Quality Discussion Thread

[Mr. Micawber]

I actually enjoyed the other two books by BS more than this one.  I don't know what it was but I noticed more of the characters being off, and particularly their dialogue.  Aviendha was horrid.  Some of her lines were ridiculous, she didn't even sound like an Aiel, never mind herself.  Mat was a fun character to read, but he wasn't RJ's Mat.  I did enjoy his sections though.  I haven't really liked Nynaeve much since BS took over.  I think her to be a bit blunt and her dialogue comes off as rather abrupt.

 

I think the pacing was fine up until the ending, where I would agree with others who've said it should have been less abrupt.  I am happy with stories being left hanging but just the lack of reflection by characters on their losses and future lives was disappointing.  In fact, I would say that apart from Rand and Egwene, there seemed to be very little insight or reflection by any of the other characters.  This book was heavy on (much needed) action but I think the characters and relationships suffered as a result.  And tbh, our views into Egwene's mind were pretty one dimensional and limited to her believing she was all powerful/chamption of the Light etc.  I would really have liked to see more of a reaction to Gawyn's death, or a bit more of her humanity in some other way.  The interaction between characters was what I missed most. 

 

We got so little of it because almost the entire book was set on the battlefield.  Apart from Tuon and Mat (and I don't find Tuon enjoyable to read about), there seemed like a drought of good main character interaction.  Particularly between Rand and Min, Land and Nynaeve, and Moiraine and anyone.  I know these characters were split up all over the place but a lot of them were bonded to each other and there was almost no reference at all to the emotions they must have been feeling from each other.

 

I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but this is because *virtually nothing in MOL was written by Jordan*

 

TGS had the most, MOL by far the least

[MarkDiLillo]

Honestly, I dont think RJ's vision of the last battle included such a grand physical battle to the death between two armies.  I suspect there was definitely lots of battle, but the core of it would have been focused on the three ta'averen and Egwene finally fullfilling their roles while a lot more would have been written about the conflict at Shayol Ghul.  I feel like SG would have been the central point of the entire last battle instead of Merrilor, and we would have seen a lot more of Moridin and Lanfear.  I also feel like Perrin's role would have been very different had RJ wrote it.  I think the checklist items we saw him take care of in aMoL would have still been present in RJ's version, but we would have seen Perrin take a very active leadership role in the actual physical world conflict.

[Hack n Slash]

I have given up trying to actually read through this thread, as each time I  move to a new page, the thread has grown another page, so I'll just post my opinion.

 

Given the extraordinarily difficult circumstances that Brandon Sanderson was working under, the book was amazing. It was obviously not perfect, but nor was it possible for the conclusion of such an extensive and complex story to BE perfect. The last three books have been, in my opinion, significantly better than they 4 or 5 that came before them, rehabilitating certain characters who I had come to disdain and finally moving the story forward. The ending was as epic as it should have been, and I am satisfied with the way Rand was able to defeat the Dark One. Although some people may feel that certain characters didn't get enough time, it would not have been possible for everyone's favorite character to have extended scenes. During the book I laughed, I cried, and I reread sections I couldn't believe, all multiple times. The characters are not exactly the same as they were under Robert Jordan, but once again, they never could be. You want to know who the Creator is? It was Robert Jordan, and now it's Brandon Sanderson, and a world is going to be different when it has a different god.

 

I have been reading this series for almost 20 years. In 1993 I found The Eye of the World in the laundry room at my summer camp, and I have been a fan ever since. I have known great joy during the reading of this story and I have known great despair during some of the bad times when RJ was dying and after he passed. I have at times when the end seemed unreachable wished I had never found that book.

 

I don't wish that now. Thanks, Brandon Sanderson.

[Suttree]

The last three books have been, in my opinion, significantly better than they 4 or 5 that came before them, rehabilitating certain characters who I had come to disdain and finally moving the story forward.

Well of course it moved the story along we where at a plae in the story arc where the set up was done and all the plot threads were being tied up(this was started in KoD btw). It is rather strange to compare those two very different moments in the story arc when talking about pace and "moving the story forward". Will Brandon be talented at that when he reaches a similar middle spot in his own Stormlight Archive? Only time will tell.

