Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Novel
Review: The Fires of Heaven is the first glimpse of what will plague the later novels. I had problems reading the first 500 pages, but after that the novel was great, even the parts concerning Nynaeve and Elayne. However, the first 500 pages probably took me four times as long to read as the last 480. They were slow and contained almost no action. I actually caught myself rereading sentences because I could not understood what they meant. But even the beginning was really too bad, just not as good as the second half, and the second half more than made up for the beginning.What happens. Rand chases Coudalin into Cairhien. Mat is becoming a great general. Rand's Aiel fight the Shaido. Moraine fights Lanfear. Nynaeve fights Moghedian. Rand fights Rahvin. Who wins? The final two hundred pages are jammed packed with action and excitement. But the best part of the novel is that Faile is only mentioned once. She is without a doubt the worst character ever created. This next line is for anyone who has read the novel already. Looking at the copyright date on the cover, it has been ten years since Jordan killed Moraine and probably twelve since Egwene's dream of Thom pulling a blue crystal out of fire. It's been ten years. When is something going to happen here. Anyway, this is still a great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Average, Slightly Better Than Last One
Review: I'm going to start this review with an assumption; that you've read the first 4 books in the Wheel of Time series. I'm going to make a second assumption; that you're not sure if you want to embark on a 1000 page long journey to...wherever the next one goes. That's a start. If those assumptions are right, then this review may help you. If not, maybe this review will serve to give you an idea of how Jordan writes. Failing those 2, I have no idea why you might be reading this. But I'll do my best to entertain you. Jordan can put words together. Like a bricklayer, he can slap words down and cement them in place with the best of them. As you read the book, you never stumble through pages of narrative. If the procession of words is a foundation, Jordan builds a good one. It's fairly easy to walk through the pages of the book because Jordan is, in general, a good wordsmith. What's he not necessarily good at is getting to the point. His well built foundation often times supports a minimal structure. This book is better than the 4th in the series. But after several hundred pages, you begin to seriously wonder why you're still reading it. After roughly 600 pages, I asked myself, "Is this going anywhere?" I was reminded of the Talking Heads song, Road to Nowhere. I'm actually being serious. Eventually it does go somewhere, and that's what makes this book better than the 4th in the series. That, and the fact that the last 100 pages serve as the conclusion. In contrast, I think book #4 was wrapped up in about 5 pages. However, I'd be lying if I said I had trouble putting it down. The truth is, Jordan slogs through another loooooooong book to tell a relatively normal length story; but with a lot of words added to describe things you don't necessarily want to read. Jordan must work under some restriction where he is required to maintain a conservation of feminine anger in any book he writes. One of the problems I have with the average Jordan character is that they more often than not act like a pre-teen with a sour disposition. Resonant with this is Jordan's lack of character development. This book does a better job in that regard. However, some characters regress. Some that acted with composure in the previous books suddenly get, as strange as it sounds, immature. Another annoyance I have with Jordan is his vocabulary. In one sentence, he actually uses the expression, "Languid hauteur." Are you serious? I feel as though I am the object of Jordan's attempt to learn a new word every week. I'm not here to build my vocabulary. I just want to read a fantasy story. Others have commented on this same phenomenon, so I'm not the only one who thinks that reading "haughty" 20 times in a 300 page stretch of narrative is odd. Another of Jordan's shortcomings is his ludicrous depiction of women. I'm not sure how many feminine rituals there are in the series now, but rest assured of this. No ritual exists in this book without female nudity. Whatever Jordan aims for with this, he misses so widely that I think he shot the wrong way. I won't even offer suggestions as to what exactly is going on there. I think we're supposed to be led to believe these books are built with a strong female presence. The reality of the matter is that most women in the book act like teenage girls who still think that boys might actually have cooties. The reverse is true also, with most male characters randomly veering off on his own train of thought in which he deduces every woman is 51 cards short of a deck. Maybe that's a fair