Rating: 
Summary: fantastic!
Review: Jordan did it again. He wrote a wonderfull book.
Crossroads of Twilight is fantastic!!!!
We see a lot of interesting developments and there where a lot of surprises for me.
Jordan Rulez!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Foreshadowing, Decisions and...Yet More Foreshadowing...
Review: Before I get started on the meat of the review, I have a quick warning for anyone who might be thinking of starting the series here: don't. Go back and pick up "Eye of the World" and work your way forward. By Book 10, Robert Jordan expects his readers to be familiar with the story and spends minimal time catching people up - even those that may not have read "Winter's Heart" recently.The later books of the "Wheel of Time" series seem to be devolving into a sort of Xeno's Paradox - the closer the series gets to the final battle, the closer Tarmon Gai'don seems, but we never seem to close more than half the remaining distance in any one book. In fact, with this book, we seem to close very little distance at all. The name, "Crossroads of Twilight", implies that major decisions are made in this book that will affect the course of the series. In fact, major decisions are made - by Mat, by Perrin, by Egwene, by Rand, by Elaida, by Tuon and a few others. Unfortunately, though, the book ends before we see much action that results from any of these decisions. Most of the main characters are present for this installment, breaking a pattern established in the last few books where one of the major characters is left out - or all but left out - of each book. Nynaeve may be the one exception here (she has a brief, nonspeaking scene), but Rand has minimal time in this book as well. He doesn't appear until page 540 (out of 680) and his arc is left to two chapters and the epilogue. In fact, the climactic events of "Winter's Heart" are pushed off to the side for pretty much the entire story. Instead, the focus is primarily on Perrin, Mat and Egwene. Each of them reaches one (or more) crucial decisions that seem to be on the cusp of being borne out at the beginning of the next novel. Then again, we thought that to be the case books ago. If you're a "Wheel of Time" junkie like me, I hardly need to encourage you to get this installment - just be warned that it seems almost a prologue in-and-of itself for the remainder of the series. Also, be warned that you might want to read over "Winter's Heart" again to refamiliarize yourselves with many of the minor characters - especially the Aes Sedai. More are introduced with each book and I, for one, am starting to find it very hard to keep more than eight or ten of them straight. A quick rundown on each in the glossary really wouldn't be such a bad idea. Nonetheless, this book is solid Robert Jordan and in spite of the lack of movement, I was still happy to get my (now every three-year) "Wheel of Time" fix. If you're as big a fan as I am, go pick it up. If you're a little less so, you may want to wait until the paperback comes out. It'll help minimize the time (and possibly disappointment) until Book 11 comes out.
Rating: 
Summary: The Extra Star is For Mat...
Review: I'd just like to list the main characters, mentioning who they were, and who they now are. Rand Before: Used to be caring (remember how he made Bela run for Egwene?),yet strong willed, and an overall good-guy. Remember when most of the story was about him? Rand Now: Absolutely does not care what anyone says or thinks, and does whatever he wants to whoever he wants. Not even 3% of this book concerns him. Perrin Before: Big, strong, gentle. Took his time to think about things, never did anything rash. Didn't like to be in charge, but took control when he had to. Perrin Now: Rash, angry, pushes people around, cares about nothing else but Faile...NOTHING ELSE. Egwene Before: Smart (she could read people like nothing else), strong willed, seeking adventure - generally fun-loving Egwene Now: So, so, so stupid. I mean, those flaming headaches come along ONLY when her Saidin infested servant girl is around, and angry at her (sometimes AT THE EXACT MOMENT OF HER DISPLEASURE), and only her Saidin infested servant girl can make them go away, AND whenever her Saidin infested servant girl is out late, someone dies FROM SAIDIN! I just can't take her stupidness. Nynaeve Before: VERY strong willed, kind of a witch, but generally good intentioned. Quite mature. Nynaeve Now: As all the characters 'matured', in a sense (they no longer think about things that are juvenile, generally), Nynaeve has actually de-matured. She