Rating: 4 out of 5
I had been afraid of starting this book where it would lead. In the end, this had been unnecessary and stretching the hunt out across such a tome was not a bad decision. Most of our protagonists grow and become wiser as well as more skilled. Yet, the book was not as captivating as some other recent fantasy, perhaps also because the moral is not hidden in the everlasting combat of two half brothers.
Most of this book focuses on the group of heroes following the Horn of Valere that gets stolen at the start. This means that the rather wide cast of the previous books is whittled into an operating set of four or five for the majority of this book – and Mat, Perrin, and Inotar do not greatly contribute.
Meanwhile, during the boys’ quest, the girls are taken to commence their studies in the White Tower which makes for some rather uncomfortable scenes where we have numbers of girls mooning over Rand. I think that they could have spent at least some time describing their studies or whatnot but it seems that this wasn’t quite what Mr Jordan had in mind.
I liked it; I will continue, but I have no wish to rush to the next book in this series.
