Let me preface this by saying I haven't made it through all the books yet. I don't hate her, but the braid tugging got out of control in The Dragon Reborn. By the time you get to the end of the book she has gripped, pulled, tugged, or yanked on that thing nearly thirty times. It bothered me so much, I made a drinking game out of it!

That sense of "Wait, but why...?" was one of my biggest gripes about The Eye of the World as well. Readers spend the entire book wondering what The Eye of the World is until finally, around chapter 42, Moiraine starts talking about it. Only, she won't come right out and say what it is, and her grand plan is infuriatingly hand-wavey: Meanwhile, everyone in the group is content to follow her like lemmings through the Ways, and it isn't until chapter 50 when Mat finally asks what the Eye of the World is.

I think sprinkling books in between is going to be key for me. I got through New Spring, The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn back to back, then 15 chapters into The Shadow Rising and started feeling some burn-out. So I took a two-week break and read King Sorrow as a palette cleanser. Doing so actually helped me realize that Wheel of Time is something special. This is not to say I didn't enjoy King Sorrow -- I enjoyed it a lot -- but I tried writing about it the same way I write something about every Wheel of Time chapter I read, and I found I didn't have anything to say. I'm not sure what it is about Wheel of Time, but no matter how good or bad a chapter is, I can always come up with some satisfying commentary on it.

Having recently re-read the first three books, it was The Great Hunt that improved the most for me, between then and now. I think I am much better equipped to appreciate a good villain now than I used to be. I remember the Seanchan frightened and infuriated me when I read The Great Hunt as a teenager. But now that I've seen something of the world, the Seanchan had a lot more appeal. After being exposed to all of this metaphysical mumbo-jumbo with the Dark One, the Forsaken, and reincarnation, it felt refreshing to have a villain in the form of a society whose caste system has institutionalized slavery. Like finally, something that is grounded in relatable reality. It's like Jordan took some of the nastiest parts of recorded history and used them in world building.