Wheel of Time - Page 29

Attacked by shadowspawn seven times. Attacked by Mashadar. Attacked by darkfriends twice. Attacked and captured by whitecloaks. Rescue operation. At least three freaky dreams.

Prologue fight with Others. Kid attempted killed twice. Dwarf captured, attacked, released after fight. King dead, throne couped and lord executed. Exiled king also killed.

Technically speaking, Ned didn't need to die. The story could have gone on without him dying and just going to the Night's Watch and telling Jon about his parents. All signs pointed him to the NW and Martin still killed him. Not out of anything like shock value or apathy, but because he knew that the anarchy set forth from that 1 event was a much better story going forward than a civil war with Ned safely tucked away at the Wall.

The Thorn of Camorr is said to be an unbeatable swordsman, a master thief, a ghost that walks through walls. Half the city believes him to be a legendary champion of the poor. The other half believe him to be a foolish myth. Nobody has it quite right.

Slightly built, unlucky in love, and barely competent with a sword, Locke Lamora is, much to his annoyance, the fabled Thorn. He certainly didn't invite the rumors that swirl around his exploits, which are actually confidence games of the most intricate sort. And while Locke does indeed steal from the rich (who else, pray tell, would be worth stealing from?), the poor never see a penny of it. All of Locke's gains are strictly for himself and his tight-knit band of thieves, the Gentlemen Bastards.

Locke and company are con artists in an age where con artistry, as we understand it, is a new and unknown style of crime. The less attention anyone pays to them, the better! But a deadly mystery has begun to haunt the ancient city of Camorr, and a clandestine war is threatening to tear the city's underworld, the only home the Gentlemen Bastards have ever known, to bloody shreds. Caught up in a murderous game, Locke and his friends will find both their loyalty and their ingenuity tested to the breaking point as they struggle to stay alive...

Did anyone else really like the way they handled Demandred's battles with Gawyn, Galad, and Lan? When they showed Gawyn going to kill him with the Seanchan ring, I was expecting him to kill Demandred, because surely, Gawyn can't lose. Nope. Well, surely Galad will avenge his fallen brother! Nope.

By the time Lan shows up to fight him, you genuinely don't know or feel confident that he's going to succeed. It made that scene really intense, and it was my favorite part of the whole book.

I'm kind of shocked that Lan lived. I'm actually surprised that as this many main characters survived

Talking about that, looking at this list http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2012/12/new-survey-amol-body-count.html I personally put down 5 or more, but out of that list only 3 died.

I could see Lan surviving, but I thought say Perrin might have bit it, or Moiraine for the shock.

Lanfear's death was anticlimactic. I was hoping she would turn to the light. I don't think Faile should've lived, but that might just be my personal bias against her. I also was unsure how to feel about Rand's new power at the end when he lit his tabac just through imagining it lit.

That being said, I enjoyed the quick pace of the book. I think it allowed me to feel the "pulse" of the battle by having so many quick chapters with so much constantly happening. Sanderson is a great writer and I'm very happy with how the series ended, the only wish I have for him as an author is for him to allow for some grittier scenes and some more erotic scenes. Jordan was far more detailed in describing the sex scenes than Sanderson and even Jordan kept those descriptions sparse and vague.

I was really glad that rand had some powers at the end. I hate when books end and either the main character loses all their power, chooses never to use it, etc etc to make the world a better place. If i was anyone in these books, I'd keep all my power and while I wouldn't dominate, I would maybe just check in now and then with it. Was cool that Rand could either be stronger now or at least he has some power.

Lan killing Demandred was awesome. The battles, fighting and tactics were all masterfully done - and that essentially made up the whole of the book. While a lot of the main characters lived, the ones who did didn't feel like they'd avoided death unnaturally. The only one I think I felt should have died, or was in a position that would've made sense for them to die, was Lan. I hadn't expected him to get back up, and when he did at first I assumed he was a hero of the horn. At the same time, happy he did. All in all, a very satisfying ending. I wasn't sure how Jordan/Sanderson was going to make a final battle against what more or less amounts to a deity of darkness work, but the way they pulled it off was quite brilliant. Happy the series ended so well, sad that it has to be over.

Sanderson likes to have his characters give cheesy motivational speeches, which I found mar the more solemn tone of Jordan's uiniverse (see Galad's speech to the Whitecloaks in ToM, Elayne's speech in aMoL, among others). They just sounded childish/weakly written. I couldn't imagine the characters, as I've known them over the 11 initial books, spontaneously orating like that (ok, Elayne maybe).
While the way Demandred dueled with Gawyn, Galad and Lan really cool to read, I found it unrealistic and illogical that two of the most skilled leaders of the Light throw away their lives so rashly. Also, how the hell would they've been able to get so close to Demandred without being seen, even with the ring ter'angreal's powers? Demandreds considerable powers aside, he was surrounded by channelers and guards, who then just happened to not blast them to pieces the second they revealed; this defiance of the Shadow's nature (unmerciful, opportunistic, dishonorable), I think, overexaggerated Demandred's competitive side, making him seem more arrogant and petty than he should have been.
The ending was good, but I found the surprise with Rand surviving to be slightly underwhelming. Whilst it was clear that Sanderson was going for a Rand-riding-off-into-the-sunset-at-peace kind of ending, it didn't resolve a lot of things. The dynamic of Rand's bond with the three women, and his death was terrifically understated, and things happened too quickly at the end for my taste. Also, and I've heard this complaint from other reviewers of the book, I felt somewhat cheated that we didn't have some of the ending hints from the previous books tied up with the climax i.e. Nynaeve's healing of someone 3 days dead. Either I don't understand, or it doesn't make sense, but I don't know how Rand logically 'switched souls" with Moridin, leaving him to die as a decoy in the tent, with Rand himself somewhere else? (since he could no longer channel, using the Mirror of Mists and other complicated weaves to disguise and compel Moridin's body were out of the question)
Rand's resolution to seal the Bore, after he said something like "the Dark One isn't the problem", was also confusing, since it didn't make an ultimate end to the Dark One's future influence over the world, since it would still be theoretically possible for someone like Lanfear to drill through the Dark One's prison, making another Bore and letting him influence the world again. Perhaps Sanderson was going for a kind of morally neutral resolution (people have to have both good and evil to be human), but I can't judge that since I know Jordan himself had a hand in how the specifics of the ending would play out before his death.
But still 5/5, epic read, was really excited throughout the book. Well done Sanderson and Harriet!