assessment, considering the way Jordan portrays most of them. Even with all of this, the story is better than the last. The angry female characters are becoming less of an issue with Jordan, while building strength is becoming his predominant theme. The idea of the characters "building strength" is one I took from another reviewer, who suggests these stories are like a game of D&D being played out in a book. I think there's a lot of truth to that opinion. Every chapter we have a new skill being developed or learned. All of that said, again, it is a decent read. You cold do worse. Yeah, I'm sure you could do better but I'm not very well versed in fantasy stories to be able to say. So I'll probably pick up the 6th book because I am compelled to find out what happens. Truth be told, as lengthy as the book is, it's refreshing to get your money's worth when you buy it. As opposed to some of these 250 pages books, Jordan's sure have a lot of meat on them. A final tidbit about the story. At this point, there are over 30 characters in the book. Each occupies a story line, no matter how trivial the character. Granted, they are often intertwined so we're not reading three dozen narratives at once. Still, there are so many that Jordan left out at least 5 major characters this time. An entire book went by with no mention of Perrin and that story. Mind you, there were 1000 pages in which to do this. That tells you just how laboriously the narrative thickly flows through these 1000 pages. Jordan's acceptance that not all the good guys can get out scot free is a step forward. As is his character development and the more robust final showdown. I still think he's got some work to do in terms of shoring up the details of his story. Every book ending is roughly predictable, and this one is no different. But this is probably worth picking up if you're not sure whether or not you want to continue.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow, but fun
Review: The fith installment is not as good as the previous ones, but not by much. I personally did not like this book as much as the others, and for s few reasons. 1 Ending was dumb, i mean, really dumb
2 My favorite character, Perrin. Was not in the whole book! his name is mentioned about 3 times but you never actually hear about his adventure after saving Two Rivers, which was the best part in all the books
3 He had a lot of detail, but a lot of obvious things were missed by characters, sometimes you just wanted them to talk After all that is was a pretty good book, those there was one questionable part
Rating:
Summary: Well done, if poignant and sad ...
Review: It's rare that to get chills or an emotional response to fiction of any kind, but that has happened twice for me with Jordan novels, once in The Great Hunt, and once here. If you have gotten hooked on the Wheel of Time's earlier books, this will not likely disappoint you. The writing is starting to get a little ... dense here, but you will only be disappointed if you abandon the book early. Enjoy this book, because you have a lot of reading ahead of you that is less than stellar in Books 6, 7, and 8. There is noticable improvement in "Winter's Heart" ... but that's a 1500 pages away. In the meantime, things do move here, and if you have read 1-4, be prepared for a surprise by the end.
Rating:
Summary: This Wheel Turns Too Slowly
Review: There is a recurring theme in all of the reviews of the Wheel of Time books - eventually, it seems, reviewers become fed up with the slow pace and aggravating main characters and give up, with more giving up the further along in the series they go. I'm probably at that point now. Fires of Heaven has a remarkable ending, one that gets the adrenalin flowing, but reaching that end is a long, tedious slog. Fully half of the novel - the half featuring the mind-numbing adventures of Nynaeve and Elayne - is barely readable. The portions with Rand are much better than in the previous book, but are too frequently interrupted by more of the Wimpy Women to be fully enjoyed. It is not that Jordan cannot write women . . . well, okay, he can't, but some of the best moments of Fires of Heaven come when he lets us inside the heads of Min and Siuan Sanche. But far too often the women characters spend their time complaining about men, only to place themselves in situations where men have to rescue them, all the while obsessing over how much cleavage or leg they or other women are showing. It's cute for the first few hundred pages of the first book. By the time one hits page 4000 in the series, however, it is a complete turn-off. It took two weeks to muddle through the thousand pages of this one (and only two hours to get through the last two hundred). It is a serious question whether book six will be worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: War, Magic, and Turning Points
Review: The Wheel of Time is probably the best-known and most widely read fantasy series other than The Lord of the Rings.
