Rating: 
Summary: Investment News - Value of WOT collection plummets!
Review: Jordan is a genius. His imagination is breathtaking! Aes Sedai, the dream world, talking with wolves, the Forsaken, the One Power, the True Power, Snakes & Foxes, the Sea Folk (and windfinders), the Seanchan, the Black Tower, Logain, the repercussions of cleansing the male source, the Dragon Reborn himself!How can he ignore this in favor of petty drivel? Don't all these wondrous things just SCREAM to be written about? FOCUS Mr. Jordan, FOCUS! I don't know the man, I could be wrong. But I choose to think that Jordan cares so deeply for his story that all the minutiae he writes about in COT have meaning and seem important, at least to him, Sadly, they don't have meaning or interest to most of us. Every series has to have a low point, I sincerely hope COT is it for Wheel of Time. I agree with the many others who feel the editor is to blame. Authors are prone to excess unless reined in. If COT was Jordan "reined in" then the Light help us all. I have collected first edition hardcovers of what I was sure would be the greatest fantasy series of our time. Sad to say after more than a month I haven't even finished COT which I bought without reading the reviews. I thought surely he could not go TWO books with so little payoff. I will not make the same mistake again. As it stands my collection devalues with each new book.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely BORING
Review: The reason I became hooked on this series was because of the great characters (Rand, Mat, and Perrin) the complex plot twists, great writing, and the epic battles against evil. All, save great writing, have been absent from this book. I am tired of hearing about Aes Sedai and their petty differences. Get on to the siege of Tar Valon. There was no need to get so in depth and detailed with this aspect of the story. I, along with most readers would rather hear about how Rand is after his cleansing of Saidin, how Mat is doing, or Perrin's trek to rescue his wife. You can only take so much of Aes Sedai whining.
Rating: 
Summary: good things come to those who wait
Review: most of the people who reviewed this book need to learn some patience. CoT is slow, true, but its the description and character depth that makes the series great. by now any avid reader of robert jordan should be used to the detailed description. also, this book has more dialogue and less action, especially with the white tower and egwene, but its necessary for the forwarding of plot. bottom line is, its not as fast paced as the others, but still a good page-turner
Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: If you speed read and skip about two-thirds it might be worth it to some but not for me. Sad, sad, sad!
Rating: 
Summary: I am no longer sure if this is good or bad or just long.
Review: About this book:
This book is mostly the same as the last seven in the series (both good and bad.) Incredibly however, the pace of the story has slowed even further down. The only real high point was the 4 sections (not necesarily chapters which Jordan makes not intelligent use of)on Mat and Perrin (2 each) but there is no action of any kind and really no other important events/characters that couldn't have been added in a later volume outside the core work. About the series:
To compare this series to the Lord of the Rings is not altogether silly. However, this series is really more like the Lord of the Rings if Tolkien had spent the hundreds or thousands of pages to fully detail the story of Golem, Sauron, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, Elrond....in the middle of the books. When all is said and done I am going to rip out every page from this series that has to do with Rand, Mat, and Perrin (the original "key" players) and bind them into an awesome trilogy. All the other characters and events are occasionally interesting, but not all that important outside of their involvement with the three main characters.
Rating:
Summary: RJ: Who are you and what have you done with the real RJ?
Review: What started out as the most amazing story I have ever read has turned into so much drivel. After nearly 300 pages the characters, if you can call them that now, from this book have finally caught up to events from the LAST book. Which, of course, means that by the end of this book the story will have advanced an extremely minute amount. Enough with the going around is circles from one meaningless event to the next, get on with it. I don't particularly care how many books you write in the series as long as they have a purpose. This one, along with the last one, have been utterly stagnant in plot advancement.
Rating: 
Summary: Wheels of Time keep turning
Review: In the interval between the publication of Book 9 and 10 in this series, I decided to re-read the entire series. With the time lag between books, I had forgotten some of the details. And I discovered that seemingly insignificant details in earlier books took on new meaning within the context of subsequent books, especially as I've tried to track the cast of darkfriends and Forsaken. I really enjoyed re-reading the earlier books! When reading the most recent addition to the series, I admit to feeling a little disappointed that almost none of the problems introduced and developed in previous volumes have been resolved. For example, will Perrin's search to be reunited with Faille ever end?? He's becoming a little pathetic (though it is a nice change to have a male character so defined by a woman). Will Elayne ever figure out who's who in terms of darkfriends--and will she ever win the throne? What kind of marriage can Mat expect with Tuon (assuming that ever comes off??). But for those who claimed, "no action in this volume"--how about what's new in Egwene's life? Another small complaint, for those (like me) curious about how Rand had survived his ordeal from Book 9--turn to the 16 pages in Chapter 24 and then to the epilogue (2 pages), and you'll have all the answer that this volume provides. In spite of all this, I think Robert Jordan's prose is enjoyable to read--he still creates vivid images as he's describing the cast of thousands and what they are up to and where they are doing it. If I was new to Robert Jordan and considering reading this series, I'd wait until it's completed (I'm guessing 2007?) and then sit down with all of it...
Rating:
Summary: Just a placeholder....
