Rating: Summary: WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY Review: Jordan should not punish longtime readers anymore. How many times does he have to use the same adjectives to describe the same events? After reading 10 books of WOT i am aware that Aes Sedai have ageless faces and are notoriously sneaky. Do i really need to be reminded again? Is there that many people who pick up the 10th book in a series and need to have things explained to them? How many times do we have to hear about men and women do not understand each other? And i think we are all aware that Rand does not care for the voice in his head....and what great warriors the Aeil are....How hard it is to kill a Myrdraal...How when the dice tumble Mat gets worried....that all the women love Rand but are uncomfortable sharing him...etc... wait...i cant remember...is the Dark One evil? it doesnt matter im sure he will remind us all twenty times in his next book... Everyone give up on Jordan... go read George R.R. Martin. his books move at lightning speed and are way way better...he respects his audience and treats us like grown ups. Mr Jordan has 1 more chance with #11...if he fails again, the wheel will stop turning for me.
Rating: Summary: Lots of words but no story Review: Wow, I can't believe that after the last couple of sleepers (and i mean that literally), i still had even moderate expectations for book ten of a serious that could have, and should have, been wrapped up after eight tries. The real story here is that this author seems to enjoy signing bonuses and royalty checks more than sharing a well-written, quality story. Shame on me for buying this book. This series is dead to me now, just as it apparently is to the author.
Rating: Summary: What a let down. Review: Well, I have read, and re-read the WoT series a few times, and I enjoy picking out little details that I had missed the 1st time through. Unlike many readers, I had no complaint about how the series may, or may not have dragged in the last few books. But this time around it was just too much. I can understand that the WoT is in reality just one massive book, but the details that just went on and on in Crossroads of Twilight made my mind numb. Where in other WoT books I've read with a hunger because Im enjoying the story, this time I found myself just skimming the pages in hopes that something/anything, of interest happening. Im sorry, but RJ blew it this time, if I have to wait 1/2 of forever for the next book in the line, odds are I wont buy it. Hopefully Jordan and his publisher will understand they let out a disaster, and will get the next book out rapidly to try to salvage the WoT.
Rating: Summary: Long on detail, short on plot advancement Review: First, let me say that I love the WOT series and I think that Jordan is a very good writer. He has created an incredible universe of the mind. However, I think that he has no idea how to finish this story. The book is almost complete before Rand even makes an appearance! I have students who don't know how to finish a paragraph and just start rambling on, sharing everything they know about the topic without being able to wrap it up. This book makes me think of them. I'm getting the distinct impression that Jordan either doesn't want to leave or can't find a way to leave the WOT universe.
Rating: Summary: Jordan appears to have taken a wrong turn... Review: I agree with the readers who found this book to be another filler. Jordan has now got so many plotlines going that even were he to advance them all at a reasonable pace, still the overall story gets along about as fast as my aged grandmother! I guess at least he's consistent. I see the male and female characters still "interact" at the same idiot level of full-time misunderstanding. Jordan's creator appears to have made men to be hen-pecked, and women to smooth their skirts. 680 pages (in the edition that I read) and all in all Egwene gets caught. Fullstop. That's all folks...
Rating: Summary: Directionless and disappointing. Review: Let me preface this review by saying that I loved the first 5 books of the Wheel of Time. Unfortunately the bloom is off the rose and Jordan's propensity for enormous plots has taken its toll over the life of the series. With so many intricately connected plotlines a characters, Jordan's style of storytelling (visiting each character or set of characters briefly and then moving on to another) is has broken down. "Winter's Heart" did little to move the plot or the action along but was salvaged at the end by Rand's assault on the the taint poisoning the male half of the Power. This action gave Jordan an excellent opportunity to follow up into the next book and break the logjam of plots and subplots. The story in "Crossroads of Twilight" moves at a glacial pace. The story actually picks up prior to Rand's cleansing of saidin and follows various groups of characters and their reactions to the immense use of the One Power that it involved. However instead of focusing on the changes the cleansing of saidin has engendered, Jordan treats it as an aside and goes about his slow and merry way. The enemies of progress and the Light seem almost entirely mundane now, with few of the beastiary from earlier volumes making any lenghty appearance. Politics is the order of the day, between the Aes Sedai in Salidar, between factions in the Tower, amongst the Lords of Tear. While I enjoy the use of politics to advance the plot, create obstacles and move the story along, I found the overabundance of it in "Crossroads of Twilight" to be offputting. That said, Jordan is a better than average writer and managed to hold my interest well enough that I finished the book in several days. Just for contrast, in the past when faced with a new Wheel of Time volume I have devoured it within 24 hours or so. My recommendation? Only for the true fans of the series and even then I would wait for paperback. George R.R. Martin's fine series "A Song of Fire and Ice" would be an excellent alternative for those who have not yet read it. Or if you like your fantasy with a slightly darker side check out Glen Cook's vernerable but still great "Annals of the Black Company".
