Book 12: The Winter Ghosts

The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse

 

I try to be much more discerning about books I purchase nowadays, meaning I'll get a pile together, and sit at the cafe with some coffee, read a few pages to see if I like the writing style while also looking at ratings on Amazon or Goodreads.  I don't do it with every book, and sometimes I like the premise of the novel so I'll just decide to give it a chance without the screening process, but I figure I need to stop buying so many books that then end up in my growing to read pile (actually I have a to read pile that I really consider books I want to read soon, and then a whole other, larger stack of books that I have and will read eventually if that makes any sense).  I bought this one over a year ago, before I had started being quite so picky because it mentioned World War I in the description.  I read a lot of novels about or related to World War II, but World War I interests me as well; I just don't think it grabbed the American imagination in quite the same way and don't always see as many novels or books in general on the topic.  I just couldn't get into this novel a year ago but I think that had more to do with my mood at the time.  Due to the Keyword Challenge, I decided to give it another shot this month since it contains the keyword "winter" in the title.  I looked it up on Goodreads before I started reading only to discover that this was a ghost story!  You'd think maybe the word "ghosts" in the title, and the fact that the back description talks about people being haunted would have clued me in, but I thought they were metaphorical ghosts and that people were haunted by the past, not by actual ghosts (also I never read the quotes from magazines or other authors because just like movies, there is always going to be someone willing to say positive things about even horrible novels).  I'm glad I figured that out before I started reading this, because it definitely would have been unexpected and surprising otherwise.

 

Bones and shadows and dust.  I am the last.  The others have slipped away into darkness.  Around me now, at the end of my days, only an echo in the still air of the memory of those who once I loved. (p. 9)

 

I am having a hard time really deciding how I felt this novel.  The majority of the novel is a flashback to 1928 in the French Pyrenees area, though it opens and closes in 1933.  In 1933, Freddie enters a bookstore because he wants its owner to translate an old piece of parchment written in Occitan for him.  The rest of the novel is his explanation of how this document came into his possession.  In 1928, our 27 year old narrator is traveling through France, still grieving his brother's death which occurred 11 years before.  Freddie was too young to fight in World War I, but his brother and a majority of his unit were killed in battle in 1916.  As the second, much younger brother, Freddie never had a substantial relationship with his parents, and George's death hit him especially hard, though he was unable to get any comfort from his parents.  He is now drifting, trying to move on but also not quite wanting to let go, and unable to understand how everyone else can be looking forward, to the future.  He understands that his grief isn't unique, that just about everyone lost someone in this war, but he still feels isolated and disconnected.

 

Following a car accident, Freddie ends up in a small village, Nulle, off the beaten path, and is invited to the yearly festival that happens to be occurring that night.  While at the festival, he meets a woman, Fabrissa, and feels more interested in his surroundings and life than he has in a long time.  He is completely fascinated by Fabrissa, enjoys their conversation, and eventually they share their stories of loss.  The novel is very slow moving, meandering even, and the ghost story and plot are incredibly obvious and straighforward to everyone but Freddie.  The author does have a nice turn of phrase, and while the novel is 263 pages, given the amount of indentation on the pages and the font size, it really is probably only half to two thirds that long.  On the one hand, it's almost impossible to say much about the story without feeling like it's a spoiler but on the other hand it doesn't feel like a spoiler because it is obvious what is going on.  I've seen many reviews describing this as a classic ghost story, and while I get that, I prefer my ghost stories with a little bit of mystery.  I like the ones where the protagonists have to do research to determine the identity of the spirit, and then more research to find out what happened to that person.  They don't have to be scary, but as I said, I like that sense of revelation as the story progresses.  The reason I think this is labeled as a classic ghost story is because Freddie finds himself transported into a different time, witnessing events (even if he doesn't realize it), and I at least got the sense that this was a "one night of the year" kind of situation.

