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2.0 out of 5 stars
Slightly Better than the last, but oh what has happened to this series!, Dec 25 2007
Well to be honest I think that Robert Jordan had gotten his sequencing backwards. Instead of intelligently realizing that his readers were growing older and more mature as his series slowly crawled onwards, Jordan seems to assume that they have become younger and more juvenile. The this point the dialogue would suit a twelve year-old, except for the moments of combat that are fairly well described and a bit to visceral.
In truth Jordan has killed all sense of fantasy that propelled this novel and turned it into a dismal soap opera. And not a good one. He spends most of his time in this book describing--bashfully--women's bosom, or petticoats, their dress necklines and lace, all the while admonishing the fact that his characters are paying attention to such things.
And it gets worse, all the characters continue to bicker in such a manner that it is obviously forced and even more painful for that fact. Yet, astonishingly this story, which had such amazing scope in its genesis in the first five novels, still turns up captivating moments. Their are plot turns and intrigues that are truly interesting, but Jordan kills them one by one with his treatment of characters you are begin to like but he forces you to hate, and through interesting events that he barely allows to see the light of day in favor of aggrandizing others that seem forced and stilted.
Sadly not only has he lost his grip on the characters, which were better when they were flat and predictable instead of impressing us with their amazing ability to develop more and more into horrible caricatures of everything that could go wrong with friendship and inter-gender relations; he has also lost his grip on the story line, instead of developing the ample material that has settled into the background, introduced earlier in passing, he contrives new twists and turns and characters that are unbelievable given the rest of the story. It just doesn't work.
Bottom line, it is not as abysmal as his last book, and one can hope it will get better, but if the series had started out this way, I don't think I would have made it past the hundredth page. But alas I will be one of the legions who will continue to masochistically slog my way through this series in hopes that it will get better, or atleast redeem itself somewhat.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Over the hump!, Sep 10 2007
This particular Robert Jordan novel has been the Achilles Heel of me getting over the middle hump of this bloated fantasy series, but I was finally able to make it through, with the help of the unabridged audiobook off audible.com. I actually found that listening to Jordan's prose (redundant or richly detailed depending on who you talk to) works better for me than reading it off the page. I did a little of both while reading this installment, and enjoyed it. I'm not a die-hard fan of the series, but I loved the first book -- it would be one of my top 10 fantasy novels for sure, but I have the same complaint as many...when will it ever end? I gained a new perspective while re-reading the first 6 books a while back, namely that reading a series like Wheel of Time is like watching a television series. In fact, I think that's the only sort of filmed adaptation that could be done of the books. Aside from the unnecessary (at least it seems so now) wounding of Rand by Padan Fain in the last few chapters, the book was a great "next step" for all the characters in the series. That said, Mat Cauthon's storyline is the one that I liked the most this time around. Rand was too moody and Perrin's too obtuse. And as a quick side note...why are only males ta'veren?
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4.0 out of 5 stars
please kill them off, May 28 2004
By A Customer
I hve loved these books so far. All have been wonderful in there own way and this one is of course no exception. That said I must now complain. I don't understand why Mr. Jordan has to make every women in his books act as if they are the devil. I dread every time that I see the chapter is about them. Every time that they speak I want to strangle one or all of them or at least slap them up side there head. They are rude and mean and usually mess up every thing that they want to do because they don't understand that they don't know everything. I guess that this would be ok if it was one or even two women but it is every single women that Jordan has written in. (Brigitte dosen't count in my rant of course.) Then there is Perrin or I guess the lack there of. Lets face it Perrin is probably the second best character the Jordan thought up next to Rand and he was not in the last book and is hardly even in this one. Besides that he has no purpose so far compared to Rand and Mat.
Again I will tell you that I love this book and all of the rest so far but I just had to get that off my chest thank you.
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