Well, the Aes Sedai actually know the Creator and the Dark One exist. Do you pray to the most powerful being you know exists? I bet he'd like it, but it's not going to get you anywhere. The whole thing about religion is that you believe without having concrete evidence. Otherwise it's no longer religion and becomes science, politics, and so on.

I haven't gotten to a reread yet, but I too expect The Great Hunt to improve the most. It's a smoother narrative than the Eye of the World, it has a lot of interesting world building aspects and it improves big time on the main problems of Eye (not clear why we're going where we're going, super confusing ending). It'll be a while though, before I expect to go for the reread. My TBR is LOOONG. Just from Sanderson I still need to finish Wind & Truth and then read Mistborn era 2, Skyward Flight, Defiant, Yumi, Sunlit Man and Dawnshard. Then I have Dune 3 and 4 ready, I want to finish the main series of Red Rising and there's a pile of Abercrombie books whispering to me. 😅

Knife of Dreams has great payoffs in the second half, but I too found the first half to not be significantly better than Crossroads. The second half was a hoot though, which made it worth fighting through the slow start. As to your topic title: there's a lot to criticize about the book titles in WoT. In fact, I dislike most of them. The Lord of Chaos gets like three paragraphs of page time in Lord of Chaos, there's no Heaven in Fires of Heaven, what Path of which Daggers? I vaguely remember Towers of Midnight being mentioned but they don't play a significant role in the story at all. I still don't know what the Eye of the World was, exactly, and it took WAY too long to find out why we needed to go there (find out for sure who the Dragon Reborn is, without springing the obvious trap at Tear). Also, The Dragon Reborn is the first book that we experience mostly from a different point of view than that of the actual Dragon Reborn. That was weird. Okay, rant over. A Memory of Light in my opinion is the most beautiful book title ever. Most is forgiven. 🙂

Wanna make it even worse? I looked into it, and as it turns out, Sanderson's Skyward books get filed under adult in the UK, because there they felt that his name would sell more than the placement. They prioritized selling to his fans over selling to the main target demographic. Also, Mistborn got filed under YA in Taiwan because the protagonist was of YA age, plus it came out a few weeks before the Hunger Games, and because of this, in Taiwan Mistborn actually became what the Hunger Games is in the USA and Europe. It's all a big mess, and in the end everybody just does what they think will sell the most copies.

So next turning of the Wheel, the answer to the question of the universe and everything will be 43?

I kind of assumed you'd be in book 13, which is Towers of Midnight, and the book where Moiraine comes back - the thing OP was talking about. But books 9 and 10 happen simultaneously as well, in part, so I guess you could lose sense of time there as well. Though I feel like that part of the series was quite clear.

I think part of why we lose the sense of time in the final books is also because Sanderson had originally planned the ending out as one big book, but then was forced to split it up into three volumes. This caused him to have to move stuff around. Large parts of books 12 and 13 happen simultaneously, but it's not perfect. Sanderson admitted as much. So there's no natural flow the way you'd expect. Jordan did the same, sort of, with books 9 and 10, there the first half of book 10 happens during the ending of book 9, but that one feels more deliberate. I still don't love that though. It very much feels like you're reading buildup for stuff while the cool things are happening elsewhere, and you really just want to go there and read about that. I think typically, if you're writing your story mostly chronological, it auses all sorts of problems if you later diverge away from chronological stoytelling. It can be done - anything can be done if done well - but I wouldn't recommend it.

True, but to be fair, I absolutely prefer this to what's happening with ASoIaF and Kingkiller. Jordan did produce a book per two years (or faster) until he was gone, and we all know how fast Sanderson writes. We got an ending, and a good one at that. I can't really recommend Martin now, as he'll never finish. Rothfuss maybe, but it's not looking rosy for him either. Anyway, back on topic: I had completely forgotten about the foreshadowing for Moiraine's return while I was reading, but I got it spoiled before I got to Towers, so I knew it was coming. I do think it could have used more buildup though - it did feel rushed, and the romance came out of nowhere again, though to be fair that was how Jordan usually wrote them, so perhaps that was just Jordan anyway. The Androl + Pevara relationship felt a lot more natural, and if I had to guess, I'd say that one was 100% Sanderson.