 

In medieval times, the Pyrenees served as a type of center and refuge for Cathars, members of a heresy that the Catholic Church disagreed with, and this faith group was eventually persecuted to extinction.  While Mosse alludes to the region's history, she doesn't explain much.  I thought that was fine for the novel itself, but when she discusses her inspiration for this story in the afterword, I wished she would have added a paragraphs or two about what the Cathars actually believed, what their heresy was etc.  I looked on Wikipedia and it didn't give much of an answer instead focusing on the wars and the persecution, not so much what they were being persecuted for - I gather this is partially because the Catholic Church did such a good job of rooting them out and destroying them that not too many specifics are known.  Overall, I think this novel would have worked much better as a short story - there just wasn't quite enough there to justify an entire novel (and as a matter of fact, this is actually the author expanding on a short story she had previously written).  What is there is very straightforward, though I kind of liked it.  I would also say while Freddie was a bit longwinded and needed to get to the point a bit more quickly, there are some rather well written sentences in here.  While I don't think I'd recommend this one, I am still curious about the author's other novels.  I am not sure what that means since usually if I don't like a novel or feel either very apathetic or ambivalent about it, I have no interest in anything else by that author, so I guess there must have been something here to hold my interest even if I can't quite place my fingers on it.  Then again, it may just be as simple as the fact that her other novels also address the Cathars and my interest in the subject is now picqued.

Book 11: The Distant Hours

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

 

I have only read one other Kate Morton novel before which also happened to be her first, The House at Riverton.  While I enjoyed it at the time, it also seemed a bit deriviative, reminding me strongly of other gothic fiction, and even part of the twist was something I had seen recently before.  As a result. I wasn't in a hurry to pick up any of her other novels, though I was curious to see how she had developed as a writer and often found myself lingering over her novels at bookstores but always put the novels back down, thinking of her as a back up.  Similarly, once I bought this book, I still kept picking other novels in my pile first.  It's not that I wasn't expecting a good read but it just never seemed like quite what I wanted.

 

Of course, it is gothic fiction so naturally there is an old ancestral home or castle, a family secret, the hints of a tragedy, and a love story gone wrong.  She basically captures all the elements, and there is a twist when all the secrets are revealed - that's basically the genre; if there weren't a twist and decades old secrets, it wouldn't be gothic fiction.  At the end, it is hard to feel anything but sad about some of the circumstances and not think "what a waste" regarding the characters' lives and outcomes.  The novel starts out when Edith's mother, Meredith, receives a letter from over 50 years before that had been misdirected (or mislaid).  Though she won't share its contents with her daughter, her reaction leaves an impression on Edie, and it starts her quest to learn more about her mother.  Edie and Meredith do not have a very sharing relationship, and Edie has felt misunderstood for much of her life.  Prior to this letter, she didn't even know that her mother had lived in a castle, Milderhurst, for over a year during WWII when parents from the cities evacuated their children to the country due to the bomb threat.  The novel begins as a daughter's quest to know her mother, and when she finds herself in the proximity to Milderhurst after an out of town meeting, she takes a tour and meets the Blythe sisters, the older twins Percy (Persephone) and Saffy (Seraphina) and their younger sister, Juniper, the author of the letter that started the novel.  Percy and Saffy are from the first marriage and about sixteen years older than their sister Juniper, who was once a promising writer but has gone mad because of a disappointment: a man she loved never showed up, leaving only a letter saying he had married someone else.

 

Edie, a book lover, is fascinated by the sisters, the castle, and the past, and begins to slowly dig to find out more about the disappointment that Juniper experienced - as her mother tells her, people don't go mad due to disappointment, and as much as Edie, lover of gothic fiction and romance, may like the idea of going mad due to lost love, she also soon admits that it is a bit fantastical.  One of the first things Edie learns about Milderhurst is that the sisters' father was Raymond Blythe, author of The True History of the Mud Man, one of the first books to turn her into a reader and a childhood favorite.  She mentions that Raymond Blythe's inspiration for the novel has never been determined so in addition to the mystery of the sisters and the missing lover, there is a bit of a literary mystery in the later half of the novel.  She eventually gets an opportunity to return to the castle (she refers to it early on) to help satisfy some of her curiousity.

