Spawned from the Thing of Your Day MKII thread, this is a thread where people can post about what books they are currently reading, and what they think about them.

Hypothetically a sister thread of Taure's Reading Club, but different because instead of coordinating and encouraging everyone to read the same classic things, this is more about "what are you reading now and what do you think about it." It's a commentary and review thread, not a book reading club. You can read whatever you want, and there's no particular coordination to speak of.

I'd go ahead and say you can discuss and review comic books as well here, since there isn't really a space to do that yet, but please remember that any discussion about manga would go in the Everything Else Manga thread.

Friendly reminder that if someone is reading a book and they're discussing or providing commentary on it, they probably don't know what's going to happen next. Please be considerate about spoilers. For people who are doing the reading, please be an adult about spoilers as well. Sometimes accidents happen. Don't be an asshole.

 

So yeah, that time when Rand becomes best buddies with a Trolloc is amazing. Best part of the series for me.

Spoiler

Lol.

 

Spoiler alert: I expect great things from this thread.

 

So evil paladins, I'm now fairly certain which Commoner is going to end up taking levels in Rogue, and we (re)met a guy that I suspect is going to betray the fuck out of us.

Why do I get the feeling we're going to be leaving this city in a great hurry?

---------- Post automerged at 08:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:57 PM ----------

Oh Jesus Christ. Now there's three of them. And watching the direct bitch-on-bitch combat didn't make the constant stream of off-topic sexism more palatible, either. At least Moiraine is subtle about it. The Wisdom shoves it into every sentence and expression she can.

Apparently Wisdoms aren't chosen for maturity or cleverness, I can tell you that much.

I can't believe I'm actually looking forwards to the Whitecloaks showing up and burning the inn to the ground.

 

You've survived Chunin Exam Day, you'll survive this as well.

 

Raine, your WoT commentary induces much laughter. Continue.

 

Really, we shouldn't pretend this thread has any point other than some of us gleefully watching as Raine reads through WoT.

It has been, and will continue to be hilarious.

 

We need to talk. Or rather, I need to talk. Whether or not you choose to listen is up to you.

Some of you are probably wondering why I suddenly let the thread die. I didn't. It's still alive. But I need to get something off my chest before continuing.

Pidl is correct. I have read worse than this. I've read much, much worse than this. Any of you that followed any of my previous readings of openly terrible fanfiction (God help you) is aware of that.

But you see, that's kind of the problem. As I mentioned (and I won't assume any of you read it, because why would you) in my reading of Partially Kissed Hero, Lionheart's writing is so infuriating because it is not all bad. Lionheart can write the start of a story. He can do it very well. His starts aren't exactly dripping with originality and artistic value, but they're solid literary constructs with nothing overtly bad about them. They serve their purpose, keep everyone in character (more or less), and move the plot along. They are economic vehicles of literary entertainment.

It's only once you get past chapter five or eight where things start taking a nose dive straight into the depths of fanfiction hell. Lionheart could be a good writer. You can see it in his writing. He could be a good writer, but chooses not to be, because he would rather masturbate to his own soapbox ideas and author tracts. He takes a story concept that could be good, and as a potentially good writer, he ruins it. Every. Single Time.

It is because Lionheart is not all bad that he is so abysmally horrible to read.

Were something to BE wholly bad, were something to truly be utterly irredeemable and clearly written by someone with no talent for the art and science of literature, then it would be easy to read. It would not incite rage. It would be almost an object lesson of sorts. A parable of what not to do. I actually seek these sorts of stories out to chronicle them. I read them as an exercise in abstract education of what not to do.

In short, the profaning of something that was once whole, the destruction of something that was once or could have been beautiful, is more terrible than something that was always that way, and was never going to be anything else.

You laugh at a movie that's unequivocally bad. You rage at a movie that could have been good but was ruined by some preventable reason or another, such as a better director or a more thoughtful casting choice.

Which brings me back to what pidl said. Yes. I have read worse. Much, much worse.

That's exactly the problem.

