Rating: 
Summary: Makes you crave for the remaining books
Review: Great sequel to the best fantasy epic I have ever read. Can't wait for the remaining parts. Jordan is a master in creating characters and making you love them, hate them, and think about them whether you are reading one of his books or just going about your day.
Rating: 
Summary: Some Resolution of Long Running Themes
Review: I was happy to see that some things are progressing in this volume. However, some themes are dropped in the middle as has been the case in most of the recent books. A couple of the many plot lines are hardly even touched on. It certainly is difficult to wait two years for each new volume and then only get this much out of it.Again, more resolution happens in this book than the previous three or four books in my reckonning. Happy reading! I just wish it were all done so we could read it all as one story at once - such a great overall epoch with memorable characters and complex relationships and plot lines.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, Something Happens
Review: After the bewildering nightmare of miring plotlines that we have all been suffering through in the last few books, Winter's Heart was a pleasant surprise. Instead of reading it because I had to, as I had been recently, I found myself reading a spellbinding page-turner. For the first time in ages, all three of the ta'veren had something significant to do, with only Egwene left out of the action. Even Egwene's relative absence didn't bother me much, since I have grown a little tired of Aes Sedai maneuvering. Mat's bits were, of course, the highlight of the book. My only regret was not seeing Perrin tear into the Shaido. I even started liking Rand again. That in itself is a miracle. More like this, please, Mr. Jordan
Rating:
Summary: Welcome back RJ
Review: I have to say, He's baaaack. After muddling through books 7 & 8, the story line came back to what had me enthralled with the first five books. I read the book in three sittings including a flight to Texas to visit my daughter who is also reading the series.The original main characters have returned to the lime light. They are again playing major roles, and it seems that all the loose ends will soon be tied up. I hope Moiraine Sedai returns.
Rating: 
Summary: Deja vu
Review: I am slowly starting to wonder if RJ is still writing the Wheel of Time Series or has a ghost writer taken over? Books 1-5, maybe even 6 were top drawer. RJ pained his world in bold strokes, we got detailed descriptions, the main characters were developed, the story clearly progressed. Most important of all, these books gripped the reader; it was a real struggle to lay them aside for food or rest! After that, some taint (!) seems to have struck down the writer. The pace of events has become glacially slow, the plot line seems to meander in a sluggish maze, the very quality of the writing seems to have become sloppy. The characters do not grow and develop further; instead they seem almost to regress. What happened to the RJ who wrote that fascinating time slice view of Aiel history, who expounded the meaning of ji'-e-toh, who described for us the testing of the Accepted? One gets the feeling that Tor and RJ are taking the readership for granted. Take the size of each new volume. Picking up #9, it feels as long as the earlier ones. But look again at the typeface and you realize that #9 for instance is barely 70% as long as Book 1. This tactic was apparent in Book #8 as well and has been repeated in #9. In fact, Books 7-8-9 could easily be boiled down to one of maybe two at most. But three books earn more royalties than two I realize. The impact of this reduction in size is also apparent on the plotlines. Earlier, RJ could keep his sub-plots under control as the length of the book gave him enough leeway to sort them out. Now with the book size reduced, he no longer has the room to sort out the sub-plots, leaving messy loose ends. As a result, the main plot line suffers in the sea of sub-plots and cannot progress. Book 8 ended with Egwene's Aes Sedai and Gareth Bryne's army poised to attack Tar Valon. Now in Book 9 we find that the army is not yet half as big as it needs to be for this task! In fact Book 9 has absolutely no mention of the Salidar Aes Sedai. Where is the continuity? Perrin appears for a few brief pages in the beginning of Book 9 and disappears, leaving us no wiser about his fate than after Book 8. By the end of Book 9, Mat has barely started his escape from Ebou Dar; Book 8 ended with him trapped there! Huge discontinuities start to tear the fabric. Suddenly Rand appears in Far Madding but why exactly will he find the apostate Ashaman here rather than anywhere else? No idea. Suddenly, almost in passing we confirm our suspicions as to the former identities of Cyndane and Moridin. RJ spelled out Moghedien's leashing for us but not a word on how Aginor, Balthamel, Ishamael or Lanfear got their new lease of life. For that matter, if Moridin is Nae'blis, how come Mesaana and Semirhage don't even bother to acknowledge him, far less take orders from him? Rand apparently went to Far Madding to deal with the renegade Ashaman, then suddenly, out of the blue, he announces that he will cleanse the taint on saidin. How did he learn how to do that? Was it Herid Fel's undisclosed clue? How did he know to use the choedan kal for this purpose? For that matter just what exactly does he do to remove the taint? No idea. At the finale, the taint is cleansed, but apart from Aginor, what happens to the other defeated Forsaken? Blank. Apart from the story elements, again Book 9 sticks with the same old old hackneyed map, has no proper recap of the immediate past and the wretched excuse for a glossary is so paltry that I wonder why RJ bothered with it at all, except maybe to get 6 more pages. I think it would be instructive for Tor / RJ to run an analysis of sales of each book in the series. I will stick my neck out and predict that the earlier volumes sold more in hardcover as well as paperback to individuals, the last two will have been bought by proportionally less individuals and more by libraries. Many of RJ's readers, who earlier would have given his WOT books pride of place on their bookshelf are getting disillusioned and falling back on the public library. You see Mr. J., we are hooked and we do want to know how the saga pans out, but we will not throw good money after bad. Wake up and smell the coffee please. The people criticizing you on this page are not fools, we are the same ones who praised your earlier work and who are saddened by the deterioration. Please stop taking us for granted - I'm assuming you do occasionally visit these feedback pages and care what your readers think.