 

Kate Morton's characters are very well drawn, and having read novels like Atonement, I feared what Meredith's involvement could possibly be in this mystery.  While the resolution was perhaps a bit by the numbers (at least parts of it), Morton's development towards the big reveal was superbly done, and I quite enjoyed exploring the different relationships, and watching as Edie began to gain new perspectives on her mother, and her mother's relationship with her family.  Percy is also a character it is hard to get a handle on because there are some differences between her 1992, her 1941 and her 1939 character, though the reasons for this all become clear as the sections progress.  The only character I occasionally got irritated with was Edie.  While I could relate to her love of books, I got a little annoyed with her whining about how she never felt understood because she liked books, and no one else in her family did.  She also mentions that her parents had a boy before her who died either when she was very young or before she was born - either way, she has no memory of him but talks about missing him and wondering what he would be like and what type of relationship they would have had, even using it to say she could understand another character's bond with her siblings.  I'm sure this is because I can't quite relate - my mom and I have a relatively close relationship, and talk regularly (I mean, I was never in the habit of calling her and telling her about crushes, but I would discuss actual relationships; I have also never referred to my mom as my best friend) so it is hard for me to understand the distance between her and her mother sometimes.  Additionally, I think I would have understood the sibling thing more if she had ever actually interacted with her brother, and it was an actual loss to her rather than just a question of what it would have been like, and I think this also goes back to the fact that I'm an only child and have always loved being an only child.  I wasn't that kid that asked her parents for a sibling - I was the one that emphatically told them she didn't want one.

 

Still, while the novel may have occasionally dwelt more on Edie's present day life and her problems (no apartment, no boyfriend), the majority of the novel was well written and an enjoyable read.  I liked most of the characters, and felt like the story was very well drawn; while I was expecting a big reveal at the end, I liked the way it built into the story, and added depth and a certain amount of irony to the events.  It really was perfect for curling up on the couch with some hot chocolate while it was 0 degrees Fahrenheit - except for the fact that I have been having some serious issues lately with finding a brand of hot chocolate I actually really like.

Book 10: The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise

The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart

 

My best friend came up this weekend, so we went to the mall for pedicures, which naturally involved a stop at Barnes and Noble for coffee and browsing.  After picking up the book I really wanted (the second part of a trilogy I recently started), I looked around a bit, and when I saw this, remembered all the rave reviews I'd seen of this novel last year.  While it had sounded sweet, I wasn't quite sure if it was my cup of tea originally, so I hadn't rushed out to get it, but obviously the title stuck in my head.

 

The novel is set at the Tower of London, and the two main characters are Balthazar Jones and his wife, Hebe.  As a Beefeater, or Yeoman Warder, Balthazar and his wife live at the Tower along with their almost two century old tortoise, Mrs. Cook.  There are a myriad of supporting characters in the novel, including the other Beefeaters and Tower inhabitants, and the people that Hebe comes across working at the Underground's Lost Property Office.  Following their son Milo's death three years before, Hebe and Balthazar have started to drift apart.  While they had always been a close and loving couple, their methods of coping with grief are very different, and instead of finding shelter in each other, they become isolated from each other.  Jones has developed an odd obsession with charting types of rain, while Hebe simply wants to discuss their son.

 

After one of the animals presented to the Queen as a royal gift dies, almost causing an international scandal, the Queen decides to move her personal animals from the British Zoo and reestablish the Royal Menagerie at the Tower, placing Balthazar in charge of it due to his tortoise.  Naturally, there are some hijinks involved with the animals, especially since the Ravenmaster, who is also the closest Jones gets to having an archnemesis is less than happy with the changes and starts developing plots.  A lot of the characters in this novel are unlucky in love - several are divorced, the Reverend Septimus Jones is still trying to find a woman that would be willing to live in the Tower with him, and all are rather gunshy as a result.  Hebe's coworker tentatively enters a relationship with a fellow unlucky divorcee.  Most of the characters are sweet, but I wouldn't call them very well developed.  They have distinguishing character quirks, and it is hard not to root for them but they are also relatively superficial.  My favorite was probably the Reverend who writes erotica in his spare time when not trying to handle the rat problem in his chapel.

