I found “Veins of Gold” and “A Fount of Power” to be two of the most epic and intense climaxes in the series. In your opinion are the two climaxes of Towers of Midnight similarly epic?
The climaxes in the book are epic. One thing you have to remember in Towers of Midnight is that there is not as narrow a focus as there was in The Gathering Storm . So we’re dealing with more characters in many different places, which means that instead of as in the previous book where we could dedicate a good third of the pages directly to Rand—maybe even more—and build to one majestic, powerful climax, I’m not doing that as much in this book. Instead of twenty chapters from one character, you’ll get ten, and building to each climax will narratively depend on your love for the characters and your experience from the previous books. I think there are some wonderful climaxes that are a long time in coming. Are they on the level of The Gathering Storm ? I’m really going to have to let people decide that for themselves.
Defining what makes something epic is so hard even for an epic fantasy writer. One definition of epic can be what we just talked about—a big, massive build across a huge number of chapters to something enormously earth-shattering. But you can also look at epic as a dozen different characters seen across a dozen different plots building toward one event—each of their pieces is smaller, yet builds to something larger. Those are both good definitions. Towers of Midnight is more like the latter definition. The Gathering Storm is more like the former definition.
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