I'm no stranger to panning venerated literature. Once upon a time, I absolutely lambasted Moby Dick in a paper where I was to review it. I gave it no quarter and no mercy, stating unreservedly that it was a bloated and unedited mess, meandering along waist deep in its own purple prose, floundering for tens of dozens of pages at a time without getting anywhere or accomplishing anything. "Any book where entire chapters can be skipped wholesale without even a single hiccup or noticeable skip in the progression of the plot or the flow of the story being told is a book in dire need of editing."

I received a near-failing grade for that paper, simply for disagreeing with my professor's assessment, the popular assessment. He said as much to my face. It was hardly ambiguous.

The vindication I felt later when I became aware of the fact that Herman Melville himself thought Moby Dick was a bloated and unedited mess that didn't deserve to be a doorstop, let alone a book, and only published it at the dogged insistence of close friends who insisted on its excellence, was palpable.

Just because something is loved, or old, or considered a 'classic' (such a hollow and meaningless word), does not make it good.

So I would hardly hesitate to pan Wheel of Time mercilessly simply because it is one of the cornerstone foundations of modern fantasy. I would spare it no quarter, no matter how influential it was in the 'underground' fantasy realm of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns and pencil and paper storytelling, from which all modern fantasy stories now draw upon.

But I hesitate, nonetheless.

The great tragedy I am bearing witness to is not the depositing of garbage on the curb, nor is it even the profaning of something that carried greatness and potential.

What I see is a solid, well-written, interesting fantasy story, clearly deserving of the crown it carries as the forefather of a thousand published worlds and a million paper campaigns, being slowly destroyed from the inside out by a choice the author knowingly made, seemingly oblivious to it's ultimate repercussions.

It is as though, by pure chance, fate and cruelty conspired to breed a poison in Jordan's masterpiece, and he, blissfully unaware of it, dipped his brush in the poison and painted enviable strokes with it upon the canvas.

I have seen soap boxes. I have seen author tracts. This is neither. Robert Jordan does not himself believe these things. They are written in with too great a subtlety, too absent from the overarching narrative, to be an ideology that he himself espouses.

Robert Jordan chose to make his fantasy world a sexist one. Moreover, he chose to make it a misanderist one.

I have no problem or issue with this at all. I've done as much and more myself as a Game Master, nevermind an author.

It is all the more justifiable for the fact that there is hard reason for this to be the case. Once there was balance. Now, there is balance no longer. The great heroes of old were struck down in a treacherous blow by the forces of wicked blackness, and the very spiritual font of masculine power in the cosmos has been tainted with madness and a mind-twisting desire to seek out and serve the great bleak lord himself, thematically mirroring the silent whispers that a certain plain ring of gold once uttered in the dark.

Worse has been done for less a reason, and considered justified.

But like the arrow loosed by Paris, this innocent, justifiable, and clever decision ultimately wrought ruin. For if Robert Jordan has a great weakness I could finger, having admittedly read so little a sampling of his writing as a few hundred pages, it would most certainly be in his ability to write interesting and compelling female characters.

Every one he writes, be they girl, woman, or crone, be they peasant, wizard, rouge, or housewife, is disappointingly two-dimensional. Even attempting to lend them a degree of second-hand complexity by involving them in complex events (often a reliable cheat for those initiated in their own weaknesses and how to avoid them) seems only to highlight how flat they are.

This by itself is hardly a damnable offense. Far from it. We all have our failings, and I would hardly pass out a condemning judgement for such a basic and easily overlooked fault.

But it's existence in the same medium as his choice to portray women as strongly and subtly misanderous breeds a perfect storm that gives birth to a dire mistake.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is the ultimate, final expression of my objection towards Lionheart's writing, taken to its most horrifying and tragic extreme. It is a fantastic work of high fantasy, deserving every bit of honor that could be given it as a supporting pillar of modern fantasy, that stumbles and falls from lofty heights by choosing to portray a particular social construct that is almost precisely calibrated to show off and highlight in every respect the author's greatest writing weakness.

