Winter's Heart

About Winter's Heart

Winter's Heart is the ninth book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and the volume in which one of the series' most consequential single acts finally occurs: the Cleansing of saidin, the male half of the One Power tainted by the Dark One at the Breaking of the World. For nine books, the corruption of the male source of magic has been the shadow hanging over every man who can channel - including Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn. Winter's Heart is where that shadow is confronted. The structure of the book is built toward that climax with deliberate patience. The early chapters follow Mat in Ebou Dar, now occupied by the Seanchan - an empire from across the sea who collar women who can channel and use them as weapons of war. His interactions with the Seanchan high blood, including his impending entanglement with the Princess of the Ravens, provide the book's sharpest humor and its most unexpected tenderness. Perrin's storyline, devoted to tracking and rescuing Faile after the raid that took her captive, carries less forward momentum but develops the Shaido Aiel as antagonists and deepens the marriage at the center of his arc. Elayne's political campaign to secure the throne of Andor unfolds in Caemlyn with considerable intrigue. The culmination in Far Madding and then on the grounds of Shadar Logoth - the city of ancient evil where a darkness powerful enough to oppose the Dark One still lingers - is the most dramatically unusual sequence the series has attempted. Two women channeling opposite halves of the Power to protect a man who is cleansing the very source that could end his mind: it is unlike anything else in the saga, and Jordan handles the magical mechanics with the rigor he always brings to the One Power's rules. Winter's Heart is mid-series Wheel of Time at its most ambitious. Readers fully committed to the series will find the climax enormously satisfying.

Tropes & Themes