 

As for these three books being better than the 4 or 5 before I can maybe see the argument from an action and fan gratification standpoint(but still it is rather unfair to compare those vastly different places in the story arc). If you look at it from the perspective of prose, plotwork and literary quality then that is a a very difficult argument to make. These three books don't really hold up under careful scrutiny and re-readability suffers. There are far too many issues that ruin immersion and fan service is allowed to carry the narrative all too often(in AMoL especially the 4th wall is broken way too much). Although I am grateful for Brandon giving us the ending, it will be interesting to see how his long term legacy is viewed in relation to the WoT.

[Reyoru]

Poor. Just poor. Massively disappointed with the quality. From what I've read so far, Lan is written badly, Mat is written badly: the meeting between Rand and Mat and the bragging was painful to read. Amateurish, such a shame.

[Hack n Slash]

 

The last three books have been, in my opinion, significantly better than they 4 or 5 that came before them, rehabilitating certain characters who I had come to disdain and finally moving the story forward.

Well of course it moved the story along we where at a plae in the story arc where the set up was done and all the plot threads were being tied up(this was started in KoD btw). It is rather strange to compare those two very different moments in the story arc when talking about pace and "moving the story forward". Will Brandon be talented at that when he reaches a similar middle spot in his own Stormlight Archive? Only time will tell.

 

As for these three books being better than the 4 or 5 before I can maybe see the argument from an action and fan gratification standpoint(but still it is rather unfair to compare those vastly different places in the story arc). If you look at it from the perspective of prose, plotwork and literary quality then that is a a very difficult argument to make. These three books don't really hold up under careful scrutiny and re-readability suffers. There are far too many issues that ruin immersion and fan service is allowed to carry the narrative all too often(in AMoL especially the 4th wall is broken way too much). Although I am grateful for Brandon giving us teh ending, it will be interesting to see how his long term legacy is viewed in relation to the WoT.

 

The pacing issues in the middle books go far beyond simply their place in the story arc. Many of those books feel like almost nothing happens in them, and certain characters, most notable Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve as well as to a lesser extent Rand become very unlikable. How many books of the three of them sitting in the same room spitting and biting at each other can a person really handle? My mother, who is also an avid reader, actually stopped reading the series during those books and never picked it up again because of those very reasons, and she made it through the first 6 with great enjoyment. I often felt almost as if RJ feared that bringing an end to the great work of his life would in some way be linked to his own life and the struggle he was facing. I felt a great empathy for him as a result of understanding such a feeling, but I can still be honest about how I feel about that section of the story.

[Agitel]

Over the course of the book I came to like Sanderson's portrayal of Mat, to be honest. Much of him started to feel right. On the subject of Mat's voice, I felt like Olver's POV was closer to what Mat's should have been through this entire run. Still, I felt like Sanderson found something that fit. As for Lan's changes, I attributed that to the fact that he was no longer holding back. He was doing what he'd been waiting for his whole life, and I felt that brought out some fire in him.

 

Anyway, I didn't expect everyone to love the book. I was caught off guard by the intensity of dislike for it, though.

[Suttree]

 

The pacing issues in the middle books go far beyond simply their place in the story arc.

Oh I don't think anyone argues that by CoT things had gotten away from him although it is rather silly to include ACoS in that. AS stated however that was fixed in KoD which had a pace equal to that of TGS and ToM while being far better from a literary quality standpoint. That is the big issue with these last three books. Unpolished prose, lowest common denominator plotwork, poor characterization. All of that and you don't even touch the mistakes, timeline issues and filler. See even in books like TPoD and WH the writing quality never suffered. Some of the most well done sections of the entire series such as the Damona Campaign and Rand/LTT interaction fall in those books. I know people look for different things in their fantasy but AMoL was not a well written book by any stretch(although it was an improvement over ToM.)

[Agitel]

One thing that did get on my nerves was "tempest." I didn't even notice it so much in previous books. It was everywhere here.