The end result is shallow, two dimensional characters subtly intruding upon the pacing of the story at irregular intervals to sneer at and demean those who are their betters in breadth and complexity, exerting an almost tidal force in the reader, a burning desire for karmic retribution. Retribution that will not come, because that was not the purpose Jordan had for choosing to portray sexism. Were the work to lessen itself by becoming an author tract against the idea of sexism itself, or at least, openly so, then the flaw would be far more tolerable, as it could assumed to be deliberate. Much like how the selfish and cruel are put paid like clockwork in certain genres and settings, so too could we comfortably assume that retribution, even if it is unseen, is coming to those characters who dare to offend our sensibilities.

But the work is not an author tract. It is not a soapbox. Robert Jordan did not set out with that in mind, and paints the issue with a more subtle and realistic brush than anyone with such compunctions could hope to do. The story may have a quiet and subtle moral lesson in the idea that only in achieving balance and mutual understanding can we be whole and equal, but while balance (and the repercussions of imbalance) may indeed be the theme of the tale, it is hardly an author tract.

There will be no petty revenge or emotional vindication. He was more damnably noble than that, and his damnable nobility damns him.

Obviously, I have read less than one fourteenth of the full work. My opinion lacks the validity of experience. But I fear I have seen enough to perceive the pattern, and others have told me that "it will get worse" in reference to the sexism, so I have little hope in Jordan rectifying the innocent but poisonous error he has made.

This is, I fear, more introspective and less funny that what you are used to expecting from me. It lacks bitter sarcasm and excessive profanity. Quite frankly, I choose to often act in that way and not in this out of fear of my own pedantic and rambling insufferability. I would rather play the abrasive and bitter fool than the insufferable and saddened bore. I will return you to your regularly scheduled programming shortly. I do have a fair bit of ground covered to go back and comment on, including what I've begun to call in my head "the Official List of Reasons Moiraine is an Objectively Terrible Wizard." I'm sure fun and entertainment will be had.

I simply felt compelled to take off the jester's mask for a moment, and speak plainly about my feelings on the matter. I can neither hate nor condemn Robert Jordan for his writing or his choices, and to me, that makes it all the more tragic that such a well-written and foundational work has such a glaring and avoidable flaw interred within. Would that for the grace of God I could have treated him to lunch at a coffee house when he was still penning it and advised against such a choice. But wishes live in the same neighborhood as forgotten dreams and the innocence of childhood, and there is no use dwelling upon it. I am no wizard or master of cosmic forces, and I can no more command the stance of time than I can command a cat.

We move on, as we must, to other things. To shoes and ships and sealing wax, to cabbages and kings. And the irony that I myself have stood upon a soapbox to convey my feelings on this matter to you is not lost upon me, I assure you.

 

If I may interject briefly with some slight spoilers, in the hope that we will continue to receive updates and that you will thereby have chosen to continued reading; there are many and more female characters to come who embody every aspect that you have written, Raine. They are terrible. They make you hate them, rather like Umbridge within OotP.

But it is not that far off that another perspective is developed - one which takes part of what you have mentioned and pays it back ruthlessly. And there will be more.

I see now, looking back, just how valuable that additional perspective truly was. Why it evolved as it did over the course of the series. Oh yes, the majority of the women to come are indeed infuriating, and self-righteously smug in their state of self-assertion and value, with little to no regard for the men with whom they are often paired or converse, but do not give up. Please, wade deeper, and tolerate the intolerable for another book or two. I can not promise you that you will be satisfied, but that you might just see some gleam, some diamond in the rough, that encourages you not to abandon the Wheel of Time.

There are some epic moments if you choose to wait for them. Not all upon the battlefield.

 

Thank you for your post Raine. You said my thoughts a million times better than I ever could about the sexism in the Wheel of Times books.

The plot is great, the setting is amazing... But his females make the books nearly unbearable to me. I ended up stopping on the eighth book because I could not take it anymore. I felt all the female characters had few redeeming qualities and would do anything for the "man they loved."

I want to keep reading to figure out the ending but I don't know if I could muck through the bad to try to find the good.

I do think you should read up to the third book at least. I feel they are some of the best of the series.

