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Women's Fiction
The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time, Book 8)

The Path of Daggers (The Wheel of Time, Book 8)

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Jordan, The L. Ron Hubbard of the 1990s
Review: First off, anyone who calls Robert Jordan's books literature is an idiot. Tolstoy is literature, this is just a mid-range fantasy series.

That out of the way, I just wanted to raise my voice and register my protest about this book. The wait was too long and the product was boring and went nowhere. Reading this book is like watching a sixteen hour soap opera. Jordan seems afraid to get into the meat of the conflicts and so he delays and hems and haws about meaningless, boring, details.

I think this book (and recent developments, like the wheel of time video game) go to show that Jordan is going for money over art. He is milking this series for all its worth.

The worst part is that I will probably keep buying the books... Actually, if the next book is as bad as this one (and how could it be) I will stop reading the series.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Necessary Ebb in the Flow of a Great Long Story
Review: I've been reading a lot of the comments of other readers of WOT saying that Path of Daggers sucks. I think those who are true fans of this series need to look at this installment again. Granted, it does move slowly, and I agree that there are too many women tugging their brades. But a story this long cannot always be moving 100% full force forward. Besides, this is a good book, especially the development of the Asha'men and Cadsuane. It was very intersting to me that the next to the last chapter was titled "Beginnings." So for you who hated this one, the next will undoubtably be everything you're looking for in action packed adventures.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: All of the books up to this one were great.
Review: It builds great characters and has powerful imagery. A must have. It is a little confusing at first but keep with it (there is an index in the back of the book if ya get lost). I suggest you read the previous books first though.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Seven course meal, no entree
Review: Robert Jordan's Path of Daggers lacks motion. While some may claim that the one-book-a-year spacing of the books contributes to a perceived slow-down, it's more likely a matter of pacing.

From the outset of Daggers, the reader is not brought into the story. Instead, we are given bits and pieces of a seven-course dinner, but we never get to the entrée. This creates a sense of forced movement. Had we seen a climactic dénouement as we have seen in earlier works, we might have excused the yawn-fest we had to endure through half the book.

The solution to the weather problems came too easily. After searching for months for the Bowl of Winds, the actual use of it was anti-climactic at best. There was no struggle, no tension in solving the problem. As well, the playful bantering and quibbling among the women in the novel, which may be intended to replace a better conflict, is beginning to wear tediously thin. Jordan's readers will not be surprised if Nynaeve is bald by the end of the series.

Further, Jordan's handling of the second Seanchan invasion occurred in rather mysterious fashion. Gone were the descriptive narratives that highlighted earlier battle scenes. Other than Rand getting knocked down, where was the fighting? This scenario was handled from an observer's point of view, not a participant. Even Thom Merrilin would lose interest in Stones if all he ever got were results. We want to be taken into battle, not given a report on its outcome.

By the end of the novel, the slow-paced, uneventful history leaves the reader hungering for more action and mystery. We can only hope that by the time book nine comes out, we still have an appetite. Of course, we will read the series through to the end. Jordan's readers have invested too much of ourselves not to. We only ask that he finish the series, too.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good middle-of-the-series writing
Review: I read Path of Daggers in under a week (despite work and family). Like all of Robert Jordan's efforts to this point, it was enthralling and hard to put down. I was disappointed that it ended so soon, and introduced more questions than answers, but that's the way of a story teller - keep the hook in, keep you guessing. Yes, I had hoped that there would be more about some characters, more bringing the disparate plot lines together, but the character development and the number of separate lines Mr. Jordan has to keep straight and bring together at the end hint of a spectacular finish. Those of you who didn't like it, quit whining! If he had to write the omnibus 3000-page volume that you seem to want, answering every question (or worse, a stripped down "action" version), we'd all be waiting 5 years between volumes. If it gets to be too much, read some Terry Pratchett and get your sense of humor back.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Actually two hundred pages short!
Review: TPoD is the most disappointing of the WoT series because it had potential that did not get realized. The Rebels v. the Red Tower, the Black Tower v. the Aes Sedai, the unification of the Borderlands under the Dragon banner, the (probable) abduction of Mat to Seanchan; all these plotlines were left dangling but at least some should have and could have been, to a degree, resolved. This chapter also had the weakest ending of any of the WoT books, weaker even than ACoS. If you're going to write the longest fantasy epic ever, put some more meat in it as we head (hopefully) toward a conclusion.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a neccessary but sometimes tedious book
Review: jordan is taking his time. be thankful. if in 6-8 years when this series is completed you can look back and still crticize the slow pace of the past two novels then all you one, two and three star people may have been right. if all twelve books followed along at the same pace, which is to say rather intense, there would have been no room for climax. we have to remember the gigantic, the absolutly huge world that Jordan has constructed. there are huge shifts in the balance of power constantly, the plotting and the counterplotting is equal to the complexity of our own world at times. remember that jordan is not giving one point of view in his novels but many, maybe even dozens. all these intrigues, all the plot lines need to be brought together in a coherent fashion. so i say again give him time and uunderstand the context of the novel. further, anybody who has read the books this far has experienced a phenomenal amount of character development. whether your favorite is rand, perrin, mat, egwene, or even nynaeve you realize that Jordan needed to slow the pace down a little to let his characters develop. even it all takes lace in one week. we saw the turnig point events that change and develop the characters correctly--meaning consistently. we would all hate jordan if in book six rand was relativly normal and almost sane and then in book seven if he was a raving lunatic whose paranoia had gained the better of him. jordan is allowing us to see the struggles of his characters. hopefully the ending will justify the means. be patient and show the man more respect. he knows what he's doing. i hope. (that's why four stars as opposed to five--even i have doubts)

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: All I can say is WTF.
Review: I have been reading the WOT books from when they started and its been 9 years now. I still love the books and yes I will buy the next one. But I also buy trash novels because I am hooked on them. I dont want to think of the WOT as trash novels but a 2 year wait for this!!!!!! Meanwhile having to subsist on is mediocre Fallon books. What are you doing to us Robert Jordan? I am a majorly disapointed fan. Maybe a I year wait I could take, but no, you have to do less interesting books and make all of your fans wait. In closing I would like to say that this book traveled nowhere.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: Whine, whine, whine. Those who give Jordan's A Path of Daggers one star fail to remember that it is Jordan's world, and the reader is a visitor. What the reader WANTS to happen is completely irrelevant. "Give us more Mat!" you scream. And when the next title is devoted to Mat, you'll rant and rave that Jordan didn't touch upon Bela enough. Move on, I say! If you don't like what's happening, stop buying the series. The problem is, you can't, because you're hooked. Thus, Jordan is doing his job after all.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Lost, and wandering in circles.
Review: With Path of Daggers the last in the list of titles for a very long time, I thought that this would be the climax. I think the author is lost, and wandering in circles. Major disappointment!


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