Lord Captain Commander holds more power than the Amadician king, and they boast that their authority extends wherever the Light shines. Robert Jordan claimed that religion didn’t exist in his world, because the Creator and the Dark One were evident to all, but the Children are religious zealots, complete with a holy text, The Way of the Light, and an inquisitorial body, the Hand of the Light (or Questioners).
 
We don’t know much about the group’s founder, Lothair Mantelar, but he wrote The Way of the Light and organized the Children during the War of the Hundred Years. It was a brutal, bloody period of chaos following the disintegration of Artur Hawkwing’s empire. During such eras, charismatic leaders offering certainty, purpose, a banner, and an enemy tend to flourish. The Children’s enemies were Darkfriends, but Mantelar also had a useful target in the Aes Sedai. During Hawkwing’s final years (and possibly under Ishamael’s influence), the High King waged war against the White Tower, and his distrust of Aes Sedai was so great he even tried to build a capital around an Ogier stedding, where the One Power could not be used. Given the Dark One’s taint on saidin and Hawkwing’s hatred of Aes Sedai, it would have been easy for Mantelar to harness historical and legendary animosity toward those who wielded the One Power.
 
The glass columns of Rhuidean revealed the willingness to scapegoat and lynch suspected Darkfriends even before the Breaking of the World. The attitude carried forward through centuries, and is reminiscent of the Whitecloak ways.
 
 
The White Tower
 
While their name translates to “Servant to All” (“public servant?”), the Aes Sedai were a rarified class who lived centuries longer than ordinary people and, of course, could wield the magic power that drove the universe. What we know of the Age of Legends reinforces the idea that they were elites whose status was conferred by an inborn trait, the ability to touch the One Power. The White Tower was founded after the Breaking of the World, during a time of great strife. The Aes Sedai themselves became an even more exclusive group, as all the male Aes Sedai were driven mad by the Dark One’s taint.
 
Since its founding, the White Tower’s mission has been to spread its influence and consolidate its authority. Each Aes Sedai is treated in most nations with the status of a ruler, and the Tower’s premier, the Amyrlin Seat, has been known to command kings and queens. The Tower reinforces its authority by suppressing its failures. Moiraine won Lan’s trust by revealing one of the Tower’s secrets.
 
 
Into this atmosphere of elitism, arrogance, and secrecy comes the Dragon Reborn. When the Amyrlin Seat Siuan Sanche’s secret dealings with the Dragon Reborn were revealed, a faction of Aes Sedai led by Elaida do Avriny a’Roihan staged a coup and deposed Siuan. Elaida was strong in the One Power among Aes Sedai, which conferred standing. She was also steel-hard, determined, and sporadically possessed of the ability to Foretell the future, if not necessarily understand it, which gave her a disastrous false certainty. She was also almost laughably narcissistic. (I have since been disabused of the notion that someone so self-preoccupied could never achieve such a position of power in the real world.)
 
Mesaana and the Black Ajah couldn’t have picked a better leader to tear the White Tower apart. Elaida reigned through intimidation, threats, and bullying. She seemed incapable of building consensus or coalitions except through appeals to fear or greed. And she devoted a great deal of time and resources to self-aggrandizement, like building a personal palace to rival the White Tower itself. Elaida’s coup broke the Tower into its first open schism that became an all-out civil war.
 
In the context of current events, Robert Jordan’s take on the White Tower’s schism may have been optimistic. While Elaida’s unhinged leadership, and coterie of cronies and secret Darkfriends caused significant damage, Jordan showed that the institution of the Hall of the Tower, as well as backchannel activities of serious-minded Aes Sedai acting for the good of the Tower (and the world), were capable of healing the break. Egwene was instrumental in bringing the White Tower to Tarmon Gai’don on the side of the Light, but she did not act alone.
 
