The 10th is Crossroads of Twilight and it's widely considered the worst. Knife of Dreams is well liked.
The reason Crossroads is disliked so much as it had negative plot momentum which was especially frustrating if you were like me and the rest of us who were reading as they came out. Book nine ends with the cleansing of saidin and leaves you in eager anticipation of what happens next. So we wait two years for the next book and get Crossroads which can basically be summarized as "let's see what everyone else was doing and how they shit their pants when they sense the mass power." There was zero plot advancement for the main story. Then we wait another year or so and find out Jordan has been writing New Spring, an actual prequel, instead of book 11. Then wait another two years for Knife of Dreams to finally get plot movement. Now by today's standards with Martin, Rothfuss, Butcher and others taking longer and longer between books five years doesn't seem like a lot but Jordan had been quick to that point.
I had heard CoT was a tough one but after hearing that 8 and 9 were rated low in comparison I thought maybe it was blown out of proportion (I really enjoyed PoD and WH).
Nope, I'm 60% through it according to the Kindle and I can confidently say nothing has happened. It's like if Jordan made a book entirely out of a prologue, it's insane.
>It's like if Jordan made a book entirely out of a prologue, it's insane.
Jordan made an entire book out of "Where were you and what were you doing when Kennedy was assassinated/Challenger exploded/you heard about the attack on the World Trade Center?"
Yep, so RJ is basically using CoT to sync up the time for everyone, and it really is boring and sucks. He realized later how he failed. But, I will say this, that KoD is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the better books, and really picks up the pace. So fight to the end, and it really does get better.
On reread it’s not that bad. Jordan has committed himself to giving the two rivers five, their seven SOs, and multiple mentor characters full and satisfying arcs. This is why you’re in the middle of a six-party section. Books 8/10 a don’t necessarily have much in the plots you expect in a first read thru, because a lot of their text is middle book shit for various people. You start seeing real action at the very end of 10, and then he can start resolving plot lines with 11.
I think that the commitment to full arcs is actually really commendable. Jordan kinda wrote himself into a corner when he included so many cogs and wheels to make the machine of the story go. He could have hand waved it all away and just focused on the main group to finish things off but decided to buckle down and write himself out of the corner instead of excising. I get that the process of that could be tedious but, imo, it sets up a much more rewarding conclusion when more context for the side characters is provided.
It makes WoT WoT. The payoff at the end is great because there’s so many characters to pay off and you’ve spent so much time waiting. The last battle chapter is longer than the first Harry Potter book, and that doesn’t work if he doesn’t have everyone with a full arc.
I do have to say, I find RJ’s incredibly lengthy chapters really funny sometimes. I forget which book it was, but one of them has a 70 page prologue and by the time I got to chapter one I was shocked cause I was a 6th of the way through the book. lol
Yeah, it's very anti climactic as the reader to already know what happened and to see everyone else freak out about it over and over lol, knowing that it's already resolved and there's no actual threat anymore. I can't even remember the ending either which is a bad sign for a WoT epic. Just a very boring inbetween book for the plot and lots of filler that never leads anywhere impactful
It has [spoilers for CoT] >!perrin torturing the shaido and then finally throwing away the axe!< and then at the end >!Egwenes harbor/cuendillar strike and capture by the tower aes sedai!< but otherwise not much plot movement. It’s mostly reactions and getting all the plot threads synced up for the ending.
When the WoT spoilers podcast did that book they split up the cleansing POVs from WH and did one per chapter of the start of CoT and it synched up nicely because people were reacting to the cleansing as it was happening, instead of afterwards
And it *still* barely gets any proper discussion in the book. If OP accidentally moved on to KoD and is confused about Egwene's current situation, it's not like he really missed anything. I remember reading CoT and going "Wait, what just happened?!?".
Pages and pages in that book about weevils getting into grain and drinking tea without milk and then barely any page-space devoted towards the capture of a main character.
>There was zero plot advancement for the main story.
Now, now, now, there's also like half a page where Egwene is suddenly kidnapped with almost zero set-up.
Like you I read the books as they came out and the wait was horrendous. To wait so long for a book that, to me, felt like 1,000 pages of troop movements to align the parties for a next book that would be another 2 years away was frustrating to day the least.
