Rating: 
Summary: Snowballs, Snowballs, Snowballs
Review: The moment I put this book down after finishing it, I was completely satisfied. I was thinking to myself "What a Great Book!" and "I Love WOT." The book was very entertaining and a great few hours of my life. Then I began thinking through what had happened. I realized that nothing had except for during each character's final chapter. Perrin will meet with Seanchan. Rand will meet with the Seanchan. Mat will meet with all of the Seanchan, not just Tuon. So I guess the title was accurate that it was a crossroads because every character is on the verge of a huge decision. But it appears that in book 11 Rand and Mat will be re-united, if not Perrin also. That makes me want to read the next book in itself. So on to my point, I got on to write my review fully expecting most people to have liked the book, and was shocked when I saw that after 885 reviews the average review was only 2 Stars. Then I started to read the reviews, and they actually started to change my mind about the book. Until this point I was just happy that the books were entertaining, but when I realized that since essentially book 7/8 nothing, NOTHING, significant has occurred (The cleansing is significant, but hasn't been addressed yet so it doesn't count)I became a little angry. I know that I have said this to myself for the last few books, but this time I think that It must be true - Book 11 is set up right now to be one of the best in the series. Things have been snowballing for a few books now, and it appears the snowballs are about to smash into one another. We should all just wait patiently for the next book like the little drones we are because everyone knows that in a couple of years when the next book comes out we will be just as anxious for it as we were for this one, and all of this talk about everyone quitting the series will be forgotten.By the way has anyone else noticed that Path of Daggers and Crossroads of Twilight both ended with Question Marks? (The final chapters, not the epilogues). I'm not an English Major, but I know that a book is not supposed to end with an open-ended question.
Rating: 
Summary: the beginning of the end
Review: I completely understand the disappointment fans may feel after reading the 10th installment of The Wheel Of Time series after waiting 2 years for it to come out. However, that doesn't mean this is not worth the read. After 10 books, Tarmon Gai'don is just around the corner, the tension is rising, and chaos is beginning to reign as situations are getting too big for any of the characters to handle on their own. In fact, nearly everything has slipped out of anyone's control! The world is crumbling, and Robert Jordan is doing a fantastic job of portraying it. However, the Crossroads Of Twilight deviates from the other books in a very important way - it's not really a story on it's own, not really - as there are no concluding factors. At the end of the previous 9 books, there's a big battle, someone dies, and something is accomplished. Not so in the 10th. Robert Jordan spends most of the 10th book with character development - personal situations and the tiny details of their lives, but still mingling with the bigger situations (and showing how control is slipping away from them). When Tarmon Gai'don gets here everything is going to change, and in the 10th book you get a real feel for the characters, so when that change happens we'll all understand just how big a deal that is. I gave the book 5 stars. The suspense is killing me, and because of that alone, this book deserves all of them. Any series that can pull someone into the story that well, and leaves them yearning for the next bit, deserves that sort of rating. The only real tiff I had with Crossroads of Twilight is the inevitable wait of years for the next book. Hurry up, RJ!
Rating: 
Summary: Crossroads of Tedium
Review: I have read and listened to numerous interviews of and talks given by the author who calls himself Robert Jordan. (His real name is James O. Rigney Jr.) I have concluded he is a self-righteous, supercilious, prideful, condescending, self-indulgent, insufferable prig of a man. His latest book reflects these qualities. I believe he thinks he can walk on water. He is so in love with himself, it is disgusting. I believe Mr. Rigney could not care less what anyone thinks of his books, his writing, or the Wheel of Time series. His attitude seems to be that he is writing this whole thing for his own pleasure and satisfaction and that the public is lucky that he gives us the privilege of being able to purchase his increasingly plodding tomes. With Crossroads of Twilight, for the many reasons given in the hundreds of other customer reviews, Mr. Rigney has nothing to be proud of. Mr. Rigney has apparently twisted himself into a tangle of knots and lost the thread of the story he is trying to tell. In the process, he has endangered his legacy as a great writer and is on the verge of being figuratively tarred and feathered by the reading public that he so obviously disrespects. At his current glacial pace of plot development, the Wheel of Time series will require at least fifteen (15) more volumes to reach what will by then be its anti-climactic ending. The question is whether he will have a publisher or any readers left.