Rating: 
Summary: Is there a cliff notes version???? Please
Review: In all my years of reading, I have come to the conclusion that no writter is capable of keeping a story going longer than 3 books. I don't know if I will be able to finish this one. It has so many meaningless plots and characters that its impossible to keep up with what's going on. And in a lot of parts there is a lot of dialog or whatever and nothing happens. Parts of the book seem to exist that should have been removed by an editor. What I would love to know is, where was Jordan going early on. Did he loose the original idea? Anyway, I'm sorry to say. Don't buy this book. If you have to read it. Go to a library or borrow it from some poor fool who bought it like me...
Rating:
Summary: Highly Satisfying Wheel of Time book!
Review: I don't know what has caused so many people to leave poor reviews for Winter's Heart, but I finished this book last night and thought it was the most satisfying Wheel of Time book that RJ has put out in a while. Everybody wants to see this series wrapped up as soon as possible -- but why? It's obious that Jordan doesn't want to go on forever with the story, but he's happy to take his time with it, creating a story that with a depth of detail that is almost never found in works of this size. And Book 9 contains some material that is among the most satisfying in the series. I'll give you all this much -- if you don't love the characters, you can't love the Wheel. It's true that this series does not move fast enough to be loved on plot alone. And Jordan wouldn't want you to. Maybe it's because I'm not as big a fan of fantasy as I am simply of good literature, but every book in this series gets deeper and more beautifully written. And on top of all that, the plot of this one is good! Winter's Heart is an A+ in my book.
Rating:
Summary: Best not to waste your money or your time
Review: Let's get one thing straight...NOTHING happens in this book. You've probably read that Jordan ties up a few loose ends in this book, but it's not true. Let's see...Perrin? Nothing. Mat? Oh, he takes up a lot of the book, but he never does anything...and I mean NOTHING. Elayne? Nope. Egwene...was she even in the book? Nynaeve? She seems to pull her braid less often, but that's it. Cadsuane? Let's be honest...Jordan regretting killing off Moraine 2000 pages ago and conjured Cadsuane up as a replacement...she's boring, shallow, and predictable, and, by the way, does nothing in this book either. And what about Rand? OK...besides falling in love, he accomplishes one thing...after spending 640 pages doing nothing but sitting on his couch, he spends 9 pages trying to do something he should have tried two books ago. As for the bad guys...if there is one fictional setting in fantasy writing that I would want to be the protagonist in, it the WoT books because the bad guys clearly sit around doing nothing all day. Total time devoted to Forsaken is less than 10 pages. I hate to say this. Understand that I loved the first three books and enjoyed to next two or three. For a period of time, I enjoyed no other author more. But after many years, I now realize that it's time to give this series up. Maybe I will come back to it in ten years when it is being wrapped up (or will it be 20 years?), but I will not waste my money on a new hardback or my time on this asinine plot any longer. I advise you to do the same.
Rating:
Summary: Good fiction for the capable mind
Review: Jordan gives us all our favorite characters this time around. This is a much better continuation than the last book. Some conclusions to long anticipated events take place, but not enough to finish the story. It is evident that Jordan is wrapping the story up at long last and is leading us to the last battle. Clearly from the bad reviews there have been a number of readers with a sitcom length attention span, expecting a quick wrap up. Robert Jordan skillfully uses classical hero legends and weaves a complex story containing many pieces of our real world. The plots and sub plots are beginning to gel and lead into the end. If you can stretch your brain to encompass his complex macro cosmos and appreciate attention to detail then you will like the Wheel of Time series. Jordan leaves no stone unturned. He sees the value of the stories within the story. His only downfalls are he uses far too many characters, who become difficult to track in the time between books, and he uses travel as a means of moving a story along too heavily.
Rating:
Summary: Winter's Heart Continues The Tradition
Review: Winter's Heart continues the tradition of the Wheel Of Time series. Whilst Jordan has been critised for his writing style, to each his own and especialy his readers! Jordan has stayed faithful to his characters and whilst introducing some new ones he has again reintroduced characters that we thought were past. Jordan's style is not for everyone, but those who enjoy his work would I'm sure apreciate the magnitude of the universe and his attempts to create a world which appears to have a tangible history and exsistance. I applaude Jordan for his effort to keep the characters rolling along at a steady pace, but have reviewed this installment lower than the preecding books because whilst I like his style, I feel that perhaps with the end of the series assuredly just over the rise, Jordan should perhaps increase the pace slightly and included at least one more confrontation. But more importantly Book 9 should have been released sooner than this! To wait too long between chapters is dangerous and can be alienating to some for the perceived idea that the author is trying to 'cash in' too much so to speak by releasing ancillary titles. I belive and hope that Jordan will release book 10 sooner rather than later!
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