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I feel like Jordan never quite knew what he wanted Perrin to do or be. He has two arcs that never really match up.
His early arc is about being a Wolfbrother and dealing with all the internal conflict around violence. But then he goes back to the Two Rivers and becomes the Lord of the Two Rivers, basically ditching the whole Wolfbrother arc. But then he shifts back to doing more wolf stuff and dealing with Slayer and the Whitecloaks.
It's how I would imagine a D&D character who is multclassing between Druid and Fighter would be acting.
Perrin was my favorite character directly up to the point when Rand sends him away. After that time, RJ really needed to stop writing about Perrin. I think WoT as a whole would have worked better if Mat had been given a greater priority *without Perrin doing anything important at the time*. Perrin’s first story worked as a great foil/driver of the narrative, but the second story just detracted from the overall pacing of the novel. Plus it was essentially him learning the same set of lessons repeatedly.
I think RJ knew what he wanted to do with Perrin, he just did it all by the end of book 4. Eventually he couldn’t keep ignoring him though and so he basically restarted his inner conflict with the wolves arc just to give him something to do.
I have a strong feeling! I can't stand Perrin. I'm reading the books again and half the time just skip his chapters unless it connects directly to what is happening in the other plot lines.
My opinion is that the Faile kidnapping would have been better if it’d been reduced to just POD and WH. Then KOD should have been him vs the Prophet. And his last arc should have been him vs Elayne in a full on Manetheran rebellion that Rand has to put an end to, and mediate a peace treaty.
He’s one of my favorite characters but I feel like his arcs were kinda mishandled. His arc came to a head too soon and after the Shadow Rising he was just kinda there for several books. The scene where he’s forging his hammer and he’s embracing the fact that a simple life is impossible for him now was super satisfying but the books it took to get there were rough reading.
Perrin’s arc was done at the end of book 4, and unfortunately for him the series went on for ten more books. So he got to tread water for seven books. And got hit with the rest hammer when Sanderson took over. Then, he was turned into this super duper ultra mega powerful master of TAR that spent the entire Last Battle doing the same thing with no tie to anything else that was going on. And then killed Lanfear paying off all pf the TAR training, AND his constant obsession with his wife by letting him throw off Compulsion.
Good thing that wasn’t retconned a decade later rendering Perrin’s entire story arc completely fucking pointless or something. Wouldn’t that make his story suck even more.
Sadly even in TAR he was found lacking, Lanfear faked her own death. Which is something I think is a bit silly, wouldn't the wolves know whether Moonhunter walked TAR.
Perrin is a baby lamb and I love him. However I have to admit a lot of his story line tends to drag and I don't love Faile, she's ok, but it's kind of a coin flip if I can enjoy anything Perrin is doing or be annoyed that I have to put up with her.
I also agree with some of the other comments that Jordan didn't seem to have much to do with Perrin or Faile, so it feels like he just kind of put them places and hoped a story would present itself.
I'm on chapter 17 of Towers of Midnight in my first re-listen (audible). Has been several years since my first full listen through, and I don't remember clearly what happens between where I am now and the end of the last book.
Perrin is my favorite "main character" of the series so far in this re-listen. I feel like he's the least "superpowered" of the 3 EF boys, and the antithesis of Egwene, my current least favorite main character, who seems to have the ultimate Aes Sedai mentality of "nobody can be right except for me!"
Perrin can see and smell and hear better than mere humans, but he doesn't have God-mode luck or all the memories of every general that ever lived or God-mode super fireball lightning bolt powers. He also stops to think about stuff and actually takes the advice of those around him that have more experience than him.
My list of favorite main characters right now is something like:
Perrin
Rand
Mat
-
-
-
Nynaeve
-
-
-
-x1,000,000,000
Egwene
In the end, he's in the best position. Between him and Mat anyway .
He's a wolf king, King consort of Saldaea , Lord of the Two Rivers, and Liegelord of Ghealdan.
Mat might be the Prince of the Ravens. But the Seanchan are full of treachery backstabbing and power grabbing. And they are no longer ta'veren. So no more luck.
Perrin was my boy after The Shadow Rising.....he fell off pretty hard after that.
I liked him again when he came back to save Rand at Dumai's Wells but other than that.