runs around like a giddy school girl now, doing anything anyone tells her to, and swooning over Lan. I mean, the only time you see her in this book is watching Lan practice sword-fighting, where she is described as practically 'bouncing up and down in her seat, rooting for Lan'. And it's only practice! And Lan is whomping the other guy, no contest! ugh... Lan Before: Quiet, composed, deadly, past shrouded in mystery and greatness. Lan Now: Forsakes everything he used to be to yell at people, making sure they don't hurt Nynaeve. Tam Al'Thor Before: One of the characters in the first book who I was so looking forward to getting to know better. His past seemed so interesting! For sure, Rand would want to talk to him and figure all this stuff out...especially when he learned to travel, and it would be nothing to take a day or so out of his schedule... Tam Al'Thor Now: I am convinced that he no longer exists. The only saving grace of this book - Mat. Mat is the only character who simply hasn't changed much...he's still good-old Mat, and completely hilarious. I think the only thing different about him is that he swears A LOT now...which is funny. The moral? I don't like the characters anymore - they're stupid, mean, angry, devilish, self-centered, and all around bad people. At least Mat is SUPPOSED to be a 'bad' person...anyway, I don't even want them to win. The Forsaken now are the underdogs, and I like them better. I must say that it would be absolutely brilliant for Jordan to turn the good guys (ever so slowly, as he has been doing) into the bad guys, and the bad guys into the good, however, because I know this will not happen - this last installment is just one more step in the complete destruction of everything Jordan started.
Rating:
Summary: To be brief (something Jordan will never be)
Review: Upon seeing Jordan's new Wheel of Time prequel on the book shelves, I literally screamed.
"Dear God," I exclaimed to my wife, "He's _going_the_wrong_way_!!"
If you ever liked the series, but not become one of the "Jordan-can-do-no-wrong" true believers, this book will probably just about kill it for you. Pages upon pages of new characters who are little more than a couple of twitchy mannerisms. Action that isn't (some of you may remember the multitude of chapters of the situation with Perrin, Faile, and the Shaido in book 9? Well, it STILL isn't resolved in Book 10.) A "prologue" that goes on until page 96. Oh, and maybe fifty pages that actually advance the plot- in a 797 page book, NOT counting the glossary. Robert Jordan is wasting our time. If you MUST punish yourself, join me in swearing only to buy the man's books in paperback, used. And please, don't encourage him by buying the prequels, of which we are now promised THREE. Jordan, get a freaking editor and LISTEN TO HIM OR HER.
P.S. Someone who dismisses the criticism of Mr. Jordan's works as "geriatric" in one sentence and demands those critics "leave the deep arts to the adults" has no place implying that they have some greater understanding of writing, sir.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to get through
Review: I have to say that Book 10 left me feeling very dissatisfied and almost angry that I now have to wait who-knows-how-long to get some closure on the multitude of unresolved story-lines. I don't have the excited anticipation of the next volume as I had after finishing all the previous volumes. It's more like "The next book better be really good to have made this one worth the reading." The feeling is disappointment- disappointment that I had suffered through hours of anticipation, thinking maybe something exciting would resolve in the next chapter. That's the only thing that kept me from putting the book down half way though. All the book seemed to do was set up each individual story line in a new direction, in painful detail, but then nothing big came of any of them in this volume. Give me a crumb and I would have been at least partially satisfied and willing to wait in excited anticipation for the next book, but I wasn't even given a crumb. I expected something exciting to come of the cleansing of sadin but it was such an anti-climax that I was almost stunned. It was treated like it was almost meaningless to the characters & story- but when so much emphasis was put on the taint and how men who can channel go insane, and Rand's physical repulsion and struggle every time he touched the soruce because of it, and how the Ways were tainted by it, etc. how could the cleansing be treated as so unimportant? I still don't understand what happened!