Review: I dove into this book with the hope that at least some of the many loose ends from the last several books would be tied up. Unfortunately, everyhere that Mr. Jordan resolved a conflict in the plot, two or three others popped up. As I kept reading, I nervously tracked how many pages remained in the book. By the time I got to the end, sure enough: Mr. Jordan left us with a huge cliff-hanger ending along with a brand new crop of unresolved loose ends. While this may be a style that is acceptable to some (perhaps those who are big fans of soap operas), it is not something I find particularly appealing. Mr. Jordan is a marvelous story teller. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth books of the series, he really succeeded in crafting long, involved, wonderful stories that could stand on their own. In contrast, his past several books, including this one, have taken on the character of the classic movie serials. Oldsters like me know that the movie serials were minichapters in a long storyline in which each serial merely serves as a teaser, and the audience is kept hanging until the next installment of the story. Unfortunately, The Wheel of Time is becoming just such a serial story, with much left to be resolved in succeeding chapters. I have no problem with stretching a plot over multiple books--this is, after all, the whole point in multivolume works. But in my view, there is a difference in having a series book as a mere placeholder in a chain of books and in having a series book enlarge the story line by standing on its own even while tying the greater plot together. I am having a hard time staying loyal to a series that I have stuck with for over seven years. Mr. Jordan's style is still engaging, and he is still a master of bringing the world of his books to life with his power of description and character development. But the sense of completeness that each book (even one in a series) should have was sadly lacking here. I long for the gigantic tomes earlier in the series (such as the aforementioned books 4, 5, and 6). They were great stand-alone stories that also tied together the greater plot. They were well worth the wait. COT, sadly, was not.
Rating:
Summary: Not fabulous but not horrible, either.
Review: No, the plot doesn't advance much, but "Crossroads of Twilight" is still a pleasant, fast read and by no means the literary travesty many here make it out to be. Other installments in the series had more hugely dramatic developments; I think this one was genuinely meant to be a book of more modest pleasures. As such, I think it works just fine. I'm still on board for the next one.
Rating:
Summary: A series that has lost its magic for good
Review: If this were the first book of the series (or I should say, if EOTW was written with this type of pacing, characterization, writing skill, description, and plot) then no one would have read EOTW and the Wheel of Time would never have made it to a second book. If this was true, EOTW would probably have ended with the Emond's Fielders arriving at Baerlon for the first time, and we probably would have hated them already. Action, big battles and lots of magic. That what all the COT-defenders are saying that we are all obsessed with. If that is true, none of us would have like Martin's "a storm of swords", because there were no huge battles, great sorcerers getting killed, magic abound in all shapes and forms, none of that. We all loved the book because of the incredibly tight writing, the masterpieces called POV characters, the speedneck plot, the incredible suspense and mystery, and the unpredictability of it all. COT has none of that, absolutely none of it. It is not that the plot has become so backwardly slow, or that for every page of plot-advancement there is 10 pages of clothing/scenery/facial description, or that fact that the book is written with a larger font and printed (almost) double-spaced (but this all counts) but it is that the writing has become so abominable that it is unreadable. Every page seems to contain slews of sentences that end with exclamation points that seem totally unnecessary. Every time there is a sentence where something might actually seem to happen (such as when Perrin finds the darkhounds pawprints) there are six pages following where you get to read about the facial expressions, darting eye-movements, clothing descriptions, horse-coloring, background stories, etc. of all the fifty characters that are present. The wording is just juvenile. The characters seem to say and think such childish things that you can imagine that they are sticking out their tongues and making farting noises. All in all this contributes that the plot sinks into obscurity. The plot in this book is like finding gold rings in a junkyard. Unconnected, unattainable, disjointed, and soiled. So much so that they best-written parts in COT are not even a good as the worst written parts in the first trilogy. I am not hooked on this book like so many others because I want to see the end and to see what happens to the characters, because RJ has ruined so many great characters that I want to see them all die. Of course, knowing how all the women in WOT came out, Moiraine will probably be ruined when she comes back as well. The goes to my next point. I have never seen writing with such absolutely horrible male-female relationships. I dealt with it up through Winter's Heart, but it's almost reached dead-bottom here in COT. The women are all so horrible it's almost unbearable. The most insane moment in this story came early on when Mat went to sit down near with Tuon, Setalle, and Selucia and each move their arms and legs so that he couldn't sit down near them....and Mat actually took it, and stood there seeming almost afraid of them!!!!!!! Besides the fact that these 20-something main characters (well actually, do we actually know if there are main characters anymore, maybe some SeaFolk person will be leading the POVS soon) are incredibly juvenile, but can you look at all the Aes Sedai/Sea Folk/Wise ONes. These are people who are all old and supposedly worldly and intelligent and MATURE, but have you ever seen people who are as immature and childish as all of them. They care about nothing then who seems to have more authority over who, or who should look up to them, or who gives them the necessary authority. I couldn't believe it when I read in the prologue of when Dobraine was injured, the Aes Sedai seemed to care nothing about it. The only thing that she cared about was that the other Aes Sedai tried to usurp her authority, or began to talk first, or was giving commands to servant when she should have been allowing the other Aes Sedai to be giving the commands. Geez, i almost took the book out and burned it without finishing the prologue. It makes me wish that Mat, Perrin, and Rand would just dump their girlfriends/wives/lovers, and just hook up with their guy pals and get it on instead, just so we didn't have to see or hear the women (especially Elayne). It's sad that a series once so thrilling and beautiful has fallen so far. It just had a magic to it. The feeling you got when the Emond's Fielders first came to Baerlon. The rush of excitement when Egwene was freed from the Seanchan in Falme. The thrill of the chase through a lightning storm when the Darkhounds first descended on Illian. There are no more magical times like that. The best we'll get is when Elayne and Aviendha will fight over who will walk in the front during the last Battle. Or maybe Aviendha will get smart and slit Elayne's throat. Now that would be a truly magical moment. Sweet! :lol
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