Rating: Summary: Devastatingly boring, too many plots and not a single spark. Review: How do I start, first Robert seems to think that his dedicated readers need to be retold old descriptions and character traits. Please, please, Robert do not bore us we love the series and if a new person is silly enough to start reading at book eight and not book one then he/she deserves to be lost! I was completely lost in this book, there were too many storylines going on with no substance to them. The battle scene, the few that were in the book, were quick and over before you knew what was happening. The drool and petty politics was enough to put a raging bull to sleep. An important character was never even introduced, Matt, and he is a key player. I had to go back to book seven to see if perhaps he had died and I missed it! Where was the Evil One? Was he relaxing on a tropical island with his minions for the couple of weeks that went in the book? Drinking some tropical concoctions no doubt. I would recommend that you wait for this particular book to come out in paperback, then wait for your local library to purchase it and then borrow it and read it save your dollars for a Extra Value Meal or Gas or something worthwhile. I am too hooked to stop buying but swear that if the next book, hopefully out before the year 2005, another gripe for another time, is as bad as book eight then I will stop and start reading Terry Goodkind's series.jim email me if you have further comments kurock@eagle1st.com
Rating: Summary: Jordan's done better. Review: Jordan seems to be facing several problems right now. He seems to be working hard to establish several situations which (hopefully) will pay off in the next book or two. Unfortunately, they don't pay off now. The Seanchan invade. Egwene prepares to fight the tower. Rand struggles with his sanity while facing terrible choices between what he wants to do and what he needs to do to survive. The Dark One prepares to attack. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Been there, done that. The really sad thing is Jordan's recent prequel novella, "New Spring," published in Legends, managed to push the plot further ahead. Want to know how firmly entrenched the Black Ajah really is? What was the question only Moraine could answer for Lan? What happened to the other Malkieri survivors? What is Cadsuane after? Who might that new forsaken in POD be? If you want a lot of fight sequences and a bit of plotting and angst, read Path of Daggers. If you want to know what's going on, read New Spring.
Rating: Summary: Get back on track! Review: When I read the first 4 books in the series, I realized that Robert Jordan is the best writer ever! But after that, each of the books has gotten worse, and finally, Path of Daggers is the worst of the bunch. In this book, Robert Jordan realized that anything with his name on it would be a bestseller, so he wrote a bunch of garbage and put it on the shelf, but he made the ending a cliffhanger so that we would buy the next book he writes! Unless Robert Jordan starts writing again instead of just trying to make a bunch of money, his readers will stop buying his books. -Luke Janes
Rating: Summary: Moving characters around without enough plot Review: This was a major disappointment after a long wait. I had reread the prior books while waiting for this one, and once again appreciated what a great series this has been. But this one -- very little happens beyond bickering and moving from place to place. Keeping up with this many characters doing very little is wearying rather than enjoyable. Leaving out Mat is inexplicable -- one of the three t'averen. Robert Jordan is seriously risking the readership and reputation he has built up -- he needs to do some serious editing and get rid of the bloat. Show us through events; don't endlessly tell us details with little happening. This is an action fantasy, not Proust.
Rating: Summary: All of this book COULD have been written in 3 pages Review: When you have to wait roughly two years for a book and then, because you are hooked on the series, cough up enough money for the hard cover, it may as well contain something of a story. Oh sure there is plot and interesting events and revelations but where are the characters that made the series so popular in the first few of the books. If you follow the story you could use this book as a handbook to politics of WoT (part one). If the trend is to be followed, more political descriptions will have to occur. Maybe book nine? Possible title: The Various Promises Made by Mat in His Running For Mayor of Salidar: with a commentary by Mike Duffy (Canadian political commentator) The story is non-existant and the flow is choppy, so why didn't Jordan write this entire book like he did the battle for the white tower, as a summary with no conclusion. This entire book would be a chapter, leaving room for actual storytelling.
