Winter's Heart: Chapters 13, 14, & 15

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Through the Glass Columns, your weekly Wheel of Time read-along podcast.

I, of course, am Tyler, your host who knows these books and loves these books and is kind of ready to be done with this book, to be totally honest.

I am joined, of course, by Greg, who is less unenthusiastic about this book because he's only read half of it.

Greg, how are you feeling about the status of Winter's Heart at this point in our read-through?

Uh, I actually am surprised that you're down on it this week 'cause I thought we got a major piece, uh-

This was a better week

... falling into place, uh, this week.

But, so I'm a little more positive at least this week.

Um, and I was also, uh, you know, when I read through this the other day, I was like, "Well, I can't be mad about not a lot happening," 'cause we're, like, not that far [laughs] from being done.

I mean, we're past-

Yeah

... we're in the second half now, and I think it's become a theme for us to kinda observe that you do that kinda first round check-in-

Yeah

... and especially with a beefy prologue, and all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, okay, so we're on the downhill, uh, slide." But I don't know.

I, I think, you know, your comment, uh, tells me I should, you know, not get my hopes up too much about a special thing or two happening.

But there is still a lot of space left, uh-

Yeah

... a- almost a full half, so there could be something else to come.

And, you know, whatever happens-

To be clear-

... we keep going

... my disdain is for the first half of this book.

All right.

All right.

Uh, so I'm excited, I'm excited to talk a little bit, uh, so, you know, I will, uh, vague-cast forward and say, I definitely had a chapter in this book, and everybody who's done the full reading knows which one, where I was like, "What is this? This is terrible.

Why are we doing this now?" And then I was like, "Oh, awesome." [laughs]

Yep.

I know exactly which chapter you are describing.

Now, if you haven't done all of the reading, we do have three chapters this week, so we're being extra vaguey vague in the intro.

We'll be talking about chapter 13, Wonderful News; chapter 14, What a Veil Hides; and chapter 15, In Need of a Bellfounder, tonight.

And as Greg is alluding to, there's some sloggy stuff and some really fun, interesting, throw the plot forward in interesting ways stuff.

Um, is there any thoughts you have on the first chapter kind of big picture? This is our last look into, like, Rand-adjacent characters.

So any thoughts on kind of leaving that plot line before we summarize the chapter and actually really dive into the details?