dannnex

Ok, this is one of the best dream/nightmare sequences I’ve ever read.

First off, it just feels so much like a dream. Not just because Rand notices all these super dream-like details, but because of the way he notices them. Like not noticing a man by the fireplace until he looks at the man. As if the man had always been there, but wasn’t there until he looked at the man. But then, how could he have looked at the man before he was there? And to that I say: EXACTLY. That is exactly what dreams tend to be like. You don’t see something until you look at it. Super Paradoxical, super Dream-like. 

Secondly, it’s actually scary. I feel that scary scenes in books usually aren’t as scary as they want to be. I think scary things are more suited for a different format. But here, I felt dread. Whenever I’m talking about or analyzing the concept of “fear” I like to reference this Steven King quote about the 3 levels of fear. 1. The Gross Out, 2. Horror, 3. Terror.
 

In this nightmare scene, the 3 types of scary are mixed PERFECTLY. Watching the man slowly break the rat’s backs by bending his finger. Awesome grossout/horror. Walking down a long endless hallway. Great horror/little bit of terror. Running out of the room, only to trip, stumble into a different door on the other side of the hallway, only to find yourself in the same room. Great horror. There’s so much, that’s not even to mention all the Meta that goes on when Rand and the Man both acknowledge that this is a dream. Great terror there. And then the dream ends, and it feels solid. We get this interaction:
It feels like a very solid ending. Like a fade to black in a movie. The reader is convinced that the dream doesn’t matter anymore, it was just a dream. We even get a chapter break to enforce this. Rand wakes up. There are a bunch of little interactions. We get to see his viewpoint on a ton of small, unimportant things. He complains that his friends have left without waking him. He’s glad there’s hot water. He debates wearing his sword or not in public. He watches the innkeeper argue with the cook. The reader has almost forgotten about the dream, they think the story is just moving on. It’s been 2.5 pages since the last mention of the dream. Rand is downstairs, talking to the cook, and then the cook mentions that numerous dead rats have showed up. All with their backs broken. It’s amazing. It’s utter genius. 1000/10 Terror. So so many chills. There are so many other tiny details that really sell this whole thing. Stuff that would take forever to mention, like mentioning that the previous dream-scene set a precedence for dreams not affecting reality. That dream ended, and then nothing else happened. So many tiny details like that spread throughout the book, they all work together to make this scene just amazing.