[Rhienne]

If you look at it from the perspective of prose, plotwork and literary quality then that is a a very difficult argument to make. These three books don't really hold u There are far too many issues that ruin immersion and fan service is allowed to carry the narrative all too often(in AMoL especially the 4th wall is broken way too much). Although I am grateful for Brandon giving us the ending, it will be interesting to see how his long term legacy is viewed in relation to the WoT.

 

^^^This has just nailed on the head something I had been struggling to put into words. 

 

Even in the slowest of RJ's books I fely 100% immersed in the world.  Opening the books was complete escapism.  There were so many times (several per chapter) where the writing (most often dialogue) jarred so badly with how the characters were written by RJ that I felt pushed out of the story and it lost its immersive quality, which for me is one of the most important qualities for a fantasy or sci-fi novel.

[batcaver]

To me, whether Jordan could have finished the series in one, two or three books is totally beside the point.  The point is the quality of the story, and that's equally true for Sanderson.  I'd have loved the same split to three books from Jordan as long as they were good.  In fact I'd have preferred it, since I feel that the end of the series and the last battle deserve as much attention to detail as we got in books like WH and COT when very little was happening.  I'd agree with Suttree that KOD was moving things back in the right direction.  We'll never know whether that would have redirected the whole course of the series, but if it had then I say the more books the better so long as he got on writing them seriously again.  But he got sick and that's spilled milk now.

 

The more time that passes, I'm finding I feel less and less satisfied with the ending.  The fight ended well enough, but I feel cheated by what came after.  The fight was all there was.  I don't know whether the responsibility lies with Joradn, Sanderson or Team Jordan.  Probably all of them.  I feel like I read a book that was missing the final chapter.  If I just read WoT for big battle scenes then I guess I'd be pretty well glutted.  But the middle books did nothing if not train me to look at these characters with a microscope.  They made me slow down with the pace of the story and get into the details of their lives.  I wanted a huge scale for the last battle, but it really needed to be grounded in a strong depiction of what a war this huge is doing to the individuals in it, given their personalities, given their histories, given their relationships, etc.  I feel that if Sanderson knew he was going to have to end with a 17 page epilogue that provided the most minimal possible post-battle information on these characters then he should have been giving us more of that along the way.  The death toll in a few hundred pages here was more than in the rest of the series combined by far.  If I'm going to really feel that as a reader, then I need character's doing more than "Egwene's dead?  Uh oh.  Well, I better not think about that."  And that was a lot considering how little attention was paid to some characters dieing.  Maybe he thought that a cold delivery like that would have a greater affect on the reader, but it just made it seem like a travesty to me.

[batcaver]

One thing that did get on my nerves was "tempest." I didn't even notice it so much in previous books. It was everywhere here.

 

The thing that was so annoying about this was that we know that he has to know that he's doing it at this point, and he must just think it's funny enough to keep doing it.  It really got on my nerves too.  After a while it became pretty distracting. 

[lilltempest]

Part of the problem stemmed from earlier in the book.  I'd feel far less cheated about Egwene's death being given only a token mentioning in the epilogue if characters had reacted to it more appropriately earlier.  I doubt Sanderson could have fixed all of it's superficiality if he was really having to play it as it lied but he definitely could have spared us a few trolloc fights to give us a more in depth Aes Sedai reaction to Egwene's fall, or some POV putting things in a little more perspective. 

 

So everyone was supposed to drop everything in the middle of a war to boohoo over Egwene dying? Egwene barely responded to Gawyn dying, except for using it to make herself angrier and deciding she needed another Warder right then and there, and she was bonded and married to him. Elayne didn't stop and cry over Birgitte, despite being bonded to her. It would've made zero sense to have everyone stop what they were doing so they could lament Egwene's death There were tons of people dying, so there was no time to just stop and grieve. The Shadow wasn't going to give them a time out so everyone could cry over the death of the Amyrlin. Wars don't work that way.

 

Nynaeve cried for her - and for Rand - at the end, as did Perrin. Those two are the ones who have, and will show, emotion. The rest of them, not so much. Especially the Aes Sedai, considering they're trained to show no emotion at all even if one of their family members has his head chopped off right in front of them. Besides, a lot of them didn't even like Egwene...they respected her, thought she made a good Amyrlin, but they didn't like her, and who could blame them for it after she kept screwing them over and manipulating them? Wasn't it good enough that they were planning a funeral for her that was fit for the Creator himself after a low-key "no one cares but Nyn and Perrin" funeral for Rand?

