The Great Hunt

The Great Hunt finally allows The Wheel of Time to become its own thing, breaking free from most of Tolkien’s structure, which so hindered The Eye of the World. It’s a competent fantasy novel that focuses on fleshing out its world, introducing and developing elements that make the series stand on its own feet.

As its title implies, the plot of The Great Hunt revolves around a big chase. Darkfriends, led by Padan Fain, have stolen the mythical Horn of Valere and a sinister dagger that is magically linked to Mat Cauthon, who is bound to perish without it. With the intention to save his friend, Rand sets out with him, Perrin, and a bunch of soldiers from Faldara, pursuing Fain to retrieve the objects.

The book opens with a gathering of Darkfriends, introducing us to the evil forces that populate the world of The Wheel of Time. They are the rich and powerful who look for the only thing their money and influence can’t buy: a way to cheat death. The Dark One promises to “break the wheel” and subjugate time, which for them represents a chance to acquire eternal life. Despite their power, these people are paranoid and afraid. They wear masks to conceal their identity and are hesitant to drink and eat, fearing poison. We don’t know who the man we are following is, but we know he’s arrogant – believing to be the smartest one in the room – and distrustful: he’s referred to all the time as “the man who called himself Bors”, which marks how his name is just one more attempt to disguise his true self. When the so-called Dark One turns to him, he pauses before saying Bors’ name, as if mocking the attempt. This introduction, then, presents the antagonists as people in positions of power who are both foolish and afraid, being easy prey for the darker forces of the world.

Evil in The Wheel of Time is smart enough to taint the very elements that could pose a threat to it. It takes everything that could be used by people to improve their lives and vilifies them, so that they are rejected instead of embraced. A prophecy says a chosen one will appear, so the Dark One instigates the appearance of false messiahs, making them dangerous and a force to be reckoned with. Consequently, when the real chosen one appears, he is hunted down by the very people he should protect. The White Cloaks, who are supposed to be a group formed to serve the light, hurt honest folk more than real monsters. They hunt Aes Sedai, call them witches, and torture and murder innocent villagers, seeing evil where there is none. The Dark One doesn’t even have to touch them too much, as their righteousness is enough to lead them to a darker path: most of them are zealots, blind to the true nature of their actions.

There’s an early scene where a captain called Bornhald – one of the good White Cloaks, who is self-aware and prone to question things – meets a Questioner – their Inquisitor – and notices how the man “had a gleam of certainty in his eyes that every Questioner had.” Bornhald points out how the Questioners decided guilt even before they began asking questions, revealing how certainty can be the root cause of injustice and evil, as it feeds a person’s sense of self-righteousness, masking personal bias as the truth. It’s no wonder, then, that in the prologue, when the Dark One speaks to one of his followers who is a White Cloak, he just has to command, “continue your good works”: despite working for the light, their actions serve only those that profit from fear and violence.

These elements were already present in The Eye of the World, but now that the parts that are too derivative from Tolkien’s work have been scaled back, they have more time to shine. They make the world of The Wheel of Time a fascinating one, marked by internal conflict and contradictions. The first part of the novel, for example, is built around the tension between Rand and the Aes Sedai. They should be a Gandalf-like figure to Rand, the wise ones that guide the protagonist to his goal, but they are too afraid of each other to work together. Rand’s immediate concern is not the Dark One, but Moiraine and her people: he’s afraid of being killed or gentled. If there’s a great hunt taking place, Rand thinks he’s the prey: “He closed his eyes, but he could still see himself huddling like a rabbit with nowhere left to run, and Aes Sedai closing round him like ravens.”

Rand possesses enormous power but could turn mad at any moment, risking the lives of everyone around him. Making matters worse, he is a stubborn fellow as well, being often called a “woolhead” or a “goat-brained fool” by his own friends. He’s the type of person who is never swayed after making up their mind, which is a serious problem when they’re wrong and their decisions may hurt other people.

The protagonist’s stubbornness is built by repetition. He keeps saying, “I will not be used,” referring to the Aes Sedai and the Dark One, clinging to the idea that he’s not the one the prophecies talk about and, if he is, he will refuse to do anything they want. In The Great Hunt, Rand is stuck in the denial part of the hero’s journey: “I don’t want the duty, Ingtar. I will not take it. Light, I’m just a shepherd. Why won’t anybody believe that?” he complains to a Shienaran officer, who actually yearns for that very duty.

Rand hopes that if he keeps saying out loud what kind of person he wants to be, he will become that person out of sheer will alone, and his problems will consequently disappear – meanwhile, other people just expect him to do something about those problems instead of pretending they are not his. He keeps refusing his destiny, but Moiraine – living up to her name – warns that his wants and desires may not matter much when it comes to destiny: “He has no more control over his fate than a candle wick has over the flame,” she says.

