This chapter is only five pages long. That's less than half the length of every other chapter that preceded it, so I don't really have much to work with this update, do I? I could practically do a breakdown of what happens on each page, but that would be pretty boring, so I'll just sum it up in one paragraph.
Perrin wakes up the day after escaping Adirhol and wanders the woods for a while, paranoid about running into more Trollocs while he's all by himself. Instead he runs into Egwene again, who's in a similar state of panic, though their reunion calms them down. They start to worry about the others and debate on what they should do. Waiting for Lan and Moiraine to find them isn't proactive enough, and going to Whitebridge is too predictable to the enemy, so they decide to go to Caemlyn, the city east of Whitebridge and south of Tar Valon. After that, they'll play it by ear, talking to the other Aes Sedai without Moiraine if they have to. And then they leave.
I'm not leaving much out. That's really all that happens in these five pages. I'm glad that Perrin and Egwene are traveling together, as this gives them both someone to talk to on the way, and that they're both being proactive and accounting for the fact that they might not run into their guardians again, but it feels less like good writing and more like the absence of bad writing.
The chapter feels like a missed opportunity. I would have put those pages from Perrin's perspective a couple of chapters ago into this chapter, because as it stands I don't see much reason for them to be where they were. Other than that, I don't much know what I'd do. As much as I haven't been that impressed by Jordan's writing, I have to admit he's still better at it than me.
The chapter length just seems weird to me, and I hope there's not that much more of them in the future. But then again, I'd rather take a five page chapter than a chapter full of fifteen pages of filler.
NEXT TIME: Wolves!
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