Winter's Heart

Rating:
Summary: Jordan is more driven by money than passion
Review: I have never felt the need to publicly critize someone, untill now. Jordan may be a good writer but none of us can hide forever what we really are. Somewhere between book 3 and now Mr. Jordan decided that by dragging on this story he could milk more cash out of it. It is truly sad, not because I will not read this series any more, but because Mr Jordan no longer has my respect as a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Shake that money maker..Please..
Review: Okay first of all this book gets 2 stars instead of one is mainly because it was slightly better than POD. I had so much hopes for this book that Jordan will get back to the days of the first 5 books, considering the criticism he received for POD and rightly so in my opinion, but alas it was too much to hope for. The dollar signs are embebded just too firmly in his eyes now, as he realises people who have actually bought nine books will definenetly buy the last 4 or 5. The experiment with the E-prologue is proof to that greed and milking of dedicated faithful fans.

Okay then the book wasnt all bad there were some enjoybable stuff there Mat's POV for one tho the whole thing with Tylin is so belaboured it makes me cringe. Rand was mostly ignored till the ending and besides sitting there with eyes glazed, in a trance, didnt contribute much else. The flipping of POV's from forsaken to forsaken was beyond shoddy. Some of the most powerful channlers turn up... and retreat, within two pages per forsaken. He could have done so much more with that scene. A whole 300 pages were wasted with Perrin and Faile POV's which could have been written in 10 pages, if you took out the filler. Apart from that there was the usual 400 pages of filler which we are now coming to expect from Jordan. Travelling, bickering, whining, sniffing, tugging etc.. There was all that still in there. An attempt to tie up a few lose ends from book 2/3 was made halfheartedly and failed miserably as no particular reasons were given and it didnt contribute to anything of the plot. I am sure that passage in the book was introduced mainly to actually tie up an end.

I am sorry to say Jordan has lost it. All the hardcore fans of Jordan who keep harping on about how good WH is , open your eyes and compare the last 3 books with the first 3. All transitions should be complete by now, all character developments done by book five, he should have started getting on with it from book 6 IMO. Noone can deny , how the last three books have slowed down to a crawl with nothing happening in them and how his writting has gotten wporse and worse. What for?? $$$$$$$$. that is the main motivation behind Jordan's writting now, to milk as much as possible from this never ending soap opra of a series.. Sad but true.

Rating:
Summary: Speeding up the story to it's former pace
Review: With Winter's Heart the story finally get's some action going again after the dissapointingly slow book no eight, Path of Daggers. A lot of questions from previous books which were left unanswered in book eight got answered at last and a set of new conspiracies were cast off. How the auhtor is planning to bring this all together in the final book no ten will be interesting to see. Let's hope he will not fall into the "Twin Peaks enclosure"-trap. (That is, things will be more and more complicated and weird until a totally meaningless ending is all there's left to finilize it all.)

Rating:
Summary: Lots about Mat, not so much about Nyn - that's OK!
Review: RJ delivered on schedule, and many twists of the plot had been predicted at least 50% accurately by the diehard WOT fans on the web. But, Winter's Heart is a much more pleasant reading expirience than PoD. Also, something actually happenned in this book. Plus, there are several hundreds of pages featuring Mat, and some of the Aelfinn prophecies are cleared. I strongly recommend all fans of the series to read this book. Nyn tugs her braid only a couple of times, just to keep her fans pleased. For the rest of us, her absence from big portions of the book is a true Light's blessing.

If you are new to the series, try Eye of the World first - the title which truly deserves a five star rating. Then read the following six books, have someone to retell you the plot of Path of Daggers, and then read Winter's Heart.

Rating:
Summary: Some people...
Review: Some people have become to used to paying out the Wheel of Time for it's past ventures, and hence have not given this GREAT book a chance as they can't get away from what is the general all-round opinion of books 7 and 8.

I am a die-hard RJ fan, I have thoroughly enjoyed every single book in the series so far and will continue to do so until the series end, which I personally hope is sometime in a long unforeseeable future :) But this does not mean that I am in any way biased, it was well-written more so than book 7 and 8, it was exciting and finally the ending just rocked.

