The Lord of Chaos: The Wheel of Time (Paperback)

So why am I giving it three stars? Because Jordan should have either made this book five hundred pages or two thousand, and I'm beginning to see a pattern here. In the beginning of the series, Jordan took painstaking time to write battle scenes and war scenes. And they were breathtaking, even for me, who prefers characters over war any time. He knew what he was talking about, since he was actually schooled on warfare. Starting with the Fires of Heaven, he's focusing too much attention on the women, who aren't doing anything. Their chapters would better off be blended into one large mother-chapter. If Jordan included half the stuff that goes on in Lord of Chaos, then it would be two thousand pages, and I would prefer ten thousand pages if it included those missing events.

Jordan writes the afternoon-tea well, I'll give him that. I'm not saying they suck. But when that's the majority of what we're getting, it starts to become a problem for me. Random arguments between husband-and-wife, petty insults between women, are just not Jordan's forte; or not nearly as well as he does battle, as he proved to me when he wrote the last chapter. Those events let you see more of the character's personalities, of course, because of how they react to the situation. But the situation itself is what makes it all useless, irrelevant filler. They could have been nice laughs if they were tossed in here and there, but Jordan is starting to give details on things that he shouldn't be going into so much detail on, and summarizing things that deserve a long and decent chapter.

Less time is being devoted to the Last Battle, and more time is being given to the personal issues that are dragged on far too long (Faile's argument with Perrin goes on for chapters on end). Jordan takes a particular interest in describing the problems the characters are having with love, but as he does with all other personal situations, the situation itself is ridiculous. Where did Lan and Nynaeve's love come from? I still haven't figured that out. What happened with Egwene was the final straw for me; no time is spent to the actual falling in love; it's always love at first sight. Jordan has lost about ninety percent of the urgency that was shown in the first three books. The characters are dawdling, loitering, and mingling with other characters. They aren't doing anything. And when they are, in order to complete it, they need to do more dawdling, loitering, and mingling (the siege at Tar Valon, the Bowl of the Winds...)

I would recommend this book, because all in all it's a good read. It's just not the best of Jordan's capabilities, skirting the important issues, and tracing the unimportant. I don't know whether Harriet is editing too much out, or if Jordan is just neglecting to write more, but either way, he's chopping off far too much things that are happening in his books, and I'm hoping that maybe he's going to start collecting those fallen pieces and continue on his streak of breathtaking battle scenes.