[Razumikhin]

batcaver nicely articulates my biggest concern or gripe with aMoL and its ending.  As far as the *events* of the ending go, I rather liked the resolution.  However, an opportunity was missed with the characters and their own perspectives.  So much of this book is action (which I have mixed feelings about, discussed below) that the ending is one of the first times the book has a chance to rest.  There's the opportunity to see how these events have affected them as people, or perhaps how seeing each other (particularly the remaining Emond's Fielders) might help them deal with the events they have suffered through.  That would not require that the ending take the timeline much further than Rand's leaving, but would really strengthen the ending and help make up for one of the larger weaknesses of the book itself.

 

I wonder how much of that was caused by the fact that Jordan had written much of the epilogue?  Did Team Jordan feel constrained by that?  It's a big risk to take "Jordan's Ending" and add on something else after it.  I could imagine that Sanderson and the others might have felt that the text had to, or fittingly did, end with RJ's own section.  While, as I've just remarked, that I don't think this works best for the text - it would be an understandably difficult situation.

 

On the action-heavy nature of the book, I think I share the complaint that it was overdone.  However, the WOT has often had problems weaving the characters and the battles together.  I often found that to be where the character development was most heavy handed in the later novels - Perrin with Faile being the obvious example.  We've also got 13 books of getting the characters into the right place.  I think the area where this could be most improved would be by adding a few more "quiet moments" throughout, to give the characters a chance to interact and reflect independent of the battles.  The most obvious case, other than the epilogue, would be Rand with Moiraine and Nynaeve.  These are the women that he trusts to take into Shayol Gul, to literally take command of Moridin, allowing the entire plan to work.  These are the women who willing took on the most dangerous of roles to follow Rand into this battle.  Even a moment to acknowledge this, to reflect on who these people are and why they have done these things, would balance out the non-stop action scenes of the latter parts of the book.  Indeed, one of my favorite, even if fleeting, scenes in the entire book as it is was the reaction of the Sharans to him, revealing that they saw him as a prophetic leader in much the same Randland saw Rand.  It's so brief, but it suggests the sort of background that makes Bao the Wyld at least somewhat interesting.  With characters we have grown to love, the effect would be much more pronounced.

[lilltempest]

Poor. Just poor. Massively disappointed with the quality. From what I've read so far, Lan is written badly, Mat is written badly: the meeting between Rand and Mat and the bragging was painful to read. Amateurish, such a shame.

 

While I will agree about Mat being written badly, how, exactly, was Lan written badly? Because he wasn't in super suicide mode and chasing death like a dog in heat? I thought Lan was written very well, and was quite pleased with his story arc in this book. Brandon did an awesome job with him.

[Venaliter]

As a little more time goes by I'm just more and more let down by the myriad of storylines that were left completely untouched or handled poorly.  It miffs me that I spent so much investement in reading these arcs when there was nothing there at the end. 

 

Which portions of the book do you believe could have been completely removed from the overall story, and you would not have even cared/noticed?

 

• Fain and the dagger are obviously worthless with the way he was handled at the end.  The greatest villian of the story, treated so poorly :( 

• The entire adventure with Mat, Thom and Jain into the tower was a complete waste as Moiraine was a waste of a character in the last book, doing NOTHING (her little speech could have been done by anyone).  Such a great adventure for no payoff.

• Everything with Cadsaune seems very wasted, just another annoying female character that lent nothing to the story.  Her and Moiraine's character just came off as filler as soon as Moiraine went through the twisted doorway.

• The Tinkers/Aram.  Not needed at all.  What was their purpose other than some contrast to the Aiel?  The Song obviously didn't matter even though it was alluded to so many times and Rand found it.  Our missing epilogue is right there imo.

• The Windfinders.  The entire storyline with the Bowl of the Winds, quite possibly the most tedious of all of the storylines to power through, shows up as nothing more than "they sat on the ledge and controlled the storm".  Serioulsy?  Wow.

