First time poster, long time lurker:
I'm a woman and I love the books, it was me (I? I'm not a native speaker, logically it should be "I" but that sounds so wrong?)
"I" would be technically proper English but the English language in many places is changing such that it can sound stilted and stuck-up to use it that way. "Me" would sound more natural to most of us.
I can see where the question is coming from, a lot of stuff going on in the books would put off most of my female friends from reading it plus the sometimes "dry" philosophical parts... yes, probably not as many female readers as male ones.
But I honestly don't think the books are really that misogynistic, it's a medieval, patriarchal world with it's inhabitants behaving accordingly.
The women themselves are written quite well, they feel real and are quite different from each other, not like in WoT where I wished death and disease on every single female character by book 4 because they were mostly just annoying clones.
So you don't feel that the emotional core of the characters is kind of missing or anything like that? These are criticisms I've seen and didn't personally understand but then it is a matter of perspective I suppose.
Wheel of Time's female characters...ugh. One horrible petty abusive person in 500 bodies. I feel sorry for James Rigney if that was his experience with people.
I'm glad I could get my point across clearly enough.
Well, the "Dûnyain-lite" characters might have their fans too. I think Bakker wanted to show how Kellhus and Esmenet's children were affected by the combination of their parents' traits, and it makes sense one or more would fall in the more stable side of the half-Dûnyain spectrum. With their variety of personalities, opinions will vary as well.
On Serwa: Sadly, I agree, I don't think she survived her injuries for long even if she was still (barely) alive by the end of TUC. Too bad, because I would have much preferred to have her around in TNG than Kayûtas (I'd actually prefer having both survive, but if I had to pick only one, it'd be Serwa).
I even liked her and Sorweel together. Naturally I didn't expect that to last long. People aren't allowed to be happy here. But it ended much more abruptly than I thought.
I'd love more Serwa but if she is dead she has had an excellent end so not sure how I'd feel about her miraculously surviving. Though even then it might not be without consequences, which would make it worthwhile to continue with her I think. She's horribly maimed physically and perhaps psychologically, which might make Moenghus' claim that she was afraid she'd changed too much for the Metagnosis to work the same after Ishterebinth was foreshadowing.
This is getting into territory that's probably better for another thread.
We may never know for sure, but after rereading and seeing how upset Thelli was with the mention of her trauma at the hands of Inrilatas, it seems likely she could have planned for him to die. It's plausible she would figure that Maithanet confronting Inrilatas (with Kelmomas being there too) had a high enough chance to result in Inrilatas' death. Thus, revenge by proxy - there were even more tracks in the snow than Kelmomas considered...
Sounds very plausible. I quite liked the revelation that she wasn't just a computer as Esmi seemed to think. Her lack of affect was mostly just a matter of appearance. Although it seems to have fooled even her siblings, except for Inrilatas.