Rating: 
Summary: Ouch
Review: I love the Wheel of Time. The series takes me away, and I can never put the books down. That is until the Crossroads of Twilight. I had to work to get through the book because roughly 400 pages into the book it became painfully obvious that the book was going nowhere and getting there very sloooowwwwly. I am not one of the readers who wants the series to end. Much to the contrary. I want the series to go on and on, but I also want it to move. I could read 8 more books in this series if they actually had something to say. I feel Jordan just phoned this one in and cashed his checks. Who knows? Maybe he'll put out another book in less than a year and we'll all love him again, but until he does something for his fans, I now just see him as an opportunist with no regard for what his readers are paying for.
Rating: 
Summary: Is there a point to all this?
Review: Horrible disappointment. I've been reading this series for 13 years now, and was hoping that with the momentous event at the end of the previous book we'd finally start wrapping this thing up. Nope. The plot advances very little in book 10, there are no big surprises or revelations and the characters are all still in the same predicaments they were in at the end of book 9. I can't imagine what the author was thinking. For the vast majority of the book, we see what everyone else was doing up to the time of the end of book 9, so it's not even advancing chronologically. Still, I will be one of the first in line to buy book 11 because after such a substantial investment in time, money, and enjoyment of the first 8 books, I really want to see how this thing ends. If it ever does.
Rating:
Summary: I returned it for store credit
Review: How come it took Jordan 2 years to write a book about nothing? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! I really loved this series. The first 7 books I enjoyed but these last 3 completely .... At this rate Perrin won't be reunited with Faile until book 20, Mat will marry Tuon in book 30 and the last battle will be book 50. This is pure ....
Rating:
Summary: A waste of [money], unfortunately, and the time spent reading it
Review: Unfortunately, Mr. Jordan has succumbed to what I call the "castle needs a new roof" syndrome (as popularized by Anne McCaffrey on her various rehashing of the same old Pern stories over and over and over......) by taking a fantastic series, and then turning it into drivel in order to cash in. This book does not move anything forward; at the rate he is bringing the series to a "close", I suspect it will be three to four more books (i.e., another DECADE) before this series concludes. Unlike Ms. McCaffrey's books, I will continue to buy them - but I think I'll stick to either paperback or used for the next one rather than pre-ordering and waiting anxiously.
Rating: 
Summary: good.....but very little action
Review: This is the 10th volume in the long running Wheel of Time series. I am not convinced this series will ever end. Jordan claims that he has known the ending since before he began writing the first book, but it doesn't appear that he is that much closer to completion. He claims there is going to be 2 or 3 more books. But he said that same thing 2 or 3 books ago. We'll see.With that out of the way, I'll start talking about the book. Ever since the incredible ending to Winter's Heart , I've been eagerly waiting for the next WOT novel. A release date was set, and pushed back. Finally I was able to buy this book and start reading. I was expecting and hoping that the book would follow up from the ending of book 9. I soon realized that most of this book takes place at the same time as the pivotal event of Winter's Heart , so while the story can advance for the other characters, not a lot of time will pass (and so not that much closer to the Last Battle). Because of the time constraint, not a lot of action happens. This is not a bad thing because the other characters needed some time to have their stories developed more. The character that benefits from this the most is Mat. He had been sorely lacking in the previous couple of books and his chapters are the best of the novel. Perrin and Egwene suffer from the same problem. Nothing happens until the end of their appearances in the book where Perrin makes a very importance decision that may have serious ramifications throughout the world and Egwene actually acts instead of just sitting at the siege at Tar Valon. Elayne is also featured in several consecutive chapters in the middle of the book and while they are moderately interesting....i'm really wanting the whole succession situation in Andor to be resolved. Even though Winter's Heart had such an incredible ending and my hopes for the pace of the series to pick up again....it hasn't. Crossroads of Twilight is a fast reading book, but there is not a serious advancement of plot. Most likely this is because WOT is really one large book and not a 10 + volume series. It is one story and in any novel, there are slow parts and character development parts....and unfortunately we get entire novels of that. This is one of them. This is not to say that Crossroads of Twilight is a bad book, because it is not. It is a good one (when taken as part of the greater series). I couldn't put this book down and I wasn't ready for it to end. Any complaints I have with the book are ultimately small. I enjoyed Crossroads of Twilight very much and I am already anticipating book 11 in this series even though it will likely be 2 years until I see the next book. The book was good and the series is excellent. While I want more out of some of the books, I'm not disappointed with the series at all.
Rating:
Summary: crossroads of twilight
Review: Come on Jordan, quit using us..this book has taken somthing brillant and run it into the dirt..reading it was like being trapped by a boor at a cocktail party. Shame on you.
Rating:
Summary: Plot comes to a halt again - maybe the worst of the series.
Review: As someone who was dramatically encouraged by the major plot advancements Jordan made in Winter's Heart - clearly the best book since Fires of Heaven - this is as dramatically disappointing. Once again, Jordan loses the reader by attempting to build out probably 20 more characters in a series already pushing a couple hundred. While he did the same in Winter's Heart, at least that book contained a couple significant plot advances and had the offset of a beautiful new city culture advanced like only Jordan can do. Here none of that happens. The only new culture in the book is a brief visit to a city in which the dead are rising, yet Jordan lets that plot drop off almost in the chapter he writes it in. There are indeed some interesting questions to be explored - half the world seems to think the power that was used removing the taint actually was some evil from the Forsaken, a clever world building twist, but how many more books can Halima continue giving Egwene headaches and Rand ignore Mazrim Taim without doing anything? The end result is a book quite similar to CoS, in which he moves characters around to (hopefully) advance the plot next book. There are also significant problems on the editing side. The prologue runs over 100 pages - one of the main places where Jordan feels free to introduce new characters. Our main character Rand does not appear until page 576! And finally, the conclusion lacks the characteristic major battle between good and evil that conclude all but one of the other books. How Tor let this come out in this form defies belief. Still, I will say that I spent 4 full days rereading the series back in June and as an entirety even the last several books make more sense if read standalone. Perhaps in 5 or 8 years we'll look back on this book more favorably if we can reread the series as a whole. For now, however, shame on both Tor and Jordan for not having better sense than to make convolution more complex. Worth a skim for hardcore fans but probably less frustrating to wait for the next book and reading in combination with it.
