Due for release Nov 2nd. I have my copy pre-ordered with Amazon.
I am really looking forward to this. There was a certain level of trepidation with the last one, but I think Sanderson did a fantastic job, and the plot progression was more than the previous 2 or 3 books combined.
I am particularly waiting for Mat in the Tower of Ghenjei. What’s your key expectation?
Woo! Got my copy…
Bastard! I have to wait till I get out of work…been waiting for this since last November! Arg, I have this AND NaNoWriMo this month…gonna be a tough month to be social.
Dammit! I had no idea this was happening today. Grr.
HOLY CRAP. I have to go to Chapters at lunch. I forgot it was November now.
And there are already surprises in the prologue (Distinctions). You guys may have read it already if u decided it was worth the money, but I refuse to buy the prologue and then buy it again with the book!
Snuck up on me!! (Checks e-mail …) Woot! 33% off coupon from Borders, good through tomorrow! Off to the bookstore I goes …
I’m annoyed because I pre-ordered it at Borders for delivery to my local store, and now I need to wait until it gets delivered some time this weekend. ARRGH!
I was impressed with Amazon. Release date quotes as Nov 2nd, it was delivered to me on that date! Go Amazon.
For some reason this isn’t available for the Barnes and Noble Nook yet. WTF?
I just checked Amazon and it doesn’t seem to be available for the Kindle either. Any word on an ebook availability date?
11/2/2011. Harriet is not a fan of the E-book format.
Wow. This is really disappointing. My wife and I purchase nearly all of our new books in Nook format when available. I guess I’ll have to wait a year. Oh well, that’ll give me time to re-read the rest of the series.
I ordered my copy through Amazon and it was waiting for me when I got home on the 2nd. Unfortunately I’m crazy busy right now working on remodeling my home so I’ve only read the first couple of hundred pages. So far it’s great, Sanderson is much better at imitating Jordan’s voice this time around and so far I haven’t noticed any disconnect.
I keep waiting for the Towers of Midnight stuff to start and even though the other stuff going on is interesting I want Mat to get off his ass and rescue Moiraine.
I really wish they’d quit releasing these books in November, because my birthday is in a few weeks, and now I have to impatiently wait so my wife can get it as a present then pretend to be surprised.
Sanderson has way too much fun writing dialogue for Mat. Not to mention his letters to royalty.
I just read this this morning. I laughed my ass off but I agree between these two books Mat is definitely his favorite character which is one reason I can’t wait for the rescue to start.
I really liked The Gathering Storm, but this one kinda left me feeling disappointed. I cannot disagree more with statements to the effect of “Sanderson sounds just like Jordan.” In my opinion, Jordan didn’t write poetry, but there was a sophistication to his descriptions that Sanderson can’t do (or, to be charitable, can’t do while on a tight schedule). Obviously RJ went overboard describing clothing and such, but I think I’d rather take a paragraph that I could skim over about brocade and studded pearls and such over the half-sentence Sanderson would give in a similar situation.
(Challenge to those who are mid-read, or to myself when I re-read it – find the longest description of any single thing. I bet it’ll be ~2 sentences, and the adjectives will probably be along the lines of “large” or “tall.”)
Sanderson did do a better job with Mat in this book, but in my opinion he really screwed up two people:
Lan and Rand. Lan protested way, WAY too much – he sounded like a whiny bitch, whereas RJ would have conveyed a similar statement much more effectively with a grunt or some kinda cheesy [but honestly kinda badass too] Malkieri phrase. And Rand sounds like some sort of New-Age hippie, spouting wise-sounding nonsense. He’s, like, the Dragon Reborn, maaaaaan
The middle-to-later part of the book was superb, with the
Perrin/Slayer fight overlaid with the Aes Sedai/Mesaana/Black Ajah fight overlaid with the Gawyn/Bloodknives fight, all frenetically contained by the Dreamspike
but the “big reveal” in there was weak (and even weaker so was the perfunctory ending of that particular baddie).
Also – and this is a major spoiler, really:
Graendal killing Asmodean was revealed in the glossary? I’ve never really given two shits about it, but that was kind of a dick way to treat the hundreds of thousands of fans who were really invested in that particular mystery.
All told, I think a split into two volumes would have worked better than this split into three. But I’m still eagerly awaiting the next one (the last one :eek:).
P.S. Aviendha’s storyline, while short, was pretty damned awesome. It… I dunno if “scared” me is the right word, but I definitely said something like, “Oh wow, holy shit.”
P.P.S. The events portrayed on the cover were way, way rushed. If it was going to get a 20 page-ish treatment, this shit should have happened around book 9 or so, rather than this interminable wait.
Which “big reveal” are you referring to? And if you’re talking about Egwene out-willing Mesaana, I thought that was just fine. Particularly as Mesaana has hardly been a major character in any way.
I didn’t notice that at all. It’s kind of funny, actually. Although, really, that was always a pretty weak and irrelevant mystery to begin with.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed it. I loved the resolution that Perrin came to, particularly the scene of him forging the magic Thor hammer, and the fact that Galad ended up respecting him despite himself… although I could have used one fewer chapter leading up to that.
I really liked the scenes with the scary future Aviendha saw, although of course we hope it can be avoided.
Everyone finally learning Morgase was still alive was a relief, and long overdue.
Rand going all super-powered and blowing up the entire army attacking Marador (and that whole plotline) was pretty awesome.
One thing that seems stupid, and maybe we’ll find out something later that allows it to make more sense, was Verin’s letter to Mat. If she had such vital information to report, why not just do so during her info dump last book?
Overall, I found the book a bit less satisfying than the previous one, but still way better than books 7 through 10.
I’d like to add a third option to that: “or can’t do while trying to end all of these storylines in three books”. We’re two enormously long books into the “last” book, and it feels about where we should be in terms of being two thirds of the way through resolving things. Frankly, other than a few of the early Perrin chapters in this one, there isn’t all that much that could be cut out to make more space, even if you wanted to. I agree it ends up giving you a different tone in the end, though, regardless of how you get there.
Anyways, I finished this last night, and I also liked it less than 12, but much more than 7-10. The first third or so dragged a bit for me, but I really enjoyed most of what happened after that. The Moiraine rescue seemed a bit anti-climatic, considering how much I had been looking forward to it; this definitely peaked in the fight at Tar Valon. Agreed on the short Aviendha scenes being another big highlight. I think I may go back and re-read some of the more fun parts tonight or tomorrow. In the end, it was a fun read and pretty satisfying in moving the series on, so another success as far as I’m concerned.
Edit - Forgot to mention - I am really looking forward to seeing how things work out for the Black Tower, and I hope it gets at least a few pretty serious chapters and not just a glossing over. That was another very small piece of this book that I really liked.
I dunno–Verin seemed to be playing a very tough game very well. She had a lot of information to give Egwene in a very short time that Egwene herself desperately needed. Leaving some other information with trusted associates in letters that were only to be opened after her death may have been the only reasonable course.
OTOH, it seems like she could have squeezed in one sentence about the Waygates in Caemlyn without too much trouble. She was clearly aware that Egwene was in regular dream-contact with Elayne, who was the person who really needed that info … Either way, she obviously miscalculated, but it’s hard to blame her. When she handed that letter to Mat, I gave him a week, tops, before his curiosity overwhelmed him. It’s pretty shocking–and says something about how focused he was on getting Aludra her resources and rescuing Moiraine–that he made it through a whole month.