There are so many situations set up in this book without resolution that if the next book doesn't resolve them in an exciting way, I will probably be very angry. I find my sentiments strange in itself but I've just read every book 1 to 10 (for the second time, this time with no pause between books) for about a month now (that's 1 book read in about every 3 days.) Jordon has had me in his grips where I couldn't put a book down to get to sleep at a decent hour or take the appropriate time and effort to eat right, that I just can't believe he lost it with this book. I can't believe the author would keep his fans hanging so painfully unless he had a real whopper of a book 11. I believe that Robert Jordon has done too good a job in this series to fall flat now just when things are really building to such a critical mass. He may have needed this volume to begin changing the direction of the series and the characters so he could build the foundation for what's coming as he gets closer to the final battle. I just hate where he left off with a crisis at the end of each story-line and character, but maybe there's a reason why.
I will hold judgement until I read the next volume.
So I have to agree with the other reviewer who recommended that people should maybe wait to read book 10 until book 11 comes out and then read them one after another. To me, volume 10 seems like 1/2 a book- all the painful set-up to the excitement sure to come... Maybe book 11 will resolve what was built in book 10. I don't know, but I'm sure hoping that is the case.
...But I still can't help feeling like he should have had volume 11 written and published right after volume 10 to make up for what he put all his devoted fans through... to make it worth the suffering! :)
Rating:
Summary: Crossroads is a deciding point
Review: Their is a lot of critisism, and some praise for this book, and I think both sides need to realize that this book is exactly as it it titled, a Crossroad. This is the turning point, and as described by the chessboard comparison is setting up for the books that follow, may they come soon. However, what this also means is that we see that Rand is okay, Elaine is still fighting for the throne, Eqwene is still laying seige to Tar Valon, Perrin is still looking for his wife, and Mat is still trying to escape. The only thing new is that we know Rand is okay... this book would have been better as the first half to a book that provides us with something new, and a much better sence of acomplishment. My recomendation would be to read this book when the next book shows up, assuming its reviews are far better.
Rating: 
Summary: Please Listen Carefully
Review: Long ago I had the joy of reading a wonderful book called 'The Eye of the World.' Its writing was succint, its insights were well put and, like the best of Tolkien, it was spun in such a way that while it left so much open, it closed with having made its point.
However, Jordan has now passed from the 'epic' stage to the stage of inefficiency. The Wheel of Time was wonderful because it provided us with a world rich with fresh semiotic relationships, an environment that was palpable and, more importantly, well told.
Jordan has now replaced this high quality of story telling with a slowness and turgid nature that cannot retain the freshness and the richness of the new codes we have been given. Instead of showing, he is telling, as if he has removed his characterization from the context of a narrative and placed it into a textbook. Instead of high fantasy, he has dipped into the sloppiness of the low.
This is not by any means the 'game of chess' the recent reviewer described it as, nor does it exist at some higher plane of intellectual discourse of which the layman is incapable of understanding. This is not Pynchon or DeLillo; this is not high Shakespeare; this is not 'Being and Nothingness,' if you wish to expand the analogy to encompass philosophical discourse; this is the result of quantity over quality.
As a writer, I know that even if one has a set idea of what the plot will eventually come to and how it will come to it, taking too long to 'get to the point' and reach some sort of conclusion will cause your writing to drop off in quality.
Jordan should have learned this from studying the greats in fantastic fiction--grand does not equal long. Tolkien conjured up a timeless, limitless epic in four installments. There is a reason he did write 100 installments instead. Jordan needs to make his point, or suffer the sort of aesthetic decay that it pains a common writer to see.
Rating:
Summary: Wake me up when its finished, please.