The Dragonsworn
 
If the Children of the Light brought elements of quasi-religious fundamentalism to the world of the Wheel, the Dragonsworn brought full-on, militant, religious extremism. It’s fitting. Rand al’Thor is a figure of religious prophecy, a messianic avatar of the Creator sent to save the world from humanity’s great adversary, the Dark One. The crumbling of nations was foretold; the Dragon’s appearance signaled the End Times, a new global purpose, and an open, literal war between Light and Dark. And in this cosmology, it’s absolutely, beyond-any-doubt true.
 
When Masema Dagar, a soldier who has guarded against the Blight all his life, saw Rand al’Thor in the sky, battling what appeared to be the Dark One, it was a religious experience that filled him with awe and zeal of purpose. In this world, that is a reasonable reaction to the arrival of the actual messiah. But as the Prophet, Masema amassed madmen around him, and became a crazed fanatic. How much of that was due to the disguised Forsaken (probably the proxy-loving Demandred) manipulating him? It’s unknown. Some people are just fanatics in search of a focus.
 
What’s interesting is that the Prophet, much like the Children of the Light’s Lothair Mantelar, invented his own moral code to rally his followers. For the Dragonsworn, extreme austerity, a detachment from worldly concerns, and devotion to nothing but the Dragon Reborn were the hallmarks of their beliefs. None of this came from Rand al’Thor. It became critical to his victory that Rand wasn’t the sort to dictate what was in people’s hearts, but as a religious figure, his refusal to do so created a moral vacuum for those who saw all old ties and purpose burned by the coming of the Dragon. That allowed others--Masema and the Forsaken manipulating him--to fill that void in a way that served the Shadow.
 
The Shaido Aiel
 
Just as the White Tower was sundered by news of the Dragon’s rebirth, the Aiel suffered an identity crisis when Rand proved himself their Car’a’carn by revealing their secret history. Even today, in the real world, people fight bitterly over the history they reveal about their own society. Identity is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and to learn that identity is a lie invites a crisis.
 
When Rand revealed that the Aiel, proud, honor-bound warriors, began as sworn pacifists whose honor was to serve, he revealed that every one of them was one of the worst things an Aiel could be: an oathbreaker. The Tuatha’an, whom they called “lost,” were actually the keepers of the true faith. Some of the Aiel killed themselves to expiate their shame. Some permanently became gai’shain, a temporary status that contained an echo of what the Aiel once were. The Shaido Aiel doubled down on the lie of their identity, rejecting the revelations about their history as falsehoods designed to break them. Their clan chief Couladin claimed to be the Car’a’carn who would lead the Aiel to glory, a lie that many of his people would want to believe over the shame that Rand offered. Couladin offered to Make the Aiel Great Again.
 
 
Militant fundamentalists, arrogant out-of-touch elites, unhinged narcissist heads of state, religious fanatics, historical revisionists, violent secessionists. If Robert Jordan’s depictions of an apocalyptic age seem prophetic, it’s because he was a lover of history. The Wheel of Time repeats its patterns, and so do world events.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    If Robert Jordan’s depiction of the political landscape of the apocalypse in The Wheel of Time seems prophetic, it’s because he was a student of history. SPOILERS for all the books.

MahaRaj
MahaRaj

Deleted Scene: Egwene and the Color Pool

Amazon Prime Video has released the first deleted scene from season 1 of The Wheel of Time TV show on its social media channels. 
 
The deleted scene features an alternative version of the events from Episode 1 that take place inside the Women's Circle cave in the Two Rivers. Nynaeve narrates about the role of women in society as Egwene is submerged into a pool with streams of paint. The paint colors correspond to the seven Ajahs.
 
This image was originally teased in the first TV show trailer, but never made the cut into the finished episode. 
 

 
This clip was first revealed at the closing ceremonies of WoTCon, a first-year fan convention that took place in Columbus, Ohio. A day later, it was released on social media. A second clip was also shown at the convention featuring Egwene and Tam al'Thor. 
 
(Updated) Here's our reaction video to this deleted scene, featuring Kitty Rallo. 
 

