At Cold Rocks Hold, Rand’s party meets Rhuarc’s roofmistress, Lian. Everyone shares a meal, and realizes it will be a month before they can travel to Alcair Dal to meet with the clans.
The problem with the Aiel is they read like a child dreamed them up. There are too many things about them that only work if you happen to have the spry body of a grade-schooler.
ME: How should the Aiel get around? Let’s see… they live in the desert, so camels?
10-YEAR-OLD ME: No, that’s been done. How about they run everywhere? Like, heroically run.
ME: Um, ok, but isn’t it intensely hot in the desert?
10-YEAR-OLD ME: Well, they’re just used to the climate.
ME: What about the elderly and the disabled?
10-YEAR-OLD ME: We don’t talk about them!
Stuff like this keeps coming up. Next is Aiel mealtime. Supposedly they eat by placing their food on an extremely low table, with everyone crowding around. They sit not on their butts, as normal people would, but rather lie on their stomachs. The very same stomachs into which food is flowing. Propped up on their elbows, to one side or the other, I guess? It sounds uncomfortable, unsustainable, and exactly the kind of weird-ass shit a kid would dream up. This is how ten-year-olds congregate around a Monopoly board, not how grownups with acid reflux take a meal!
After eating, the group continues to wallow on the floor like a herd of walruses on an arctic ice shelf. Some of the men smoke, and Rhuarc says it will take a month before all clans arrive at Alcair Dal.
RAND: A month!
I know, Rand. We just pissed away two chapters on getting to Cold Rocks Hold, and the plot goes nowhere. I can’t stand a whole month of this shit. Please! Even cutting away for a Perrin chapter would be welcome.