I always liked the Violator era Depeche Mode the best, like “Enjoy the Silence” above, or maybe the Black Celebration songs. As for OMD, by far their most successful album in the 80s was Crush, which had a lot of great singles on it, including this one:

Or this one, which was always a sentimental favorite of mine:

It takes you back, doesn’t it?

The new version of Depeche Mode is somewhat changed from their heyday:

I remember these guys pretty much standing behind their synthesizers and not doing much else until Martin Gore maybe played the keyboard for a song or two. But they are much different on this album and they have a much more bluesy sound, without lapsing into the deep depression that characterized some of their more self-indulgent tracks back in the day.

OMD is a little different story. They never reached the stratospheric success of Depeche Mode, but for a band that was somewhat following in Depeche Mode’s well-worn tracks, they had a burst of popularity in the 80s that few bands equalled.

The conclusion you quickly reach when you hear their new album, English Electric, is that they sound very much like they did before. And you know what? That’s not a bad thing.

In honor of the new movie, I’m posting here my favorite quotes from this, my favorite of all American novels. If you have other nominations, post them in the comments.

I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials
for the ‘Yale News’—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the ‘well-rounded man.’

The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.

It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a
bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered ‘Listen,’ a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.

The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier, minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath—already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the center of a group and then excited with triumph glide on through the seachange of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light.

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on YOU with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey. Precisely at that point it vanished—and I was looking at an elegant young rough-neck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care.

She was incurably dishonest. She wasn’t able to endure being at a disadvantage, and given this unwillingness I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard jaunty body. It made no difference to me. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply—I was casually sorry, andthen I forgot.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.

I’d seen it. Everybody had seen it. It was a rich cream color, bright with nickel, swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hatboxes and supper-boxes and tool-boxes, and terraced with a labyrinth of windshields that mirrored a dozen suns. Sitting down behind many layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory we started to town.

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an overwound clock.

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams—not through her own fault but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.

One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalk really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees—he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder. His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

She’s got an indiscreet voice,’ I remarked. ‘It’s full of——‘I hesitated.
‘Her voice is full of money,’ he said suddenly. That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of
money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it…. High in a white palace the king’s daughter, the golden girl….

The track curved and now it was going away from the sun which, as it sank lower, seemed to spread itself in benediction over the vanishing city where she had drawn her breath. He stretched out his hand desperately as if to snatch only a wisp of air, to save a fragment of the spot that she had made lovely for him. But it was all going by too fast now for his blurred eyes and he knew that he had lost that part of it, the freshest and the best, forever.

…he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about … like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees.

West Egg especially still figures in my more fantastic dreams. I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon. In the foreground four solemn men in dress suits are walking along the sidewalk with a stretcher on which lies a drunken woman in a white evening dress. Her hand, which dangles over the side, sparkles cold with jewels. Gravely the men turn in at a house—the wrong house. But no one knows the woman’s name, and no one cares.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch outour arms farther…. And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Anyone else have a thing for this particular album? It came out just about the time my son was born so I have a particular reason to love it more than anything else, but I would be interested to hear if others feel the same.

It’s a mess.  Despite a rather large anti-Tate/Pro-Wilson bias, this article here does a decent job of detailing the twists and turns of the band’s craziness.  What I find most interesting about the split (other than how much the whole thing resembles a divorce – and considering one of the band members married and then quickly divorced Geoff Tate’s daughter, that couldn’t have helped band dynamics) were the competing visions.  In essence (and despite the fact both versions of the band are releasing new albums), Geoff Tate wanted to keep recording and playing new music, and the rest of the band rather explicitly stated they preferred to play songs from the first five albums (their most popular ones, and their most “metal” ones).  In essence, the debate was over progressing musically or else becoming your own cover/tribute band.

It seems like that step is inevitable.  It seems very few artists have the longevity to keep releasing new music that sells well their entire careers.  Most bands, at some point, start playing their own oldies (even if they may throw in a new tune here or there – I saw America in concert once, and in the two hour concert, they played a total of two songs that were “new-ish” and the rest were their oldest and greatest hits).

I have no real insight on this topic.  I just found it somewhat interesting.  It’ll be interesting to see which version of the band actually prevails in court over the legal right to the name.