Rating: Summary: Endings... Review: ... I just completed reading Jordan's Crossroads of Twilight last night. I purchased the book the day it became available in January. It usually takes me a couple of months to read through these novels. I mean, what's the rush, right? I gave the book three stars more on the merit of the previous novels (which you have to read, this isn't a stand-alone novel). I enjoy the world he's created. However, I agree with the many, many other reviews here. Just when things start to get going, the book ends. And I really didn't get into it until about halfway (page 330 or so). I think the problem is that, with the breaks between books, it's taking Jordan a good 200 or 300 pages before he can completely immerse himself in the world he's created. This leads to irrelevant descriptions and pages upon pages of no plot advancement. He describes things I, and apparently many others, just don't care about. And what was once a keen story is becoming a drag. I think it would benefit the author if he wrote a good hundred or so pages to get in the groove before starting future books in the series. Having said that, I will continue to purchase the books as they come out. It's become a tradition, and it will be melancholy when the series ends (which seems doubtful at this point) ... ...
Rating: Summary: Don't buy this book Review: If you have read some of the other reviews you already know that nothing happens in this book, though minor and irrelevant detail is discussed in great lengths. Here are some additional complaints I hope the author will read and think about: (1) almost from the beginning, characters have been doing irrational things for no reason other than the ¡°weave of the wheel¡± or the ¡°pull of ta¡¯avern.¡± Cut it out. It is very annoying to read a book where characters just do things for no reason. (2) There are six distinct ways to quickly or instantly travel distances of hundreds of miles, yet the characters tend to stay out of touch with each other and to act purely on hearsay and rumors rather than direct contact. They all have the means to travel instantly and they are all friends: Why do they not communicate? (3) The characters are mostly unintelligent and care more about benign and petty issues that are of no consequence to them or to the story. I have read the entire series and I am as captive as most Jordan readers. I do wish, however, that I had never started reading his books. He gets exceedingly worse and wastes our time and money with these sequels. Knowing that we are captive, he has no incentive to use his imagination or intelligence in writing sequels. Shame on you Robert Jordan!
Rating: Summary: Because 0 stars isn't an option Review: The production of the last 4 books in this series required the mass destruction of paper producing plants -- the same plants that produce the oxygen that we breathe. Fair trade for this book? I think not. Jordan is an oxygen thief. Here's the deal: Jordan is married to his editor. No kidding. He can barely call what he does writing, and she obviously can barely call what she does editing. A perfect marriage and a perfect crime, for this series will no doubt continue until there are no more trees left in North America. Stop the madness. I'm rooting for the Dark One -- the environmental choice. End this series NOW.
Rating: Summary: Thank god for these reviews... Review: All I can add to the 766 other one-star reviews of this awful book is a total appreciation for this customer review forum. All of the bad reviews weren't enough to stop me from buying CoT in hardcover, but it's good to know that I'm not the only one feels cheated by where this series has taken us, or better yet, not taken us. I still remember finishing PoD (back in 1998) with such a sense of outrage at how nothing of any substance happened in 580+ pages, how I then compared the fonts and margins of PoD to previous WoT novels, and even started to build a WoT timeline to chart how many significant events happened in previous books to support my point. Thankfully, I then read some of the other customer reviews and quickly realized that most other readers shared my opinion on Jordan's latest work, and that it wasn't just me. The whole experience was very therapeutic! As far as CoT goes, it is unfortunately more and more of the same. Nothing much of substance happens, although I did enjoy the initial Mat thread. At least he finally got out of Ebou Dar which is an enormous accomplishment based upon Jordan's recent standards! That being said, there is still just way too much annoyingly detailed descriptions of things we already know about, or worse yet, don't even care about. And for those who defend the glacial plot advances, CoT actually manages to go back in time with some storylines, so maybe we should be happy with whatever crumbs of plot advances Jordan throws our way. I hate to say this, since the early WoT books still remain some of my all-time favorites, but a previous review got it right when it said that the only good thing about the recent Jordan novels is reading all of the terrible reader reviews they are generating. For those looking for a good fantasy series, I would suggest Robin Hobb, Steven Brust, Tad Williams or George R.R. Martin.
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