 

I had, and have, no intention of abandoning the series. I'm genuinely enjoying nearly everything I've read thus far, and I've soldiered through worse for less reason. It would take something monumentally objectionable happening in the middle of the series to make me drop it now. I was merely stating my feelings in the moment, here halfway through the book.

Speaking of which, Enlarge Person is a fantastic spell. It gives you ten foot reach, makes all of your weapons increase in size, and generally lets someone in your party spend one minute per your caster level wrecking the unholy shit out of anything that's pissed them off. It's definitely one of the meta-spells in the Dungeons & Dragons canon, and is right up there with Fireball, Flight, and Greater Invisibility as must-haves.

But there's a right way and a wrong way to use it.

Riddle me this one, Batman. Do you think it would be better to:

A.) Use Enlarge Person on the person wearing robes that isn't a frontline fighter or terribly good at melee combat, and will be spending the better parts of their turn doing things besides beating the crap out of things with their bare hands.

B.) Use Enlarge Person on the party member that's carrying a weapon half the size of their own body and walking around in armor that can stop arrows.

Unless you're the sort of wizard who wanders the countryside in full plate and carries around a bastard sword strapped to their back, there is no situation where the wizard casting it on themselves is the better option. Enlarge Person doesn't make spells bigger. Just the target and whatever weapons and gear they happen to be carrying. Unless you're somehow separated from your own group and need to drop it on yourself to get out of a sticky situation that your other magics cannot save you from, it's never the most ideal choice. And when you have a limited number of times you can cast spells per day, misusing spells in non-optimal ways is how you end up not having the solution your party needs when they need it. That's called failing your fucking job of being a wizard.

The argument could be made that she was only doing it to intimidate the asshole paladins into running away, and as such, it wasn't really about combat optimization. Sure, fine, I can dig that.

But what's more intimidating? A twenty foot tall blonde princess in pantaloons, or a twenty foot tall samurai in armor thick enough that it could plate an ironclad ship and carrying a sword the size of a bus?

Moiraine, you are a terrible wizard. Get your shit together before we TPK against the minotaur orks, Jesus.

And speaking of TPKing against the minotaur orks, what made you think a line of fire was going to buy you more than sixty seconds at best? How long was it? At most? Five hundred meters? Three thousand feet? The Trollocs can run as fast as a horse can gallop. What the fuck did you think you were going to accomplish half-killing yourself to make a fire pit? Flashy magic doesn't save the day. Properly applied magic saves the day. You would have been better served to conjure up another round of the obscuring mist you pulled seventy pages back. At least then you could have bought more than a minute's worth of time getting the Trollocs lost and turned around in it. Maybe then you wouldn't have had to take a rest stop in the back yard of an eldritch abomination to spend the night. Maybe then Mat wouldn't have poked the eldritch abomination in the nose with a stick because he's almost as bad as Egwene is about this whole 'adventure' thing.

Speaking of Mat poking the eldritch abomination in the nose with a stick, Mat, buddy. You have to stop this shit. I like you Mat, but you're fucking killing me over here. If the Nazgul are afraid to go somewhere that the heroes are also afraid to go, I promise you it's not because it's a really cool and totally safe vacation spot that probably has loads of treasure lying around somewhere unguarded and free for the taking.

It's because there's a goddamn Balrog wandering around somewhere.

For the first five minutes, I was certain it was going to turn out that the whole city was infested with vampires, and it was only relatively safe because it was daytime. I was completely certain of this right up until we actually got an explanation. And I thought my theory was the worst case scenario.

"That guy is a vampire. Full stop. This guy is totally a fucking vampire. For real. Yeah, he is, look at that. No shadow, probably no reflection, crazy magic bullshit. He wouldn't step into the sun, and he flat-out said he had been underground for a really long time. And now there are eyes watching them from everywhere. This is totally a Necropolis. Vampires are going to pull an Aliens as soon as the sun goes down, I promise you. OH. OH SHIT NO. I WAS WRONG. I WAS WRONG IN THE WORSE POSSIBLE WAY. FUCK. FUCKING RUN. JESUS CHRIST DROP EVERYTHING. GET THE FUCK OUT. HOLY SHIT IT JUST ATE A FUCKING HALFMAN. BE ANYWHERE BUT HERE."

