The crew dives into a discussion on The Great Hunt, book 2 of Robert Jordan’s epic. The consensus is that the story is really starting to pick up; the ending of this one beats the ending of Eye of the World; none of the guys would want to be anywhere near the Red Ajah; and Craig likes cats enough to be okay with choosing the Brown Ajah.

Listen to the Eye of the World podcasts here:

Remember that time there was this giant pool of magic power, and Rand used it up to kill the Dark One? And remember how the Horn of Valere was in there? And it’s going to call a bunch of dead heroes back from the grave? And nobody blows it, because … I forgot why? Okay, you remember that, good. Right, so we start the book that’s all about the Great Hunt of the Horn …. with our heroes already in possession of said horn. This is lucky, because it’s a really short book with almost no conflict at all.

Just kidding. Padan Fain and his trollocs and darkfriends have stolen the Horn. So the Boys, led by the Shienaran Lord Ingtar, go on a daring, dangerous quest to retrieve it, while the Girls go to boarding school at the Vagina Island School of Witchcraft and Definitely Not Wizardry. Sounds adventurous, right? Well, it kind of is. If the Boys don’t catch up to the Horn, and with it the dagger from Shadar Logoth, then Mat will die. There’s some urgency there. Plus, if Padan Fain blows the Horn, the all those heroes will serve him. So there’s some urgency there, too. And on the girls’ side of things, if they forget to use the honorific term ‘Sedai’ after somebody’s name, they might have to wash dishes, so there’s plenty of urgency there, too.

Well, luckily for the left-out ladies, there’s a storyline switcheroo. Because just as we’re beginning to lose interest in the manly quest, the girls are unknowingly led off by a member of the feared Black Aja, and Egwene is sold into literal, collar-and-leash slavery, and Nynaeve, Elayne, and Min have to bust her out of there. The storylines finally collide in an excellent ending in which Mat blows the Horn, Perrin does less than nothing, Ingtar was a Darkfriend the whole time, Egwene beats the crap out of her captor, and Rand battles the Dark One … again, and is then given no choice but to proclaim himself the Dragon Reborn. Thus ends book two.