It’s no secret I liked this show before, but the new season has me thinking Xtina and Cee-lo who? Usher and Shakira are better in every way and this show just keeps getting funnier and somehow manages to find even better talent every season.

So far, I’m thinking Team Adam has a stranglehold on the top spot, with team members like these:

Yes, John Peter Lewis is the same guy from season 3 of that other singing competition show. The coaches couldn’t quite figure out why two guys from Idaho are able to speak fluent spanish, but I think I might be able to decode that for them…

Meanwhile, there’s this girl:

That’s a strong team folks, but it’s still early. Anybody willing to lay down money on who’s going to win this season?

Season 4 of this great series is under way and I have just started watching it. I have my own thoughts about it so far, but since I am behind in my viewing, I thought I’d start a thread where others could share their thoughts. No spoilers please.

Also, is anyone watching the new FX series The Americans? I have been watching it and I’m mostly impressed. For those who don’t know, it’s about a couple of sleeper soviet spies living in the U.S. as an American couple during the 80s Reagan/cold war era, and stars Keri Russell as the conflicted female spy with a horrifying history and kickass fighting abilities. Let me know if you have been watching.

There is no real logic to these notes but they are rather just my attempt to capture what I could. It goes without saying, nothing here should be used as direct quote from Mendes.

- I was a student at Peterhouse, Cambridge, not living in college, and in 1987 a friend of mine mentioned that he wanted to direct a play he had seen called ‘Gotcha!’. I told him that he was too shy to direct. and that I should do it instead, so I did. That was the first of 3 plays that I directed in quick succession and it was after that experience that I was left with a burning desire for more. But there was no Damascus moment.
- One of the great benefits of being at Cambridge is that you have the money and the resources to experiment because it does not matter if people come.
- There was this moment when I felt that I could do this. Most of my career since that time has been an attempt to find out why I felt that way, why I felt that it was my calling?
- The worst show I have *ever* directed was a production of ‘The Changling’. I still wake up with a cold sweat to dreams of the mad man dancing to the music of the Pogues.
- It took me some time to find my voice – it is more difficult to find your voice as a director because you need other people to find it. Sometimes there are particular people who can help you find it and who are able to best represent it.
- Working at the Marlowe was a turning point. We did a production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Something happened during that production, I found an eclectic freedom.
- During my final I wrote by hand to almost every theatre in the country looking for an Assistant Director position and the only one which responded was a small summer festival in Chichester. They asked me to write back in May and I promptly lost the letter. While revising for my finals, one of my books slipped down the back of the radiator and in an effort to dig it out I found this letter. By that time it was May and so I wrote to them again and they asked me to come down. It was one of the few moments in my life where I felt that maybe this is my destiny.
- In Chichester I was in charge of this small side stage where we produced Chekhov, Friel, Ibsen; we did a good production of Minerva, and I met Tony Stoves(?). Although I struggled down there with the theatre, it was through this that I was able to land a position directing ‘The Cherry Orchard’ in London, at the age of 24, with Judi Dench. I cringe to remember, on my first day, getting up and telling the cast about Chekov and what this play meant. Judi often reminds of this and remarks that, ‘you certainly had chutzpah’.
- Shortly afterward I began working with the RSC on a production of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ with Ranulph Fiennes and Richard Eyre. This was one of those important moments where I began to find my voice and part of the reason I was able to do so was because of the excellent people I was able to work with.
- Opening night is like giving birth to a blind baby and watching it walk to toward the edge of a cliff.
- Donmar Theatre was a closed building. I contacted the owner and said I would like to run it as a theatre; he had not even considered this and although I was still quite young somehow I persuaded him and he agreed. Corra Newling came on board and we still had to get the money together but we made it work. Early on we produced Assassin. It was a good play and something I have been very proud of. Our production of the ‘The Blue Room’ with Nicole Kidman was also an important piece.
- This was another of those experiences where I was able to find who I was as a director. On reflection it seems to me that working consistently in that space allowed me to explore the limits of my talents and enabled to find those things at which I excelled.
- I realized during this period that liking a play it is not a good enough reason to produce it. You need to feel that you have a secret about it that no one else can tell in quite the same way as you. You need to have something to say about the play.
- After doing a version of Cabaret in New York I was offered American Beauty. It was nothing that I knew about, I had never received any training in film and yet it was something that I felt like I knew how to do.
- Experiment: “by indirections find directions out.” (Hamlet)
- Skyfall. This is a film about England. It is about finding a new England but nevertheless feeling like it is the same.

