Repeating after book 8?

[Mr Ares]

One of my favorite moments in KOD is when Kadere finds Mat's camp and gets everything wrong.

You mean Karede? Kadere, the amazing skinless Darkfriend, was long since dead by that point. Damn all these similar names. But if Kadere had shown up in KoD, that would likely have gone on the list of great scenes. "Hi, guys. Has anyone seen my skin?"

 

KoD had a slew of great moments... but tons of those could have been tied up in CoT. I think the battle of Malden could have happened in book 10.

But where would that have left Perrin? He would have to do his AMoL stuff in KoD - or some of it, at least. Leaving him ahead of everyone else. Unless he sits another book out. That's one of the problems people have with the later books - a lot of stuff is going on in a lot of different places at roughly the same time. And most of it has to happen (if not necessarily requiring as many words as received, but that's another story). There really isn't a solution that will please everyone. CoT spent all it's time setting things up for the last two books, and KoD was finally able to deal with some dangling plot threads in order to head into the last volume. That set up needed to happen.

[Hybrid]

One of my favorite moments in KOD is when Kadere finds Mat's camp and gets everything wrong.

You mean Karede? Kadere, the amazing skinless Darkfriend, was long since dead by that point. Damn all these similar names. But if Kadere had shown up in KoD, that would likely have gone on the list of great scenes. "Hi, guys. Has anyone seen my skin?"

 

Indeed.  Yeah, there are so many similar names.  I mean, there's 3 Aes Sedai whose names are Seaine, Sarene, and Saerin, and two of them occupy the same plotline!

[Generic Aelfinn #2]

personally, i think the first 6 books were the best.  the only lowpoint of the first half was TGH.  although it is quite a fews' favorite, personally, it continues the 'little boy, big world' atmosphere when its appeal was already used up in TEOTW.

 

my list:

1. shadow rising

2. lord of chaos

3. eye of the world

4. fires of heaven

5. the dragon reborn

6. great hunt

 

also, i agree, KOD has some VERY good moments(trolloc attack on the manor, nynaeve's 'for malkier' speech).

[RAND AL THOR]

I liked 11 overall except for the lack of a definite climax. My complaint is the absence of Rand from most of the book. RJ had to catch up on some storylines but I wanted more Rand! I was turning each chapter and was so disappointed.

[Samudor]

The first several books I think grab more easily because they are more action packed. But to be honest, there are some things that happen in the later half of this series that are absolutely gripping- mostly conversations and character interactions. If you think that reading about meaningful character interaction and delving a bit into the nature of love, and exploring the effect of taking a powerful character and taking all her power away is exploitation, then perhaps you shouldn't read the 12th book, or should have stopped about half way through the Fires of Heaven when the series begins to evolve out of the discovery stage and into the let's figure out what the heck I'm supposed to do stage.

 

To be honest, for me it's really hard to pick one book out of them and say "that't the best one." By no means does the series repeat itself- in fact book 10 is strong simply because what happens at the end of book 9 changes the playing field completely- it is monumental and 10 then takes us around to the different characters and allows us to see their reactions. 10 and 11 are absolutely intriguing because they catalogue decisions that would never have been made without the events of Winter's Heart. Once again, Rand is shaping the world without knowing it. 9=action, 10=consequence. Plain and simple. As for 11, well I can't think of a better pitch for Sanderson to hit his homerun.