Half? I’d say 85%. What a dog of a book! To me, exactly three interesting things happened in the damn book. Mesaana’s whole 2 page appearance, Perrin’s method of pursuading Shaido Aiel to talk, and Egwene’s adventures on the last 2 pages of the book, just before the epilog.
I’ve been reading this thing since 1990, just before The Dragon Reborn came out, and I have become very annoyed with RJ’s over-descriptive (to the power of 10) prose, and the glacial pace. Not to mention sniffing.
Yeah, I just finished the book yesterday. After a week of reading. Normally, I tear through the new books in about 1 to 2 days, that it took me so long this time shows me that my interest is seriously wanning. I can’t believe the review at dragonmount.com said that things start to happen in this volume. I can’t really think of a significant event that did take place. The biggest problem I noticed in this book was that he either forshadow’s so little that you have no idea where he’s going, or so much that you get tired of being beaten over the head with it. For example:
[spoiler]With the turning of the chain across the harbor in to heartstone. What the hell was the point in that? So that they can’t retract it? Did they make a point about what good that would do? I understood what she was going to do fairly quickly, just not why.
And with Rand or Perrin forming an alliance with the Senchan (sp?). To me it’s fairly obviouse that Rand would have to come to grips with the fact that he wouldn’t just be able to snap his fingers or toss lightning at everything, he’d have to come to an agreement. And since we know that the Senchan have the male adam with them, and that the High Lady Suroth is a darkfriend, then we know this is going to turn out badly. Does he have to beat us over the head with it? [/spoiler]
Anyway, I did like the way Perrin handled the Aiel too. That seemed very real to me, while some of the other charaters actions didn’t make any kind of sense at all. Bah! While I’ll probably still finish reading the series, I doubt that I’ll be rushing anymore to get them when they are released.