It is finished

Lo, many months ago Shifter did undertake a great undertaking, which was undertook lo many months ago. And that undertaking did require the undertaking of a buttload of reading. And that buttload of reading, which was undertook, did involve ALL of the Wheel of Time books, each of which has a gazillion words and pages. And now, as it was undertaken, so it was undertook, and it is done.

Finally.

Having now re-read the entire series, and read the new Book, which was outlined by Jordan and finished by Brandon Sanderson, I can make a few observations.

First, the series is, if anything, even longer than I remembered.

Second, the first books were every bit as good as I remembered.

Third, the latter books were not, overall, as bad as I remembered. Reading them all in order definitely helped with many of those later books.

Fourth, SOME books (especially Crossroads at Twilight) were EVEN WORSE than I remembered. Really, CaT was a colossal waste of trees, brain cells, and precious hours that I could have spent plucking my eyebrows or other tasks, all of which would have been more interesting and valuable than reading that book. However...

Fifth, the new book (book 12, The Gathering Storm) really rocked! I am very impressed by what Sanderson did. It is definitely not a "Jordan" book and in some ways that is not a bad thing. The pace was much faster, for example, and clothing was described much less often. I know it seems like I harp on clothing descriptions a lot but believe me, I harp on them far less often than they show up in all 11 of the other damn books. There were actually some decent and I think fairly accurate reviews of Book 12 on Amazon, and I agree with them that the writing for Matt Cauthon was a bit jarring compared to Jordan, but aside from that it was a fairly seamless transition from Jordan to Sanderson. And it was just a good, fun book.

So now the next book (Book 13) comes out in about a month and I will pick that up and read it, but probably not right away. I'm longing for some books that are under 800 pages - working on some true pulp at the moment. The Malazan empire books are calling to me as well, but again I'm hoping for some lighter, sub-900 page novels for a bit.

And there you have it.