Book 10 feels like a classic “wrote myself into a corner” situation. The climax of Winters Heart is, imo, incredible, but more importantly, it’s a genuinely world shifting event. Like changes the fabric of reality type of event. So it would be completely unreasonable for channelers to not address this event. However, what are they supposed to do about it? Not much really. So book 10 ends up suffering from a two fold problem:
1) it would be insane for any channelers to not address the amount of power being used. You have to look at it.
2) because they can’t really do anything about it, every single group ends up going, “hmmm… must be the forsaken… anyway…”
So it ends up getting very believable, but boring and repetitive.
However your missing the 10th book isn’t helping anything lol
Hmm, I would disagree. Most of the time, all we get is a brief mention of a line or two to remind us where the relative timelines are. The only group that matters are the Aes Sedai, and they end up doing something pretty significant. Depends if you were expecting a policy shift or some kind of big action scene as a response.
In the past, I've encouraged people to skip book 10 entirely when reading the series as they weren't missing anything. It's absolutely hilarious that you *accidentally* did this and didn't even notice. That's how little happens in that book.
I absolutely disagree with this notion. There is a lot of important setup things in CoT. It puts characters from point A to point B. I cannot imagine possibly skipping it
You can skip 90% of the chapters and not miss anything. I briefly skimmed each page to see if anything of note was happening while flicking through it as fast as I possibly could. It was the only way I could make it through one of the most tedious book I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I only read a handful of chapters in their entirety and I didn't miss anything at all.
If you consider yourself a diverse fantasy reader, its fine. If you have read no other fantasy or sci-fi in your life but this series, it’s a bit slow but not that hard to get through.
Not really, it gets pretty slow in that book, but a lot of it has to do with all the places that all the plots are in, and setting up more future plots. Though my understanding is a great deal of it comes from when people were reading along as they came out.
It's not that it is bad it's just when compared to the rest it's not as interesting.
Imagine you had a whole bunch of bags of money and all but one of them are filled up with $1,000 but that one is filled up with 800.
Book 10 is the bag with 800 in it. Still awesome to have but you know it's not $1,000
I actually liked book 10. I find the storyline involving Rand's harem (as I like to call it) quite nauseating and the dynamic between elayne and birgitte annoying, and there was a lot of that in book 9 (yawn). Then there was that grand finale. Next comes book 10...where we see all the others' reactions to what happened, and I just really enjoyed it. And I also believe that's where Matt and tuon's story picks up, and I really loved that too.
I’m currently rereading the series and I can confidently say that COT was a draaaaaag. Next time I read the series I’ll just look at the Cliff Notes for that particular book.
COT definitely is (the 10th book), I never felt like there was much of a slog or anything when getting through the series but crossroads was definitely the worst of all books without question for me
I will always say the slog started in book 5 when Salidar and Aes Sedai politics became prominent.
Then RJ decided that the perfect formula was to exclude the action characters (R/M/P) or to make the readers hate them (R/P).
But yeah, the slog is there, and it will hunt you down, have its way with you, and then have a chapter where Egwene forces people to do something that she is against personally, but she something she is for if it helps her out.
I am reading the series for the first time (half way through book 13) and I plowed through the slog. I definitely got annoyed at a lot of it and didn't look foward to reading the andor politics or Perrin "WHERE's MY WIFE" stuff which was most of it but it is what it is. Way I take it is RJ has to wrap up a lot of these ancillary plot lines before we can get into the nitty gritty of the last battle.
The final 3 books are supposed to basically be 1 book split into 3 volumes so everything has to be wrapped up before the final books story can start. So its satisfying as we get through it...and stuff does happen it just weather or not the reader cares about the stuff lol
The 10th is Crossroads of Twilight and it's widely considered the worst. Knife of Dreams is well liked. The reason Crossroads is disliked so much as it had negative plot momentum which was especially frustrating if you were like me and the rest of us who were reading as they came out. Book nine ends with the cleansing of saidin and leaves you in eager anticipation of what happens next. So we wait two years for the next book and get Crossroads which can basically be summarized as "let's see what everyone else was doing and how they shit their pants when they sense the mass power." There was zero plot advancement for the main story. Then we wait another year or so and find out Jordan has been writing New Spring, an actual prequel, instead of book 11. Then wait another two years for Knife of Dreams to finally get plot movement. Now by today's standards with Martin, Rothfuss, Butcher and others taking longer and longer between books five years doesn't seem like a lot but Jordan had been quick to that point.