 

Overall, it was a sweet novel, the quirk being balanced out by the sadness and grief that has infected the main characters' lives.  I am curious how many of the facts about the Tower are true, because some of them were very entertaining.  And of course, it's hard not to enjoy the animals (don't worry, no important animals die in this to make some type of point), especially the parrot, the bearded pig and the albatross, who obviously represents Balthazar.  I think this would work best for an afternoon on the couch with tea and small cakes or cookies.

Book 9: The Whites of Their Eyes

The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History by Jill Lepore

 

I'm remember reading an article about this book when it first came out, and thinking it sounded incredibly fascinating.  This book has now sat on the floor in my bedroom (two different bedrooms in two separate states, actually) for so long that I can't even find the blog post that first mentioned it because I think that blog switched servers - assuming I'm even correct as to where I first heard about this book.  Additionally, it seems like the Tea Party is slowly peetering out.  Oh, there are still plenty of super conservative people around, but I don't think they are rallying to the call of the Tea Party anymore.  Of course, I could be mistaken here but does seem to be the impression I get based on news, blogs and election results.  So yes, while this book certainly takes a look at an interesting topic (the misappropriation and misinterpretation of history), the specific moment the author is exploring may already be past.

 

While I quite liked the premise of this book, I have to say the execution left me slighlty dissatisfied, and that I believe has a lot more to do with me than the book.  I think Lepore was attempting to start a discussion, and this slim volume would certainly do so.  However, I was left wanting more details about both the present interpretations of history and the past, the actual events that happened.  Of course, this book never claimed to be about the history of the Revolution and its events; she mentions several events focusing on the Boston and Massachusetts area (I admit while I was reading about all the grievances regarding events in Boston, I kind of started wondering why the rest of the colonies agreed to go to war as well - there was certainly nothing listed about grievances that the rest of the nation faced), and talks about how certain events were barely remembered until later brought back into focus.  For example, the Boston Massacre Anniversary (the colonials certainly had a good grasp on propaganda - an armed, riotuous crowd does not an innocent assembly make) was always celebrated, but the anniversary of the destruction of the tea wasn't even really noted until many years later when one of the last survivors was used by a political party.  Similarly, no one paid much attention to Paul Revere's ride or remembered it until Hawthorne wrote a poem prior to the Civil War.  The book is full of interesting tidbits like this, and overall when she digs into a discussion or argument, it really is interesting.  I just wish there had been more.

 

She also argues that some of the problems with history right now go back to the Bicenntennial when academic historians failed to put a proper meaning to the anniversary - something that academia might not find necessary but something that the American people perhaps needed.  Academia has lately been much more focused on the social movements, rediscovering lost voices and discussing these types of more problematic pieces of history so that the far right and popular historians have taken over the idea of the "Great Man," publishing various biographies that basically make every single founding father (a term that didn't come into use until Woodrow Wilson) singlehandedly responsible for the course of history and the American Revolution.  Of course, this means some of the more problematic fathers are either dismissed by certain political elements (such as Thomas Jefferson) or only parts of their history survive, such as Thomas Paine.  Somehow his writings on his lack of interest in religion aren't really addressed when people try to argue that our nation was founded as a religious nation.

 

She introduces the men involved in the Revolution as complex, flawed men with conflicting opinions, and says that it is absolutely not correct to try to determine what they would do in current situations.  After all, by setting up this nation they were very definitely not looking to their forefathers.  The other parts I liked were when she discussed how the American Revolution has been interpreted and used in the past - after all, the Tea Party are not the first to make history fit their own design; it was done by both sides during the Civil War and various other groups before and since.

