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Winter's Heart

Winter's Heart

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

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I honestly don't remember 80% of the characters anymore.
Review: Like most people I have enjoyed this series since the beginning. However with each new volume coming out, I remember less and less of the previous characters. When you read the first few chapters and don't remember half of them, that's a problem. I guess I'm gonna have to go a re-read all of them before volume 10 arrives or I'm gonna be totally lost.

However, even if I didn't remember the characters, I did remember the overall plot, so I was very happy when the big, hairy, epic moments began happening. The cleansing of the male half of the magic was a loooooong time in coming. I was going to give this 3 stars, if it weren't for the last few chapters. The battle-royale between tons of characters was one of the best battle-sequences I have EVER read! I hope the next one has that same level of excitement!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Keep on plugging away
Review: My girlfriend bought this book for me for my birthday last year and I decided to re-read the entire series so that I could refresh everything in my mind before I read the most current installment.

In the course of the re-read I found myself getting just as excited in the first 5 or 6 books and then found the myself using that earlier momentum to plow through the last ones.

The series is truly excellent, the characters well defined with an amazing backstory but the end is long in coming. I enjoy the secondary plots that Jordan introduces but following these ancillary plotlines does not leave a lot of time to move forward the main characters, even in an 800 page book.

I'm in for the long haul and when the end does come I'll still think it was time well spent.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good book but lacking focus
Review: I love WoT, and this book for the most part was a good addition to the series. However, like many others I have found rambling to be the main detriment since probably book 6 or so. While having so many interesting plots sure makes for a very fleshed out world, they are tolling on the reader who wants to hear about the main story, who wants to see what hooked them to the story in the first place. Jordan's vision in the beginning was simple, the Dragon champions the Light, and will battle the Dark One in the Last Battle. The first books were dramatic and had a good pace, and were FOCUSED on this vision. Now the vision is dimmed, and we are left with a lot of political intrigue, slow story lines, and almost no action at all in the main plot. What we need from Jordan is a return to the vision, kill off all the subplots except Rand and Mat, (Perrin is boring, and shouldn't be a main feature IMO)with Rand bringing mankind together, and Mat bringing the Seanchan into the fold. The Dark One's presense needs to be made strong again. Has anyone seen a Trolloc lately? Myrddraal? Anything? Nope, and that needs to be addressed. The Forsaken have been so inept as well that the Last Battle seems a forgone conclusion. ... while the series has experienced stagnation, it is still among the best written, and Jordan still can make it one the best ever, he just needs to make the right decisions and cut the fat off the books.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Questions
Review: I just started rereading the series again recently, and just hit book 5. I have had the suspicion since the beginning, but now I am becoming more sure. I think that this series is not being written by the same person. Either this series is soooo long that the author (Robert Jordan if he exists) changes his writing style in each book and forgets what he wrote in the last one, or we have different writers working on the series. For example, many people have noticed how the series gets REALLY bad in book 5. I think this may mean that the original author's final book is book 4 and the new author(s) take over. There are also the noticable inconsistencies (which could be easily attributable to the length of the series if they weren't just so blatantly obvious!). For example, many of Min's viewing from book 1 never show up. Another big one that made me cringe: at the end of book 4, the Avendesora tree in Rhuidean only has one limb broken, but in the beginning of book 5 Avendesora is completely burnt. Also, Fain/Ordeith says he is going to go to Caemlyn to work his evil at the end of book 4, but at the beginning of book 5 he is in Tar Valon. As to the so-called "Robert Jordan", this is the main character of Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls"!; either a great pen-name or a cover for the many authors writing the series. Maybe I am wrong, and "Jordan" just went through one of the Mark Twain-Huck Finn type mid-work changes, or...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quit your whining...
Review: "Winter's Heart" significantly ties up such questions as the identities of Osan'gar, Aran'gar, Moridin and Cyndane and climaxes with the fate of the Ashaman and the Taint. It probably has the most significant plot developments that we've been waiting years for.

