Spoilers-A Memory of Light- Thoughts? Spoiler SPOILERS!!! Finished reading the last Wheel of Time. Really enjoyed it. Fast paced, lots of action and good resolution (I think). Well written (but then I nearly always like Sanderson's style), the characters I usually find annoying were much less so and the ones I like were great. Some of the scenes I particularly liked: The great captains meeting at the beginning. Thom trying to compose a ballad while killing people. Mat and Rand meeting up in Ebou Dar. All in all a worthy ending to an epic series :heart: Your thoughts?
Originally posted by Sifu Ben: Done. Sorry but it did say spoilers in the title and at the top of the post...
OK, so not really any spoilers in your post after all. I have mixed feelings about AMoL, it's very much a Brandon Sanderson novel using Robert Jordan's world. As such, the things Sanderson is good at are great. As the bulk of the book is a seemingly hopeless battle while the main characters struggle to find a game changer, much of the book is probably better than Jordan would have written it, as this is the thing Sanderson does REALLY well. However, this was the last book of the series, and if there's a weak point to Sanderson's work it's his endings. Many people found the ending to Mistborn unsatisfying and underexplained with no information beforehand to explain it as it happened. This is the case here, especially with the Egwene storyline (which I found the most unsatisfying) and catastrophically with Rand! I suspect that part of the reason for this is that while the Jordan novels were predominantly event stories, Sanderson's work is much more character based. Therefore it's the character's story he's interested, rather than the story of the characters. Coupled with the fact that during the course of the series Perrin and Mat turned out to be the more interesting characters (and indeed, I thought their threads in AMoL were much better handled), this probably explains why there was an issue. However, this meant that I found the ending something of an anticlimax, which isn't good for a fantasy epic, especially one I've invested my entire adult life in. I'm looking forward to the supplemental novels though, I'm especially hoping that Spoiler the identity of Gaidal will be revealed (as I'd had my suspicions throughout).
Spoiler I agree that the ending is a bit WTH just happened but I kind of liked it. The fact that balefire didn't have an opposite was driving me insane, so I'm pleased that Egwene found one though disappointed that it wasn't explained. I'm also happy that the DO wasn't killed since the whole "humans naturally have a darkside" thing is one I agree with. Sanderson is more character based than Jordan which I thought was good for an ending to sort of redeem a lot of the major players before it finished.
I am waiting for the paperback, at which point I will start over the entire series before going through to the end. I've skipped the last couple of Jordan novels precisely for that reason. Around book 9, I decided that it was going nowhere, and that I'd start again only if the story was actually finished. I like sanderson a lot, and I think that part of his problem was that the chalklines of the ending were already defined by Jordan, and he had to stick more or less to the limits that were set for him.
