It's an Exciting World

This was a fantastic book.  The whole thing was packed with great action, unexpected plot twists, and moving scenes of valor and love.  I got choked up at a few points in the book when main characters died or something really lovely happened.  I also really liked the ending, and especially the subtle ways the final sequence with Rand plays out.

The series overall was grand, and I think too expansive in many ways.  The levels upon levels of complexity that were there seemed needless.  There were so many different alternate universes, ways to move between them, and things that were there that it seemed like he would just invent something because he needed a tool that fit the specific instance, but didn’t go much beyond that.  Despite the multiplicity of everything there was a nice stacking to it all.  The snakes and foxes was the furthest I think any of it was pushed, with some of the testing universes also pushing the envelope.  The characters did develop well over time, but seemed to be a little too at ease with everything that was happening.  He had stated that they should show a bit more reluctance than other books of the genre, but I’d say the reluctance didn’t show through as much as it should have.  This is especially true towards the end of the series.

This series is the second best I’ve read, only second to A Song of Ice and Fire.  I’d highly recommend reading all of these, but you will need to set aside a huge chunk of time to accomplish such a massive task.

This book is bringing everything together for the big finale.  It is great to have all the disparate paths winding up nice and neat.  There are several things that I wasn’t expecting at all to come out of the book, but were very nice surprises.  The book, since it is so close to the end, didn’t create many of those unanswered questions and cliffhangers that were so annoying about then end of the last few.  I really enjoyed it and am going to be sad when there isn’t any more to listen to.  I’m excited to start the last book, and think I’ll get to that right now.

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This was a fantastic book with so many things being resolved, and the great battle at the White Tower.  I really liked how they portrayed most of the characters.  Perrin is falling off for me, he doesn’t seem to be that exciting anymore, and more whiny than anything else.  Matt is still great, and unpredictably funny.  I’m really liking the story that has come to be around Egwene, and I look forward to the conclusion of it.

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I really liked this one as it focused on my favorite characters and wasn’t just setup for the next few books.  I really liked Matt’s parts in this one.  The way things went down for him was quite amusing, and I’m really looking forward to the end of his story.  Perrin getting his wife back was nice, and the way he surprises the Seanchan he is interacting with, and the same can be said of Matt.  The things happening with Egwene are also quite amusing, and I’m glad to have had so much of it in this book.

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While many of the other books had exciting things happening at the end, this is by far the most blatant cliffhanger.  I was a little annoyed even by the uncertainty with which this book ends.  I was also annoyed that the main action from the last book, while echoing all over this book, didn’t actually resolve at all.  I was suspecting that it would be all over the place, because it must have been, but they didn’t even bring up the characters that were involved with it in the last book.  So all together this book set up more cliffhangers without answering any of the ones from last book.  The characters that were focussed on in this book also aren’t my favorites.  I would have liked to have had more happen with Matt and Perrin, but their parts of the story were only honorable mentions by the scale of what happened with them.  I’m still looking forward to the next few books and finishing the series.

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This book certainly had a lot happen right at the end, but I didn’t see much of the build up to it coming.  There seemed to be so much more plotting and scheming going on, without as much build up.  Even the great amount of action at the end left a ton of open questions.  I liked this one and the end sequence was great, but something tells me that the next few books will be mostly wrapping up the loose ends from what just happened.

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This book didn’t have all that much action directly revealed.  There was a lot of plotting and a lot of hinting at action, but not all that much happened.  There was plenty of setup for what will be coming in the next few books, but I was disappointing in what actually happened in this one.  Much of the long action sequences has been taken out and replaced by small explosions and incessant plotting.  I liked the longer travel narratives instead of the short battles mixed with large pieces of politics.

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