• Morgase.  She should have died at the hands of the Forsaken to save our time.

I'd kill all of the above just to have some more development of Demandred in the last book.  Instead we got a cartoon character with a microphone who came off as dumb as a box of rocks. 

The Black Tower immediately springs to mind. "It will be rent with fire and blood, and Sisters will walk it's grounds."

 

We had a one paragraph conclusion; and not much blood or fire to speak of.

[Yamezt]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One thing that did get on my nerves was "tempest." I didn't even notice it so much in previous books. It was everywhere here.

 

The thing that was so annoying about this was that we know that he has to know that he's doing it at this point, and he must just think it's funny enough to keep doing it.  It really got on my nerves too.  After a while it became pretty distracting. 

 

Honestly, he appears to shut out and ignore criticism so much that he probably has no idea.

I do not quite agree about ignoring criticism. I do not think it is that simple for people to just change in a snap.

 

I think in remembrance of his critics, Sanderson used Thom to enshrine his mistakes for us, which I enjoyed and it gave me a bit of a laugh.

 

The scene with Thom where Thom was trying to decide if he should use "majestically exquisite" or just let the word "exquisite" stand by itself. Made me think of the 'one line (word)' too many criticism.

 

(A little bit out of point I know, but I thought I share that observation about Thom)

 

*edit: I need to learn to type and read.

[batcaver]

Razumikhin - Great post.  Nail on the head.

 

 

So everyone was supposed to drop everything in the middle of a war to boohoo over Egwene dying? Egwene barely responded to Gawyn dying, except for using it to make herself angrier and deciding she needed another Warder right then and there, and she was bonded and married to him. Elayne didn't stop and cry over Birgitte, despite being bonded to her. It would've made zero sense to have everyone stop what they were doing so they could lament Egwene's death There were tons of people dying, so there was no time to just stop and grieve. The Shadow wasn't going to give them a time out so everyone could cry over the death of the Amyrlin. Wars don't work that way.

 

Nynaeve cried for her - and for Rand - at the end, as did Perrin. Those two are the ones who have, and will show, emotion. The rest of them, not so much. Especially the Aes Sedai, considering they're trained to show no emotion at all even if one of their family members has his head chopped off right in front of them. Besides, a lot of them didn't even like Egwene...they respected her, thought she made a good Amyrlin, but they didn't like her, and who could blame them for it after she kept screwing them over and manipulating them? Wasn't it good enough that they were planning a funeral for her that was fit for the Creator himself after a low-key "no one cares but Nyn and Perrin" funeral for Rand?

 

 

It certainly wouldn't have been necessary for everyone to drop what they are doing and start crying.   That's ridiculous and if you really felt that you needed more fighting from this book then our views on this series are probably too disparate to bridge.  There are a few creative ways I can think of off of the top of my head that the human aspects of the war could have been better attended to during the fight, not to mention after.  What about some reflections from the wounded or the dieing?  Jordan was fantastic about having characters sort of trail off tangentially in their trains of thought during these kinds of scenes, and through that he'd ground all of the action in the context of the greater narrative. There are a lot of options.  Sanderson definitely does some of his best work with the action stuff, and it seems like his priority in this book was giving us the biggest battle he possibly could.  My problem is that it's not only the last battle, but also the end of the series.  The former was well attended to while the latter was ignored.

 

The main issue is that Egwene was an important character to the reader.  That's the mandate for a proper reverence of her death.  It doesn't necessarily need to come from any specific character, rather it's about imparting the reader with the feeling of being as close to this event as possible.  I'm using Egwene's death since she's the biggest example, but it applied to a lot of other deaths and events as well.

[MountaineerWV]

I thought Egwene's ending was handled well. While she is an important character and died well...she was just another casualty in a battle with hundreds of thousands of casualties following days of brutal fighting. The survivors are undoubtedly suffering from PTSD and numb to everything.

[Elan Tedronai]

Razumikhin - Great post.  Nail on the head.