Questions:
Q – Did you need to change the way you direct in order to work with Hollywood actors?
A – No, I was the same. Certainly there are differences in dealing with Movie stars than with stage-actors but my consistency is probably in part due to my arrogance. That sense that I knew how to do it has always been with me and perhaps was strongest during American Beauty. I remember I was shooting the table scene from American Beauty and Spielberg was on set. We did the shot and it was great. I said ‘Cut! Next scene.’ And Spielberg asked me if I was going to take coverage. No, I replied, it was great. In films since then I would have shot coverage. It has taken me 10 years to get back to that level of confidence. I was able to start doing that again with Skyfall.

Q – Was the transition to film a struggle?
A – Not if you see things as a series of scenes. Some theatre directors struggle to move to film because they cannot imagine getting away from the fourth wall. The Producers is a strange example of this because it is shot almost entirely like the stage show.
- Every actor is different and they need something different from you.
- The great stage actors can be both inside and outside their character at the same time. They can imagine how they are seen while they are performing it.
- I remember meeting Paul Newman, who is one of the greatest actors I have ever met. We sat in his apartment, he made me lunch, and we talked through the entire script. After quite a few hours he asked me: “Are you good at holding actors hands?” I said ‘Yes’. ‘Great, lets make this film’. It was one of the greatest moments on my life. This was a great actor who knew that he was still vulnerable and would need my help.

Q – How have you found directing old work?
A – You have to love working in the tradition. You have to know and love the productions that have gone before even while feeling that you have something to offer as well.

Q – Did you start shooting American Beauty and then change it after a few days.
A – Yes. It was at the end of day 2 when the first days filming was brought in I knew that it had gone wrong and that we needed to do it again. I spoke to the production company and they agreed. That was a bold thing to do as a director on his first film and on the first day of filming. It is usually a time of great excitement and optimism but it just did not reflect the vision I had for the film.

The world is full of people who have made an interesting short film but it is a quite different matter to be able to tell a story on screen.

Just to be clear: Les Mis is a good film.  I actually really enjoyed it, but here is where the problem lies.  It was not so much the film I enjoyed but the musical.  The performances were good but never exceptional.  Hathaway and Jackman were solid and emotive but it was the songs that made their performances deeply moving.  If either Hugh Jackman or Anne Hathaway win Oscars then Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, and Jean-Marc Natel (perhaps even Herbert Kretzmer) deserve to collect the award with them as well.

There were moments when the film attempted to do something with the story that was interesting, for example, both the opening and the closing scenes were well-conceived.  But aside from these small moments there was nothing substantive that either Hooper or the cast brought to this film.  It would have taken very bad performances for this not to work, as evidenced by Crowe’s tolerable Javert.  In any other setting this would have been worthy of a Razzie.

The costumes were good, particularly the  Thénardiers (who, perhaps, unsurprisingly seemed like something out of a Tim Burton film), but not noticeably better than some of the other films nominated.  I suppose I would not begrudge them this particular award but ‘Why Les Mis should only win one Oscar’ is not quite so provocative as a title.

Now, admittedly, I think if you are going hand out Oscars to films like Chicago then you should probably give them to Les Mis; the latter is certainly a far better production.

The critical questions for me while watching this film was whether it brought something new to an otherwise excellent production.  I am afraid it quite clearly does not and deserve the praise that it has received.

I have now finished this final book in The Wheel of Time series, and I’ll get right to the obvious question: Are all the questions answered and all the loose ends tied up in the end? Well no, obviously, but the book does an admirable job of tying up most of the loose ends and bringing the series to a reasonable conclusion, though of course there are some questions that still remain. I won’t spoil the ending for anyone that is still reading or plans to do so in the near future, but I will say that the ending surprised me very much in some respects. There is one aspect of it that I honestly can’t figure out any explanation for, and I am wondering what Jordan’s intentions were, but overall, I found it satisfying and it made the journey through this series worthwhile.

