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Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:Fleeing from Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon learns that he can neither keep his betrothed nor let her go. Perrin Aybara seeks to free his wife, Faile, a captive of the Shaido, but his only hope may be an alliance with the enemy. At Tar Valon, Egwene al'Vere, the young Amyrlin of the rebel Aes Sedai, lays siege to the heart of Aes Sedai power, but she must win quickly. In Andor, Elayne Trakland fights for the Lion Throne that is hers by right, but enemies and Darkfriends plot her destruction. And Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn himself, is hated even while prophesied to save the world. In the tenth book of THE WHEEL OF TIME, the world and the characters stand at a crossroads, and the world approaches twilight, when the power of the Shadow grows stronger. From the Compact Disc edition..… (more)
User reviews
Again because we do not get to the end of the story, more can be found to fault the telling of the story. (You would know we had because some way 'THE END' would appear.) New details in the travelogue that is the The Wheel of Time occurs. Alton Brown cruising around the US on Asphalt, or Mark Twain in Roughing It. We have Jordan having created a map with a great many lands, so why not ensure we as the audience know how diverse it is.
The problem therein is that we don't care. The Map has never had the detail it needed to find a great many of the places mentioned. Battles can not be followed because they are impractical and are just literary voyeurisms. The battles could have been summed even more quickly, Good guys show up, have smaller force, use power to win. If you try to look at it in military context, it will do you no good, as will understanding logistics which Jordan tries to give a nod to.
Big armies need big food. Even the many thousands of Shaido need food, but they don't, and again with the contradictions when the Forsaken sent the septs all over to be destroyed, now they seem to be getting back together? Oh, Jordan smacks his head wanting a V-8, in revisionist writing, this is even better five or ten years after I originally wrote the other scenes that I'll just change things.
Another exploration of Tell, don't show is revisited in ever bigger details which as the writing started to be denser again, or the fonts tighter, showed that the travelogue needed to be expanded.
Screen time is also getting shorter and shorter for characters as each is fighting for time on camera. Including Rand. The Protagonist, but the series is so large, that he is not as important as he was before. We have to remember as early as book three we were already pushing off the center stage.
But as Rand points out, he is the one who has to show up at the final climax chapter to fight, everyone else we have grown fond of, does not really need to be there. Thus we get into the exploration of why they are on screen so much. They need to be ready.
In the early books of the Travelogue we saw how big the world was, and as the characters criss-crossed it, they were learning. But now they are as wise as I in the space of 3 years of book time and twenty years of reading time.
These last books Jordan accelerates the time scale and he should not have. For what our leaders want to accomplish, they do need more time and seasoning. One William Pitt the Younger in a generation please. Not six, seven, eight... Who can keep track.
But is there anything else to read as good with as much depth. No. On to the next.
Crossroads of Twilight is a mixture of positives and negatives, with the latter emphasized because of the two year wait and the fact that Prologue was almost a tenth of the book even though some of the bits within that were interest. However, even though this book can be frustrating at times (my came in about three-quarters of the way through waiting for something to happen) it is a necessity to read as The Wheel of Time draws to it conclusion.
Also, the fact that in one chapter, he spent two thirds of the time describing the dresses of the women
Another disadvantage to the CDs is you can't always see where you are adequately in the book. After listening to 3 CDs, I was feeling like I was finally getting into the meat of the story, only to find that those first 3 CDs were all prologue. Yikes!
Anyhow, the story is finally moving along again, though there still were some stalls in the plot line. It took about 2/3 of the book for every single plot-setting/story arc to react to the massive use of the power that was Rand and Nynaeve out there cleaning up the male have of the power. That got a little much -- everyone who could channel, stopping and staring off in that direction. My favorite character, Bela, that sturdy Two Rivers pony with her quick hooves is back. On to Knife of Dreams.
*(My husband began working for Robert Jordan just before this book began being written.)
Look at that book description! On Goodreads it's six paragraphs long. This, of course, is because the main characters are split off into six different groups …This book was everything that was wrong with the series.
Note: In general, I can't review this series with any objectivity. I've been reading it since I was eleven years old, and it's thoroughly embedded in my brain.