Lol MSJ. You know, Madness and I are two different people. We've got enough trouble distinguishing ourselves without you misquoting 
.
I have
never seen the two of you in the same place, though...
Also, as Thelli (Our resident Timeline Wizard) mentioned via quorum, this read will take about 2.5 years. This convinced me that i should probably participate. I think there's still time for me to catch up, so I'll be participating.
More details on that - I did the math assuming that, like we're doing right now at the start, prologues/interludes will get grouped with first/last chapters of the books they're in:
- TDTCB has 19 chapters + prologue, so this reread goes on for 19 weeks.
- TWP has 25 chapters -> 25 weeks.
- TTT has 17 chapters -> 17 weeks (unless someone wants an extra week to discuss glossary details?)
- TJE has 16 chapters + prologue and interlude, so I'm assuming we'll have 16 weeks of discussion (prologue being grouped with chapter 1 and interlude with chapter 16).
- TWLW has 15 chapters + interlude -> again, assuming chapter 15 + interlude, so 15 weeks.
- TGO has 17 chapters + prologue -> once again, chapter 1 + prologue, 17 weeks.
- TUC has 20 chapters - 20 weeks (unless, like mentioned above for TTT, there is extra discussion on the glossary).
If the reread goes like this, there'll be a total of
129 weeks of discussion and we'd end TUC on
September 20, 2020 (so yes, close to 2.5 years).
On Part I of the TDTCB prologue:
-Very predictably, I'm going for the genealogy & timeline nitpicks
(I also predict everyone is going to get tired of this rather quickly...). I know that the idea of Celmomas surviving Eleneöt Fields somehow has been brought up before based on this passage:
Ganrelka's uncle, who'd led the heartbreaking assault on Golgotterath's gates in the early days of the Apocalypse, hung from a rope in his chambers, slowly twisting in a draft.
My timeline sorcery, as Wilshire put it, makes me really dislike the theory that Celmomas is Ganrelka's uncle. Celmomas was born in 2089. Ganrelka was born 15 years later in 2104. Celmomas was the High King and Ganrelka his heir, so it doesn't make sense for Ganrelka to have been the son of an older brother of Celmomas, because then
he'd have been the High King if this hypothetical brother of Celmomas was dead. The age difference is already small enough for some people to doubt that Ganrelka was a son of Celmomas, so it doesn't make much sense for him to be the nephew of Celmomas via a younger brother, since then that brother would have had to be 14 or younger at the time of Ganrelka's birth. Of course, one can make the argument that Ganrelka could be a more distant relation and Celmomas' nephew
by marriage...but that's entering too nitpicky a territory, even for me.
-I think this has also been brought up before, but I like the parallels and contrasts we have between the unnamed bastard boy and the Boy, aka Crabicus. One young boy becoming the first of a new Anasûrimbor line, the other being the last (at least from a generational point of view, since there are still other Anasûrimbor living). The bastard boy had recently lost his father at the time of the Dûnyain's arrival, and the Boy recently lost his father in the current series time. Ganrelka's son is not really an Anasûrimbor, in a way, as he's illegitimate; the Boy is not really a Dûnyain, in a way, as he's defective. And so on. It makes me wonder if there could be any clues for the Boy's future in the bastard boy's story?
-Has anyone ever discussed the fact that wolves might have some sort of symbolism in the story? (I know this has been discussed regarding trees, but that's all I can remember.) Off the top of my head, there's Cnaiür killing the wolf as a rite of passage in his flashbacks, the wolf carvings in Cil-Aujas, Sarl's "sometimes the dead bounce" rant (which also mentions wolves), Moënghus being described as the piglet raised among Anasûrimbor wolves... And here there's this passage:
Winter added its cold to the emptiness of Ishuäl. Propped on the battlements, the child would listen to the wolves sing and feud through the dark forests. He would pull his arms from his sleeves and hug his body against the chill, murmuring his dead mother’s songs and savouring the wind's bite on his cheek. He would fly through the courtyards, answering the wolves with Kûniüric war cries, brandishing weapons that staggered him with their weight.
It probably means nothing, but it just made me wonder.
Prologue: Always same things strike me here. First one is the Bardic Priest. I believe he was Consult and knowing what we know from TUC the Dunyain eventually "take over" the Consult, the Duyain could very well been lead there by the Consult, Mek or the like.....and just forgot. They have the same exact goals. And, this was brought up many times wether there was one or not. We'll never know (and excusing any extratextual fact), it would make sense. Remember, we hear over and over that the Consult patience would bugger the imagination. Anyhow, an unknown, one that makes too much sense.
That's an interesting idea, he definitely seems like a shady character, there could be more to him than we know.
Do we know if this is the same Bardic Priest that Akka mentions in his early TAE dreams (the ones with Seswatha's affair with the queen)? If so, he could very well be playing a long game, as that was decades before this prologue is set. After all, there was at least one Consult agent in Celmomas' court (Iëva), so why not more?