I say that guardedly, because when I first picked up The Eye of The World (I got it simultaneously with the second book, The Great Hunt) back in December of 1990, I could not have imagined it would take over 23 years (has it really been that long?!?!) to reach the end of the journey. The first book was not terribly impressive, in my mind, and I might not have continued reading if the second book, The Great Hunt, did not intrigue me so much more.

The setup of the story in the first volume seemed unoriginal at best: a group of young people from an unassuming community have their lives turned upside down when great evil comes to town and it is revealed that at least one of them is not really just a farm lad, but is really The One. You know, The One Who Can Save The World. That’s not a particularly original story idea, as you can see connections to everything from J.R.R. Tolkien to George Lucas. Beyond that, Jordan’s execution of the story was not particularly compelling. There was awkward dialogue, and there was the annoying insistance on climbing into the thoughts of every single character for etended exposition and description and even constant exclamations concerning the horrifying nature of their predicament (Light! That gets old! Blood and bloody ashes!). It was not a great beginning.

And yet…And yet there was something that made me pick up the second book. Maybe it was just the fact that I already had it and didn’t need to go out and buy it, but there was something that kept me going. Maybe it was the characters, which have always been drawn vividly by Jordan. Maybe it was Jordan’s rather exceptional skill in revealing the patchwork of strange cultures that populate his world. Maybe it was the unknown future of the characters that Jordan hinted at in prophecies and visions. Maybe it was all these things and some unknowable chemistry in the book that made me just have to know what happened next, but the bottom line is that I did have to know. I cared about the characters and the story and I so I picked up the second book and began reading. Almost from the beginning of that book, I was much more impressed and by the end of it, I was hoooked. Jordan really hit his stride in that book.

But then the problems started. I had to wait until October of 1991 for the third book to be published, which wouldn’t have been too bad except that by the time it came out, I had forgotten much of the story and had to reread most if not all of the first two books before I could read the third one. The series continued to follow this pattern, with the books coming out about a year apart, and me re-reading some of the series in between each book, until the sixth book, after which things slowed down to an interval of about two years or even more between books. By then I had become frustrated by the sheer weight of the thing. The number of new minor characters seemed to be getting exhaustively large, the story appeared to be going in circles, or worse: nowhere, and the end seemed impossible to reach or even imagine. When each book came out, I still tried to get it and read it, and I re-read the parts of the previous books that I needed to read to know what was going on, but I was angry at Jordan and disgusted with the series by the time I reached the eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, in late 2005.

And then Robert Jordan died. I had not previously imagined that this could possibly happen, though of course it’s always a possibility that an author could pass on before finishing a book or a series. In Jordan’s case, I forgot all my frustration in a paroxysm of self-centered grief. I will never know the end! I thought. The story would forever remain unfinished, like a painting left by the artist with a bunch of empty white space where the lower half of the painting should be. Only this was worse, because a painting doesn’t leave you guessing nearly as much about what was going to be in that white space, whereas now we would never know the fate of Rand al’Thor or the other characters or the world they lived in. How could this happpen! How could Robert Jordan (and the universe) do this to me! In desultory fashion, I traipsed along through the five stages of grief and ended by resigning myself to utter futility when it came to ever knowing the end of this story.

Sometime later, I heard the rumors. Rumors that a new author was being asked to write the ending of the series. I was very skeptical at first, mostly because I thought this was probably an ill-advised, slapped-together project being put together by the publisher to wring some dollars out of the stalled series and stick an ending on that couldn’t possibly fit or bring any real resolution. I was convinced it would not only be unsatisfying but would probably ruin any good feeling about the series that I had left. But when I heard the author being asked to write the ending was Brandon Sanderson, and that the person asking him to write it was Jordan’s wife Harriet, I started to change my mind. Then I read Sanderson’s take on how he would attack this project, and I once again dared to hope, and to let myself be intrigued again about what might be in store for the characters and the story of The Wheel of Time.

For the most part, I think Sanderson has done a masterful job. Without changing the style or basic nature of the storytelling, Sanderson has been able to bring the story to a conclusion that seems right and rings true. It may seem odd to use that phrase in describing a fantasy novel, but what I mean by that is that it rings true to the internal truth of the world in which the story is set. That’s of paramount importance in a series like The Wheel of Time, because anything that doesn’t seem consistent with the story or the characters or the world as already revealed sticks out like an assault rifle in a Jane Austen novel.