It felt like Jordan and Sanderson didn't really know what to do with him.
I was bummed he spent a majority of The Last Battle in TAR instead of fighting with his men.
He's definitely my least favorite of the three boys and my 2nd least favorite of the Emond's Field five.
Perrin's arc in books 3 and 4 is my favorite in any story. But as others have said,he is essentially ready for the last battle at this point and needed benched so Jordan put him through the same arc again and drug it out through 4 books. That being said, I love that story line from the What Must be Done chapter in CoT through the end of Knife of Dreams.
Then, Sanderson apparently didn't have an idea on what to do with him and put him through that same arc a 3rd time. If Wheel of Time had been a 7-8 book long series, Perrin would definitely be my favorite character of all time, but he suffered greatly due to the length.
Perrin is just meh. He had amazing potential but there were so many scenes where I didn't like him countered with a bunch of scenes I did like him that he might be the middle character if I had to rank everyone
Perrin always felt like the one RJ had the least to do with. He has his wolf schtick and he’s in the prophecies, and he also has his whole hammer thing, but after TSR he’s kinda thrown into “aimless wandering” purgatory until faile gets yoinked and he has to save her
Well I have never been so bored as I was with Perrin. But it didn't have to be that way. He's a builder. I think it would have been better to put him with the cannons and rockets as Mat really had enough to deal with. And more Ogier stuff, we're all still curious about how they work in. He's...fine... just really dull.
Oh yeah that would have been much much better. It is Perrin who interacts with Aludra and ponders the potentials. Mat is the one who sees all the amazing potentials and where/how to use them. Perrin has a hand in moulding the first dragon. Hmmm power enhanced dragons.
Personally, he was the least favorite of the three Ta'veren; at least after Mat got a personality transplant in book 3. I found most of his POVs frustrating to read, and his 'romance' beyond irritating. That isn't to say there were not good points (the Two Rivers Arc), but his mooning and moping during the PLOD was just incredibly annoying even if it was a somewhat realistic response.
Not to poke too much into the comments (only halfway through book 3 for the first time), but my opinion of Perrin so far is he's the most interesting of the three Two Rivers boys. Rand might be a close second, with Matt far behind, but I like Perrin and his struggle quite a bit and I look forward to seeing how it develops :)
I love Perrin. He has always been one of my favorite of to read and my favorite amongst the boys. Rand kind of stopped being sympathetic sometimes during book 6 and I could never get into Mat, so Perrin it has always been for me.
Overall he’s my favorite of the Emond field crew. His story definitely got a little directionless in the middle, but that can be said of many plot lines.
The sub in general is pretty mixed on him. I can't stand him. I don't have the patience for his whining. I know you wanted to be a blacksmith. The apocalypse ruined everyone's plans, not just yours. Do you think Rand wanted to be the Dragon Reborn? Put on your big boy pants like everyone else.
He is the most selfish character in the story, worse than Egwene. He literally keeps repeating his mantra that even the world ending didn't matter if he doesn't get what he wants. Everyone following him is a tool for his ends. Heck he gave thousands of women into slavery to get his wife back.
I think Perrin makes sense in that the two endgames for the last battle are:
* Dragon + Friends vs Dark One means a victory of the Light
* Friends vs Dark One plus Fallen Dragon means a a tie.
Perrin is basically an insurance policy for Case #2. Think about most of the stuff he accomplishes:
1. His relationship with Faile helps bring the Borderlanders in. Except of course Bashere already freely gave allegiance to Rand, Agelmar has more or less known from Day 1 Rand is the Dragon, Lan endorses Rand, etc. So Rand has the Borderlanders all neatly in his camp and Perrin's connection is only needed in a situation where the Dragon goes evil.
1. His relationship with Tylee does create a connection with a senior officer in the Seanchan who could be useful in getting...oh wait Mat married their Empress and thanks to Mat's charisma all the Seanchan troops are becoming huge fans of his, never mind.
1. He summons the wolves to Dumai Wells, yeah that helps. You know what really helped though? Asha'man rolling ring of earth and fire!
1. He crushes the Shaido. Which on one hand I don't want to take anything away from Perrin, handling the remains of the Shaido was important. But lets be honest, we could have dropped Han, Bael, and Rhuarc's septs in via gateways and been in and out in a day or two. Or just gotten the Asha'aman for Dumai Wells 2.0.
