The act of world-building was his greatest talent, I think.

 

I dunno if taking Earth and renaming everything counts as "world building." :D

It's hardly a Malazan: Book of the Fallen style constructed world, but I still think it works.

Yeah, if you think Robert Jordan overdid the description it's nothing compared to Gormenghast. But the way Peake used language and description was much more effective, and it never felt like padding, at least to me. The incredibly gothic world demanded that level of detail and since the first two books take place almost exclusively within the same castle it really works well.

But I could gush for hours on why I think Gormenghast is the greatest thing ever and I have no desire to derail the topic so I'll just say that it's worth a try if you enjoyed WoT.

It's odd. I actually agree with most of the complaints here, and it's increasingly apparent that beneath the surface the Wheel of Time is full of flaws and, depending on your opinion, outright bad writing. I've lost count of the number of times I had to put a book down for a second because one of the characters did something stupid, and the number of times I skipped entire chapters because they were redundant and nothing happened in them except for drawn out descriptions of women's dresses.

And yet I still enjoy the WoT series. The only books I enjoy more are Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. Despite all the flaws in his writing, Robert Jordan really did create a truly engrossing world. The act of world-building was his greatest talent, I think.

'Serenity'. An uncountable number of times.