It’s kind of tricky to review the 11th book in an epic fantasy series. I can’t discuss much of the story, since it would spoil what comes before for anyone who has not caught up, but anyone who has not started the series probably won’t care about any references I make to characters, storylines, etc. So what should I talk about?

The biggest deal, at this point, is that this is the first volume after the unofficially dubbed “slog”: the last few volumes in the series have been a bit light on forward momentum, and has really felt like sailing a boat on a windless sea. However, this book starts with a very long first chapter, where we touch base with all the major characters and remind ourselves where we last left them. Some characters are trying to move unseen and escape with a politically high value prisoner in their care. Some characters are trying to rescue their wives and queens from the clutches of the evil Aiel. Some characters are trying to reclaim their rightful throne (all while battling morning sickness with only the aid of medieval fantasy world medicines). There’s a lot of politicking and yet the story is finally moving along. Thankfully, this is not done as an info-dump or monotonous recap, but rather, Robert Jordan gets back into the telling of the story. We are moving forward.

Despite the fact that there was no overall story arc within this one volume, many plot threads did come to closure or climax, and there was a sense of momentum and imminent danger as we move towards the Last Battle (known as Tarmon Gai’don). Unfortunately, there are still too many characters (and too many members of each group of character are individually named — I’m thinking of you, Aes Sedai!), and Jordan didn’t show any sign of reducing that. Maybe it’s good that no major world-building has been introduced. At this point, there are different types/factions of magic users, i.e. users of the One Power (e.g. Aes Sedai, Black Tower, Kin, Wise Ones, Windfinders, Damane), and they are all forming alliances and have chosen sides. 

One group of characters, super-villains known as the Forsaken, have been in the background the whole series, including in this volume, but I still don’t think they’ve been used very well. At this point, I doubt that will change until maybe the last battle. With each of their appearances in these core volumes, they are always talked about and they have a lot of secret meetings, but then they are easily and quickly defeated by the main heroes. Considering they’ve had so much time to hatch their schemes, they usually haven’t come up with very good ones. To be frank, this has been one of my biggest disappointments with the series, because I loved the idea of the Forsaken so much, but it feels almost like Jordan lost interest in them quite early on.

Next volume is where super-author Brandon Sanderson takes the reins to finish the series after Jordan’s passing. Hopefully Sanderson has a clearer approach in mind. I’m really intrigued to find out what other big elements will take over the story to carry us through to the last three chunky books. In the mean time, this was a nice return to form, and I’m now more excited than ever to ride this saga to its conclusion.

4 stars

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