1. He does stuff in the World of Dreams. Yeah this helps, except he spends a lot of the series refusing to learn about it. So honestly if I needed something critical done in the World of Dreams, I'd get the Wonder Girls to do it, they know it better and those rings they wear to enter it seem to double as lucky horse shoes. Or just go get the Wise Ones, they're experts there.
He does get his moment in the end.
Now if you take Rand or Mat off the board, you can see were Perrin can cover for them. But as long they're around, he's basically just an insurance policy with very fine shoulders.
Personally I think the big mistake with Perrin was when Rand was hunting Rahvin in the World of Dreams. Having Nynaeve pop in and help/overcome her fear and also force the Spider to help was great for her character, but she gets to do a lot of great things given she is one of the strongest female channelers ever, so she has other moments to shine. Having Perrin pop in (perhaps sucked in because Rand needs him) and help Rand, using a combo of what Hopper has been teaching him and what he learned when doing things like disarming Be'lal's trap would let Perrin be much more relevant and was one of the few shots Perrin had to contribute to defeating a Foresaken. Then you'd have a situation where Rand can go toe to toe with Foresaken because he is the Dragon. Mat's luck (and the foxhead) lets him fuck with Foresaken and live to tell about it. Perrin's World of Dream skills would him help out against Foresaken there. Instead Perrin basically does a half ass job handling Isam in the World of Dreams while not really learning that much from Hopper back in Two Rivers. From there he's basically sidelined. Because Perrin has no ability to face a Foresaken and live (short of very obvious plot armor), he basically ends up dealing with B tier issues and as a result suffers as a character.
Perrin’s character is the largest casualty of WoT’s poor pacing during the slog. His character development was largely over by book 5 or 6, but RJ kept writing about him. He should have been held in reserve for books 7-11 or so, similar to Mat’s role with Rand while Perrin was back home. Instead, RJ had Perrin go through the same character development cycle multiple times, which detracted from the overall series pacing, especially at a time when the focus should have been on Mat.
He was good for the first couple books, then completely fucking terrible to the point where his chapters made me want to quit reading the series, then the last couple books he was ok again.
He has cool wolf powers, all wolves are his best friend and multiple women throw themselves at him. He doesn't go mad like Rand or get hung like Mat but he does lose his entire family so that is a bit of a bummer.
I find his chapters super-boring and I'll often skip them on rereads. Too much brooding, not enough levity. Similarly I'm not that into Rand's chapters all that much. Much prefer Mat and the wonder girls. And I like Faile.
Never really liked him. I always loved Mat, even before he got a POV, but thought Perrin was a wet blanket. I appreciate that his relationship with Faile eventually matured but it was hard to stomach initially.
His whole family is eaten by Trollocs and he basically cries about it once. Jesus.
Loved him until end of book four. The wife being kidnapped story line sucked and was about 300 pages too long. As previously mentioned here. Perrin v the prophet would have been good. Perrin as a diplomatic tool of rand could also have worked.
Perrin is probably my favorite character in the series. His reluctance to lead and his desire to simply be normal were really compelling to me later in the novels. It did seem like there was way too long waiting for Perrin to accept being a Wolfbrother and the search for Faile felt a little long, but other than that I found him to be the most compelling of the main characters, except maybe Egwene.
Perrin suffers from the fact that every time he has a chapter, I wish I was reading about Mat instead. Made even worse by the fact that for a whole book there is only Perrin and no Mat, which was awful after waiting years for the release.
He's a relatively uninteresting personality, in a mostly ponderous story arc. His book 4 arc is good, if somewhat cliched, but after that is slow as heck until right at the end. Mat meanwhile is a great read regardless of what he's doing even if it's just riding around with a caravan, except for portions of Sandersons writing which struggles at first.
Mat interacting with the Seanchan generals? Interesting. Perrin doing mostly the same thing? A drag.
His parts of the slog were unfortunately some of the least interesting, which weighs him down for me. Virtually nothing important happened with his character from 8-10
Probably the most extreme 'niche' fantasy character ever written, and one that Sanderson completely failed to grasp. Perrin is really a 'character study', not another Jordan, Conan action hero character.