The main events of the novel, then, work with this internal conflict, testing Rand’s resolve and morality. Right at the beginning, for example, he boasts about his noble nature in an attempt to drive his friends away from him (to protect them), but after this scene, he’s constantly forced to pretend that he’s indeed part of the nobility, having people bowing to him and addressing him as a Lord.

Rand wants to disappear into the crowd: he desires nothing more than to go back to being a farmer, living a simple, carefree life. All the talk about being a Lord is a constant reminder of his importance and the duty he has to the people who follow him. The scene where he finally stops complaining and just accepts his part in the ruse is crucial to the narrative precisely because of what it says about the character: Rand accepts being called a Lord only when this acceptance means that the people who are accompanying him will feel safe and protected. He doesn’t want to be someone important, but if it means helping people, he will do it in the end.

His denial may be a blessing in disguise though, as it also means that Rand is avoiding using his powers, which could seal his fate, corrupting his mind. They are aptly described in terms that frame them as a temptation. They’re not just a tool that Rand can wield, but something that draws him in, like “a flower’s perfume drawing a bee, a midden’s stench drawing a fly.”

The protagonist’s journey in The Great Hunt suffers from a couple of issues, however. At the heart of his quest, there’s a rivalry between him and Padan Fain, who nonetheless disappears during the climax, making all the build up to their confrontation dissolve into nothing. The climax, however, is still miles better than the one in The Eye of the World, serving as a converging point to several plotlines, even though it poses the question of how many times Rand is going to battle “the Dark One” at the end of these novels.

The second issue is that there’s a difference between being naïve and being an idiot. And when Rand meets a mysterious girl in a magical plane, who seems to know much more than she should, and is constantly appearing and disappearing out of thin air, being never afraid of the monsters they are facing, and he fails to notice any red flags, trusting her completely… well, he is acting more like an idiot. This woman is always inflating his ego, leaving him more amenable to her charms, and Rand actually notices the contrast to Egwene, who often calls him a woolhead, but this doesn’t explain why Rand’s companions also fail to question the woman or warn Rand that something may be wrong with her.

The female core of the book is even more problematic than Rand’s part – and since the narrative is constantly highlighting gender tensions, which are even built into that world’s magic system, the differences between male and female characters stand out. Egwene, Elaine, and Nynaeve barely appear during most of the story, having just a couple of chapters about their training, where they muse about handsome men or marriage and complain about their harsh teachers.

Egwene is as innocent and foolish as Rand – maybe they really were made for each other –, trusting very shady people while failing to ask the important questions. Elaine, meanwhile, is a more frivolous and pampered version of Egwene: she still jumps at the sound of Rand’s name, but talks more often about trivial stuff. There’s a scene where she’s being hunted down by some horrible people and she’s still speaking of dresses and her mother’s opinions about what is proper. Nynaeve may remark how this means that Elaine still “speaks like a princess”, but this doesn’t change the fact that the girl sounds too frivolous. Nynaeve is the best of the three:  her main motivation may still be a man (and jealousy), and there’s apparently an unspoken rule that says her temper must be mentioned in all of her chapters, but at least this temper leads her to take action and question things around her.

On the other hand, the female characters in the book seem to be the wisest ones. Men in The Great Hunt are marked by obsession (Ingtar with the Horn, Matt with the dagger), denial (Rand), and hastiness (all of them) and are all prone to make stupid decisions. Nynaeve even remarks how “men often mistake revenge and killing for justice. They seldom have the stomach for justice.” Without an Aes Sedai to guide them, they would have most certainly been lost in the hunt for Padan Fain. The exception is Perrin, who is a more introspective character that likes to observe and understand more than act. However, the novel limits him to a plot device, never going too much beyond his “special tracking abilities”.

Finally, we have the biggest element introduced by The Great Hunt, which shakes things up and makes its world feel less derivative: the Seanchan. They are the usual foreign empire with strange customs and hostile intent. They employ monsters in their army, wear bizarre pieces of armor, and enslave female channelers. Their characterization can be deceptive: they appear almost like the “orient other”, the foreign menace that is marked by its bizarre and monstrous qualities. However, they not only come from the West but their history is also deeply indebted to Rand’s continent: they represent much more the past returning with a vengeance than an actual “foreign” force. And if they seem misogynistic by putting women on leashes, they actually all serve a woman as their Empress: they would have put men on leashes too if only they could channel without going mad. But the most important thing about the Seanchan is that this foreign empire adds a big threat that is not related to the Dark One, complicating the political landscape of Rand’s continent.

The Great Hunt marks a crucial chapter in The Wheel of Time, representing the moment when the series manages to form its own identity. It’s a fine fantasy novel that widens its world, making it more complex and fascinating.

May 30, 2022.