Honestly, I don't know why the reviews posted before this decided to knock "Winter's Heart." If you didn't enjoy Jordan's books since book 4 (which came out in 1993!) then why are you still reading them 8 years later? If you don't have the patience for this series then you shouldn't even be reading it. The man has created a great fantasy universe that doesn't resort to the cliched elf/dwarf/wizard stereotypes that STILL run rampant throughout the fantasy genre. If you are content with that method of storytelling then I recommend that you turn to Anne McCaffrey and her dragons and princesses and leave Jordan alone.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Wheel of Time Turns (on and on and on...)
Review: I did not find Jordan's latest offering as tedious as many reviewers seemed to, but I must say that there is now simply too much (and too little)going on: We have Perin wondering about, hunting the Shaido; Rand on a quest to cleanse the Source; Mat is sitting in Ebou Dar, planning his escape; and Elaine is flapping about in Caemlyn trying to secure her throne. These main plot strands, the huge number of sub-plots (sundry scheming Aes Sedai, the Black Tower, the Forsaken, Padan Fain, Isam, and so on), as well as the multiple changes of perspective, leave one a little frustrated. Perin is simply abandoned in the first third of the book, and Elaine is no closer to securing her hold on Andor when she leaves the stage(Jordan could really have cut down this particular portion). Jordan also leaves hanging the multiple sub-plots that are simply dropped in at the outset, and fails to pick up strands left hanging in the previous books (Egwene and her war with Elaida for instance). Generaly, the individual tales told book 9 are intersting, but the overall plot movement is glacial. I really wish that Jordan would churn out his books faster, or that he would write a monstrous 5000 page book that gets things back on track again! Also, I am (like many others, I'm sure) loosing track of many minor characters (especially the multitude of Aes Sedai who seem to be popping up everywhere): a detailed "Who's Who" in the glossary at the back would be incredibly useful!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Jordan delivers once again!
Review: I cannot say enough. You will not find a more engrosing read than a WoT book and Winter's Heart continues this brilliant epic. The Lord of the Rings may have claim to the Greatest Book of the Twentieth Century, but the Wheel of Time will surely have the benefit of being called the greatest story of the last two centuries and should be called the greatest fiction of all time. Not just because of its story, but it's detail, complexity and his brilliant use of language (which, might I add, is the only thing that does not quite match up to The Lord of the Rings but it is still pretty darn good). You will not find more enthrawling characters, characters that you will actually feel for and understand what they are experiencing. Some of them will be your next door neighbors. Someone that I know in my church is a watered-down version of Nynaeve and someone else I know is very much like Elayne.

On the other hand some people even women believe that RJ presents his females as bossy and hostile. There are a few, but for the most part he doesn't. You may know bossy, hostile people, but no one necessarily believes that everyone is the same whether they are men or women, so this is a very unfair complaint.

I told one of my friends that, when you read the novels, it seems like he understands women. She refused to believe me. Then she read the books and she actually told me I was right. If that is not good enough, I heard a story once about two who went to one of his books signings believing Robert Jordan was a woman's pen name.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Chapter With a Climax!
Review: I'm giving this volume such high praise simply for the presents of a tangible and verifiable climax. I cannot express how thrilled I was to have something to read towards in this series. Something happens that actually changes things. Sure I have my wishes as to where the story goes, but I'm not telling it, I'm reading it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: what happened??
Review: Its still hard to believe how the Wheel of Time series that started as one of the most promising fantasy series ever has become what it is now, an endless annoying soap opera with hundreds of flat characters who dominate 90 per cent of the books. Winters Heart only continued that way downwards although the main plot line finally moved a little when Rand cleansed Saidin (on the last 10 of 7 or 8 hundred pages) but altogether the story became even more unbearable. I almost stopped reading this book when I came to the part where everybody suspected that Perrin had an affair with Berelain. Unfortunately I decided to continue reading it but I won't make the same mistake twice!!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Too wordy, dull until last few chapters
Review: With Mr. Jordan's books coming out every 2 years, you need a photographic memory or his exploitative and encyclopedic "The World of Robert Jordan's the Wheel of Time" to get (back) into the series without being confused or too bored. I have truly enjoyed his Wheel of Time but....I think he got a little bogged down in Winter's Heart. There is some plot advancement but it plods until two-thirds of the way through. It did pick up at the end so that I was able to finally finish the book. Maybe the next will be better.


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