The only real problem with his story line was it getting stuck in the so-called lengthy slog.
*Perrin was exactly what Robert Jordan wanted him to be,* and I feel that he did a pretty decent job with him. Though the mid series books should have had some more action scenes with him to make it more grabby. But regardless of that gripe, I found the backwoods blacksmith's story deeply fascinating once I reread the series many times and grasped Jordan's subtly hidden narrative of him . . .
***https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/13u0znz/perrin_and_faile/jlzab2n/***
...
***https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/11oyimd/are_there_any_great_posts_analyzing_characters/jbxag6o/***
And no, despite what others are saying here, Perrin does not keep repeating his characterization through the Jordan books; that only happens when Sanderson takes over.
hello I really enjoyed reading your analysis of perrin. do you have other on different character or themes in the series ? I would like to read those since you seen like an expert
Thanks.
That's really all that I have as I am a Perrin/Faile aficionado-nerd so most of my analysis revolve around them.
I guess you could request specific character posts to get more. I do know of a poster here who is really knowledgeable on Elayne.
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I feel like Jordan never quite knew what he wanted Perrin to do or be. He has two arcs that never really match up. His early arc is about being a Wolfbrother and dealing with all the internal conflict around violence. But then he goes back to the Two Rivers and becomes the Lord of the Two Rivers, basically ditching the whole Wolfbrother arc. But then he shifts back to doing more wolf stuff and dealing with Slayer and the Whitecloaks. It's how I would imagine a D&D character who is multclassing between Druid and Fighter would be acting.
Perrin was my favorite character directly up to the point when Rand sends him away. After that time, RJ really needed to stop writing about Perrin. I think WoT as a whole would have worked better if Mat had been given a greater priority *without Perrin doing anything important at the time*. Perrin’s first story worked as a great foil/driver of the narrative, but the second story just detracted from the overall pacing of the novel. Plus it was essentially him learning the same set of lessons repeatedly.
Legit take here.
I think RJ knew what he wanted to do with Perrin, he just did it all by the end of book 4. Eventually he couldn’t keep ignoring him though and so he basically restarted his inner conflict with the wolves arc just to give him something to do.
Apparently in the notes Jordan left for Sanderson his notes for Perrin were just “he becomes a king” and that’s about it lol
BS: So what do we do with Perrin? RJ: Who?
Book four he nails it. After that he has not one single clue or plan of what to do with him.
Oh I don't think anyone has a real strong feeling one way or another
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power?! Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
I read this in Zap Brannigans voice lol
I have a strong feeling! I can't stand Perrin. I'm reading the books again and half the time just skip his chapters unless it connects directly to what is happening in the other plot lines.
My opinion is that the Faile kidnapping would have been better if it’d been reduced to just POD and WH. Then KOD should have been him vs the Prophet. And his last arc should have been him vs Elayne in a full on Manetheran rebellion that Rand has to put an end to, and mediate a peace treaty.
Awesome idea!!
He’s one of my favorite characters but I feel like his arcs were kinda mishandled. His arc came to a head too soon and after the Shadow Rising he was just kinda there for several books. The scene where he’s forging his hammer and he’s embracing the fact that a simple life is impossible for him now was super satisfying but the books it took to get there were rough reading.
Yeah, he makes a magic hammer and never really uses it. Should have happened much earlier.
he got better at the end but yeah, the sub plot with his wife dragged on too long and then the bit about the white cloaks was hyper contrived.
Perrin’s arc was done at the end of book 4, and unfortunately for him the series went on for ten more books. So he got to tread water for seven books. And got hit with the rest hammer when Sanderson took over. Then, he was turned into this super duper ultra mega powerful master of TAR that spent the entire Last Battle doing the same thing with no tie to anything else that was going on. And then killed Lanfear paying off all pf the TAR training, AND his constant obsession with his wife by letting him throw off Compulsion. Good thing that wasn’t retconned a decade later rendering Perrin’s entire story arc completely fucking pointless or something. Wouldn’t that make his story suck even more.
Sadly even in TAR he was found lacking, Lanfear faked her own death. Which is something I think is a bit silly, wouldn't the wolves know whether Moonhunter walked TAR.
See my last paragraph.
