Rating: 4 out of 5
I had been very keen on this series overall until this book left me wanting. Somehow, the story develops in some aspects like a lightning strike and in others very slowly indeed. In other aspects, the topic of conversation for most characters is the same as before: men complaining about women and women about men.
Having taken a look at the previous books character by character, I’m not really of a mind to do the same here. All in all, I’m still of the opinion that Nynaeve is fairly annoying. Rand also became slightly repetitive here and, while I don’t really think the madness that is supposed to come will be like what everyone thinks, he still seems to act deliberately weird in a lot of cases.
But the activities… my favourite plot line was Egwene’s Amyrlin power consolidation. Possibly the second best is what is taking place in the White Tower. These are perhaps the least military and most political of the stories, and clever strategy is what will carry the heroes through. The rest, including Rand’s mountain campaign, were set up from the start like a slow climb to a sudden fall as one would expect from a typical parable.
Overall, I enjoyed it, but the book also made me lose interest, at least for a while, in continuing with the series.