Rating:
Summary: I waited for this???
Review: There is an old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. Well, what do you say when you have been fooled at least 5 times by the same author?
I kept turning the pages thinking, something must happen sometime! And the characters! Suspension of disbelief? No sane person in any world would make the decisions the characters here do. It is just becoming unbelievable (as if magic were believable in the first place) and I find myself just wishing someone would simply nuke the white tower and get it over with. I mean, who cares anymore?
Is Mr. Jordan simply milking us for more money? Seems like this was the topic of conversation with the last novel.
Well, I've been fooled again...
Rating:
Summary: Never have so many words accomplished so little....
Review: The pace of the Wheel of Time series has decelerated even further (against all odds) so that it can now accurately be measured only in geological time. In book 10, the heavy-handed Jordan spins prose that provide little character development, little plot development, little suspense, and little action. The book begins with a confusing hundred-page checklist of the goings on of a number of minor characters that Jordan doesn't intend to deal with in Book 10 (and that frankly, seem well-enough forgotten) with little aid from Jordan to the reader on exactly who this character is and what they were supposed to be doing. The reader is lead to feel that, okay, if we're flying this fast through all the characters that I don't remember, it must be because Jordan is saving pages for considerable action once we get into the heart of the book. Unfortunately, the reader is treated instead to a parade of major characters involved in (a) moving or (b) having arrived where they are going, waiting around and wringing their hands in indecision. The actions of the characters during these drawn-out movements and uninteresting decision-making processes add little to our understanding of the characters or their motivations, but rather seem aimed at upholding the increasingly diminutive series status quo through ceaseless repetition. Too many times, we are reminded of "an ageless Aes Sedai smoothing her skirts and putting on an outward mask of calm" or of the fell harbinger of "the dice rattling in Matt's head" or of Perrin "not liking the smell" of something. Crossroads at Twighlight is, quite frankly, drudgery, and if this is the best that Jordan can do, then stop the Wheel, I want to get off!
Rating:
Summary: Will the Dark One please pluck out my eyes!?!
Review: Why did I buy this book? Please - if anyone sees me trying to buy book 11 - stop me! True, I'm only on page 200-something right now (after weeks of painful attempts to get interested), but absolutely nothing is happening in the story. Actually, I take that back. Tons is happening. People are plotting things, but not telling anyone (including the reader) what they are plotting. People are walking around and thinking. Women think evil thoughts about men, Men think evil thoughts about women, and everyone seems to understand those darn Cairhiren's can't be trusted. What is really starting to drive me nuts, is that if anybody just spoke to anyone else and listened for five minutes, pretty much everything in this world would be solved. Oh, and don't let me forget to mention that we've now been introduced to about 500 new main characters. And I have two thirds of the book to go! I guess I wouldn't be this upset if I didn't like the books so much, but I feel like a cocaine-addict. I want to stop, I don't enjoy it any more, but I just can't do it. Maybe I'll form a support group, WOT Anonymous. Go read the Song of Ice and Fire series - that is time well spent.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Time (WoT) and money
Review: Negative number ratings are needed for books this bad. Can you say milk the cash cow? Shame, yes shame! on TOR and the editors for letting this book go to press. I enjoyed the first 3-4 books in the series but believe WoT went markedly downhill since then. The latest installment is by far the worst yet. Snails move faster than Crossroads at twilight. The 100 page prologue bores to tears, and the rest of the book is not much better. Rand does not make an appearance until 2/3rds of the way through the book, sticks around for about 5 minutes of reading, then vanishes again. 10 books and Jordan isn't even bothering to wrap up any of his dozens of major plots and instead opens up still more minor plots? CoT seems to spend more time on what women are wearing than it does on plot advancement. With so little to say, why did this book need to be written or published? What a waste of trees! Do yourself a favor...read George Martin's trilogy instead (Song of Fire and Ice)..or just put a blindfold on and pick any book off the fantasy shelf. You might be happier. If you buy this book and hate it, demand your money back.