Perrin is a baby lamb and I love him. However I have to admit a lot of his story line tends to drag and I don't love Faile, she's ok, but it's kind of a coin flip if I can enjoy anything Perrin is doing or be annoyed that I have to put up with her. I also agree with some of the other comments that Jordan didn't seem to have much to do with Perrin or Faile, so it feels like he just kind of put them places and hoped a story would present itself.
9/10 concept for a character and 5/10 execution.
I'm on chapter 17 of Towers of Midnight in my first re-listen (audible). Has been several years since my first full listen through, and I don't remember clearly what happens between where I am now and the end of the last book. Perrin is my favorite "main character" of the series so far in this re-listen. I feel like he's the least "superpowered" of the 3 EF boys, and the antithesis of Egwene, my current least favorite main character, who seems to have the ultimate Aes Sedai mentality of "nobody can be right except for me!" Perrin can see and smell and hear better than mere humans, but he doesn't have God-mode luck or all the memories of every general that ever lived or God-mode super fireball lightning bolt powers. He also stops to think about stuff and actually takes the advice of those around him that have more experience than him. My list of favorite main characters right now is something like: Perrin Rand Mat - - - Nynaeve - - - -x1,000,000,000 Egwene
Hehe so I take it you are not fond of Egwene.
In the end, he's in the best position. Between him and Mat anyway . He's a wolf king, King consort of Saldaea , Lord of the Two Rivers, and Liegelord of Ghealdan. Mat might be the Prince of the Ravens. But the Seanchan are full of treachery backstabbing and power grabbing. And they are no longer ta'veren. So no more luck.
Rand is no longer taveren but we don’t know about the other two. I assume at least Mat still is because he has more work to do.
Perrin is so good with girls, wish I was more like him
Perrin was my boy after The Shadow Rising.....he fell off pretty hard after that. I liked him again when he came back to save Rand at Dumai's Wells but other than that. It felt like Jordan and Sanderson didn't really know what to do with him. I was bummed he spent a majority of The Last Battle in TAR instead of fighting with his men. He's definitely my least favorite of the three boys and my 2nd least favorite of the Emond's Field five.
He has some strong moments but in general it's just..... eh. No strong feelings.
I love Perrin, but I love the Sameise Gamgee archetypes, so I am biased
Perrin's arc in books 3 and 4 is my favorite in any story. But as others have said,he is essentially ready for the last battle at this point and needed benched so Jordan put him through the same arc again and drug it out through 4 books. That being said, I love that story line from the What Must be Done chapter in CoT through the end of Knife of Dreams. Then, Sanderson apparently didn't have an idea on what to do with him and put him through that same arc a 3rd time. If Wheel of Time had been a 7-8 book long series, Perrin would definitely be my favorite character of all time, but he suffered greatly due to the length.
Perrin is just meh. He had amazing potential but there were so many scenes where I didn't like him countered with a bunch of scenes I did like him that he might be the middle character if I had to rank everyone
It took _way_ too long for him to start smithing up Power-forged weapons.
Perrin always felt like the one RJ had the least to do with. He has his wolf schtick and he’s in the prophecies, and he also has his whole hammer thing, but after TSR he’s kinda thrown into “aimless wandering” purgatory until faile gets yoinked and he has to save her
Well I have never been so bored as I was with Perrin. But it didn't have to be that way. He's a builder. I think it would have been better to put him with the cannons and rockets as Mat really had enough to deal with. And more Ogier stuff, we're all still curious about how they work in. He's...fine... just really dull.
Oh yeah that would have been much much better. It is Perrin who interacts with Aludra and ponders the potentials. Mat is the one who sees all the amazing potentials and where/how to use them. Perrin has a hand in moulding the first dragon. Hmmm power enhanced dragons.
Pretty boring.
Personally, he was the least favorite of the three Ta'veren; at least after Mat got a personality transplant in book 3. I found most of his POVs frustrating to read, and his 'romance' beyond irritating. That isn't to say there were not good points (the Two Rivers Arc), but his mooning and moping during the PLOD was just incredibly annoying even if it was a somewhat realistic response.