  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Amazon released its first deleted scene from season 1 of The Wheel of Time TV show.

Jason Denzel
Jason Denzel

The Wheel of Time: Origins nominated for animation award

Katy is a news contributor for Dragonmount. You can follow her as she shares her thoughts on The Wheel of Time TV Show on Instagram and Twitter @KatySedai
 
 
The Wheel of Time: Origins Series has been nominated for Best Animated Short Form Series by the Hollywood Critics Association. The second annual HCA TV awards will be shown on broadcast and cable August 13th, and streaming on August 14th. The Hollywood Critics Association is an organization that is known for promoting diversity of film and television and was the first organization to create separate categories for certain streaming and broadcast television awards. 
 
The Origins series debuted on November 19th with the first episode of Amazon Prime’s The Wheel of Time TV show. There are six episodes, each about three minutes long which explores the lore and history of the Wheel of Time story. The Origin series was originally hard to find in the X-ray content on Amazon Prime video, but the shorts can now be found as bonus features on the main menu or in the explore tab. 
 
The Episodes are: 
1. The Breaking of the World
2. The Fall of Manetheran
3. The Greatest Warder
4. Saidin, Saidar, Stone 
5. The White Tower 
6. An Ogier's Longing
 
Written by Rammy Park
 
Producer
Jakub Chilczuk
 
Director
Dan Difelice
 
Animation by 
MPC Episodic
 
Narrated by 
Ida May
Rupert Degas
 
The Wheel of Time’s social media accounts also recently announced a panel focused the Origin series at San Diego Comic Con on Thursday, July 21st. 
 
The description for the Comic Con panel hints that fans will see something special:
 
 
 
The writer of the Origins series, Rammy Park posted the news to Instagram and said: 
 
 

I can't wait to see what the Wheel of Time team has in store for us. The animation of the series was beautifully done and it was a great way to introduce TV fans to the background and lore of the Wheel of Time. Be sure to check our the Origin series if you haven't seen them yet! Let us know what you think of them in our forums or in the comments below.
 

  • Teaser Paragraph:

    The Origins series will also be the topic of a panel at San Diego Comic Con. 

Katy Sedai
Katy Sedai

Review: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

Aleksandra (Ola) Hill is a Polish-Canadian writer and the founder and editor-in-chief of khōréō, a magazine of speculative fiction by immigrant and diaspora writers. She won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards and is currently pursuing an MFA in writing at The New School. You can find her on Twitter at @_aleksandrahill.
 
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TL;DR: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas is a chilling, genre-bending gothic novel set in the wake of Mexico's War of Independence. Chock full of twists, it's a perfect read for anyone looking for a breathless read, including fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James.
 
#
 
This column is usually about fantasy. But in late May, I told Jason that I really, really wanted to yell about this new horror book, and could I pretty please do so.
 
He obliged.
 
Readers, I am so excited to tell you about The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas. Pitched as Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca, it tells the story of Beatriz, a young woman whose father was killed in the War of Independence. She and her mother can only find shelter with the disapproving Tío Sebastián and his cruel wife, Tía Fernanda. Beatriz knows her prospects are meager and dimming with every day she stays with her mother’s family, and so, she flees in the only way she can think of: by marrying Rodolfo, a mysterious young widower with an estate far from the city.
 
He spirits her away to his hacienda, San Isidro—and from the first moments, Beatriz realizes that this place is not what she thought it would be. The land is arid; the house is in disrepair; and nobody seems to have any kindness to offer her.
 
Soon, whispers begin to follow her. 
 
It is a standard haunted house narrative in that a person is trapped in a house first by their own hand, and then by the situation they have created, and they must learn to fight it lest it destroy them. Cañas captures the crescendo of the experience nicely, beginning with innocuous happenings and slowly bringing the reader and Beatriz herself to realize just how much danger she is in—and just how alone she is in her plight. Even as she finds an ally—more on him in a second—the house has ways of isolating individuals, speaking or acting only towards one person to further undermine their sense of self and leave the reader anxiously awaiting what will happen next. For those looking for an excellent spooky read, this will scratch all the itches you have.
 