Rating:
Summary: Well, think about it...
Review: Why is Robert Jordan taking so damned long to get anywhere? Think about it. The bare bones "plot" is fairly simple: The Dark One must escape his prison and the Dragon Reborn must, with the aid of the world, defeat him and give his life while doing it. Heck, the prophesies about the Dragon practically give the ending away. Given this, it's no wonder that Robert Jordan is dragging this out; introducing scads of subplots and characters and padding his story with many, many chapters' worth of description about bosoms, fine lace, people staring at each other, etc, etc. Unfortunately, this will tend to make the ending, if and when it comes, a little anti-climactic. Again, think about it: The Dark One unleashes evil, yadda yadda yadda, Rand finally unites everybody (somehow) and beats him and... dies...or not. (Yippee! Then everyone is free to bicker amongst themselves about matters other than how best to control the Dragon, or who should be in charge of which wedding party). Either way, big hairy deal; that's what supposed to happen, more or less: the bad guys gets it. I can't imagine there being a lot of different ways it can end. The end (if it happens the way the prophesies say it will) will hardly be something to cheer about, considering the fact that the Dark One is (correct me if I'm wrong) STILL getting free of his prison and (and simmering menacingly in the darkness, no doubt, or something); he hardly presents the reader with someone to HATE (as in "I can't wait for him to be dead). And the Forsaken seem to be dropping like flies, no matter how many times they're ressurected, the poor bastards. The Seanchan (who once seemed menacing), meanwhile, seem to be repelled every time they attack (which seems to be every other book). It's hard to cheer the downfall of evil when evil seems to hardly have any sort of palpable effect; it just sort of sits there radiating waves of menace and little else. So far, from what I remember, there's been a cold wave, a heat wave (lasted at least 2 books and in the end was dispelled by a bowl), and... boll weevils; and various other mutterings and grumblings. But characters that have names don't seem to die or even get hurt. It's the unnamed ones that get hurt and killed, but noone knows who they are, so who cares? Characters that are injured seem to heal quickly and characters who die get brought back to life. Take the example of the taint on saidin. Any man that uses it goes insane. Rand 'Al Thor is a man and no exception. We think "oh dear, Rand is going to go insane and kill some loved ones." Except he spend books 3-8 resisting insanity until Book 9 when he figures out how to cleanse the taint (just about as anti-climactic as you can get). In short, the characters don't seem to be adversely affected by the supposedly dire events going on around them (not if they have the luxury of worrying about what to wear). They seem none the worse for wear despite their "troubles." RJ, quite frankly, didn't pick the most compelling story to tell (for all it's window dressing and hundreds and hundreds of characters, it's really just another Little Guy vs. Dark Lord story). At some point, perhaps he realized this (maybe after the halfway decent books 1-5) and felt compelled to draw out his story even more, stringing his readers along with writing even more glib than before and prose even more bloated, the ultimate result of which, ultimately (in my opinion), is a very long-winded, very unsatisfying fantasy series.
Rating:
Summary: I give up!
Review: I have continued to read the last several books in this series out a sense of obligation. I have invested so many hours on the previous nine and I usually don't give up easily. Crossroads did the trick, however, with countless long passages of little or no action whatsoever. I want to scream when I'm reading those endless chapters of Aes Sedai characters gossiping with one another! The central character in the drama, Rand, did not even appear until page 540! I blame Robert Jordan for abandoning the fans of an amazing series (up to Book 6 at least) and the editors and publishers for not caring about what kind of pulp they put out on the shelves. Please stop the comparisons to Tolkien as Jordan missed that boat about 2000 turgid pages ago.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing happens...
Review: I'm completely serious: absolutely nothing happens in this book. Book 9 clearly had some momentous events, but this one has nothing. Even the interesting ending is pretty boring in the grand scheme of things. Mr. Jordan: I want those several hours of my life back.
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