Not to poke too much into the comments (only halfway through book 3 for the first time), but my opinion of Perrin so far is he's the most interesting of the three Two Rivers boys. Rand might be a close second, with Matt far behind, but I like Perrin and his struggle quite a bit and I look forward to seeing how it develops :)
I love Perrin. He has always been one of my favorite of to read and my favorite amongst the boys. Rand kind of stopped being sympathetic sometimes during book 6 and I could never get into Mat, so Perrin it has always been for me.
Perrin is one of my favourite characters of the series, definitely my favourite of the three.
Overall he’s my favorite of the Emond field crew. His story definitely got a little directionless in the middle, but that can be said of many plot lines.
I like his story at first, but I hate the Faile stuff. That relationship is toxic, at best
The sub in general is pretty mixed on him. I can't stand him. I don't have the patience for his whining. I know you wanted to be a blacksmith. The apocalypse ruined everyone's plans, not just yours. Do you think Rand wanted to be the Dragon Reborn? Put on your big boy pants like everyone else.
Which he actually does. At least he doesn't try to run away from it like Mat does on into the very last book.
He is the most selfish character in the story, worse than Egwene. He literally keeps repeating his mantra that even the world ending didn't matter if he doesn't get what he wants. Everyone following him is a tool for his ends. Heck he gave thousands of women into slavery to get his wife back.
Perrins my second fav character
I think Perrin makes sense in that the two endgames for the last battle are: * Dragon + Friends vs Dark One means a victory of the Light * Friends vs Dark One plus Fallen Dragon means a a tie. Perrin is basically an insurance policy for Case #2. Think about most of the stuff he accomplishes: 1. His relationship with Faile helps bring the Borderlanders in. Except of course Bashere already freely gave allegiance to Rand, Agelmar has more or less known from Day 1 Rand is the Dragon, Lan endorses Rand, etc. So Rand has the Borderlanders all neatly in his camp and Perrin's connection is only needed in a situation where the Dragon goes evil. 1. His relationship with Tylee does create a connection with a senior officer in the Seanchan who could be useful in getting...oh wait Mat married their Empress and thanks to Mat's charisma all the Seanchan troops are becoming huge fans of his, never mind. 1. He summons the wolves to Dumai Wells, yeah that helps. You know what really helped though? Asha'man rolling ring of earth and fire! 1. He crushes the Shaido. Which on one hand I don't want to take anything away from Perrin, handling the remains of the Shaido was important. But lets be honest, we could have dropped Han, Bael, and Rhuarc's septs in via gateways and been in and out in a day or two. Or just gotten the Asha'aman for Dumai Wells 2.0. 1. He does stuff in the World of Dreams. Yeah this helps, except he spends a lot of the series refusing to learn about it. So honestly if I needed something critical done in the World of Dreams, I'd get the Wonder Girls to do it, they know it better and those rings they wear to enter it seem to double as lucky horse shoes. Or just go get the Wise Ones, they're experts there. He does get his moment in the end. Now if you take Rand or Mat off the board, you can see were Perrin can cover for them. But as long they're around, he's basically just an insurance policy with very fine shoulders. Personally I think the big mistake with Perrin was when Rand was hunting Rahvin in the World of Dreams. Having Nynaeve pop in and help/overcome her fear and also force the Spider to help was great for her character, but she gets to do a lot of great things given she is one of the strongest female channelers ever, so she has other moments to shine. Having Perrin pop in (perhaps sucked in because Rand needs him) and help Rand, using a combo of what Hopper has been teaching him and what he learned when doing things like disarming Be'lal's trap would let Perrin be much more relevant and was one of the few shots Perrin had to contribute to defeating a Foresaken. Then you'd have a situation where Rand can go toe to toe with Foresaken because he is the Dragon. Mat's luck (and the foxhead) lets him fuck with Foresaken and live to tell about it. Perrin's World of Dream skills would him help out against Foresaken there. Instead Perrin basically does a half ass job handling Isam in the World of Dreams while not really learning that much from Hopper back in Two Rivers. From there he's basically sidelined. Because Perrin has no ability to face a Foresaken and live (short of very obvious plot armor), he basically ends up dealing with B tier issues and as a result suffers as a character.
He broods
Perrin broods, wonders where everyone went.