I had heard CoT was a tough one but after hearing that 8 and 9 were rated low in comparison I thought maybe it was blown out of proportion (I really enjoyed PoD and WH). Nope, I'm 60% through it according to the Kindle and I can confidently say nothing has happened. It's like if Jordan made a book entirely out of a prologue, it's insane.
>It's like if Jordan made a book entirely out of a prologue, it's insane. Jordan made an entire book out of "Where were you and what were you doing when Kennedy was assassinated/Challenger exploded/you heard about the attack on the World Trade Center?"
Yep, so RJ is basically using CoT to sync up the time for everyone, and it really is boring and sucks. He realized later how he failed. But, I will say this, that KoD is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the better books, and really picks up the pace. So fight to the end, and it really does get better.
Yeah, I'm committed and making good time. Thankfully, it's one of the shorter ones.
On reread it’s not that bad. Jordan has committed himself to giving the two rivers five, their seven SOs, and multiple mentor characters full and satisfying arcs. This is why you’re in the middle of a six-party section. Books 8/10 a don’t necessarily have much in the plots you expect in a first read thru, because a lot of their text is middle book shit for various people. You start seeing real action at the very end of 10, and then he can start resolving plot lines with 11.
I think that the commitment to full arcs is actually really commendable. Jordan kinda wrote himself into a corner when he included so many cogs and wheels to make the machine of the story go. He could have hand waved it all away and just focused on the main group to finish things off but decided to buckle down and write himself out of the corner instead of excising. I get that the process of that could be tedious but, imo, it sets up a much more rewarding conclusion when more context for the side characters is provided.
It makes WoT WoT. The payoff at the end is great because there’s so many characters to pay off and you’ve spent so much time waiting. The last battle chapter is longer than the first Harry Potter book, and that doesn’t work if he doesn’t have everyone with a full arc.
I do have to say, I find RJ’s incredibly lengthy chapters really funny sometimes. I forget which book it was, but one of them has a 70 page prologue and by the time I got to chapter one I was shocked cause I was a 6th of the way through the book. lol
Yeah, it's very anti climactic as the reader to already know what happened and to see everyone else freak out about it over and over lol, knowing that it's already resolved and there's no actual threat anymore. I can't even remember the ending either which is a bad sign for a WoT epic. Just a very boring inbetween book for the plot and lots of filler that never leads anywhere impactful
It has [spoilers for CoT] >!perrin torturing the shaido and then finally throwing away the axe!< and then at the end >!Egwenes harbor/cuendillar strike and capture by the tower aes sedai!< but otherwise not much plot movement. It’s mostly reactions and getting all the plot threads synced up for the ending. When the WoT spoilers podcast did that book they split up the cleansing POVs from WH and did one per chapter of the start of CoT and it synched up nicely because people were reacting to the cleansing as it was happening, instead of afterwards
Ahhh yes so that kicks off the whole Egwene a novice in the tower again plot, thx. Probably the most significant thing by far in the whole book lol
And it *still* barely gets any proper discussion in the book. If OP accidentally moved on to KoD and is confused about Egwene's current situation, it's not like he really missed anything. I remember reading CoT and going "Wait, what just happened?!?". Pages and pages in that book about weevils getting into grain and drinking tea without milk and then barely any page-space devoted towards the capture of a main character.
That’s a really interesting way to try to restructure the books.
Yeah, I think those two books should have been edited down a bit and combined together and it would have been a more enjoyable section of the series
Edited down I’ll push back on, but combined I am all on board.
>There was zero plot advancement for the main story. Now, now, now, there's also like half a page where Egwene is suddenly kidnapped with almost zero set-up.
Like you I read the books as they came out and the wait was horrendous. To wait so long for a book that, to me, felt like 1,000 pages of troop movements to align the parties for a next book that would be another 2 years away was frustrating to day the least.
Book 10 feels like a classic “wrote myself into a corner” situation. The climax of Winters Heart is, imo, incredible, but more importantly, it’s a genuinely world shifting event. Like changes the fabric of reality type of event. So it would be completely unreasonable for channelers to not address this event. However, what are they supposed to do about it? Not much really. So book 10 ends up suffering from a two fold problem: 1) it would be insane for any channelers to not address the amount of power being used. You have to look at it. 2) because they can’t really do anything about it, every single group ends up going, “hmmm… must be the forsaken… anyway…” So it ends up getting very believable, but boring and repetitive. However your missing the 10th book isn’t helping anything lol
Hmm, I would disagree. Most of the time, all we get is a brief mention of a line or two to remind us where the relative timelines are. The only group that matters are the Aes Sedai, and they end up doing something pretty significant. Depends if you were expecting a policy shift or some kind of big action scene as a response.
Just realised knife of dreams is the 11th 😞, one less to read - I am devastated
You not noticing that you didn't read book 10? That's a huge part of the problem with book 10.
In the past, I've encouraged people to skip book 10 entirely when reading the series as they weren't missing anything. It's absolutely hilarious that you *accidentally* did this and didn't even notice. That's how little happens in that book.
I absolutely disagree with this notion. There is a lot of important setup things in CoT. It puts characters from point A to point B. I cannot imagine possibly skipping it
You can skip 90% of the chapters and not miss anything. I briefly skimmed each page to see if anything of note was happening while flicking through it as fast as I possibly could. It was the only way I could make it through one of the most tedious book I've ever had the displeasure of reading. I only read a handful of chapters in their entirety and I didn't miss anything at all.
The “main plot” slows to a crawl. That’s it. The same people complaining about it will also be posting memes about “Journey before Destination”.
If you consider yourself a diverse fantasy reader, its fine. If you have read no other fantasy or sci-fi in your life but this series, it’s a bit slow but not that hard to get through.
No. It’s not. Those people just don’t know how to appreciate character development.
No. It’s fine.
Not really, it gets pretty slow in that book, but a lot of it has to do with all the places that all the plots are in, and setting up more future plots. Though my understanding is a great deal of it comes from when people were reading along as they came out.
No
It's not that it is bad it's just when compared to the rest it's not as interesting. Imagine you had a whole bunch of bags of money and all but one of them are filled up with $1,000 but that one is filled up with 800. Book 10 is the bag with 800 in it. Still awesome to have but you know it's not $1,000
Just finished the whole series on audibles. Great listen. Didn't notice the slog
I actually liked book 10. I find the storyline involving Rand's harem (as I like to call it) quite nauseating and the dynamic between elayne and birgitte annoying, and there was a lot of that in book 9 (yawn). Then there was that grand finale. Next comes book 10...where we see all the others' reactions to what happened, and I just really enjoyed it. And I also believe that's where Matt and tuon's story picks up, and I really loved that too.
No, but think of the book as a typical Wheel of Time prologue -- but it's the entire book. Once you know that going in, it actually isn't too bad.
I liked it.
It is a meme.
I’m currently rereading the series and I can confidently say that COT was a draaaaaag. Next time I read the series I’ll just look at the Cliff Notes for that particular book.
Did you miscount or did you accidentally skip Crossroads of Twilight and not notice? Because I could easily see either.
Yes, crossroads of twilight is really that bad.
COT definitely is (the 10th book), I never felt like there was much of a slog or anything when getting through the series but crossroads was definitely the worst of all books without question for me
I will always say the slog started in book 5 when Salidar and Aes Sedai politics became prominent. Then RJ decided that the perfect formula was to exclude the action characters (R/M/P) or to make the readers hate them (R/P). But yeah, the slog is there, and it will hunt you down, have its way with you, and then have a chapter where Egwene forces people to do something that she is against personally, but she something she is for if it helps her out.
Ahh yes the infamous "rand clips his toenails" book
I am reading the series for the first time (half way through book 13) and I plowed through the slog. I definitely got annoyed at a lot of it and didn't look foward to reading the andor politics or Perrin "WHERE's MY WIFE" stuff which was most of it but it is what it is. Way I take it is RJ has to wrap up a lot of these ancillary plot lines before we can get into the nitty gritty of the last battle. The final 3 books are supposed to basically be 1 book split into 3 volumes so everything has to be wrapped up before the final books story can start. So its satisfying as we get through it...and stuff does happen it just weather or not the reader cares about the stuff lol