I found this volume a very quick read. Perhaps that’s because of its slightly shorter length, but I also think it’s because I’m settling into the newer system Mr. Jordan had for changing viewpoints. We’ve slid into the “Large chunk from a viewpoint, then very little from them for a long while” system. With novels this complex and lengthy, there are really only two ways to handle the viewpoints. The first is to switch very quickly, like George R. R. Martin prefers. This gets you a sense of fast pacing and lets you keep readers informed about characters by coming back to them frequently, but never for very long. The other is to do big swaths from one viewpoint. This slows the feel of the pacing, but you don’t have to worry as much about readers keeping track of everyone, since you have time in each viewpoint to give lots of reminders about what is going on, then leave that viewpoint long enough that it doesn’t matter how much readers remember—you can just remind them when you come back. A middle ground between these two extremes would probably be possible, but I’d worry about readers being able to follow what is going on, since you never stay long enough to give reminders, but you don’t come back quickly enough to count on them simply remembering.
Jordan’s middle books followed the quick-moving method, but he’s eased into the longer swath method here, which I think was a wise move. In truth, what we’re doing in these later books is reading six or seven DIFFERENT books, but reading them in a serialized method.
I think that with readers, expectation is a big deal. If you go into these later books expecting to read a book which focuses on a couple of main characters, you might be annoyed. However, I’m expecting an engaging epic which shows me a lot of different smaller stories combining to make the larger one. In that, I’m very satisfied. I think Jordan did a marvelous job with these. (Though, I do remember Book Ten maybe going just a tad father than I like with the numbers of side viewpoints.)
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