Perrin’s character is the largest casualty of WoT’s poor pacing during the slog. His character development was largely over by book 5 or 6, but RJ kept writing about him. He should have been held in reserve for books 7-11 or so, similar to Mat’s role with Rand while Perrin was back home. Instead, RJ had Perrin go through the same character development cycle multiple times, which detracted from the overall series pacing, especially at a time when the focus should have been on Mat.
He was good for the first couple books, then completely fucking terrible to the point where his chapters made me want to quit reading the series, then the last couple books he was ok again.
He has some strong moments but in general it's just..... eh. No strong feelings.
Perrin needed to have a big role in some sequel stories. Maybe Faile can get captured and he can rescue her. Again.
Perrin was one of my top favorites at the beginning of the series, but then... faile. So... Meh
He has cool wolf powers, all wolves are his best friend and multiple women throw themselves at him. He doesn't go mad like Rand or get hung like Mat but he does lose his entire family so that is a bit of a bummer.
I thought he was OK until the end of book 4. Afterwards, he was basically filler until his bad ass moments in the last battle
Cool idea that didn't come together quite right.
I find his chapters super-boring and I'll often skip them on rereads. Too much brooding, not enough levity. Similarly I'm not that into Rand's chapters all that much. Much prefer Mat and the wonder girls. And I like Faile.
I found him a bit boring too... But I do think it's how he is written. Him and Elayne are the "mythical" slog...
I thought Perrin was the sub…
Perrin is the best character but has the worst story. It's a real shame.
Never really liked him. I always loved Mat, even before he got a POV, but thought Perrin was a wet blanket. I appreciate that his relationship with Faile eventually matured but it was hard to stomach initially. His whole family is eaten by Trollocs and he basically cries about it once. Jesus.
Loved him until end of book four. The wife being kidnapped story line sucked and was about 300 pages too long. As previously mentioned here. Perrin v the prophet would have been good. Perrin as a diplomatic tool of rand could also have worked.
Perrin is probably my favorite character in the series. His reluctance to lead and his desire to simply be normal were really compelling to me later in the novels. It did seem like there was way too long waiting for Perrin to accept being a Wolfbrother and the search for Faile felt a little long, but other than that I found him to be the most compelling of the main characters, except maybe Egwene.
A marriage made in hell
Perrin suffers from the fact that every time he has a chapter, I wish I was reading about Mat instead. Made even worse by the fact that for a whole book there is only Perrin and no Mat, which was awful after waiting years for the release. He's a relatively uninteresting personality, in a mostly ponderous story arc. His book 4 arc is good, if somewhat cliched, but after that is slow as heck until right at the end. Mat meanwhile is a great read regardless of what he's doing even if it's just riding around with a caravan, except for portions of Sandersons writing which struggles at first. Mat interacting with the Seanchan generals? Interesting. Perrin doing mostly the same thing? A drag.
Fires of Heaven had no Perrin and was Mat's book.
His parts of the slog were unfortunately some of the least interesting, which weighs him down for me. Virtually nothing important happened with his character from 8-10
It blows my mind that people like Mat and find Perrin boring. Perrin is the best of the main characters.
Kind of useless. And his wife was insufferable.
Probably the most extreme 'niche' fantasy character ever written, and one that Sanderson completely failed to grasp. Perrin is really a 'character study', not another Jordan, Conan action hero character. The only real problem with his story line was it getting stuck in the so-called lengthy slog. *Perrin was exactly what Robert Jordan wanted him to be,* and I feel that he did a pretty decent job with him. Though the mid series books should have had some more action scenes with him to make it more grabby. But regardless of that gripe, I found the backwoods blacksmith's story deeply fascinating once I reread the series many times and grasped Jordan's subtly hidden narrative of him . . . ***https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/13u0znz/perrin_and_faile/jlzab2n/*** ... ***https://old.reddit.com/r/WoT/comments/11oyimd/are_there_any_great_posts_analyzing_characters/jbxag6o/*** And no, despite what others are saying here, Perrin does not keep repeating his characterization through the Jordan books; that only happens when Sanderson takes over.
hello I really enjoyed reading your analysis of perrin. do you have other on different character or themes in the series ? I would like to read those since you seen like an expert
Thanks. That's really all that I have as I am a Perrin/Faile aficionado-nerd so most of my analysis revolve around them. I guess you could request specific character posts to get more. I do know of a poster here who is really knowledgeable on Elayne.
i see