Though we had to wait until 2009 to see it, I was thrilled with the first of Sanderson’s efforts, The Gathering Storm. It picked up the story where Jordan left off and moved it along at what seemed like breakneck speed toward the inevitable conflict of the Last Battle. The second Sanderson book, Towers of Midnight, suffered a little bit from being the middle book in Sanderson’s conclusionary trilogy, but it still admirably moved the pieces into place to set the stage for the battle to come.

And what a battle. You had to know that the final book would be mostly a chronicle of battle plans and the battle itself, but I don’t know of any fantasy novel that is more completely consumed with just detailed description of the alliances, plans and execution of an all-out war on several fronts as is this book. That makes it a much different book in some ways than all the others, and it’s possible that sheer battle exhaustion might overtake some readers, but for the most part it’s an exellent read that really brings the curtain down on the series, while remaining true to the spirit and Jordan’s original intent, or as much of that as can be perceived by the reader.

Part of that is due to the fact that Jordan actually wrote the ending. Sanderson read the final scene as Jordan wrote it back in 2007 and he placed it into the final book virtually unchanged. That’s remarkable in a way, but what is even more remarkable is that Sanderson was able to connect the dots between that ending and the state of the story at the time Jordan passed on. I don’t know the exact extent of the notes Jordan left, but I think no matter what state they were in, Sanderson has done a great job in seeing this series to the end.

Now that it’s finally over, I have mixed feelings about it. Relief is the most obvious sensation. Relief that I don’t have to continue to wait and wait to know the ending. But there’s also a certain amount of regret that it’s over. I didn’t really know until now how much I have enjoyed having this series around, and despite its problems, it has been fun and I’ve really loved reading it in so many ways. After re-reading the whole series prior to reading The Gathering Storm, I got to know the series in a way I hadn’t before, and I recommend reading the series that way, without the breaks between books that I originally had to endure, because it really works best when read all together. Sometime in the future I will probably start again, and get to know the story and the characters all over again, but for now I will just sit back and envy those who will be able to experience this story the way it was meant to be experienced, starting at the beginning, in that little town in the Two Rivers and seeing it all the way through to the end at Shayol Ghul. That journey covers almost 12,000 pages and over 4,000,000 words, and though I’m not convinced all of those words and pages were strictly necessary, I still think it’s a fun and worthwhile journey.

Here’s the list of things that I said before reading the final book would need to be addressed in order for the conclusion to be successful, along with my take on whether the book addressed the issue or left us hanging:

Tarmon Gai’don (the Last Battle): Check. The last battle is fought, almost interminably, in this book.
The Aiel: Their fate is addressed, but not totally determined, by the end.
The Seanchan: Check. Their role in the last battle is shown.
The Aes Sedai: Check. The fate of the White Tower and their plans for the future are shown.
The Sea Folk: They play only a minor role in the final book.
The Ogier: Loial makes an appearance and the Ogier play a role in the last battle.
The Borderland Army: Check. The issue of the Borderlanders leaving the Blight is addressed and their armies play a central role in the last battle.
Lan’s ride to Tarwin’s Gap: Double check. Lan is front and center in the last battle. What a stud.
The Seals on the Dark One’s prison: Check. The seals play a central role in the plot, though I’m not convinced the weay they are handled totally makes sense.
Shadar Haran: He is mentioned, though again, the way he is handled is not very satisfying at all.
Rand and Lews Therin Telamon: Check. The relationship between the two is explained pretty well, although there are still unanswered questions.
Nynaeve and Lan: Check. Nynaeve also plays her expected role and their fate is shown.
Moiraine and Thom: Check. Both play a role in the last battle, and their fate is shown.
Egwene and Gawyn: Check. Both play very central roles in the last battle, and their fate is shown.
Galad and the Children of the Light: The fate of the Children is not really specified, but is implied. Galad’s fate and his relationship with Berelain is shown.
Lan as King of Malkier: Check and double check.
Luc and Isam/Slayer: This is disappointing because it is never really adequately explained what Luc has to do with Isam or how they became linked, and whether one or both is actually Slayer.
Tel’aran’rhiod: Disappointing. Shown only with Perrin as part of the Wolfdream. The other characters’ knowledge and expertise in this area is just dropped. A lot of unanswered questions here.
Perrin and Faile: Check, although with qualifiers. They play central roles in the last battle but their part of the story is somewhat disappointing, especially with regard to Faile.
Mat and Tuon: Check. They play very central roles in the last battle and provide a lot of humorous moments.
Matt and the Band: They play very central roles in the final battle and their fate is shown.
Rand and Elayne/Min/Avienda: Check. The fate of Rand and his three girlfriends is shown.
Elayne’s twins (finally): No. We get no birth scene!!!
Birgitte Silverbow and Gaidal Caine: Check. Birgitte plays an important role in the last battle and their fate is shown.
Moridin: Surpisingly, he really plays only a minor role in the last battle.
Moridin/Ishamael and his link to Rand/Lews Therin Telamon: The link isn’t explained, but it plays a major role in the end.
Demandred: Check. He plays a starring role in the final battle, which is good because we’ve seen almost nothing of him until now.
Graendal: Check. She plays a role in the final battle and her surprising fate is shown.
Cyndane: Check. Again, her fate is a surprise.
Moghedien: Check. Her fate is kind of expected.
Logain and Mazrim Taim: Both play central roles in the last battle and their fates are shown.

