Sweating "not due to the heat" (some small variation or other).

Jump when (somebody) said toad.

This is arguably off-topic, but I seem to remember encountering somewhere in the middle of the series, maybe COS or POD, one time where a word actually goes diagonally upwards, quite literally. This would have been in the paperback editions published more recently, all listing titles of 11 WOT books on the back. That's all I remember, though.

Thanks, Ashandarei. I must have missed that part. It definitely had the potential to alter my experience of TSR. Though of course I did later figure out that "return" scene wasn't going to happen.

This might fall more under "ask a stupid question", but...

In TSR, when Rand takes Mat and Egwene and everybody else east, they all use Portal Stones, right? I remember thinking there would eventually have to be a part where they return from the alternate reality and come back to the "real" one, like in TGH. But it doesn't happen. I guess are we supposed to just assume they went into an alternate reality and came immediately back into the same current world? Or did I miss something? My best guess is just that RJ at that point didn't feel the need to describe Portal Stones any further, but this always threw me off.

Since we're all contributing opinions...

I've got mixed opinions on this. Basically I think of COT as a pretty decent book. Of course I came at it from a different perspective, which was that right around when I started Book One, I looked up on Amazon.com some of the other titles, and found all of them got a bunch of stars, usually 3 1/2 to 4 1/2, and the one exception was COT which got an average of 1 1/2 stars. And I read a few comments and heard it was so awful and so slow, and so, I went in expecting that.

What I was afraid of was it'd be slow to get from chapter to chapter. And I don't think that's true at all. It's a case of when it takes place, most of it takes place as the exact same time at the end of WH(which had one of the strongest endings in my opinion), only with different characters.

When it comes to the whole issue of whether the 7-11 period or so is weaker, I also can't quite make up my mind. I think sometimes I actually enjoyed 7-11 more, because I knew I was getting closer to the culmination, whereas while reading, say TSR, I was just nervous I'd never even make it to the end. And a lot of stuff does indeed happen in here, the "real" Seanchan invasion, the taking of Illian, the attack on Rand at the end of POD, the cleansing of the taint in WH (and Far Madding), the introduction of Cadsuane, the Borderlanders traveling south to oppose Rand, the introduction of Ituralde and finally including Arad Doman in the story. I enjoyed most of Mat's adventures, admittedly not so much Perrin's. On Elayne, if anything I felt it took too long for her to arrive in Andor, not that she took too long once she was in Andor. I think I considered her queen pretty much once she was there. And Egwene's KOD stuff, infiltrating the Tower, was a plus.

All that being said, though, the part of me that reads like a critic always felt that the whole series should've been compressed somewhat. And if you have to leave stuff out, an awful lot of it is in this period. But when it comes to pacing, I think it actually started slowing down as early as Book 4, but it's only the large overall plot that moves slowly. The individual passages move at a decent speed, and more often than not you're anxiously awaiting what's about to happen.

But in short, I don't believe COT is a bad book. I also completely don't buy that there's anything wrong with Sanderson.

I was thinking I got to this thread too late, but then I realized no one yet has said:

box his ears

ageless Aes Sedai face/ageless face

divided skirts

Does "burn me" count?

About four pages in, I immediately thought Aes Sedai was "Eyes Su-Dee", and even though I looked it up really early on, I never really stopped hearing it the wrong way in my mind.

So anyway I'm glad I'm not the only one who had issues with this. Some of the glossary stuff helped, especially since I somehow thought it was "EGG-ween", and "CARE-yen", I'm glad I thought to look those two up. The one that's actually driven me most nuts is "Gawyn". I know there's "Sir Gawain" and all that, but I just see the word "Gawyn" and figure there's no way to pronounce that that doesn't sound "off" somehow. Fessing up, though, after a while I got out of the habit of looking these up. I didn't realize the Taim thing until now.

Here's my list, including the good, the evil, and the ugly:

Min. I can't explain why. I fell in love with her early on. She's all about knowledge rather than about power she can literally use, and she's unique in her ability, whereas all Aes Sedai have channeling. She makes me wish I was Rand, almost.

After that, in no particular order.

Thom Merrilin. Old and wise but not in a wizardly way. He's got a past, there's something notorious about him, he's good fun but also deadly serious. He's a walking Jethro Tull song, or something.

Loial. Mostly just because he's the one Ogier we really meet. And he's a reader.

Suian Sanche. Although I mostly like both Egwene and Elayne, Suian is the one Aes Sedai I feel it's easiest to sympathize with. Somehow, she seems to me even more than Moiraine the one who cares most about the overall picture, rather than just usual White Tower politics, and she obviously has a bit of a personal story to her. Occasionally she's guilty of all that Aes Sedai manipulation/psychological confrontation stuff, but usually not. Maybe it's just me.

Rand. Almost seems like stating the obvious. But he's the smartest of the three ta'veren, and goes through immense struggles, most of them mental, and is admirable but flawed the way good book characters are supposed to be, but to a larger degree than usual. A man who needs to go insane to save the world. He's just a great story.

Mat. Fun-loving, hedonistic, okay maybe a tad sexist, but he's smarter than he seems an awful lot of the time. He's good comic relief sometimes and other times very much part of the epic of it all, he's got the best Luck of anyone and a rather unique "sense of history", and you all know what I mean. I love that he's a gambler. He's the Lando Calrissian of the Wheel of Time.

And I guess my last four are minor characters.

Bayle Domon. I have to admit, it's been a while since I read anything where he was a key factor, having read the series just the once. But if you can pull off a likeable sea captain, it's always worth it. I wish he'd been in the later books more.

Egeanin, believe it or not. Mostly, it's because she represents when the Seanchan were this mysterious group about to return from across an ocean and a millennium (rather than an invasion force that already landed as well as successfully taken over several nations) and she seemed to be the key to why they were going to matter, somehow. She's not exactly defensible, but she seemed to be leading up to a redemption. Her story seemed to get mostly abandoned, but she was quite interesting for a while.

Logain. I just like the notion that a false Dragon can still be a minor hero when it's all done. Whether he was manipulated or not is a little complex, but I basically get the sense he once believed he was the Dragon Reborn, even if he was wrong about it, it wasn't dishonesty.

Mazrim Taim. Ambitious, dangerous, probably just plain evil. I suspect he doesn't truly answer to anyone. We really have no idea what's up with him at this point.

Anyway, that's my list. Meanwhile, Elayne and Egwene do get honorable mentions. They're both a little power hungry, but they're good at heart, they both represent changes from tradition and old ways, and it's interesting to watch them try to balance delicate issues. The only major character I'm not crazy about is Perrin (and Faile, who's not quite major, but you can't bring up Perrin and not mention her), but I can tolerate them I guess.

All that is coming from gut reactions after having just read each book exactly once, and recently. If you'd asked me as recently as May 2010 who Rand al'Thor was, I would have said "who?". So there are a bunch of details I've probably forgotten, but I guess I'm a moderate fan now.