It felt like this for me too, in parts. But Sanderson was hired to finish it, first in one massive volume, and then in three shorter ones (as a 2k page book wouldn't make any money). His work was under heavy scrutiny from the publisher for especially books 12 (the return, very scary moment) and 14 (the last book, perhaps even scarier?). Brandon was forced to up the pace big time in order to get the story finished, but he would have sped up anyway. His own work is also a lot faster paced than Jordan's, especially in the description department. But I do think if he'd gotten free reign, he'd have ended up writing more than just these three books. Jordan was nowhere near finishing with Knife of Dreams, and Sanderson's a WoT superfan. I'm sure he had a ton of stuff he'd have liked to explore more.

It is implied that the First Age is our time, more or less. Which means that the Second Age (Age of Legends) probably started when Channeling was discovered. So yeah, there have been ages without channeling. In order for the seven Ages to make sense and fit into our time, or something close to it, we would actually need at least one of the Ages to be really long - think in terms of millions of years. We would also need an Age without humans, or at least with very very few humans. If we don't have these two things, we'd see traces of the previous turning of the Wheel everywhere, but we don't. It's not clear to me that the Seanchan actively cause channeling to go extinct during the Fourth Age, but it's not a crazy theory. Though I would like to point out that the futures our heroes see in Rhuidean are possible futures. They're not set in stone. To quote a different franchise: "Always in motion, the future is." It's clear to me that channeling will disappear at some point, but when exactly, and how, we can theorize on. 🙂

To be fair, reading about Mat in bed recovering from a broken leg might be even more tedious. Could be fun - anything can be fun if written well - but I think Jordan was correct in leaving that bit out, just as he was leaving out Perrin rebuilding the Two Rivers in book 5.

As someone who writes a bit, I feel like you're forgetting a few: -No longer than 90k words per book - hard limit or you don't get published (unless your name is Rowling). -No more than three viewpoint characters. -No more than two major themes. Young adult is meant for readers from 14-20 years old, which means it must be digestible for the average 14 year old. The Wheel of Time absolutely isn't. For me it was, I read LotR at that age, but the average 14 year old might actually struggle with the Hunger Games. There's endless discussion on what consitutes YA fiction, but ultimately the publishers and book stores decide what to publish and where. Sanderson's Reckoners and Skyward books go into YA and the Cosmere stuff goes into adult fantasy simply because the industry wants it that way. They don't care about opinions or content matter. They care about what they can sell and to who they can sell it.

I quite liked Path of Daggers. It didn't feel like one whole book though. It felt more like four episodes from the middle of a season of a TV show. But three of those I rather enjoyed. The ending of the Bowl of Winds storyline I thought was fun and one of the stronger starts to a book. In fact I think that should have been part of the payoffs at the end of Crown of Swords. Rand waging war against the SeanChan was also cool, and Egwene's power struggles with the rebel Aes Sedai were interesting. Only the Perrin stuff wasn't all that, but to be fair, that was just setup for a whole storyline. It's just frustrating that Faile is so jealous all the time. All in all, Path for me definitely isn't the weakest. There's a lot to like and quite a bit of action. It's just not a very coherent book. There's no clear beginning, middle and end. Anyway, those are my 0.02$.

Agreed, though to me it felt a bit like that was what you were doing. 😉 Regarding entertainment I think it's typically healthier to avoid things you don't like, simply because you'd be spending time not being entertained when you could have been. Discussing flaws in WoT is of course what we do here, but I was starting to feel like you weren't all that impressed with the series, hence my remark.

For someone who dislikes so much about WoT, you do post a lot on the fan forum. If I don't like a thing, I typically shrug and move on to better things. Feels like a healthier approach.