Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book, not near as good as the others though!!!
Review: CoS was a bit of a let down from the rest of the WoT series, but I enjoyed it. Now, Mr. JOrdan BETTER get the next published soon!!! It would be a MAJOR let down to have the series end without reaching the last battle. I've just finished the whole series in the last month, and I don't know what I'm going to read next, or even if I'll be able to read (they were that good).
Rating: 
Summary: Part soap opera, part kids cartoon
Review: Jordan slips further behind the true masters of the genre with this book. A HUGE scene involving Egwene conniving her way slowly into more power could have been cut to ribbons in order to restore the pace and development of the first four books. The same with pointless scenes such as the bath, or the endless details as to irrelevant minutae of characters lives. The first four books were NOT like this, and one gets the feeling that Jordan may be trying to stretch such plot as he has left into as many books as possible. The women? A description of Myrdraal from LOC describes Jordans women fitly : "As alike as though cast in one mould". They have become like thinking, like talking, like acting, annoying cliches. They were alright early on but are showing signs of being too stretched, too generally tired. And the endings : each book ends with the good guys win, the bad guys lose. For an adults book, that is VERY superficial, and reminds me of cartoons I used to watch as a kid. It fails to represent the tragedy of war, and the strength of evil. Just once I would like to see an evil guys plan actually work (gasp!). As it is, as soon as one is revealed there is no excitement watching it unfold because you know it will fail : it always does. Many fantasy books achieve very powerful moments when developed good guys die fighting for their cause. But no, all the developed good guys follow a pattern : start single, have romance, win battles, all survive and presumably live fairytale lives. That is where its headed now, but I hope it can find some less predictable developments before it is too late.
Rating: 
Summary: WOT was once great........
Review: Between September of 1994 and before the end of february of 1995, I read the first six books. They were amazing!! I loved them!! I loved the characters, the world, and EVERYTHING in them!!!! Then, just over a year later, this came out. I waited year for the eighth book, so i could read them together, but it never came out, so i read a crown of swords. Unfortunately, I understood very little of anything that was going on. And now, another year later, the next book still isnt out. Robert Jordan has created an amazing series, but he has gotten too carried away. There are too many plots, subplots, character, lands, peoples. In short, he has created his own little world. It might have worked, and if you decide to read this series, read it all together, but RJ spends way too much time between books. And unfortunately for him, a readers interest cannont be sustained for 10 or so years when there are other authors who atleast give 1 book a year, and they create amazing worlds too. At one time, for books 1-4, this story was unbelievable. In books 5 it slipped, and in Lord of Chaos, it slipped even further. The end of Lord of Chaos made the entire book worth while, though. However, a Crown of Sword has absoutely nothing of value in it. The is so much in this series, and so many things start to happen, you stop caring about each individual event. And individual events are what books are based on. In short, I am likely going to continue to read this series, but only when it is completed, and then i will start from the beginning, and see if i can recapture the love i once had for this series.
Rating:
Summary: I loved the Wheel of Time.
Review: To keep it short, there are too many characters doing too little in the story.It lacks the motion of the first books and is clogged down in too much detail. I think the writer fell in love with his own characters and somehow lost track of a great story he was trying to tell.
Rating:
Summary: Can't wait for Vol 8
Review: Great book. I was sorry when it was finished. Can't wait to get my hands on the next installment. I would recommend this series for all. Read every book 3x.
Rating:
Summary: Series has become a soap opera, and not a good one at that
Review: This book is just a continuation of a plot which has been inane at least since book 5. Some previous reviews raved about the superb characterization which even the likes of Tolkein could not achieve. I guess I agree that he has done a fair share of characterization, although there seem to be many duplicate characters in the story, and all of the characters come across as 10 year olds trapped in large bodies. Before even reading the information about the author, I could tell that he was a male war veteran, because of the chauvenistic description of intergender relations, as well as the decent description of warfare and bias towards physical appearance in judging a characters worth. Nynaeve, Morgase, Moiraine, and the women Forsaken seemed the most independent females in the series at its inception, yet now they have either become simpering whining subservient lovers, the epitome of evil, or "dead." As for comparing Jordan to Tolkein, Tolkein was clearly a scholar of unparalelled skill in the subtleties of symbolism in characterization, which is evident in his revolutionary essay on Beowulf. If you need someone to pound characterization into you because you are too lazy to study and examine the intricacies of the characters yourself, then RJ is the perfect person for the job. Tolkein was a master of subtlely, so if you examine and think, you will see that he created much richer and realistic personas than RJ's,not to mention more taseteful ones. RJ is not a master of characterization, he's not even a good characterizer, and is worse in this book than in any of its predecessors. For good characterization, read Tolkein, Charles Dickens while you're at it, and then spend the time to open a critical eye on their works. As for the flippant horrid 90210esque plot, a long tangled plot can be interesting if everything an integral part of the work. RJ's plot certainly does not fall into this category, as can be seen by the fact that he could have dispensed with the whole search for the weather bowl, and most of A Crown of Swords in the process. He is lacking something called artistic unity, not suprising for someone who is the John Grisham of Fantasy, and has little talent as an artist on the whole. People may say I could just have burned his books and never read them again, and I agree. However, he wasted my time in the first place, especially by misleading me into thinking that he was a decent writer at the beginning of the series, and I hold my time valuable. In all, this is one of the biggest time-waster reads of the past year, and if you don't like to waste your time, I recommend skipping this book and probably the rest of the series at this rate.