Yeah, Mat. You've got to stop this. We can't leave you and Egwene alone together. We just can't. The ensuing chaos could destroy the world. And Moiraine and Nynaeve would be absolutely insufferable about it.

Speaking of Moiraine and Nynaeve being absolutely insufferable about things, this is why I'm starting to like Robert Jordan. He doesn't waste your time with exposition unless the exposition is important. See, what's happening on the surface is that Moiraine is trying to convince Nynaeve to become an Aes Sedai, because she's a colossal bitch, Aes Sedai gonna Aes Sedai, and she probably wants a stupider and less educated wizard tagging along so she doesn't look quite so absolutely fucking incompetent at using her magic effectively by comparison.

But what's actually happening is much more important. Jordan is giving us a laundry list of symptoms for what happens when someone touches The Power for the first time.

And wow, do those symptoms look awfully familiar. It's almost like we saw literally almost all of this about seventy pages back occurring in one specific person in particular.

Can you feel it? Because I can feel it. It's happening. IT IS HABBENING. DRAGON/10, WOULD SPELLSLING AGAIN. DO IT FAGGOT. DO IT. OH GOD YES YOU NEED TO DO THIS. DISREGARD AES SEDAI ACQUIRE MAN MAGIC.

The only question is, what was Rand's use of The Power? When did he call it? My pick would be when he was carrying his father back to town in the middle of the night. The timing is about right. That would be around a week ago for them, give or take. The symptoms would have kicked in around the time they stopped off in the city, which lines up with him behaving the way he did and feeling the things he felt during and after the confrontation with the Children of the Light. It about works out, timewise.

Either Rand used The Power to carry himself and his father back to Two Rivers when anyone else would have collapsed from exhaustion, or he himself healed him without realizing it, and Moiraine didn't really have to do much of anything.

And now we're all caught up. Excuse me while I continue reading Moiraine and Nynaeve's bitch-on-bitch combat. I'm rooting for Nynaeve on this one, even though she seems to be losing, because if Moiraine had her way, she'd have every named person with a vagina running off to train in the ways of being an asshole Jedi, and that's not really cool beans for me. Fuck off Moiraine, holy shit.

 

I just got my dad to read the Wheel of Time, I had his commentary through out the whole series and I have to say it was greatly enjoyable. Looking forward to more from you as well Raine, can't wait for your reactions to what is to come. It amuses me that my dad's feelings on Moiraine vs. Nynaeve had him leaning towards Moiraine.

 

I liked Moiraine over Nynaeve too, from what I remember. Not that it means much. I don't think there are any good female characters in that series as far as I read, but Nynaeve takes the cake as being the most annoying cunt.

*braid tugging intensifies*

 

Best female in the series: Bella.

 

She makes it too the end too!

 

I actually found Jordan's portrayal of women to be fascinating.

With the history of Saidar and Saidin, Jordan created a world in which the gender bias leans in favour of women, in the same way that the real world is hugely biased towards men. This comes across in the erratic bitchiness, contempt, and incessant dismissal of men for trivial reasons. Despite this, it holds true to the natural course of biology, such as al(most) all warriors being men.

A lot of the things criticized about his women are just a reflection of the way that men behave in the real world. As a feminist, I found this really interesting. Unfortunately, this goal was corrupted by two things: Jordan's own sexism, which is pretty unavoidable in a guy born in 1948, and was entirely without malice, and his inability to develop different female characters.

Some of you disagree, but I think he latched onto this concept of semi-inverted gender roles and used it as the defining point behind each female character's personality. Instead of them having distinct personalities, they all had different inflections of the same mix of hard-headed cattiness and twisty arrogance. Not all of the men were great characters, but at least there was more than one personality in a hundred bodies.