My name is Monar Kamelias. I was given an opportunity to talk with The Dragon Reborn, Rand al Thor, and I make these notes of our conversation in the hope that a record will survive and be of use to those in the future who wish to know about this terrible time. I have come to the field of Merrilor as captain of the second range of the Cairhien Guard, after having studied under Herid Fel in the School of the Dragon in Cairhien. Since the murder of professor Fel, I have tried to make a historical record of events as I have observed them. I believe the professor was murdered by our enemies because of the things he was working on, so I take his final charge to me as a command.

I asked The Lord Dragon to allow me to ask him some questions and document his answers and he has agreed to do so as his time permits during our wait for the beginning of Tarmon Gaidon here on the field of Merrilor. I am meeting with The Lord Dragon in his tent, which is an average size tent near the center of the field, and is guarded by Aeil Maidens of the Spear. With us is his consort, whom he introduced to me as Min Farshaw. I am familiar with the Lady Min, as she was a visitor at the school in Cairhien and a particular favorite of the professor. The lady Min did not participate directly in my discussion with The Lord Dragon, but sat nearby studying a well-worn volume of The Prophesies of the Dragon.

For those who may not be aware of his appearance, I will describe The Lord Dragon: He is a young man, appearing to be in only his early twenties at most (except for his eyes, which make him appear older), and rather tall, being perhaps a head taller than the average and broad through the shoulders. He is colored like, and has the general appearance of, an Aeilman, having their reddish hair and gray eyes. Looking at him, one can also see where the rumors come from that he is of the royal line of Andor, as he has some of the look of House Mantear.  For our meeting, he was dressed simply in a white shirt open at the neck with a pair of black breeches of fine cloth and cut, tucked into black leather boots. His left hand is missing.

He wears a heron-marked sword in a jeweled scabbard at his hip at all times and keeps a second scabbard near him, which he wears across his back whenever he goes out. This second scabbard contains no mere sword, however, but the famous sword-that-is-not-a-sword, Callandor, the crystal sa’angreal that he liberated from the Stone of Tear.

Our discussion proceeded as follows:

Monar: My Lord Dragon–

Rand al’Thor: Please, call me Rand.

M: Rand, then. At this point, most people, especially those here in this gathering place for the last battle, seem to readily accept you as the Dragon Reborn. But for those who do not, or who simply don’t know, can you state the proofs of this fact?

R: [laughing wearily and trading looks with Lady Min] Let’s just say that I doubt it is possible for me to prove that fact to those who don’t know the prophecies or don’t wish to believe at this point. I have neither the time nor the inclination to prove myself to everyone who might still doubt me. For most, the fact that I carry Callandor is proof enough. For others, no proof will suffice.