 

 

So everyone was supposed to drop everything in the middle of a war to boohoo over Egwene dying? Egwene barely responded to Gawyn dying, except for using it to make herself angrier and deciding she needed another Warder right then and there, and she was bonded and married to him. Elayne didn't stop and cry over Birgitte, despite being bonded to her. It would've made zero sense to have everyone stop what they were doing so they could lament Egwene's death There were tons of people dying, so there was no time to just stop and grieve. The Shadow wasn't going to give them a time out so everyone could cry over the death of the Amyrlin. Wars don't work that way.

 

Nynaeve cried for her - and for Rand - at the end, as did Perrin. Those two are the ones who have, and will show, emotion. The rest of them, not so much. Especially the Aes Sedai, considering they're trained to show no emotion at all even if one of their family members has his head chopped off right in front of them. Besides, a lot of them didn't even like Egwene...they respected her, thought she made a good Amyrlin, but they didn't like her, and who could blame them for it after she kept screwing them over and manipulating them? Wasn't it good enough that they were planning a funeral for her that was fit for the Creator himself after a low-key "no one cares but Nyn and Perrin" funeral for Rand?

 

 

It certainly wouldn't have been necessary for everyone to drop what they are doing and start crying.   That's ridiculous and if you really felt that you needed more fighting from this book then our views on this series are probably too disparate to bridge.  There are a few creative ways I can think of off of the top of my head that the human aspects of the war could have been better attended to during the fight, not to mention after.  What about some reflections from the wounded or the dieing?  Jordan was fantastic about having characters sort of trail off tangentially in their trains of thought during these kinds of scenes, and through that he'd ground all of the action in the context of the greater narrative. There are a lot of options.  Sanderson definitely does some of his best work with the action stuff, and it seems like his priority in this book was giving us the biggest battle he possibly could.  My problem is that it's not only the last battle, but also the end of the series.  The former was well attended to while the latter was ignored.

 

The main issue is that Egwene was an important character to the reader.  That's the mandate for a proper reverence of her death.  It doesn't necessarily need to come from any specific character, rather it's about imparting the reader with the feeling of being as close to this event as possible.  I'm using Egwene's death since she's the biggest example, but it applied to a lot of other deaths and events as well.

 

 

I remember back in book 7 when the gholam ripped nalesean's throat. A secondary character but you felt sad for him because of mat's after thoughts.

 

Brandon doesnt have anything remotely similar to what jordan can convey through death. Maybe it's because jordan was a former soldier and knew what death means to the person affected.

 

 

@ Liltempest, egwene screwing aes sedai? aes sedai dont like her? wtf are u talkin about? seriously dude, give it a rest will ya.

[Mr. Micawber]

Razumikhin - Great post.  Nail on the head.

 

 

So everyone was supposed to drop everything in the middle of a war to boohoo over Egwene dying? Egwene barely responded to Gawyn dying, except for using it to make herself angrier and deciding she needed another Warder right then and there, and she was bonded and married to him. Elayne didn't stop and cry over Birgitte, despite being bonded to her. It would've made zero sense to have everyone stop what they were doing so they could lament Egwene's death There were tons of people dying, so there was no time to just stop and grieve. The Shadow wasn't going to give them a time out so everyone could cry over the death of the Amyrlin. Wars don't work that way.

 

Nynaeve cried for her - and for Rand - at the end, as did Perrin. Those two are the ones who have, and will show, emotion. The rest of them, not so much. Especially the Aes Sedai, considering they're trained to show no emotion at all even if one of their family members has his head chopped off right in front of them. Besides, a lot of them didn't even like Egwene...they respected her, thought she made a good Amyrlin, but they didn't like her, and who could blame them for it after she kept screwing them over and manipulating them? Wasn't it good enough that they were planning a funeral for her that was fit for the Creator himself after a low-key "no one cares but Nyn and Perrin" funeral for Rand?

