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Crossroads of Twilight (The Wheel of Time, Book 10)

Crossroads of Twilight (The Wheel of Time, Book 10)

List Price: $75.00
Your Price: $47.25
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Skip this one
Review: Its just a 700+ page prologue. You can skip this one and not miss anything of the total story.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Boring
Review: No action, way to much fluff about personal appearances. Robert Jordan may have gotten in over his head with to many characters in this story. I can only hope this was all stage settings for great things to come.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Worst Kind of Anticipation
Review: As someone who eagerly awaited - and bought - Crossroads of Twilight, it'd be an understatement to say how disapppointed I was. Unfortunately what made Jordan such an engaging writer and the series so addictive - the vision, the attention to detail, the rich character profiles - is fast becoming his downfall. He seems to have become lost in the minutiae and is veering away from the central elements of the plot. The fault lies as much with the Editor as the writer; both are responsible for making a book readable.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Losing Steam and Heading Downhill Fast
Review: The question is will this ever end? No one but Mr. Jordan knows for sure but we can only hope he decides to put this sick animal down soon.

I will admit I read this book expecting very little. It lived down to my expectations. The past few volumes in this series have been mediocre at best, awful at their worst. In the beginning WOT was a marvelous concept, strong characters and an interesting story line, a great combination. But now the main characters (of which there are far to many of) have their own individual subplots that devolve into more sub-subplots, the entire series has become fractured, convoluted, complicated and, well, boring. Trying to track and maintain interest in each of these independent story lines is a chore. I found myself skipping 10 to 20 pages at a time just because I had no interest in the drivel he wrote.

They say the two hardest parts of a story to write are the beginning and the end. While he did a fair job of the first it is obvious he has still to learn the second.

My advice is unless you have invested untold hours reading the first nine in the series pass this puppy up. If you have and feel the need to continue then don't buy this book, check it out from the library. Even if you have read the first nine you can still pass on this one and still be comfortable in reading the end of series, whenever that will be, this volume has no value added.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A never-ending wheel, going over and over the same ground.
Review: I was so looking forward to this book. Waiting, and waiting. After the last 100 pages of Winter's Heart, I was expecting now, finally, after the previous four books, real movement in the story. I expected to give this at least 4 stars. But when I say that the first half of Crossroads of Twilight covers only one day, I mean actually the day that was already covered in the last 100 pages of Winter's Heart! Instead of progressing the story, Jordan wants to go over and over the most mundane and boring of details, and seems to delight in dwelling on what really is simply gossip, which in no way appears to help the story along. We don't even get to Rand at all until the last 150 pages! I could edit this for the parts that progress the actual story and make a book of less than 100 pages- 1/7th the total length. Initially we have to wade through stories of Matt and Perrin, perhaps the most boring of Jordan's characters. And as you read through the book, and realize nothing is happening, it becomes increasingly clear that Jordan is not the best of writers. Perhaps it's to his detriment that with the recent movies, we get a taste of Tolkien's skill. But I'm getting tired of cliches. Again and again. Like worlds without end. And I'm getting tired of being told what every character thinks, rather than having it described. And I'm really getting confused on who all these characters are. I read the glossary in the back before beginning the book, to refresh my memory, but most characters are not included there, and it's difficult to search through all the varying glossaries of the previous nine books to finally find a character and realize that they really are rather peripheral to the plot.

And still, the characters are mean. Unlike within Lord of the Rings or Narnia, I don't like any of these people. There are plenty of protagonists, but no real heroes. Nearly everyone acts only for his or her own concern, without true altruism. Though some act out of notions of romantic love, there is nowhere real self-sacrificing love for others. You don't see people becoming morally better, but rather everyone trying to one-up everyone else. All self-abasement is because it is forced- there is no real humility, like with the Hobbits or what Edmund learns in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. There are no leaders like Gandalf or Aslan, that make the reader feel that thrill that they are next to greatness, and greater for reading this novel. No growth, no models of kindness and morality, and little true hope.

