This does raise the question of why the Dark One never seems to have learned enough from past mistakes to find a way to win. Rand's inherited memories don't really go back further than Lews Therin's own experiences, which makes sense as the Dragon is continually reborn. But there's no indication that the Dark One suffers these cyclical memory wipes. It's like a video game where you have infinite lives. Sooner or later you're eventually going to win.

Well, animals can and do suffer all the time completely independent of any human choices. They did it before we were even around. How was that necessary for humans to have free will? You're right that suffering isn't intrinsically evil. But to say that it's worth the cost for people to be able to demonstrate their virtue is nonsense. You could do that in a world without suffering, too. It's this premise that there must be a tradeoff that should be rejected. No one has demonstrated that the ability to choose to do evil is an intrinsic good. That which is asserted without evidence may be rejected without evidence. Aside: One thing I do sometimes is just give voice to my thoughts. Something about saying it out loud (especially in front of other people) makes me realize how bonkers some of my ideas are. I recommend it to everyone. 🤣

How is that evil? I don't understand this. I don't understand why people and animals should suffer for no reason other than that people must be allowed to choose evil and hurt others. That makes no sense. There is a reason why people have argued themselves in circles over this (in our world) for over two millennia. No one can give a satisfying answer to this question of why evil is necessary. It is not. And it's not in WoT, either.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, there has been little technological advancement for 10,000 years, so WoT is almost mild by comparison. I just think that a world where magic is real is fundamentally different from ours and it's OK for there to be plenty of things that would be inexplicable in the real world.

I think the action parts and One Power stuff are really cool in most places. This may be blasphemy but I skip large sections of the books when I do a re-read. I honestly only read it the first time because it felt like I couldn't be a complete fan of fantasy without having done so. I see The Lord of the Rings similarly, and much of Michael Moorcock's work. It's sort of like the King James Version of the Bible in the real world, i.e., something that has been so massively influential on what followed that you almost have to be at least conversant with it.

What is so bad about a perfect world where no one suffers? Why give people a choice to be evil? There is no heaven or hell in the WoT universe, and all souls will eventually be spun back into the Pattern, so how do a person's choices really mean anything?

"The mind makes it real" like in the Matrix.

If this is true, then it's not really a decision, is it? It's simply an illusion of choice. So this whole struggle is meaningless, and all the associated death and destruction has no purpose. On the other hand, if the Dragon were truly free to choose, he's been given an infinite number of opportunities to get it wrong, making it simply a trap that the Creator could have avoided. Ishamael is evil, but he was right about the inevitability of the eventual failure of the Dragon.

They give every character in the series a concealed, deadly ranged attack regardless of their lack of combat experience or training, or whether the knives are balanced for throwing. I thought the ta'veren concept was a clever mechanism for RJ to make unlikely things happen, get characters out of tight spots, and so on. But the knife throwing is just annoying to me.

They make it very difficult to search books and other materials because quotation marks are metacharacters in many applications.

I feel like the series really starts to drag in the middle and should probably have been maybe nine or ten books. I'm curious about what others think. This is what I would do: Remove the Seanchan entirely (everything about them, not just their POVs) Remove Valan Luca and the circus stuff Remove the Kin and probably the Windfinders Remove most of the camping captive stuff (a lot of this is Shaido) Trim the Tower novice lessons Getting rid of the Seanchan alone eliminates or trims a bunch of other character POV chapters where they're dealing with the invasion one way or another, on top of the Seanchan POVs themselves. Besides, being in the minds of slavers is just gross. It seems like every woman in the series gets captured at least once and spends time as a prisoner in one camp or another, which is just repetitive and excessive. The discovery of new weaves and re-discovery of lost abilities or talents doesn't require a bunch of new POVs. Neither does the quest to find the Bowl of the Winds. And there's too much switching and dishwashing and so on with characters in the White Tower. There are some pretty annoying Nynaeve POV chapters outside of those bullet points that could go. I also think you could probably get rid of most of the Morgase/Gareth Bryne stuff, and move the rebel Aes Sedai along much more quickly. I can't fail to note that trimming the books might have allowed RJ to complete the series himself. I'm mainly talking about structural stuff here, not mild annoyances like highly improbable knife throwing, but if you have thoughts on that I'd like to hear them, too. So what would you change to improve the series ("Nothing" is a perfectly valid answer)?