Rating: Summary: I enjoyed it! Review: I enjoyed reading this book. I only hope that Jordan comes out with the next installment in a more timely fashion.
Rating: Summary: Last nail in the coffin Review: Well, this book has to be the last nail in the coffin to finally bury this series into the deep grave. No words can describe how extremely BORING this wretched book is. I feel like I got rip off. One of the reasons many fans give this book low ratings is because nothing gets done or resolved. True, but one OTHER reason I'm beginning to hate not only this book, but Jordan's WHOLE series is his writing are becoming more immature and very very very very reptitive. Here's some Jordan's reptitive writing throughout eight books 1) Braid tugging 2)Aes Sedai's "cool" faces 3)Male bashing 4)Female are starting to become a nuisance 5)Male character seem dull and one dimensions. They all have the face and emotions of a "rock". 6)Jordan, enough of the slippers 7)Great detail on every possible thing that we don't really care about. PoD is 600+ pages of describing your own living room. Instead of simple details like chair colors, table angle, and size he tells a HISTORY of each single item humanly possible in extreme detail that it'll literally hurt your eyes just reading them let alone understanding what this page of garbage has anything to do to advance the plot. He tries way too hard. 8)Jordan believes in quantity not quality 9) Female character seem more interested in keeping their inferiority, looks, and reputations in line than The Last Battle. Go figure. Do they actually care about anything? I could go on and on, but lets not waste each others time and get right down to buisness. This series is falling and failing. Every single character we ever liked from the beginning of EotW has change for the worse. Aes Sedai once were power figures, now they are just a mere annoyance. The characters have change so much I personally don't care if they all die merciless. In fact, lets start with Nyneave and her stupid pathetic ugly braid. Then we move on to the horses. Another thing I notice that annoyed me was that no one ever dies in this series. Do they all live in a perfect word where only evil villains perish? Another boring aspect. If they do they come back one way or another as if Jordan is scared of losing them therefore there is absolutely no suspense. Terry Brooks, another great fanatsy author, have character that we like and love that were killed unexpectedly and one thing that touched me about his books is that I actually cared about the characters that were gone. I even feel sad to tears. Not in this series because, like I said, there're one-dimension characters that are too predictable. Its book 8 and we are still seeing the same face and attitude over and over again. Even worse he adds more one-dimensional characters. So now not only do we not care for them, but we can't even remember them. Trying to remember every character in WoT series is like trying to remember every single general ever fought in World War 2. Jordan made it so big its hard for readers to follow. If you notice most successful fantasy authors always have a short series with powerful endings (Tolkien, Brooks etc). Short and sweet like they used to say. As of right now I know that the ending of WoT is going to be cheap and very disappointed. Why? Because we stop caring. As for the last battle......Jordan doesn't even bother to take time in book 5 to describe what happens when the battle is commencing only AFTER so don't get your hopes up high when the last battle does come. Jordan is only good at boring stale jokes and give us boring stale annoying characters.
Rating: Summary: Awesome nothing else cuts it Review: This book is just spectacular. I've never read anything like it. The intriuge and plot twists make this one of the best of the series. But it involves many elements that a hardcore Jordan fan would not apreiciate. If you have not read the others in the series first it will completly boggle you. It is one of the harder ones in the series to understand but the novel is amazing. Read the whole series it is the best series ever in my opinion.
Rating: Summary: What Happened? Review: Did Jordan forget that Rand is supposed to be the principal player, or did he not mention Rand until chapter 13 because he is more intent on writing about the terrain and weather and bickering women instead of the storyline. Truly devastating to have to wait all this time, fork out the big dough to buy the hard bound edition, and get a book that did nothing for the WOT series. However bad this book, I have become addicted and will continue to read if it will bring closure to a wonderful storyline.
Rating: Summary: An excellent build up! Review: I think this book is alot better then some people give it credit for, it is obvious that the slow pace is intentional and the ending looking unfinished because it leaves on a cliff hanger for the next books with lots of stories building up ready to explode together in the next book.
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