22-year-old WHEEL OF TIME mystery solved

A pair of mysteries established in the fifth and sixth Wheel of Time novels, published in 1993 and 1994 respectively, have been solved thanks to the actions of an eagle-eyed superfan.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE WHEEL OF TIME NOVELS

In the fifth novel in the series, The Fires of Heaven, the character Asmodean is killed by a mysterious assailant. Robert Jordan did not reveal the identity of his killer before his death, but did include it in the notes for the novels. Brandon Sanderson revealed the identity of the killer as Graendal, a fellow member of the Forsaken, in the penultimate volume of the series, Towers of Midnight.

In the sixth volume, Lord of Chaos, Rand joins forces with Mazrim Taim, a false Dragon defeated in battle by the Saldaean army and taken prisoner by Aes Sedai. He escapes and allies himself with Rand, eventually becoming commander of the Asha'man. In the concluding volumes of the series it is revealed that Taim is a Darkfriend, sworn to the service of the Dark One. He corrupts a number of the Asha'man into fighting against Rand, but is killed by Egwene during in the Last Battle. However, fans doubted his true identity, citing a number of times when he seems bewildered by concepts in the world that someone should know and that Lews Therin Telamon (or, rather, his insane voice in Rand's head) seemed to recognise him. Fans concluded early on that he was probably the Forsaken Demandred in disguise. However, later novels showed Demandred and Taim in the same room and working together. The final volume of the series seems to confirm that Taim is exactly who he said he was all along.

Thanks to the efforts of superfan Terez, it has now been revealed the Robert Jordan played a bit fast and loose with fans. According to the voluminous notes he left behind, he did indeed intend Mazrim Taim to be Demandred in disguise, and that the disguised Taim/Demandred (dubbed "Taimandred" by fans) was also responsible for killing Asmodean. The former theory was already well advanced by fans at the time, but the latter theory was not. Robert Jordan had always said that the person who killed Asmodean had actually already appeared in the series, and neither Taim nor Demandred appeared until Lord of Chaos (although they were both referenced earlier).

Of course, the notes Robert Jordan created for the series were a work in progress and most of them were written during or after the writing of The Path of Daggers. By the time Robert Jordan started going online and interacting with fans regularly (after the release of Crossroads of Twilight in 2002), at which time he ruled out "Taimandred", he had changed his mind and decided that Graendal was behind the crime. This was helped by a popular fan theory published in the late 1990s that pinned Graendal as the murderer.

Although irrelevant now, it does show that writers, even major writers penning a series already many thousands of pages advanced, can change their ideas on the fly and adjust all the foreshadowing elements beforehand to fit a new idea if matches up to their designs more satisfyingly. And some old-school fans can take some satisfaction in knowing they were right, at least for a time.

The Wheel of Time So Far: Part 9 - The Fires of Heaven

Previous instalments of the series:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

Spoilers for those who are unfamiliar with the series. Note that this summary is designed to help people who have already read the books get back up to speed before the release of the final volume in January. First-timers are advised to read the books directly, as in some cases these summaries may spoil things that are not revealed in the books until much later.

 The Aiel, Rand al'Thor's latest allies.

Follow the break for the summary:

The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan

With The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan moved The Wheel of Time series out of its 'adventure' arc into a 'political' phase as the characters finally moved into positions of high authority and influence amongst different nations and cultures, and could begin the process of uniting the world to face the Last Battle. Whilst adventure storylines would continue to appear, a lot more time from this point onwards would be spent on political maneuverings. Indeed, some storylines would unfold almost entirely within a character's office as they fired off letters, received intelligence, and debated strategy. That, at this stage anyway, Jordan is able to make this readable and compelling is a testament to his often-underrated storytelling skills.

The fifth book in The Wheel of Time opens by picking up the storylines from the previous volume. Rand has convinced several of the Aiel clans to accept him as their chief-of-chiefs, and he makes preperations to lead them back into the Westlands. However, his task is complicated when the Shaido clan rejects him and launches a devastating invasion of the kingdom of Cairhien. Rand is forced to take his troops in pursuit before he can secure the loyalty of the remaining neutral clans, leaving his forces exposed to possible attack on two sides. Meanwhile, Nynaeve, Elayne, Thom and Juilin have extracted themselves from the civil war in Tarabon but now face the task of crossing the hostile nation of Amadicia, the stronghold of the Children of the Light and a country where channelling is outlawed. At the same time, a fanatic claiming to be the 'Prophet of the Dragon' is ravaging the kingdom to the north, Ghealdan. Back in Tar Valon, the Aes Sedai have splintered into opposing factions, with Elaida seizing control of the White Tower and a 'Tower-in-Exile' opposed to her rule establishing itself elsewhere, but the latter's stance towards Rand is unclear. Finally, the Forsaken are preparing a trap to neutralise Rand once and for all.

There's certainly a lot going on in The Fires of Heaven and Jordan mostly handles these storylines with aplomb, switching between them to stop things getting stale and delivering a relentless pace to Rand, Mat and Egwene's story, which has them chasing the Shaido hundreds of miles and culminating in the biggest battle in the entire series (to date, anyway). However, the first few cracks in the series' structure are becoming apparent. Given the distances traversed by Rand in his story, Jordan had to find a way of slowing down Elayne and Nynaeve's trip across a much smaller area so events would converge as he needed them to. His solution was to whack them in a very slow-moving circus as it traverses Amadicia, which leads to the first chapters in the entire series so far which don't actually seem to advance plot or character, but merely keep things ticking over for some of the characters. With events proceeding pretty rapidly elsewhere, the cutting-away to Elayne learning to walk a tightrope or Nynaeve being followed around by the lovelorn circus-owner really kills the pace of the book, making it a sluggish read in places. Some readers may also bemoan the lack of any appearance by Perrin in this book. Whilst Jordan had downplayed some characters' appearances in previous novels (Rand in the third, most notably), this is the first time one of the major characters from the first book doesn't appear at all.

Jordan makes up for these issues with the ferocious climax. At the end of the book Rand unleashes a blitzkrieg as a huge battle is fought with the Shaido and he has to face down two of the Forsaken in separate, desperate duels with the One Power. During these few chapters an enormous number of important events in the series take place, several important new characters are introduced and no less than five recurring characters are (apparently) killed off. This section of the book really repays careful rereads, as you can see how Jordan impressively set up events ahead of time. In fact, this may be the most dynamic part of the entire series to date and makes for great reading. However, be warned that a fairly big mystery is introduced at the end of Book 5 that has still not been conclusively answered more than 15 years later, although Brandon Sanderson has promised us a definitive answer in the final book of the series.

The Fires of Heaven (****) is a solid installment of the series, with a sometimes leaden pace and a very tedious subplot (the circus) more than made up for by the highly impressive climax and the way Jordan deftly spins the series' course onto a new heading (although this also lays the seeds for some extremely dubious writing decisions in the books to come). The book is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA.