Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me start out by stating that I think Brandon Sanderson is a great writer. I've read most of his published work, and I know he's capable and sophisticated. That's why I'm so disappointed in this book. Even the other WoT books he worked on were far superior to A Memory of Light. And let's face it, he gets a lot of credit for managing to pull this off at all. Robert Jordan had created a huge, tangled ball of interwoven plots and sub-plots over the course of the previous books. Managing to resolve all of those fully would be extremely difficult even under the best circumstances. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that pressure to complete the series in just one final book, and possibly page count limitations as well, have led to a less than ideal resolution to the series. My overall opinion is that all of my issues with this book could have been resolved if Mr. Sanderson had been allowed to add a few hundred pages of additional material. And I think he would have managed it well. Regardless of where the fault lies, I'm saddened by the end result though. Below are my primary issues with the final installment in the series. Please be aware that there are major spoilers included and stop reading if you haven't pickup up the book yet. *** SPOILER ALERT *** *** SPOILER ALERT!!! *** *** I REALLY MEAN IT!!! *** 1. Bao the Wyld, aka Demandred, is a very poorly implemented storyline. There's not enough detail to flesh out what he's been doing, his followers culture, or why they're really fighting for the Dark One. Less detail may have actually been more effective. As it is, there's just enough to get me interested, but no follow through. The whole sub-plot around Bao/Demandred, his obsession with fighting Rand in a duel, and the three sword fights leading to his death feels arbitrary and incomplete. If there had been more information previously about this, or even a couple of dedicated chapters in A Memory of Light about it, it would've felt far more consistent with the rest of the series. He actually reminds me of some random 'Boss Mob' from an MMO, especially his constant shouts about Rand coming out to face him. 2. Where are the huge armies? Over the course of the previous books it was explained that there would be a titanic battle or series of battles. There were numbers provided that led me to believe there would be millions of Trollocs, at least a couple of million soldiers in the army of the Light, and likely thousands of channelers involved. The Aiel alone were supposed to number close to a million and have a thousand or more Wise Ones. Instead this final book is using armies in the tens of thousands. Perhaps a hundred thousand total in the armies of the Light, a few hundred thousand Trollocs total, and only hundreds of channelers in total. I was expecting assaults on all of the major cities, roving armies traveling via gateway, and circles of men and women using the One Power to its full potential. Nowhere previously was it mentioned that 90 percent of the forces on both sides had been killed, so I'm extremely confused by this. 3. Many deaths or decisions seem out of character. I'm not upset that major characters die. That's expected, and even deaths due to stupid misfortune aren't anything I'd complain about. This book centers on a gigantic battle, and people die due to misfortune in those circumstances. Being trapped under a horse, shot by a stray arrow, overwhelmed in an ambush, or even tripping and falling in a particularly bad way I could accept. My problem is with characters acting far out of line with their established patterns. Well, that and the sudden revelation of new information used to justify their demise. The most glaring example of this is Egwene, the Amyrlin, taking on Mazrim Taim head on, burning herself out, and dying in a glorious display of anti-balefire. She's one of the strongest, most disciplined, and most creative of all the main characters, but she rushes in and uses brute force with no real explanation. There's absolutely no subtlety to her battle. Suddenly discovering an anti-balefire weave doesn't change the fact that she's possibly the least likely character to rush in, guns blazing, on a suicide run. Grief over her husband's death isn't an excuse for someone with her level of discipline behaving that way. The fact that her husband, Gawyn's death is another example of strangely aberrant behavior from someone who was supposed to be past rash stupidity just makes it worse. And on a related note, neither is her sa'angreal having no buffer an excuse for Egwene's death. I'm actually calling BS on that. Callandor was singled out specifically in earlier books as being unusual and dangerous because it didn't have a buffer. It's supposed to be critical to have one in all angreal, especially powerful ones, precisely to prevent damage to the user. The Choedan Kal had a buffer in the form of the access keys, and it's never mentioned as missing from any other angreal, anywhere. And yet we're informed via a revelation that the most powerful sa'angreal the White Tower has, one that has been in use for generations, and that Egwene herself used to the point of exhaustion in an earlier book, is missing this critical component. This is the worst kind of contrived garbage excuse to rationalize killing off a major character. A big rock falling from the sky when she happened to be looking the other way, that I could accept, but not her death as described in this book. 4. The intelligence and sophistication of the characters is extremely lacking in this final installment. For instance, in a series that has featured compulsion and dreamwalking, and Forsaken who like to use both to defeat their enemies, it's absurd that no protection was provided to the army generals to prevent Graendal from manipulating them. Moiraine is protecting her own dreams as standard practice every night early on in the series, and the need for such protection is common knowledge among the Wise Ones and Aes Sedai long before the Last Battle. The intelligent, cunning, and experienced characters I remember from previous books would've set wards and had guardians watching the general's dreams from the other side just in case. True Power being capable of bypassing wards or not, the Wise One dreamwalkers and the Aes Sedai in the real world should have been acting as guards to stop Graendal from getting close enough to even try it. 5. The Aiel. I don't understand why they were suddenly relegated to a background role. They were previously noted as having great tactical prowess and their leaders were considered as being the equals of the great wetlander generals. They had never suffered a major Trolloc invasion because they were too strong and smart to defeat. But now suddenly they're just skirmishers? And Rhuarc isn't put in charge of his own position to defend? WTF? I never use WTF, but it's really deserved here. I feel like Brandon Sanderson completely betrayed the whole Aiel storyline. Rand learned the lost song that could renew the world but never taught it to them, they're only used as skirmishers and archers, Rhuarc is just some guy instead of a brilliant general who previously defeated many of the wetlander commanders he's now expected to serve, the Wise Ones are almost ignored... There's just so much plot and potential wasted here that it hurts my head. 6. The battle that Rand has with the Dark One seems almost like a retake on the Mistborn (one of Sanderson's earlier works) ending with its battle of wills outside space and time, but it's even less satisfying. I was expecting more. More detail, more information, more subtlety. The way the Rand vs. The Dark One segments are used feels like a series of predictable commercial breaks for the unending sequence of bad decisions or calamitous misfortunes endured by the other characters. Instead of a worthy ending, we end up with 'The Light cannot abide without the Dark' essentially. I understand the concept and I saw it coming about thirteen books ago. But the way it was actually laid out was so obvious and immature that it was insulting. This is the end of an epic fourteen book series, not some bad young adult vampire trilogy. And I think that basically summarizes my feeling on this book overall. The last two were just so good that I can't understand how this happened.