But! The Hacienda weaves in so much more depth to the story. Like a typical Gothic novel, Cañas explores the horrors of societal expectations surrounding gender, leaving Beatriz stuck in dangerous situations because of social conventions, expectations, or simply because she is not seen as worth helping. However, the novel also focuses on classism and colorism, how dangerous and impossible power imbalances can be for the disenfranchised individual, religious zealots/pharisees, and the shape and impact of political revolutions. Each of the subplots and the themes they explore weave together into the main plot in a masterful way, making the story feel rich and complete. Perhaps my favourite part of the novel is one of the quieter question that many haunted house stories stop short of asking, let alone answering: what does it mean to find safe harbour after the violence and chaos of everything else that has passed? You’ll have to read and find Cañas’ proposed answer. 
 
Although I loved the book, I do want to note that the beginning read a little slow to me. This was in part because of the shifting perspectives. The appeal of gothic fiction to me rests, in part, from only seeing it through one person's eyes—especially as that person begins to question everything that happens and, eventually, their own sanity. To see the world through another character's lens was strange at first; it felt almost like cheating because I could see pieces of the puzzle I didn't feel like I should have access to yet. Perhaps because of this, I didn't initially click with the other point-of-view character: Andrés, a young witch who had grown up in San Isidro before fleeing into priesthood to avoid being caught by the Inquisition, and Beatriz's primary ally throughout the book.
 
If you find yourself in this position, I implore you to continue reading through it. Trust me: this book has one of the most perfect endings I have seen in a novel and it works primarily because of the dual perspective. I spent the last hundred and fifty pages curled motionless in an armchair; it feels like it's meant to be finished in one breathless sitting. I had already planned to recommend the book, but it was its ending that cemented the novel. 
 
Additionally, I also found Andrés' perspective growing on me throughout the story because it allowed me to learn about the house's past through a perspective that feels unique to horror. So often, houses are described as evil from the start, or not remembered as anything else. But Andrés shows us the love one can feel for a home that is now haunted and broken:
There is something both magical and heartbreaking in seeing San Isidro through past and present, and witnessing the growth and change of Andrés and his power as well. His homecoming brings to mind the first moments of Rand's reunion with someone he thinks at first is a stranger at the Stone of Tear—long-awaited, desperately needed, and, in its initial moments, shockingly brutal. By providing two perspectives for the story, Cañas evolves the book beyond its Gothic roots, allowing her to address larger questions of home, family, and trust in ways that could not have occurred otherwise.
 
I absolutely loved this book and recommend it wholeheartedly for anyone who wants a delightfully chilling read. Cañas uncanny ability to weave the social realities of Beatriz's world into the supernatural horrors of the book makes the world feel lived in and real, rendering the things that go bump in the night that little bit scarier. I hope you love it as much as I did.
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    TL;DR: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas is a chilling, genre-bending gothic novel set in the wake of Mexico's War of Independence. Chock full of twists, it's a perfect read for anyone looking for a breathless read, including fans of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James.

Ola Aleksandra Hill
Ola Aleksandra Hill

Dragonmount Live

Image credit: “Verin in Emond’s Field” by Benjamin Roque
 
Dragonmount Live is back!  Join Thom DeSimone and guest host Maureen Carr as they talk about the latest Wheel of Time news.  Topics will include Verin—book Verin and potential show Verin—and the breakings news of Season 2’s wrap.
 
Watch Dragonmount Live on our Instagram feed, Saturday, May 21st, at 2pm ET!
  • Teaser Paragraph:

    Watch Dragonmount Live on our Instagram feed, Saturday, May 21st, at 2pm ET!

Mashiara Sedai
Mashiara Sedai