Review: What else can be said about this horrific book? The sheer amount of paper & ink spent detailing what the characters are wearing is absolutely mind-numbing. When you've got to rely on good reviews from the likes of brown-nosing want-to-be writers who call the general public a bunch of dim-witted bulbs, because they can't appreciate "good literature", then you know you're in trouble. No, this is not "good literature"; it is stupid. And it's a slap in the face to every customer who naively slapped down their hard-earned money for this gargantuan book in the futile hopes that Mr. Jordan has decided to write for us mere mortals again. This book is boring, slow, ponderous, & about as exciting as my college algebra textbook. Please, for the sake of your sanity go pick up something else, anything else!
Rating:
Summary: Waste of Paper, Time, Effort, etc. etc. etc
Review: A recent positive review compared this series to a chess match, moving all the pieces in place.
What a load of tripe! This would have to be the slowest, longest, poorest played chess match in history.
If you like endless description of what the characters are wearing, with little if any plot advancement, then this book is for you. Or if you want to read pages detailing the washing of silk (Who on earth reading a novel wants this?), read on brave reader. Perhaps an aid to sleep is what this book really should be marketed as.
If you want to read great fantasy (as opposed to poor) read George RR Martin. There's honestly no comparison. Martin's work, as opposed to this mess, is focused, dramatic, exciting, has evolving characters, and is fun to read.
Rating:
Summary: The general public clearly does not write for a living.
Review: To be perfectly honest, the responses to this book so far are absolutely comical. A large number of "layman reviewers" say the same things: that they previously thought Jordan was the dominant figure of modern fantasy, and that now he has somehow lost his gift or gone senile or "sold out" as it were. The sheer volume of geriatric whining that has gone on here about Crossroads of Twilight illustrates with perfect clarity why these people are on the internet complaining instead of on the road fulfilling book signing engagements.
COT is preparation. An education in chess would help the lot of you significantly. If the end has been determined-meaning you know the goal that has to be accomplished and have rightly calculated the events that have to transpire in a particular order for the goal to be reached (you want to take the king, but the king is directly defended by his queen and 1 pawn, which are in turn defended by a bishop, which is serving to block the necessary rank and file angles you require to achieve victory. Therefore, you remove the defenders in a specific order then apply irresistble pressure to the king. If you rush this process, if you do not complete the necessary preparation of your offensive, when you go to make it happen, youll soon find yourself on the receiving end of a lot of pain) then the final sequence of events have to be set up exactly right or the whole structure is going to fall apart like the plot of a sci fi channel movie.
COT again is preparation. Jordan is moving the pieces, subtly, into their necessary positions. The final sequence of attacks will not begin until it is time. The only person on earth who knows how all this is going to end is Robert Jordan. The only person on Earth who knows how to make it all come to pass is Robert Jordan. The comedic part of all this criticism is that we can see with great clarity why powerful writers succeed, and incompetent writers make themselves into critics, and that is the presence or lack of an eye for subtlety and also like the chess master the ability to see not one or two moves ahead, but through deep calculation to see the entire game through from its current point.
The bottom line is this: 1> Dear critics, when your next book is published, send it to Mr. Jordan and im sure hell be glad to send back a written review of it. 2> You are clearly not capable of the subtle and deep thought required to create an entire universe and plot its origins, its present, and its great future events to come in such a way that it all comes together with clear resolution. Otherwise you'd be doing it, and we'd be buying your books. Leave the deep art to the adults.
I have complete faith that an author as skillful as Mr. Jordan will not have suddenly in the course of one novel lost his ability to write. I havent heard any reports of him having a stroke or forgetting English, so to expect such a leopard to suddenly change his spots is ridiculous. Jordan is making preparations and he is doing it for a particular reason. Your inability to see what those preparations are for and your infantile cries of "I want the good part now!" are absolutely laughable. Have some patience and let the man finishing crafting his work. It's ridiculous to start a judging fair on a work of art that still wont be completed for another three years...its not DONE.
So stop being so bloody pretentious, assume a little humility, and show proper respect by allowing Robert Jordan to make HIS book series HIS way.
And RJ, those who understand the craft have little doubt that you will continue to hold their imaginations in your hand until the last letter is written.
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