Rating:
Summary: Useless
Review: I rushed out and bought this book in hardback the first day it was available here in the UK. (And I saw recently that Jordan is upset the UK publishers released it early and may withhold the next book from them - punishing his UK fans for something that isn't their fault. Nice going.) I also bought the previous two in hardback. Never again. When the next one comes out, I'll check it out of the library. Jordan won't be getting any of my money. My eyebrow went up with the "paid prologue" garbage, and even more with news about these novellas he'll be writing, but this book is the final straw. Almost nothing happens in it, apart from pages and pages of descriptions of things that have already been described in earlier books. There are also too many completely uninteresting subplots and characters (to me anyway - call me crazy but I tend to find the main characters the most interesting) to keep track of - and why is it that the main characters get given recaps to remind us of who they are, when we already know perfectly well, whereas the minor characters I simply can't keep straight get nothing? To be fair, the one good thing I can think to say of this book, is that most of it was actually about the main characters, unlike, say, Path of Daggers. Too bad they didn't do anything worthwhile. It seems obvious to me that either Jordan has simply lost control of this work and has no idea what he's doing, or he's stretching it out for money. The latter is upheld by ridiculous statements I've seen where he complains that internet fan-fiction is stealing his money, and the prologue selling and novella schemes. Those of you who argue that this book is about character development, and thus the lack of action is a good thing - it's the tenth book. Don't you think the characters should be fully fleshed out by now? Those who say this book is just setting up the pieces for the final run - you've said that for the last 3 books now, not including this one! Give me a break. I actually quite liked A Crown of Swords; Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart weren't so great, but there was still some forward movement. In this book however, the series has finally ground to a complete halt. Some bugs in some grain supplies does not equal forward movement. Future plots for book 11? Probably something along the lines of 3 chapters about a character going to the toilet (not actually managing to cover the act itself though - that will be saved for book 12), another spotting an amusingly shaped tree while out on a walk, and perhaps one or two having a nice cup of tea. Fantastic.
Rating:
Summary: "Transition" is no Excuse for "Schlock"
Review: I was (and probably still am) a big fan of this series. After Shadow Rising, I was convinced that Jordan was the greatest fantasy writer in history, and this was the greatest fantasy work. None of the reviews below attempt to defend Crossroads on its own merits -- for the simple reason that no such defense is possible. The book is aweful. The best that Jordan's apologists can say for the thing is that it is "transition." That is no excuse for writing (or marketing) schlock. Most (perhaps 80%) of this 700-page exercise in tedium consists of minor (even tertiary) characters reflecting on the world Jordan has created, current events, and other characters surrounding them. The reading eye drowns in vast oceans of expository lump, devoid of character development, plot advancement, or anything that would remotely interest the reader. After nine volumes, we no longer care what _______-Sedai thinks of women from Arad Doman. We just want to see some resolution of the dozens of conflicts and mysteries that Jordan had so carefully crafted in his prior work. This book is an object lesson in how not to write. With the exception of about 50 pages, the rest reads like an unedited exercise in expository free-assocation, the sort of stuff that would flow uninhibited from mind to page through the simple act of Jordan's sitting in front of a typewriter. I'm amazed he took three years to write this. I could have done it in three months (or if motivated by a large enough advance, three weeks). Nothing important happens in this book. Tuon turns the tables on Mat; Perin adds torture to his newly-acquired leadership skills; Alviarin meets the Dark Lord. THOSE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS. If Jordan had trimmed this book to include only what was necessary to advance the plot or develop characters any reader would care about, the thing would have been fifty pages long. I do not believe (as others) that Jordan is stretching things to feather his nest. I think the theme of Crossroads is that the Last Battle will effect many -- hence the vast number of minor characters (how does one keep up with so many names?) whose thoughts and fears are recorded in this work. While Jordan, as this world's creator, may find this material interesting, 99.99% of his readers will not. The good news is that things are shaping up for the next battle. A teaser of an epilogue will give even the most disillusioned fan hope that Book 11 will restore the luster to this faded gem.
Rating:
Summary: Memories...Memories
Review: My problem is I don't have a good one after two long years or the 100 hours it would take me to re-read the series. What started out as my favorite series of books--period, has slowly dissolved into echoes of boredom. I can't remember who 600 minor uninteresting characters are or what their place is. Rand, the best and who I thought initially was the Luke Skywalker of this series, is dangled in front of you 500 pages into the book simply as a cameo appearence. Perrin and Mat are great, but they do nothing significant. The rest are just a bunch of giddy girls, again accomplishing nothing. Mr. Jordan, please get the big three back together (Mat, Perrin and Rand), get their girl problems fixed, and go on the warpath! This book should have been 20 pages (he started to do it at the very end when Mat started courting Tuon). The last 20 pages of Winter's Heart was some of the best stuff in the series but again most of the rest is just fluff. New readers read the first six books and then read the Sword of Truth Series while you wait for the last book where I think there will have to be some action.... I think its possible, although it would be a total ____over, if right before the Last Battle Jordan has Rand wake up in Emond Field right as the Trollocs come (Eye of the World), thus discovering he is a Dreamer (and what he must do) and end the series!
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