Dan G

In WOT, We see a great deal of Healing focused on wounds, fatigue and One Power based ailments. Are there mentions of more general healing discussed? Could diabetes be Healed, gout, cancer heart disease? Or is there a limit to what is able to be done on a general age related spectrum? Please forgive me if this was discussed before or commen knowledge. I have only done one complete read thru so this may have been answered. Dan

For myself, once you understand the tainting of the male aspect of the One Power that leads to the breaking of the world, the gender divisions we see in WOT are put into a context that makes sense for that world. There were , in fact, horrible real life consequences based in gender followed by 3000 years of female channelers holding a position of great power and men still going mad and causing harm. This did not have to do with a belief system or discrimination, it was a fact. This is why the tension between genders we see play out in WOT don't bother me as a reader, rhey are a logical outgrowth of the world RJ created. And there is enough nuance in WOT, that it does not cross over into being beaten over the head by an author with an agenda. RJ just wrote a decent story. I really don't know his stance on gender and that comes thru in his writing, that I still don't know. I find that refreshing.

Hi There is a theroy that for a short time after the Big Bang, conditions in the very early universe allowed for the fundamental forces of nature were unified. Gravity uncoupled from the other forces first, followed by the other forces. Although I am a bit of a science nerd, I am not an expert in this area , but I have heard this discussion among theoretical and astrophysicists..

IMO - Rand's new abilities are a result of a " super force of all three of the powers acting as one. This could be somewhat analogous to the state of the early universe in the real world when, for a brief time, gravity, electromagtism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces were essentially one. (In theory anyway)

"Any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to be Magic." We know from WOT that much of the technology discovered from the Age Of Legonds is not understood even by expert channelers And even in the Age of Legonds only a small percentage of the population was able to channel the one power. Based on this it seems that the magical system in WOT is much closer to the Stargate franchise where a few individuals can interface with Anchent tech than something like Harry Potter which is more focused on the specific elements and organic components like the type of wood a wand is made from. So, can WOT Channeling be considered Magic on its face value or more a very technology based system being described by unreliable narration by those in the Third Age?

In my first read thru of WOT, and desperately working to avoid spoilers, I noticed some fans commenting that books nine and ten were somehow not as well written and a "slog" to get thru. I did not delve into this at the time due to my spoiler concern but when I got to book ten, it did not seem as bad as I thought it might be. Certainly, the tone was a bit different and book 11 on were amazing but I did not see so much a drop in quality , rather, a lot of set up for what was to come. Admittedly, not having to wait for the next book to be released probably helped as I was not taking an enforced break waiting for the story to continue. Your thoughts?