I myself was one of the most skeptical at one time, but the signs are overwhelming: The Stone of Tear fell to me in one night with no bloodshed. The Aeil accept me as their Car’a'carn. The Seafolk accept me as their Coramoor. I have conquered Illian and Cairhien. I have killed many of the forsaken. I have cleansed the taint from Saidin. I can remember my past life as Lews Therin Telamon. I could go on, but that should suffice for anyone. I don’t ask the people of our lands to follow the Dragon Reborn, however. I ask them only to do what they would already be doing of their own accord: fight the Shadow in the last battle. I will not be leading their armies, as I have a duty to attend to at Shayol Ghul. I intend to reseal the Dark One’s prison. As I am willing to do my duty, I ask for nothing more except for people to do their duty as they understand it.

M: It is said that you grew up as a sheepherder in a remote part of Andor, yet it is rumored both that you are Aeil and that you are of the royal line of Andor. What is the truth of your origins?

R: I will always be a sheepherder from the Two Rivers. That is where I was raised and that is always who I am at heart. My father is Tam al’Thor, a sheep farmer. He raised me and taught me everything I know. But I was not born to him or his wife. He found me after my mother, a maiden of the spear, birthed me on the slopes of Dragonmout during the Aeil war and died soon after. She was not Aeil, though my father, Janduin, was. My mother was adopted by the Aiel after leaving the royal court of Andor and fleeing into the waste. Her name among the Aiel was Shaiel, but her real name was Tigraine Mantear, the wife of Taringail Damodred and mother of Galad Damodred. She was the daghter-heir of Andor at the time of her disappearance. Janduin apparently blamed himself for my mother’s death and thereafter, he disappeared into the Blight.

M: Do you see yourself as heir to the throne of Andor because of your mother?

R: I am the Dragon Reborn. Elayne Trakand is Queen of Andor and now also Cairhien. That is as it should be.

M: What is your connection to the lady Elayne? She is pregnant, it is said with twins, and some rumors say that you are the father. Is that true?

R: [Rand pauses and shifts uncomfortably in his chair, looking at Min, who smiles and shrugs] I am not willing to talk about this subject because Elayne has not done so. Any statement on this issue should come from her.

M: Even your silence does answer the question to some extent, Rand. After all, if you are not the father, why not deny it?

R: Move on Monar.

M: Yes, well, I was also wondering about the extent of your ability with the One Power. You appear to have accomplished great feats with it and have bested several of the Forsaken in one-on-one battles. Are you the most powerful male channeler who ever lived?

R: As the Dragon, I am the strongest in native ability in channeling the one power of any person I know of, but I do not put much store in that, because a person holding an angreal could surpass me, and Ishamael was always very close to me in terms of his strength anyway. Though I have come out on top in my battles with the Forsaken so far; I cannot exactly boast about that because, as you can see [holding up his arm that ends in a burned stump], that has not prevented me from taking some grave wounds; some which you cannot see, but which still bother me a great deal. Strength in the one power is a fairly meaningless characteristic in battle because there are a lot of factors that are much more important, like knowledge of weaves and the element of surprise, to name just two.

M: Is it your intention to battle the Dark One at Shayol Ghul using the one power?

R: [Again looking at Min for a long moment] It is my understanding that it may not be possible to battle the Dark One directly. Hopefully, his ability to touch the world is still greatly limited and my role will be to try to permanently prevent him from being able to touch the world ever again.

M: Is this something you will undertake alone?

R: Absolutely not. Previously, Lews Therin made the attempt with the hundred companions, who were all male Aes Sedai. My belief is that effort was doomed to failure because of the lack of any participation by female Aes Sedai. Thus, I will have at least some women with me in this attempt.

M: Have some of the Aes Sedai from the White Tower volunteered to do this? My understanding was that the Amyrlin Seat had forbidden it, and was actively seeking to prevent you from making this attempt.

R: [smiling wryly] You are well-informed it seems, but Egwene al’Vere has not forbidden me from doing my duty, she just disagrees with me about the means of accomplishing it. With professor Fel’s help, and Min’s research, I have discovered that one must clear away the prior seals on the Dark One’s prison before one can re-seal the bore. Egwene has not reached the same conclusion… yet. I believe she will agree with me in time. And yes, there are some women who have agreed to accompany me in this effort. some are Aes Sedai, but some are not. Remember that not all female channelers are Aes Sedai or reside in the white tower.

And with that, my friend, I fear I must say goodbye for now. Your mention of the Amyrlin has reminded me that I must meet with her and Nynaeve al’Meara very soon.