This article was originally posted on October 5, 2009. It is re-posted here as part of my coverage of this year's Hugo Awards.
Crossroads of Twilight
Robert Jordan
2003
On my first reading of Crossroads of Twilight
I was satisfied with the novel, that even though the action of the
novel is lacking and Robert Jordan did not build on the Cleansing in Winter’s Heart,
it was Wheel of Time and it told the stories of characters who caught
short shrift in the previous volume. Only later, thinking back on the
novel, did I feel a sense of disappointment that except until the very
end of the novel could I say that “nothing happened”. My complaints
grew. Maybe we didn’t need to be caught up with all the other
characters. There’s nothing wrong with jumping ahead a couple days or a
week and just picking up then.
So what now? This is either the first or second time I have read Crossroads of Twilight since 2003. All I have are vague recollections. Now we have a volume following Crossroads of Twilight and the first part of the three book series finale is a month away from publication. Frustrations regarding the passivity of Crossroads of Twilight are lessened because now this is only a chapter in the larger story, rather than the book we’ve waited several years for.
The first half of so of the novel runs concurrently with the conclusion of Winter’s Heart.
There is this great “beacon” off in the distance that tells any woman
who can channel that a great use of Saidar is being used. Readers of
the series know that this is the Cleansing of saidin, but the other
characters don’t. The general assumption is that the Forsaken are
involved and when the Aes Sedai scout out battlefield after the fact,
they assume that what happened at Shadar Logoth is some new Forsaken
weapon. Otherwise, there are four primary storylines running through Crossroads of Twilight.
Perrin
continues to chase the Shaido Aiel who have kidnapped his wife. Elayne
works to hold on to the Lion Throne in Andor and is facing a siege from
rival houses. Mat tries to evade the Seanchan in his flight from Ebou
Dar. Mat also works to improve his relations with Tuon, the Daughter of
the Nine Moon. Egwene and her rebel Aes Sedai are outside the gates of
Tar Valon. She’s working on a plan to block the harbor at Tar Valon.
This may be a gross simplification of the basic plotlines of Crossroads of Twilight, but I do believe it is an accurate summation of the bulk of what happens in Crossroads of Twilight. Not a whole lot.
Which
isn’t to say that there isn’t quality here. When Robert Jordan gets
down to it, he can write excellent scenes and put together a good book.
Most of this book just isn’t Jordan getting down to it. The White
Tower intrigue works, as does the burgeoning (and confusing) Mat and
Tuon relationship. Elayne’s chapters are turgid, but the closer Egwene
gets to acting the better her chapters are.
Crossroads of Twilight
does not suffer from Middle Book Syndrome. It suffers from Middle
Chapter Syndrome. It answers any questions as to what was happening
with the rest of the characters while Rand and Nynaeve are off cleansing
the taint off saidin. It also sets up the next part of Egwene’s
storyline, and the future of how the major protagonists will relate to
the Seanchan. That’s about all that Crossroads of Twilight is.
It’s this that makes Crossroads of Twilight such
a disappointing novel. There is very little that occurs in the text
that needs to be told directly. Not that required 800 pages of
paperback text. A couple of chapters could reasonably have covered it,
maybe three hundred pages at most that could have been spread between The Path of Daggers, Winter’s Heart, and Knife of Dreams.
That’s not what happened, of course, we were given Crossroads of
Twilight. It’s a novel that isn’t a novel, it’s a long interlude in
between novels. It is a collection of chapters in a larger novel.
Taken from that perspective, Crossroads of Twilight is not an offensive novel. It’s really not much of anything at all.
On to Knife of Dreams, please.
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