Spoiler

It also really fucked me off that 99% of female characters used the One Power, as if magic was the only thing which could make a woman worthwhile. Dream-archer-warder-woman whose name I've forgotten is the only major recurring character I can think of who didn't roll a mage.

This series is riddled with flaws, but it's also one of my favourites. Two reasons: the world felt bigger and more real than any other, in no small part due to the "unreliable narrator" syndrome which the world itself was showing, particularly in relation to myths about the Dragon and so on. It really made it feel like a melting pot of divergent cultures.

The second reason why I loved it is that it's so fucking big. I read far too fast. It's rare that a book lasts me more than an hour. These things were huge, and there was a lot of them.

I also actually like the classical peasant-boy hero versus dark lord scenario. Most of us do, even if we get snooty and call it a cliche sometimes. I can't think of a better example of it than this.

 

Spoiler

Faile and Min too

I kinda agree that that idea behind the gender roles was really good, it was just very clumsily executed.

 

In our modern perspective, yes. Go back 20-25 years when the first book was written, and it's a whole other ball game. It's like fan fiction, the older it gets, the worse it is as it's out of date with real life's... Meta game you could say.

 

Thankfully, I have all of today and everything until Tuesday with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to disturb me. I'm going to make it my goal to get through as much of the first book as possible. I bet I could finish it if I try.

Sadly, Nynaeve seems to have lost her argument and has been assimilated into the growing list of people who will be spirited away and trained to be asshole Jedi by the other asshole Jedi. I never had much hope, but it's still a pity nonetheless.

That being said, "don't worry, they can't possibly get away. Those coins will lead me right to them."

I find myself siding with Nynaeve over Moiraine because in spite of Nynaeve's immaturity, she would never even consider murdering people simply to accomplish her objectives.

Moiraine has. Moiraine said as much herself. She literally told the Two Rivers group to their faces that she would kill them all if they disobeyed her.

Nynaeve is a raging bitch. She's clearly too young for the position she holds, and she thinks the world of herself and little of anyone and everyone else. However, a monumentally narcissistic and inflated sense of self-importance is a far lesser evil in the face of what little Moiraine has shown of herself thus far.

I've played and played with too many competent wizards to let this kind of shit slide. I've seen and run with the full gamut; everything from fundamentally neutral scholars who were uncaring of anything besides their research to beleaguered individuals of power who are doing their best to stem the threats that encroach upon their worlds and kingdoms from all corners.

As a general rule of thumb, if you aren't playing an uncaring scientist or a power-hungry sociopath, "what would Gandalf do" is a pretty solid creed to live by, most of the time.

What would Gandalf have done? He would have smiled for them. He would have accepted them for who they were. He would have told them that he would do everything in his power to see them back home, though he would have admitted that the odds of such a thing were slim at best. He would have understood that boys will be boys, and would have kept a keen eye on them at all times, or employed those who could do so in his stead. He would have prized subtly and nonmagical solutions to problems over ostentatious displays of power except in times of truly dire need.

He would not have threatened to throw them all off a cliff or immolate them on the spot for disobeying his orders. He would not have allowed resentment to grow between them over the current state of affairs. He would not have lacked the foresight to predict that they would wander off and get themselves into trouble at the first opportunity, especially given the existence of the aforementioned resentment. He would not treat them as little more than unwanted baggage on a journey he is expressly making on their behalf. He would not have assumed that any of his plans would survive contact with the enemy, and would not have put all his eggs in one basket (or all of his coins, as the case may be). He would not constantly be trying to reshape the people who got caught up in this unwanted and dangerous adventure into something of his choosing that he approves of.

When you set everything up in a row and look at everything Moiraine has done, and just as importantly, what she hasn't done, I don't think it's particularly surprising that I dislike her far more than I dislike Nynaeve.

Nynaeve is a bad person, but she's a spoiled child, and the damage she can do is minimal at best. Moiraine is an uncaring monster that would cheerfully murder innocent people and cause enormous collateral and property damage without a moment of hesitation if it was in the name of her 'cause' of denying Baalzamon what he wants. She shares the same general flaws that Nynaeve does, but her greater age and personal power makes her the more terrible of the two by far.

