Rating: Summary: Sadin Cleansed Review: Despite the fact that his last book had a severe lack of action, Robert Jordan has managed to once again take back some of the readers that he lost and wrapped them back up into the basic story of a boy's battle of good v.s. evil. One question that I personally continue to ponder is whether Moraine will make a come back. I feel as though her death was not as detailed and finalized as it should have been, leaving the imagination open to ideas. If the books continue to pick up the momentum that they had in the beginning, I'm sure we're all in for an explosive ending!
Rating: Summary: Slow start, but just what the doctor ordered. Review: Well, the main complaint people seem to have is that the pace of the latest Jordan books has been to slow and not enough plots have been resolved. Well, I think part of this is just complacence, much more happened even in the relatively duff Path of Daggers in terms of intruige, the Forsaken, our understanding of the world of the wheel of time etc... than did in the first books. I can accept the criticisms that Jordan's writing has become a little formulaic at times, but his formula for writing is what has grabbed all of our attention. As another reviewer has said, Jordan has created a huge world, with its own history and I for one am happy that his style of descriptive writing has bought it to life inside my head. Winter's Heart does move the plot towards its conclusion and resolves some of the annoying threads which have been hanging around for several books, if not longer. I for one find the political intruige compelling, and as a historian, very realistic. I felt that in this book there was development of the female characters beyond the usual blushing, cat-fighting and so on that plagued the previous two. Elayne is no longer the haughty noblewoman, Nynaeve is no longer a bully, the annoying problem of the Kin vs Windfinders vs Aes Sedai is shaking itself out. One of my major problems with the previous two books, my increasing dislike of Rand, has been lessened considerably. I think your choice of your favourite character will influence whether you merely like this book or if you love it. The return of Mat is welcome, I'm glad there has been a shift away from Cairhien and Caemlyn as the centres of action, but what has happened to Loial? Given the way Jordan was able to so successfully intergrate so many viewpoints of momentous events in the Great Hunt and the Dragon Reborn so successfully (ie Battle at Falme) I cannot see why he cannot deal with many plotlines at once again when they intersect (ie. Elayne's succession and the Borderlanders). There seems a great deal of potential for overlap between the various sub-plots, part of what Jordan does best. Having spent so much time learning to care for these characters, I would be disappointed to see them be dealt with in an implausible and off-hand fashion, like a bad TV show can do, and whilst the delay between books drives me up the wall, I won't be put-off reading and re-reading the series even after it finally concludes. Any true fantasy fan or one who is interested in historical-type novels can't really get away without reading this series, again, and again, and again!
Rating: Summary: What????? Review: I have mixed feelings about this book. I thought that RJ cleared up a lot of loose ends in this book but that it seemed lacking in content. He left a lot of the characters out of this book. It was really short compared to the other books that started the series. He focused on Perrin for the first couple of chapters and then there was nothing about him in rest of the book. He barely had anything in there about the White Tower issues either. It felt like everything that had happened in the previous couple of books was totally ignored in this book. I can't wait for his next book but I hope that it is longer and more indepth then this one.
Rating: Summary: Good, yet boring! Review: I didn't feel too good after reading this book. It seemed like this book was leading to nothing until the last 3 chapters. If Fain's letters can cause that much action, he needs to start a chain letter. What was Jordan thinking with this book, he could've easily added another 400 pages and gotten something done. I have also noticed the size of the type is ALOT larger than that of Lord of Chaos. Is Tor forcing him to meet deadlines? Or is he just getting greedy? I thought the Path of Daggers was a good book because of the fighting with the Seanchan throughout the book and then the attack at the end. But this book is something different. There was no action until the Choedan Kal and the only thing that was accomplished was the cleansing of saidin (possibly). Faile was taken in the Path of Daggers and Jordan wastes almost 10 chapters on the subject and nothing came from it. Elayne got a little closer to getting Andor but Jordan needs to remember that the main topic is Tarmon Gaidin, not Andor. Mat's case was somewhat interesting but it lacked any action besides a half page with the gholam. Finally, the inside jacket says the White Tower would be shaken to the core when the rebels appear outside. Umm... Where was that, did I miss a chapter or something? Mr. Jordan needs to actually accomplish something when he writes. Otherwise, it is all senseless gibberish that I could write.
