A Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

Summary


This book begins where book seven, A Crown of Swords left off. Nynaeve and Elayne finally get their play date with the Bowl of the Winds and fix the weather. And the the Seanchan show up to ruin the party and send them running through a Gateway to Andor, where they face a two week journey to Caemlyn, where Elayne hopes to claim the throne. But, because they fixed the weather, it starts to snow, which hampers their journey. And then no one gets along and Elayne has a bad feeling that it's going to turn messy and someone might get killed.

Meanwhile, Egwene and her rebel Aes Sedai and the army they've put together is marching north. The only problem with that is that they've got to cross Andor and some disgruntled lords have moved an army into their way to prevent them from entering. And, with the weather fixed, the snow is seriously hindering her progress. And the Hall of the Tower is really giving her a hard time, trying to strangle her power and control her, but she'll have none of that! As if that wasn't bad enough, two of her maids have disappeared. Now where could they have gotten off to?

Meanwhile, Rand is about to move against the Seanchan who have taken Ebou Dar and are moving west towards his newly conquered kingdom of Illian. To protect his holdings, he marches against them. But something's going wrong with the Force One Power, it's behaving strangely and that's making some of his Asha'man nervous. Oh well, he's never let a small thing like that stop him before, why let it stop him now? So, he goes ahead with his attack on the Seanchan. If he's lucky, he might make it to Ebou Dar.

Perrin is about to meet up with The Prophet, like Rand ordered, but I have a feeling he'll soon be wishing he hadn't left his wfie, Faile, behind.

What I liked

Fairly good writing. Not quite as stellar as book seven, but definitely good. And a little interesting, with some very suspenseful parts. And foreshadowing expertly woven in totally adds to the suspense. I liked that.

What I didn't like


This is easily the most boring book of the series so far! The first hundred pages are all about who's more powerful in the Force One Power than who and what that means about who's more important than who. And nothing happens! They just talk about that for over a hundred pages! And then the book is all politics and manipulating and working behind other people's backs, which is kind of interesting, but not really exciting. So, it makes the six hundred or so pages of this book go by really, really slowly.

Conclusion


Unfortunately, you can't skip this book without missing some important plot points and character developments, so this book is worth reading for what it adds to the story. I don't think the boringness is forgivable, though. So 2/5  disgruntled, powermongering women.

This cover art is pretty cool, though: