Same here. It's not fun reading about sexual assault, but it's an interesting dynamic and I do think it adds to the story as a whole, with the gender reversal you mentioned. Besides, it's a story. In storytelling, more conflict is more better. Also, I think Mat grows as a character because of this. In the first half of the series he's a bit of a womanizer, and he doesn't take relationships all that seriously, but his conflict with Tylin changes that quite a bit.

I don't think this is canon, but it's an interesting idea. I interpret the story very differently, but it doesn't really matter, as the story has many aspects we can enjoy theorizing about, and it's cool that everyone has their own view on things. (Mine is that the Dragon Reborn will never choose wrong, the Dark One will always be sealed back in his prison and this whole cycle will repeat indefinitely, just as the Creator designed, without opportunities for the parties involved to learn and change the pattern as a whole.) I do like your change about having Perrin face off with Moghedien. That feels like a natural duel of the dreamwalkers. But then again Perrin already needs to be at Shayol Ghul at the ending with Lanfear, so I guess Jorderson didn't want to have Perrin fight another dreamwalker. Besides, Moghedien not really participating in the Last Battle is very much in character, and I did very much like how she ended. 🙂 (Ha! Take that you idiot!)

I do understand Fain has delusions of grandeur, and perhaps I have indeed been fooled. But to me it's a storytelling thing. The way it was written didn't work for me. And I'm definitely not alone in this. As I understand it's one of the main criticisms on Brandon's WoT books. Anyway, let's agree to disagree. 🙂

Very much disagree. Padan Fain is an important character who comes back regularly and causes a lot of trouble. You don't know (and can't know) what role Fain was going to play. You can only have an opinion about it, and if you feel like Fain's ending was appropriate, that's cool, but I feel like the character deserved more than he got. His ending to me felt like an afterthought. You can compare it to the Prophet. Sanderson probably had very little to go on for him as well, and decided too many things were going on already, so he cut him out in the beginning of book 12. This made sense to me. If he wanted to do the same with Fain, he could have had Mat kill him somewhere in the beginning of book 13. That way, Fain wouldn't be part of the grand finale and perhaps I'd be more okay with it. It could have been used as an action-packed part of the beginning, to jump-start the book. The way it's written now, Fain pops up briefly here and there, and then kind of comes out of nowhere in the finale, after which he just dies in two paragraphs. I'd say either develop him more and make his ending more impactful (perhaps have him kill an important character before Mat destroys him), or just Masema him out of the story in an opener somewhere. But I'd go for developing him more. Fain's been with us since the very beginning and he nearly succeeded in killing Rand several times. Whenever he shows himself, cool stuff happens (as opposed to Masema who is very much part of the slog). I wanted more.

Someone who calls Rand's mental health issues superficial either hasn't read the books or completely misunderstands what's happening in them, in my opinion. But beyond that I completely agree that art needs a certain measure of abstraction so the audience has the opportunity to interpret the art in their own way. It deepens the enjoyment. But the artist doesn't have to focus too much on that aspect, because typically there's plenty abstraction without adding it on purpose, especially in books. Then again recently, especially in recent Hollywood productions, you see a decline of the amount of abstraction we get. Some people like that, but I feel stories get more stale and preachy as a result. It's an interesting topic for analysis.

Don't forget some people actually like having a floompy set of books. Mine: TEotW and TGH in original Dutch paperback, TDR in modern Dutch paperback. Here I switch to English and I have TDR through to WH in US mass market paperbacks in two box sets of three each. Then I have CoT in original US Paperback. KoD, TGS and ToM I have in British hardcover, AMoL I have in original US hardcover and finally NS I have in modern US paperback. So a disjointed mess, but I kinda like it that way. The only upgrades I consider are books 4-5-6 because I will reread those a number of times, and the US mass market paperback boxes are of rather poor quality, unfortunately. They're cheap though, so I can't complain too much. Oh and maybe I'll get books 1-2-3 in English. But first I have to finish my current TBR pile, which is getting dangerously close to the ceiling...

Kramer and Reading are beloved audiobook narrators, but they will be different from Rosamund Pike. What I would recommend is that you find a different book narrated by them to try, so you get a feel for their style. I don't expect you'll dislike them, but if you want to be on the safe side, trying a different book by them would be a good option. You could try Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. That's a standalone novel (it does take place in his connected universe The Cosmere, but you don't need to have read anything from that universe for it to make sense). That audiobook isn't super long and it's narrated by Kramer and Reading.

Well, there's quite a lot to be honest. But then again I'm a very different type of writer. 😛 Here's what I'd do: 1. Have the Shaido Aiel be definitively defeated at Dumai's Wells. End that storyline there. 2. Cut out the entire storyline with the weather being affected by the DO and the Bowl of Winds. 3. Significantly cut down the circus stuff. (IE: only use it for a chapter or two to escape, but not linger at the circus and get to know characters there. We do have Nynaeve and Elayne rescue the leader, though, so Mat can cash in a favor later on.) 4. A forsaken + trollocks become the reason Perrin has to coorperate with the Seanchan. 5. Rand keeps tabs on Perrin a bit more, and finds out what the Prophet's been up to. He freaks and blows him away with weaves of fire. 6. Rand does go back to the Black Tower, but Lews Therin nearly takes over and Rand can only barely stop LT from murdering Mazrim Taim. Use this as the reason why Rand doesn't dare go back to the Tower for so long. 7. Tone down Cadsuane a tad, and have her sacrifice herself to keep Rand safe at the cleansing, leaving him to rely on Nynaeve as his Aes Sedai council. Focus a bit more on the friendship between Rand and Nynaeve. 8. Padin Fain needs more in the last part of the story (obviously). Maybe he can nearly take over the battle, and we can have Nynaeve come up with the idea that Mat may be able to help, go fetch him and he saves the day. Perhaps we need a different solution here, as Mat has too much to do in that scenario. I'm not sure. Maybe we need Padan Fain to be defeated earlier. End of the first act of the final book, maybe. This one's challenging to fix. Oh and of course: 0. Rewrite the ending of book 1, as that one's a mess. We need to be clearer as to why we need to go to the EotW in the first place. Then we cut the green man, have only one forsaken show up, Moiraine only barely manages to hold him off until Rand comes in and wrecks him. Find a proper way of having Rand save the Shienar soldiers who are trying to hold off that army of trollocks. This one will take a lot of work as well. What am I forgetting about?

This is a good point. In previous turnings of the Wheel, the champion of the Light may have been called the Tiger or whatever else you can think of. Dragon is a nickname for Lews Therin, but perhaps earlier champions got different nicknames. From book 1 onwards it's made clear that we can't know what happens in previous turnings of the Wheel. Stories turn to myth, myth turns to legend and will be long forgotten when the Age that gave them birth comes again. In the story we get actual accounts of things that happen in the last bit of the Second Age, and we get hints of things that happened in the First Age (pay attention to stories that Thom tells in book 1 especially), but we get nothing from before then. We're at the end of the Third Age, so we're missing all info from Ages seven, six and five. We do get a few hints of what COULD happen in the fourth Age, but Rand prevents that particular disaster, so we're not sure what we can expect the fourth Age to bring. My personal theory is that at least one of the Ages will be extremely long (think in terms of hundreds of millions of years, perhaps a billion+) and at least one of the Ages will have no humans at all. Probably those two align. During that time, the entire surface of the Earth is renewed, all evidence of human activity is erased and when humans arrive again and start to get organized, we get the First Age where humans achieve technological advancements, then after discovery of the One Power we get the Second Age and from here everything we know happens again in roughly the same way as it always does, because the Creator designed it that way.

I vaguely remember noting that I didn't want to start a history debate. My point is that technological advancements aren't inevitable. We've seen accellerating advancements since the invention of book printing, then steam engines, then combustion engines, all the way to the digital world we communicate through right now. This extreme level of advancement in our time leads us to believe that advancements always go quickly, but they don't. And a 700 year old cathedral doesn't prove anything when the Egyptians were building pyramids millennia before then, and we still aren't sure how they did it with the technology they had available to them at the time. History shows us times of advancement and times of stagnation and even decline. It all depends on what happens. Natural disaster can hold us back, waves of trollocks attacking can hold us back, and a feudal society where a few powerful people control most things can definitely hold us back. And because of this, I don't see these 3000 years of slow advancement in WoT as unrealistic. PS. Somehow I managed to trigger Bugglesley big time, which I didn't mean to do at all. Their word salad contained many assumptions about my arguments and ideas that are strange to me - I never mentioned charts, Galileio or any specific details. But anyway, the main thing I took away from that post was: "progress is messy", which is something I absolutely agree with. If people want to discuss actual history, by all means. I'll have to leave you to it, as for me history class is two decades ago. But I'm pretty sure the conclusion will be that progress comes and goes, is indeed messy and definitely not inevitable. If the discussion flips to expectations for future progress, I'll come back in and share my thoughts on why I expect decline to start again within 100 years from now. 🙂

A guy like that would definitely listen to metal, so the confusion is warranted. 😉 But to stay on topic: I reckon that in the Cosmere, Perrin would be Mistborn.

