Finished my reread of the fifth book in The Wheel of Time, The Fires of Heaven.  This book is one of the books in the series I really like. I feel like the plot starts to pick up and it has the most events in it that I like. No Perrin, though, which was sad.

http://sonhe.tumblr.com/Book2012

Warning: SPOILERS for the rest of the series.

Specific events that I loved were Birgitte being thrown out of Tel’aran’rhiod and her subsequential Warder bonding, the finding of Salidar for Siuan’s group, Nynaeve besting Moghedien again, the “death” of Lanfear and Moiraine, the death of Rhavin, and of course the death of Asmodean. Well, I like the mystery behind his death more than the scene itself, but well, yeah.

I had forgotten that Valan Luca falls in love with Nynaeve so that was amusing.

Also, I think Asmodean is my favorite Forsaken.

I had also forgotten that all of these events happened in this book. I didn’t realize the two groups found Salidar in the same book, or that Lanfear, Asmodean, and Rhavin were all killed and Moghedien gets captured (well, by the end of the book it’s assumed).

Something I did notice, however, happened in the Prologue. Elaida is the main voice in it and the parallels between her and Egwene are amazing. Elaida’s thought sequence revolves around making the Tower whole, how it needs to be whole for the Tower to be strong; how she knows she was elected Amyrlin as a puppet but now that she was there she was going to show them that she was Amyrlin.  Her thoughts mirror what Egwene’s are, especially in The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight.

“But then, she was not sure she could ever bring herself to trust any who had fled instead of hailing her ascension. Yet the Tower must be whole again.”

“Perhaps they had put her on the Amyrlin Seat, but now she was the Amyrlin.”

“Almost she reached for saidar, the female half of the True Source, to teach the woman her place with the Power. But that was not the way.” And of course, how much she changes by the end.