If I had been playing with a wizard that was behaving like Moiraine was, in a similar situation, the time she started threatening to kill the boys if they even think of trying to go back would be around the time I stopped paying attention to cooking the pot of stew, stood up, and put the palm of my hand on the hilt of my sword.

She's a nasty, terrible, amoral person that acts like she's justified simply because she's opposing evil, without understanding or comprehending that an opposing stance offers no assurance towards your own virtue whatsoever. That's the first thing any good Paladin will tell you; simply fighting evil doesn't make you good, or just, or any less of a threat or menace than the evil you oppose. Demons and Devils fight all the time, and the average layperson would be hard pressed to so much as tell the difference between them at a glance.

Moiraine pretends she's one of the 'Good Guys,' and acts like the whole world should know it. But her actions and attitude tell a much different story, and explain for themselves why most of the world hates the Aes Sedai and call them Darkfriends.

Baalzamon must be laughing himself sick, that the guardians of the world have fallen so far that the common man would confuse them with his own servants.


I'm not saying I don't like Moiraine, but I am saying that my current OTP for Wheel of Time is Moiraine/Moiraine's Horse.

Calling Wheel of Time a fascinating feminist work on the ramifications of a gynocentric culture is like calling my last Dungeons & Dragons campaign an in-depth live experiment on the mercantile and political ramifications of a consistent directing will behind the advent of sovereign nations.

You are ascribing far greater and grander terms to something which exhibits nothing to warrant it.

Jordan neither set out with the express intent of making the particular issue the focus of the story nor does the execution of the story hinge upon it. I'm not even finished reading the first book, and I can already tell you that the theme of the story is the virtue of balanced forces and the peril of when such forces are imbalanced and go uncorrected. Far from being feminist, Wheel of Time is deeply egalitarian in nature. The attitudes that Jordan's female characters adopt as a result of the imbalance a deliberate attempt to subtly showcase the dangers of unbalanced cosmic power at best, and an unimportant tertiary note at worst, which makes it's fatal inclusion in the narrative all the more tragic by its lack of necessity.

What's more, the various female characters having this "as their defining feature" is hardly something to be excited about. When shallow and two dimensional characters that aren't passably written even by the standards of fan fiction have as their only defining feature an unabating smugness and condescending superiority complex, it would be a blind or enamored soul indeed who would see it as a feminist virtue.

If anything, Wheel of Time accomplishes the precise opposite. It makes a strong argument through it's own narrative shape that everything with a vagina should be shot on sight to make way for Samwise, Aragorn, and everyone else that actually matters and isn't going to waste our time and patience by being a giant condescending bag of bitch.

Consider this: Lan has done a mere fraction of the talking that Moiraine has, and we know literally nothing about him while we know some about her, and yet in spite of the sheer void of information or interaction we've had with him, he is the far more interesting and deep of the two of them.

Where the strength in Jordan's writing lies is inarguable, as is it's weakness. To run a deliberately abrasive highlighter over that weakness is the next best thing to deliberate narrative sabotage. To extoll it as anything other than an instructive cautionary example of what not to do is odd-minded at best, and seeing what you want to see instead of what is actually there at worst.

I'm happy for you that Robert Jordan's mistake makes your particular intellectual fetish tingle, but don't ascribe virtuous light to an authorial ink blot. Calling Wheel of Time a work of feminism is absurd, and labeling it as such only serves to weaken the concept of feminism as a whole, as if Wheel of Time could be considered as such, then any work featuring any woman as anything other than a subservient housewife could be as well, at which point the term has lost all conceivable meaning and can no longer be used to describe anything worthy of note.

Granted, that's an irrelevant and outdated sentiment, seeing how the current wave of feminsim is damned and determined to convince the entire world that everything with a vagina should indeed be shot on sight, and I very much doubt a mislabeling of a fictional work would mean much at all at this point. But it is an intellectual fine point I am not prepared to concede.

It's bad enough that this problem exists. Don't make it out to be a fascinating and intellectual virtue of the work. It's nothing of the sort.