It raises another question that Jordan didn't consider back then: what determines whether you channel saidar or saidin? Your biological sex? But what about intersex people - people with physical attributes of both? Can they channel both? Or can intersex people just never channel? Or maybe it's the gender you identify as. In which case a transgender person having to relearn how to channel would be an interesting story. But in that case, what about non-binary people? See, we do need gender studies. 😉

I always sort of assumed that Mat got struck by debris flying around in the chaos. If lightning weaves cause rocks and other stuff to start flying around, the amulet won't protect him from getting hit by those. I'd need to reread that part to be sure, though. So yeah, might be either.

I think "the slog" has a few causes, that everyone experiences differently. 1) The ending to book 6 is so awesome and explosive that anything that follows it will be at least somewhat disappointing. The fact that book 7 starts rather slow and handles a sidequest doesn't help here. For some, this is where the slog starts, and I understand completely. 2) Too many plot lines, dragging the overall pace down. Books 7 through 11 handle a number of different plotlines that don't directly impact the main struggle, and from book 8 onwards many of those plotlines are advanced simultaneously, slowing things down quite a bit. Especially Perrin & Faile's arc is very slow, and Elayne's also takes two full books. Even Mat suffers from a return to a certain group that people already disliked in book 5. The main reason why people call book 11 a return to form for Jordan is because those plotlines get resolutions in that one. 3) Book 10. Book 10 is all setup and no payoff, as Sanderson put it. It's the only bad entry in the series, in my opinion. Nothing of note happens, and then it even has the audacity to end on a cliffhanger. Booh! In hindsight, the story became too big and could have used some trimming of the fat. When Sanderson takes over for book 12, you see him do just that by simply cutting out a whole plotline in the beginning. I won't say what it is, but you'll immediately recognize it when you read it, and I think you'll agree with me that it was the right decision. Jordan was more of a discovery writer than a planner, and it shows. The plotlines start to meander, side plots take over and their resolution takes quite long. Still, I think for such a long running series, having just one actually bad book, which is still quite readable, is quite impressive. I remember hating book 7 of the Sword of Truth series so much that I actively recommend people skip that one. I don't do that for Crossroads of Twilight. It's still a nice read, despite being super slow and nothing happening. Book 7 still has a really cool ending full of important moments for the story. Book 8 feels like four episodes in the middle of a season of a TV show, but three of those are really fun and quite action-packed. Book 9 is very slow but contains some of the nicest moments in the entire series and one of the strongest endings, and if you manage to fight through 10 you get rewarded with a very strong book 11. Also, when Sanderson takes over, the pace goes up twofold. Yes, the slog is real. No, it's not hopelessly bad. It's well worth fighting through.

As an exercise in study and analysis of the writing, sure. But I'm pretty sure this would ruin your enjoyment of the story. There's always a duality between the experience of a story as a whole and analysing it. In analysis we need to pick apart pieces, check everything, find out what the author wanted to accomplish (and in this case there might be two different things as it's two different authors). You end up picking apart every sentence, wishing the other author wrote it, or that it had been revised more, or that more time was spent on aspect x, and so on. The more I know about writing, and the more I write myself, I notice myself forcefully trying to turn that part of my brain off when reading a book or watching a movie. I need to experience the whole, enjoy it for what it is. Maybe afterward I'll dig deeper, try to learn from what went wrong. That's kind of futile with WoT, though. It's not perfect and we'll never get a perfect version. Jordan already wasn't perfect, and large parts of his vision died with him, leaving only notes and interpretation by a skilled but very different author to use to finish the story. So yeah, if I want to learn about writing, I feel like it's much more useful to pick apart something that was finished by one author with one vision, edited to be as good as it could be at that time. Also preferably not too long, because analysing every sentence takes a while if you're picking apart a pile of books that barely fits on a book shelf. I recommend the novelette "Sandkings" by George R.R. Martin for full analysis. It's 17 pages of brilliant scifi horror with a number of highly unusual choices, which makes for very interesting analysis.