Maybe if some people would just see past their grudges perhaps they could see that RJ hasn't totally 'lost' his touch, and isn't in it for the 'money', but is still putting out great quality books, making it in fact, the best series ever written IMO...

Rating:
Summary: Not too shabby...
Review: Wonderful ending. Absolutely breathtaking. Only problem I had was that it was way too short. He could've dealt with a lot more stuff with a couple more hundred pages. Mat's one of my favorite characters and the part when he realizes that Tuon's the one was hilarious.

I have no problems with the length of the series. With such complex and intertwining plots, RJ should not be stingy about the number of books. It is the very complexity of the story, with its numerous factions that makes the series so great. Most other fantasy series have only one set of good guys vs one set of bad. In this one, there are so many different groups working towards their ultimate goal of "good" and "bad" in their own ways. That's what makes it special and so real. The only other one that comes close is the Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin but I suspect he got some inspiration from RJ.

I still love the series. I hope RJ writes faster. The waiting just kills me.

Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile Once again
Review: The last few books, I have to admit were not as great as the first five, with the exception of some really great parts, the last 2 were just good, not great. With this book though, you get back to great, this book has everything you could ask for, it resolves many questions that were still up in the air before. Now, thankfully many are coming around to a nice close for what I expect to be a 12 book series. This book has a killer, awesome, amazing last chapter, probably the best since Dumais Well. I thought before that that was the best, most monumental chapter in any of the books, but this one took the cake by far. It answers just about every question that you have, and it also brings up some new ones. All in all it was a really good book with the exeption that it leaves out several major players especially egwene. Her story seems to be far from being resolved. But hopefully in the next book, rj will take care of much of that.

Rating:
Summary: An improvement
Review: The prologue in this book gave way to what promised to be an excellent book. Then the next 100 pages of useless description was frustrating (I still think he should permanently get rid of that Faile character). However, there was good material in most of the chapters after those 100 pages. The last few chapters though made me think Mr. Jordan may finally be on track again. Despite what some readers believe, constant action and battle is not required (or wanted) to make a book good, and I bet most fans don't expect it. But, advancement of plot is needed. For me, the point of a story is to give description and details that hold a reader's attention and also lead to the conclusion of the story; a bit of filler may be required, but not 100 or more pages (like we find in this book and in the one before).

Though it had its slow moments, we were thrown a bone at the end (with some loose ends tied up and a major problem solved) and I grabbed it with all teeth and ran. I only hope the next book advances the plot (without introducing too many more characters and new story lines), and that it is not two or more years down the road.

Rating:
Summary: Getting better but not quite there
Review: Although i have to agree that the last few novels have lacked the appeal of the earlier books i still waited three years for Winters Heart to come out. And i still finished it in less then a week. This book is far better then Path of Daggers because it actually goes somewhere. A lot is told to the reader instead of just masking it up. I fear that Jordan is going to stretch this series out for another few books, which means more waiting time for the next book to arrive on the shelves. After finishing this book i can seriously tell you that i am very excited for the next novel.

Rating:
Summary: Capitalism
Review: I gave this book a bad review because it doesn't measure up to the quality one expects from Jordan. I think the problem started at book 6, even though the Lord of Chaos was excellent. It was the first time Jordan didn't write a complete book. He then continued this trend in books 7,8 and 9. Books 1-5 could stand on their own as a novel as well as being part of a series. Where as if one didn't read books 1-6 then books 7-9 would be meaningless. So it becomes obvious that this series is now being exploited for every dollar it can produce. This theory was supported this summer when readers had to pay 5 bucks to obtain the prologe. The extention of this series is deliberate and irritating. Remember Jordan used to put out a great book every year. Now its a half book every two years. Think about it, if he put 6 and 7 together, then put 8 and 9 together he would have had a great 7 book series. What really worries me though is the content of this book. Jordan takes a whole chapter to talk about Elayne taking a ride through Camelyn and he describes the sword fight between Lan and Toram Riatin in two lines? I think Jordan is falling away from the concepts that made this series great, not to mention becoming very greedy.