Wow, I am just gonna put down some of my initial thoughts on the book. There was a lot of good here and some bad. On the whole a satisfying end to the series. 

-I was STUNNED that Egwene died. I mean, really, I actually couldn't believe she was dead. Nobody dies for 13 books and then the biggest female character dies? Especially since she was a character who most strongly thought towards the future, strengthening the White Tower, reaching out to other groups of channelers, blowing away the cobwebs of the old and her promise to Tuon that she intended to live to see their evil empire fall. Especially in the context of Rand debate with the Dark One over nihilism that was a very powerful moment. Egwene represented promise and hope for the future. Really, GRRM has nothing on that.

-The other deaths also had similar effect. I liked Gawyn in this moment where he confessed his failings and took it on himself. Siun as well was another shock. Bryne and the Bashere died offscreen wasn't good. 

-Really did not like how they had Nynaeve as a wielder of Callandor. I can more or less live with Moiraines limited role but if the idea was that Rand would go with women who have had a formative role on him then this should have been Cadsuane. I really think Nynaeve going with Lan and perhaps saving him at one point as well as bonding with her new Malkieri subjects (she is a Queen now) would have been better. Especially since her testing emphasised that she would chose Lan over being an Aes Sedai. Just having her stand there and give herbs to Alanna was very unsatisfying. Yes, technically she and Moiraine trapped Moridin and defeated the DO. But I would have preferred a more prominent role.

-However I disliked how we have four successive people have a crack at Demandred. it does get a little silly and that with hundreds of thousands on the battlefield Galad and Lan literally just rode up him. They were all badass. Galad spitting at the forsakens feet was a nice touch. Also, Lans motivation for taking it on himself to charge up made no sense. I really wanted him to think that he was doing it because Egwene had died and it just felt like he didn't have a motivation beyond general badassery for being the one to take down Demandred.

-Incidentally. I understand that most of the Demandred material was put into its own novella. But its a little strange how he is the MAIN villain in this whilst other much more established villains like Moridin, Fain and even the Dark One; are given pretty anti-climatic ends or don't get to do much. Its especially testing when characters who clearly are from that story appear or worse die and when Demandred reflects on how he has changed from his time in Shara.

-A big problem I had with Rand and the DO. I may be mistaken, but my understanding was that the Pattern as made by the Creator is by its nature neither good nor evil. The Dark One wants to break this system of balance. So I couldn't understand why Rand killing the DO would create a world without free will because nobody can do evil. People doing evil is part of the pattern. That could only happen if Rand also tried to alter the pattern then? Wouldn't killing the dark one still leave a world with free will and where people could do evil? It seemed to be suggesting that the DO is the source of all evil and necessary for the Pattern to work which explicitly contradicts the notion that the DO is NOT part of the pattern.

-Again, I understand that there were originally going to be outrigger books that would deal with Perrin and Matt. But I felt there was a huge lack of resolution with the Seanchan and even with what Faile becoming Queen of Saldea would mean. Indeed the epilogue was on the whole very lacking and very brief considering the scale of the series.  

-Perrins duel with Slayer went on FAR too long. It also undercut his arc as developing into and embracing his role as a leader of men. I get that command is Matts moment. But, he kinda leaves his army for most of the story.

-I have no idea what Matt was doing or how he could have predicted any of that happening at the right time. Plus, I don't understand how Matt could bottleneck the Sharans with their ability to travel and it was only at the very end that he thought to do this with the Seanchan to trap the enemy.

-lol Min is the Pope. :D

-I SOOO wanted to see Hawkwing talk to Tuon. :D That would have been hilarious and it never gets mentioned after. :( 

-Would have been neat to have Mayene described. Berelains constant presence peaked my interest.

-Graendal being made Gaishan by her own compulsion was lol worthy as well.

-Moghedian is a strange loose end to leave. Ironic that the spider truly did outlast them all.

-Personally I thought there was nothing wrong with Lanfear redeeming herself in the end. In fact its strange that this is never done with any of the Forsaken in general. Killing her felt a little too harsh since she was IMO the most reasonable of the Forsaken or that she could have been clever enough to escape. 

Has to be Rand. I like his story of having to bear the crushing weight of being this saviour figure and him struggling to meet the challenges facing him. As well as seeing the evolution of the character and he is pretty badass as well.

I would have said Nynaeve, but, she doesn't get that many POVs and because she very rarely gets a chance to properly fight for the series I've read I can't really consider her a true favourite. Best female character though. I would say I prefer Nynaeve as a person to Rand though.

Moiraine and Lan are also really good characters although they aren't really in the books enough.

Yeah I prefer if its more suggestive rather than explicit. Else it just sounds ridiculous and defeats the point. With Martin, I don't think its relevant to the plot to know that Dany "didn't know if he was inside her or if she was inside him"....

Yeah, there is a lot of very suggestive things and scenes in WoT. 

Well there aren't any sex scenes in WoT at all. This is from somebody whose read Ice n Fire with its "pink masts" and "Myrish swamps"; seriously that man deserves to burn in hell for those. But even Wars of Light n Shadow and the Crucible Trilogy was much more explicit scenes even if it wasn't ALL the time as it is with GRR Martin. Nothing wrong with WoT being more tongue in cheek about sex. Min and Aviendha outside as Elayne was doing Rand was quite funny; whilst the whole touchy feely stuff is still nice. Plus I still don't quite understand the concept of writing porn.

Well in New Spring she seemed interested in that guy who turned out to be a Darkfriend. They were travelling for a long time and must have met plenty of people in their travels. I find it hard to believe Moiraine would have taken the blue ajah thing quite that severely. 

Weren't there originally some plans to do more books after New Spring about Lan n Moiraines adventures hunting the dragon? 

Has Moiraine had sex with a man before Eye of the World? If so, do you think it was with Lan or somebody else?

emphasis on the word man here btw... 

Not sure, but I think the meeting of Perrin & Galad was in the notes.  And I think also Rand's vision of that meeting.

 

Also, various later scenes seem dependent on that meeting.

I mean Rand seeing Perrin n Galad in his tavern vision.

Can a suldam be cut from the source since she is still a channeler even though she has never held it or learnt it? If so would this cut her ability to use an adam and thus present an easy way to deal with a damane since they need the suldam to get them to do anything while collared and since the suldam cannot embrace the source it would be very easy to cut them off because they would be a very weak channeler unable to prevent this. I suppose they could use the damane to prevent themselves being severed although I don't see how they could do that without being aware that the Aes Sedai is trying to cut them from something they believe they do not have. Although I guess they could rationalise it as something else.

Why didn't they edit out Perrin meeting Galad? Isn't that a bit of a giveaway?

I read Gathering Storm and it mentioned Perrin meeting Galad. Is this because the POVs are split so I'll be catching up with Perrin next book and what he was doing next or is this material only mentioned in flashback?