When book one (The Eye of The World) was published in 1988 or 1989, it created a sensation -- a tremendous first volume that had the usual good-evil battle and tons of action but also was filled with magic, history, politics, sociology, cultural background and realistic characters. When I re-read the first five books, I was amazed at the details of history and politics that Jordan provided in his world. Jordan also has numerous protagonists, not just one or two primary ones like many other fantasy writers. Moreover, the series features strong men and, through their magical abilities and powerful personalities, stronger women. Jordan has been rightly lauded for the prominent and powerful roles he created for the female characters. The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven followed and created a tremendous series such that The New York Times noted that Jordan had come to dominate the genre that Tolkien made famous. The Fires of Heaven is the most action-packed book of the series, with few dull moments and an explosive ending. The various protagonists continue their development, especially Mat (as a war commander) and Egwene. Rand continues to be pulled in many directions, but needs some help from his allies to survive. Nonetheless, this book is NOT a preview of things to come -- The Fires of Heaven's plot twists near the end (especially the most important one that would be a HUGE spoiler) are barely examined in books 6-9. Unfortunately, starting with Lord of Chaos (book 6), Jordan's creation became unwieldy. Instead of concentrating on following the themes and story-threads of books 1-5 (which combined are more than 3500 pages, hardcover), he created new storylines, bogged down the narrative and halted the pace of the epic. Book 8 in particular is an unmitigated disaster -- 650 pages (hardcover) with almost no progress to the story. Book 9 began to jump-start the narrative once again. The series is at 10 books (the tenth will be published in January 2003) and growing (13 total possible -- it's a common numerical theme in the books), thus the last volume will be published in 2006, at the earliest. Other than the final chapters of Lord of Chaos (book 6), this is the last of the good WoT books published to date. The Fires of Heaven is the blood-and-guts installment -- it has the highest body count, much war, scheming, conquest, hunting the evildoers, a couple of surprises and a fiery finish (hence the name). By the time you read this volume, you will most likely be addicted to the series as a whole; but if you hadn't made it this far, be forewarned that the pace, storyline, action and development slow down considerably in books 6-8.
Rating:
Summary: The Last Great Wheel of Time Book
Review: Ah . . . if only Robert Jordan could go back to the end of this novel and we could forget what came after. This is the last installment of The Wheel of Time which truly engaged, surprised and excited. The thousands of potboiling pages which follow "The Fires of Heaven" are not horrible, but here is the last time all the characters had depth and complexity, not just melodrama. Read here and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Best Fantasy Collection Ever Written
Review: I have been reading the Wheel of Time series since the first book came out and this is my favorite series ever. However, it's not for everyone. Jordan is probably the most descriptive writer I have ever read and he will describe everything he possibly can in one situation in order to set the mood properly. This makes his books, and the chapters, very long. Some people don't like long and descriptive, elaborate writing like this, I do, and I believe that Robert Jordan is the best author I have ever read. Read the series in order, starting from the first book, and it will make a lot more sense and be much more enjoyable reading. I've gone back and read all of them over again at least twice.
Rating:
Summary: 1000 pages in the life of the Aiel
Review: This book is long. I don't like starting any kind of review like that, it simply states the facts. It is a series for people who like long, descriptive books. Still, most long descriptive books contain action. For most of this book, I was waiting for the events of the previous book, which was incredible, to be followed up on. There were the accepted on their journey after the Black Ajah, there was the new army in the Two Rivers, and there was Egwene learning about dreams. None of that was resolved until the next book. Instead, this is all about Rand travelling with the Aiel, occassionally stopping on the increasingly uninteresting travels of Nynaeve and Elayne. Still, all of that changes suddenly, when the book pull an about face, and a memorable battle occurs, leaving a suprising number of victories for the ta'varen. Like any good journey, the Wheel of Time Books are long and tedious, but the end is always worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Enough Already!!
Review: I've been more than patient with Robert Jordan. I enjoyed the first 3 books of this series. But now (especially in this book) the plot has stalled, the characters aren't expanding or developing, and Nynaeve has 'tugged her braid' so much she should be bald right about now. Maybe I'll check in again after I'm convinced the author intends to finish the series instead of writing thousands of pages of same ol' same ol'.
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