New Spring, Part One

Before we begin, a note on the late Darrell K. Sweet.

Before his death late in 2011, DKS was the artist for every WoT book, along with many others.  And let me be clear up front, I'm not saying he wasn't a very talented artist.  In particular, I think his horses are amazing.  The human characters on his covers, however, tend to be stumpy, middle aged, early 80s rock-haired, overly made up, and generally ill proportioned. Moiraine is supposed to be very short, but always end up looking like a dwarf who rolled in foundation and mascara.  Lan's hair and hadori leave him looking like something straight out of  Dire Straits, while Bukama (guy in blue) has such a grumpy scowl on his face, he looks like a painting of Jeff Dunham's puppet old man, Walter.  Seriously, go Google it.

And this is really one of the nicer covers!

With that out of the way, onto the partial book review.

I started New Spring the Novel late Sunday night, and by yesterday had hit page 202.  This is the new section that was added onto New Spring, the short story (originaly published in Robert Silverburg's Legends, an excellent collection of short stories from authors of epics).  With two small exceptions, it's been the story of Moiraine and Siuan learning of the rebirth of the Dragon, trying to figure out how to find him, and becoming full Aes Sedai.  The small exceptions are the first chapter, and a small piece at the end of chapter 12, both of which feature Lan and Bukama, being dour, stoic, and warlike.

It's a terrible way to start.

I can appreciate the book, really.  But by starting with NStN, there is none of the suction of The Eye of the World, which does such an excellent job of making you identify with Rand before he ends up in the middle of everything. TEotW has such a tight focus on your main characters, before expanding past their known borders, that you can discover their world with them-it's a beautiful rendition of the country mice in the city feeling.  NStN makes the assumption that you're very familiar with things (granted, I am), so plops you right down in the thick of the White Tower, tossing about names that feel like Robert Jordan is playing wink wink nudge nudge-hey look, it's Verin Sedai!  Get it?  She's a major character later on!  And hey, is that Sheriam as an Accepted?  Ta-da!

Speaking of names, I began writing down a list of all the names of characters, because boy does Robert Jordan like to toss them at you.  I'm curious as to how many he actually came up with, and I'm hoping it helps me keep some of the other characters sorted out later on.  For TEotW and onwards, I'll be compiling a list and adding it to the blog, but for my own kicks, I started now.  As of page 202, there were 112 named characters.

112!!?!

What the hell?!  I know a lot of those were one offs, such as when Moiraine and Siuan are taking names for the White Tower's bounty on children.  There are also a ton of Aes Sedai, not all of whom we'll see again in later novels.  But still, that's a new name every 1.8 pages.  I really hope that doesn't keep up, beacuse that would mean by the end of the 4 million pages, there would be 2,222,222 names used (yes, I did the math, thank you for noticing.)

It would also mean I need a way bigger journal.