Blood and bloody flaming ashes! I stretched it out as long as I could, but finally finished it last night, and I must say, at this point I'm just sad it's over. Even tho I've been waiting for the end of this story for 15 years, after closing the book after the last page, I find that I will miss the aniticipation of the waiting that came with each new volume. There has never been another series that gave me that much anticipation. Hopefully I can find something new to read...suggestions welcome.

 

There were parts where I had to just put the book down and walk away for a day. Egwene's last scene was a big one. NEVER saw that coming.

I'm still digesting a lot of what I've read, but overall I liked the book. It was cut like an action movie, which made it really hard to not want to keep turning pages, to get back the characters/scene that just got cut off, tho at times I thought it jumped back and forth a little TOO much and/or too quickly.

 

Lots of super awesome Moments of Super Awesomeness. My favorites were Androl, at the Black Tower kicking ass with his gateways after the dream spike was removed, and unleashing lava on the Trolloc army, that image in my head is sooo cool, er, hot maybe.

 

There were also quite a few moments that made me laugh. I felt like Brandon got the narrative voices of the various main characters a lot better than the previous two books, Mat especially.

 

I haven't quite decided how to feel yet about Rand's confrontation with the DO, still stewing on that.

 

Besides a few small quibbles about pacing and character arcs, my only major complaint is Moiraine. She deserved WAY more "screen time", and a POV. I loved Rand's initial reaction to her, but after that nothing really happens. After all the build up of Min's viewings, and Mat saving her, "half the light of the world to SAVE the world?" I'm a little confused about what she did or knew that was so important (did I miss something?), but besides that, there just plain wasn't enough of her in the book. As much as I liked all the action scenes and battles, some of that could have been cut out to include more about Moiraine. To see Rand and the battle from her POV would have been interesting to say the least, after being the one to find our heroes in the beginning.

 

Alright I'll stop rambling now, I think will listen to the audiobook now.

ARRRG! I downloaded the audiobook, since I usually wait until the paperback is out (to match the rest of my collection) so I don't see the typos on the page, but I just discovered a very frustrating glitch in the audio version of chapter 24: there is a chunk missing!!! The part where Perrin is talking to Hopper after chasing the wolves, it skips ahead to the very end of a fight with Slayer, and I can't even tell how much is missing!!! I will go to the appropriate spoiler thread for this part of the book to ask this question: WHAT HAPPENED OMG??!! I might need to run to a book store just to read those few pages, if I can find a copy.