Chapter 31 (Play for Your Supper)

How time flowed in this and the following few chapters didn't seem to bother me on first read or upon this latest re-read. When asked to articulate the timing, I cannot, but it seemed to be intuitively understandable. At least before I thought about it too much. If you're wondering of what I speak, simply re-read the beginning of this chapter through mid chapter 33 paying close attention to scarves and you'll see what I mean.

I don't much care for the flash back style of storytelling, and I'm glad this seems to be Jordan's only experiment with it in the series (unless I'm mis-remembering something). 

In this chapter we have a few rather meaningless travel experience stories. The boys were run off by dogs, taken advantage of, etc. But we also have some fun facts about Mat - he seems to be getting worse, "muttering and tossing in his sleep" etc. but we also see that his paranoia eases around children and he's even willing to juggle when the kids are around. 

And of course we have from Rand the - Perrin would know how to handle this. He'd make some offhand comment and pretty soon she'd be laughing at his jokes instead of mooning around where her father can see.

While I'm sure that Mat has these moments as well when he finally gets a POV, it's fun to go from Perrin in the Tinker camp thinking very similar thoughts to Rand, basically echoing Perrin from chapters earlier.

At this point the traveling has gotten old, even with the different cultural experiences and, as the reader, I'm quite ready to be done. As, I'm sure, are Mat and Rand.

At least we have a little bit of action ahead - Rand began to think their problems were over until they reached Caemlyn. But then they came to Four Kings.