 

 

It certainly wouldn't have been necessary for everyone to drop what they are doing and start crying.   That's ridiculous and if you really felt that you needed more fighting from this book then our views on this series are probably too disparate to bridge.  There are a few creative ways I can think of off of the top of my head that the human aspects of the war could have been better attended to during the fight, not to mention after.  What about some reflections from the wounded or the dieing?  Jordan was fantastic about having characters sort of trail off tangentially in their trains of thought during these kinds of scenes, and through that he'd ground all of the action in the context of the greater narrative. There are a lot of options.  Sanderson definitely does some of his best work with the action stuff, and it seems like his priority in this book was giving us the biggest battle he possibly could.  My problem is that it's not only the last battle, but also the end of the series.  The former was well attended to while the latter was ignored.

 

The main issue is that Egwene was an important character to the reader.  That's the mandate for a proper reverence of her death.  It doesn't necessarily need to come from any specific character, rather it's about imparting the reader with the feeling of being as close to this event as possible.  I'm using Egwene's death since she's the biggest example, but it applied to a lot of other deaths and events as well.

 

 

I remember back in book 7 when the gholam ripped nalesean's throat. A secondary character but you felt sad for him because of mat's after thoughts.

 

Brandon doesnt have anything remotely similar to what jordan can convey through death. Maybe it's because jordan was a former soldier and knew what death means to the person affected.

 

"He should have let Nalesean stay in bed. The thought came sadly as he drove the blade home hard, then a second time, a third."

 

was more affecting than anything in MOL

[Mario Cole]

http://io9.com/5975831/the-wheel-of-time-rolls-to-a-stop-io9s-review-of-a-memory-of-light

 

"Personally, I think Sanderson probably gave us a better end than Jordan actually would have,"

 

I think I agree.

[Elan Tedronai]

 

Basically it all boils down to

 

Why did RJ have to die?!! why?!!

 

It's truly amazing that TGS was the best book out of all three!!!

 

 

The quote that comes to mind is: 

 

I win again, Lews Therin. 

 

 

Brilliant! Abolutely brilliant

 

 

 

 

http://io9.com/5975831/the-wheel-of-time-rolls-to-a-stop-io9s-review-of-a-memory-of-light

 

"Personally, I think Sanderson probably gave us a better end than Jordan actually would have,"

 

I think I agree.

 

 

 

He's either smoking some powerful stuff or he's plainly insane.

[Suttree]

 

 

 

 

Basically it all boils down to

 

Why did RJ have to die?!! why?!!

 

It's truly amazing that TGS was the best book out of all three!!!

 

 

The quote that comes to mind is: 

 

I win again, Lews Therin. 

 

 

Brilliant! Abolutely brilliant

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://io9.com/5975831/the-wheel-of-time-rolls-to-a-stop-io9s-review-of-a-memory-of-light

 

"Personally, I think Sanderson probably gave us a better end than Jordan actually would have,"

 

I think I agree.

 

 

 

He's either smoking some powerful stuff or he's plainly insane.

It's become pretty obvious that some people don't mind the drop in writing quality or mistakes. They are looking for fan gratification and an all action finale mostly. Which is fine of course(and there is plenty of in genre work like that out there), it's just never been what the WoT was about.

 

I also find it odd that many people seem to be comparing where we are in the story arc to perhaps the slowest middle-late set up portion of the series like CoT. They seem to act as if Jordan never was excellant with pace in books like TSR, tFoH etc. and ignore how KoD clearly had things pointed in the right direction. I've said it many times but it should be pretty interesting to see how Sanderson fairs during that comparable mid-late part of a long series that has given Martin and Jordan fits.

[Mats Spare Hat]

Considering issues of quality:

It's established that the release of AMoL was pushed back, two months, specifically under the guise of 'extra polish,' or however it was exactly phrased...Taking that into account, as well as how it was BS who exclaimed at a time well prior to that extended time-frame that his part was finished - and also taking into account the end product, whose flaws are as obvious as a broken nose after a 10 story face-plant...

...If the version we received, off the shelf, was the result of all that additional time spent specifically for edit & polish: How bad, bad, must the raw manuscript have been?

____

Speculation, of course, but you've got to wonder that if what we're reading is the result of an honest, extra, effort for polish & edit...Some part of me wants to believe that at least someone involved with Team Jordan must have been smashing their forehead & grinding their teeth to nubs, at the mere utterance of the name "Brandon Sanderson."