Rating: Summary: Hardly worth the wait Review: I agree with the reviewer who suggested that Mr. Jordan is riding this horse to death. Hundreds of pages of very minor story movement led to a final, choppy 50 pages that felt as if the author forgot where he wanted to go. After many references to Healing the male part of the Source, why is Nynaeve (who is supposed to be a miraculous healer) sitting passively while Rand (who supposedly has no talent for Healing) controls the flow? Combined with the nonsense of having all these Forsaken show up and then escape with nary a hangnail (with the possible exception of Moghedien and Osan'gar), I think Mr. Jordan needs to reread his first few books to remember what "plotting" and "payoff" mean. While it was nice to see some of the storylines cleared up (so that's what Verin was doing in POD), I was fairly bored through most of the book. I'm in too deep to say that I won't read at least the next book, but I wish Mr. Jordan would just wrap this up. For a better series with much better characterizations of women, I recommend Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince et seq. Reading those books, I started to think that many of Mr. Jordan's ideas were just lifted from Ms. Rawn!
Rating: Summary: Disappointing - Jordon is not focused anymore. Review: Jordon goes on and on about useless and boring details which does not adhere to the standards he set earlier in the series. Very few things really happen in the book. If you want you could skip 75% of the book very easily.. I'm still a big fan of the series... but not sure how long I can keep up after last two books... Jordon, wake up....
Rating: Summary: Simply Amazing.. Review: Every so often, an excellent writer stumbles. One book is slightly worse than the others, the next much worse, and the next becomes horrible. He never recovers, and every progressive book is a monstrosity. With Lord of Chaos, RJ began down that path. I was one of the few who enjoyed LoC, CoS and PoD, though less than the other ones. I began to fear thar RJ was headed down that path. With WH, my fears have been assuaged. Three words describe my impression of this book. Oh. My. God. I have never, and I repeat never, read such a well-written book as this. Never before have I sat for 12 hours straight just reading, with only a small half-hour break in the middle. Never before has every scene evoked an emotion in me, whether fear, excitement, amusement. WH pulled strings at all the right places. From beginning to end, WH draws you in like Eye of the World did, except more completely. Never a dull moment, I even found enjoyment in the chapters involving some of our least favorite characters. The thing that made people the angriest about PoD, the complete lack of plot lines being resolved, has been completely turned around in this book. There was one major, and I mean major, plot line resolved, another pretty big one, and tons of small ones. Theories were proven or disproven, and the entire book was a masterpiece of literature. Read this book. You owe it to yourself.
Rating: Summary: By far, the best book of the series... Review: The title says it all. For everyone who wanted Rand to meet up Elayne and Aviendha, to see what would happen when Elayne tries to make him her Warder, to find out what happened to Mat after the wall fell on him in the Crown of Swords, who the Daughter of the Nine Moons is, you HAVE TO GET THIS BOOK. My previous favorite book was Lord of Chaos, mostly because of the shocking ending. That was nothing. The final chapter of this 650ish page book, 'With the Choedan Kal', is simply AMAZING. Downside to the book you may ask? Well, for those of you who are diehard Perrin fans, you are going to be disappointed with his brief appearance in this book, despite the cover. Also, Egwene is in the book even less. However, as I said, Mat gets more of the spotlight after being noticably absent for the last book. While only being 100 or so pages longer than Path of Daggers, this book has many major events. Oh yeah...that ending is quite a doozie. In case you can't tell, I finished the book minutes ago, and that ending was just...I can't give anything away, but it makes apparently fundamental changes in the structure of Jordan's Wheel of Time world.
Rating: Summary: Exellent Review: This book was absolutely awesome. The only thing that I didn't like about it was that I thought it was too short. There are definately major strides towards wrapping up some of the plotlines in the story. If you've read RJ up until now, I can't imagine you not reading this one. So to any of you considering starting this series, I would highly recommend it. Just beware of the painful and agonizing wait for the next installment. Hahahaha. Outty.
Rating: Summary: Another tedious entry in the series Review: This is another tedious entry in this seemingly endless series. Jordan needs to start wrapping it up. He's losing his audience.
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