I really want to see what happens in this series, so I read it. But honestly, if you haven't picked up Book One, don't. I don't see Jordan being able to wrap this up in less than 13 books. And if you are hooked on the series, rather than buying this book, just ask someone who's read it to explain the relevant details that actually progress the story. That should take about 5 minutes. And then wait for the next book. That should take about another two years.

January 11th, 2003

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: The "Filler" Book of the Series
Review: I have rather mixed views on this book. As in every series there seems to be certain areas of "filler". Where the author or director just makes an episode or book to take up space. I believe what occurred in CoT could have been condensed about 200 pages and added to WH. However, even though this is my least favorite book in the series, I am in no way dissapointed or giving up on WoT. Everything that Jordan wrote in CoT was as entertaining and enjoyable as every other book. I enjoy the amount of detail Jordan creates in his books, which CoT certainly doesn't lack. However, Jordan has delved to far into the microscopic details and has totally forgotten the macroscopic. The pacing of CoT suffers greatly from this and that is why I believe it's a "filler" book. No one but a die hard fanatic would care about the events in CoT. I hope RJ understands that and gets back to form.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: What a crock
Review: I am one of the most avid readers of the wheel of time series but enough is enough!I have had the patience to wait for this book for two years and what do we get...this garbage! This is not the crossroads of twilight it is full darkness. I am on page 500 out of about 790 pages, and I have read nothing of the main character! please Robert this is a betrayal of your fans.Absolutely nothing is happening, it is not worth reading, any other book would be better than this!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A Darkfriend Forgery...
Review: ...or maybe the author has finally succumbed to that voice in his head-- the one that babbles endlessly about the minutia of politics and decision anguish. One thing is clear, this is not a work worthy of the author of the early books in the series.

I could almost believe that book nine was just way too long, and the part that was chopped out by Jordan's editor became book ten. Or maybe Jordan's suffered a head injury, or started taking drugs, or stopped. Could be he's just busy with those martial arts action books he supposedly writes under another name. Whatever.

I enjoy Jordan's descriptions of camp and military life, as I'm sure some readers enjoy those of court life, politics, Aes Sedai scheming, and so forth. There's plenty of all that in this book. From my perspective, though, each novel in a series of this sort does need exciting action, and substantial progress in the plot (and in most of the subplots--which, by the way, should probably number no more than five or six). If you're hunting for action or progress, don't waste your arrows on this book; it's a hollow decoy in those respects.

My advice: use your money to support another author, preferably one who's still hungry enough to earn your business. Then check back here when the next Jordan book is released. Maybe by then he'll have cleansed the taint from his half of the one true source of his success- a relationship with readers who can distinguish between the light of a powerful storyline and the darkness of pointless prose.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Much ado about nothing
Review: Once again, I've waited 2+ years for an extremely disappointing book. No major plot developments, no battles, no excitement...you get the drift. There is significant setup for the future of the overall story, however, after four books of the exact same setup I'm sick of it. In all honesty, the only thing that kept me turning pages was the slim hope of something exciting happening. Of course my hopes were in vain. CoT reads like a bad Seinfeld episode; namely it follows the excruciating minutia of day to day living of several of the main characters. We see Rand for all of 10 or so pages. There is virtually no mention whatsoever of clensing of the taint. The only thing that makes this book better than Path of Daggers is that Mat is in it. I read that Jordan has said he'll be done in 12 books. Not bloody likely, especially if the next two move even at 10 times the pace of the last four. Of course, after 10+ years of reading and waiting for Jordan, I'm thoroughly addicted to WOT. I will be eagerly awaiting the next book 2 or more years from now.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This series has become a forced death march.
Review: Almost nothing happens. Large amounts of time are spent rehashing stale character tics, two-dimensional characterizations, absurd gender relations, and the minutiae of everyone's clothing. More and more side characters are brought on stage, the few main characters with any "screen" time spin their wheels, and the few important things are practically ignored or given a paragraph. We spend pages on Egwene wandering through thecamp, but have throwaway lines about the Windfinders breaking out of Ebou Dar. We spend chapters with Elayne glacially moving towards the throne and Perrin glaciually moving towards Faile, but the cleansing of the Taint gets hardly a mention.

Extremely disappointing.


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