Rating:
Summary: The Wheel of Time Badly Needs an Alignment
Review: Judging from the stack of reviews, there's no middle ground. Either the reviewers want to crown Jordan "King of Fantasy" or they want to abandon him for his betrayal of the promise shown in the first books of this series. I stand in the latter group. For all of those reviewers who gave this a 10, try reading George RR Martin's "A Game of Thrones" to see how a well written story is crafted. Having once been an enthusiasitc devotee, I cannot believe how rudderless this story has become. Subplots and multiple character perspectives once gave depth and texture, now they bore and irritate. There are fundamentals of story telling like pacing and balance that have been cast aside while RJ belabors every loose thread of the pattern. The dialog has become repetitive and the characters wholly predictable. Nothing moves forward until the very end, when, with the sudden realization that he better deliver some bang for the readers' bucks, he has Rand face off with a Forsaken and the Seanchan arrive in true deus-ex-machina fashion.
After book six, I vowed to wait until the paperback comes out. For book eight, I'll go to the library.
This Wheel of Time badly needs an alignment.
Rating:
Summary: Second reading and disillusion sets in
Review: I was disappointed in the seventh book the first time. Now I can't even read it through. It's very hard for a former Robert Jordan maniac to admit that I've gotten over a world I've been in love with for almost two years. First of all there's the slow disintegration of character. You don't notice it the first time - or even the second. But then it seeps in. I LOVED Nynaeve in the first book. I still liked her in the second. In the third I got a little annoyed. By the fifth, she had turned into a braid pulling, futile little baby, which seems to be a trend for the rest of the females in the series. I still like Elayne, though I wonder how long that will last. Min....forget it. And did you notice that every single woman in power has been lowered? Morgase does nothing but feel her heart pound when Tallanvor comes near, Siuan cleans Gareth Bryne's shirts. Min simpers for Rand....Is it my imagination, or is something seriously wrong here?
As for plot. Yup, good old plot. Remember that something like that used to exist? Remember when once-upon -a-time what happened in the books made a difference? I mean, it actually led somewhere *gasp*. Does anyone remember Slayer? Or Luc? Or Mazrim Taim? Or Demandred? Does anyone remember when something more meaningful happened rather then "The Bath"?
And I'm sick and tired of hearing how guilty Rand is feeling all the time. Or how Perrin is too obtuse to know how to deal with his wife (though Faile is one of the biggest pains in history). While it made me like them the first time, I can now repeat every single one of their speeches after seeing one word. You just have to guess if its the "I'm so guilty and the mountain is awfully heavy" or "why are they bowing to me I'm just a farm boy" or my very favorite - lets not forget it- "Are All Women Crazy" and "I'm Never Going To Understand Women." That's no surprise, considering the author doesn't. And considering the fact that these women's main goals in life seems to be to confuse the men (except when they're thinking about how gorgeous they are). I mean, after all, what else does a girl have to do with her life?!
I don't consider myself a radical feminist, but I've had enough. I'm planning to give the eighth book a chance, if only for old times sake (it IS hard to drop an obsession), but if it repeats the pattern, I'm going to get rid of every Robert Jordan I have, and be ashamed of ever having read this junk. Some holes in a pattern can't be repaired.
Rating:
Summary: Look at the big picture
Review: I have read all the books in Jordan's series. Now i admit, that while ACoS was a little dissapointing, a lot of very important things happened that needed to happen. I think that those who complain about it being too long should just drop the series, because we all know he's at lesast 2 books away from completion. There is too much to cover. For those who thought there wasn't any plot...my only answer is that you are so used to reading simple books, that when a complex series comes along, you're left gaping. The thing i like most about jordan is how he has hundreds of subplots running, all a part of the main plot in small ways. Some have said that you could skip reading this book, or that jordan could have tacked it onto the end of the last book. I think that if he had tacked it onto the end of the last book, when A path of daggers came out, you would be complaining and whining about how confusing it was, and how he just jumped into stuff with no warning. Doubtless, you'd complain that aPoD needed more information to flesh it out. I just have one more thing to say to those who didn't like it. DON'T READ ANY MORE. if you thought it was too long, or not interesting, or if you couldn't find the plot, then burn the books, and never even think of RJ again. But i bet you couldn't do it.
Rating:
Summary: Hooray for RJ!!!!!!
Review: I am 12 years old and I started reading the Wheel of Time last October. To put it in three words: I got HOOKED! I finished ACoS a month ago, and I thought it was fantastic! If some of the sex scenes shocked me at first, there IS a reason that the books are in the adult section for fantasy. I don't see why some people are saying that nothing is happening in the book and that it's all a bore. Are you kidding me? Nynaeve married LAN! Rand killed one of the Forsaken! (I think that some people are taking killing one of the Forsaken too lightly). And for those people who think that the book is too long, don't read it, and for those of you who are complaining about how you totally busted all your money on this: did you ever hear of a library?? There was one person who wrote an online review of ACoS who said for Ariod to take a nap or something. Well, I totally back you up. If people think this book is too long and can't enjoy the details that make the book all the more descriptive and wonderful, it seems we've found the people who have the VERY short attention spans-By the way, I really think that the 1 and 2 reviews of the book were really uncalled for-I, for one, am not one of those people. I've enjoyed your series, RJ, keep those Light-blessed books comin'!!!
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