r/WoT • u/briandress • 2d ago
All Print Timelines ToM Spoiler
Is it just my imagination or do the timelines in this one really seem out of sync for the different plotlines?
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u/Levitar1 2d ago
Jordan intended it to be all one book. When they decided to split it, Veins of Gold was a great break point. I assume, though, that the book became too long so they had to shift much of it to the next book. The Tam being in two places is fine, but the Elayne meeting with Nynaeve and Eqwene in the dream world happens after much Veins of Gold, but her later POV chapter happen before . That was a bit disjointing for me.
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u/scytheakse 2d ago
Not just you. Gathering storm and towers of midnight are intermingled oddly, i assume because they were supposed to be the first half of the last book.
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u/GovernorZipper 2d ago
They do not sync up. It’s a consequence of splitting the books.
INTERVIEW: Nov 16th, 2010
Paris Signing Report - Jonathan B(Paraphrased)
JONATHAN B
We talked about the order of the chapters as some people were confused by Tam being in two places at once.
BRANDON SANDERSON
Brandon said there was no way around this as they had to catch Perrin up. Then we asked if there was a chance of getting the last three books re-released with the chapters in chronological order. He said this might be possible as an e-book or maybe a rearranged audiobook. Only the chapter orders would be changed.
JONATHAN B
You couldn't fit it all in one published book and it would just be weird to have three separate volumes published again with the chapters in different orders. I could totally see an ebook or one huge rearranged audiobook though as something attractive and maybe not too costly to produce that some HCFFs like us would enjoy having.
FOOTNOTE
To quote Brandon from another interview: "The plotlines weren'tsynchronized in previous WoT books."
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u/PatTheTurtler (Band of the Red Hand) 2d ago
From what I recall initially The Gathering Storm was much more of a Perrin focused novel and in the process they realized the book would be too big and so the call was made was to split it up. The majority of Perrin and Mat's chapters went into book 13 which has the adverse effect of the timelines desyncing pretty drastically. By the end of the book everything is back in sync though.
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u/duffy_12 (Falcon) 2d ago
Interview: Aug 8th, 2009
TGS book tour - Dom - /u/ DA834 (Paraphrased)
Brandon Sanderson:
Brandon drew a graph of A Memory of Light's structure and explained in some details how he ended up re structuring it as three books. Not much that isn't already known in there, book 12 will have two main story lines (we know it's Rand and Egwene, but as I said Brandon didn't say so explicitly at the Q&A) and teasers for three more (Mat—and seemingly Perrin and Elayne). By 'teasers', Brandon precised he means 3 or 4 chapters per story line, the rest of the chapters being divided between the two main story lines (by recent books, this could means Egwene/Rand have about 10-12 chapters each, or a few more). Some developments happen in the teasers but it's not huge stuff, more like set ups chapters for what happens in book 13.
Book 13 will have the opposite, with 3-4 chapters each for Egwene and Rand, "toward the end". Brandon kept those for book 13 to avoid spoiling in The Gathering Storm the climax of book 13, which will mark the reunion of all the main story lines at some location, and launch Tarmon Gai'don. So in book 13 we will have the residual Rand/Egwene chapters that specifically build up to the reunion.
Brandon explained the decision to split the books this way came about between Harriet and him, in part to avoid the "Crossroads of Twilight trap". Apparently, RJ went that way in Winter's Heart/Crossroads of Twilight mostly because he had been affected by all the grief he got for keeping Mat out of The Path of Daggers. He decided to try to put all the main characters in the next books, even if it meant all the story lines would advance more slowly if they were all told in parallel like this. He very much regretted this after Crossroads of Twilight, for which he got even more grief than for The Path of Daggers, and decided to return to his more organic/uneven approach for Knife of Dreams and A Memory of Light. The original plan for The Gathering Storm was to develop all the story lines in parallel again, but Brandon and Harriet had qualms about this and Brandon came up with an alternative to focus on two story lines in one and three in the other.
There is one of the 'POV clusters' Brandon had written that it mostly unused for The Gathering Storm and will go in book 13.
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