 

Overall, it isn't a bad book at all, but it seemed like there was less about the Tea Party than I expected there to be.  Certainly most of the topics she addresses could be turned into much larger books on that topic alone - for example, I would now love to read a book that tracks how history or certain events have been interpreted over the years.  There were also quite a few fun pieces of information that I wasn't completely aware of before, not that I think trivia would ever get that specific.  Unfortunately, I think I wanted more meat, otherwise I probably would have enjoyed this more.

Book 8: Gates of Fire

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield

 

I can't even say how long this novel has been sitting in my to read pile at this point.  I like ancient history, and I know quite a few people who enjoyed this so I guess I always felt like it was something I should read but never quite felt like I was in the mood for it.  Basically, this year I'm trying to read at least a few novels that have been sitting around forever, so I decided to take a stab at Gates of Fire.

 

This is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae as told by Xeones, a Spartan squire, to Xerxes, the Persian ruler, and recorded by his historian.  Xeones's words make up the majority of the narrative, but the historian has a few parts, which are italicized, adding background information as well as telling of the events that occurred during the rest of the war between the Greeks and the Persians.  After the Battle of Thermopylae, Xeones is discovered, clinging to life (though he wants nothing more than to join his comrades in arms in death but someone must tell their tale), and Xerxes orders for his story to be transcribed in order to gain some type of understanding of what types of men withstood his forces for such a long time against insurmountable odds.  While Xeones explains that he is a simple man, merely a squire, and not one of the three hundred peers and nobles that the Spartans sent, he defers and tells his story for the record.

 

Xeones is not from Sparta, coming originally from Astakos, but he has not entered into Spartan life in the normal manner of an outsider, either.  The Spartans did not conquer his people in war, and turn him into a slave; instead, Xeo's home is attacked by the Argives when he is young, and he decides then that he wants to join the Spartans in whatever manner possible because they "make men."  After hiding in the forests for two years with his cousin Diomache and his family's teacher and slave, Xeo makes his way to Sparta.  Eventually gaining the position of squire, he comes into contact with the great men and warriors that will make up the three hundred peers.  As Xeones reflects back on his life, attempting to explain exactly how Spartan society creates the warriors it does, he jumps back and forth in the timeline quite a bit, being reminded of tangents as he remembers various anecdotes and stories.  Usually, I don't mind jumping around in narratives but since it took me a while to get used to the rhythm of the plot, the names and places, it did hinder me in getting as absorbed into the story as I normally would have.  While Xeo becomes friends/ starts out as a squire for Alexandros, eventually Alexandros's mentor Dienekes takes Xeones as his second squire, placing his squire Suicide as Alexandros's because a young man needs an older wiser man to keep him out of trouble.  Xeones tells of a variety of different Spartans, and Dienekes and his wife were the ones that were of the most interest to me.  A large portion of the narrative is also dedicated Alexandros, and I can see where the author was going with the character - a type of underdog, a man that is almost too honest, kind hearted and earnest for his warrior society yet still tries to fight honorably, but something about the character just didn't interest me at all.  I believe that was the other reason for my initial difficulty with enjoying the story - too much of the beginning is about Alexandros.

 

In fact when Xeones discusses some of the initial training for the teenaged boys, he discusses one teacher in particular that had it out for Alexandros - it basically sounds like every coming of age story ever with the bully and everything.  Still, once the novel shifts to the events of Thermopylae, it is impossible not to get wrapped up in the flow of the battle, the heroics of the characters and the tight brotherhood they form in the face of adversity.  While the first few chapters certainly held my interest, I wasn't quite sure how I'd feel about the novel overall, especially during the training scenes.  However, I ended up enjoying it quite a lot, even if it wasn't quite a style I usually read that much.  I always feel like I should be more interested in military history and the tactics involved, but usually I'm happy reading about the socio-political events surrounding the war rather than stories of the battles themselves.  I can't say I'm going to rush out to read more novels like this, but I'm glad I have finally tackled this.

Book 7: The Invisible Ones

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney

 

Set in 1986, the novel begins with Ray Lovell, a private investigator, in a hospital, partially paralyzed and with chunks of his memories missing.  The novel then flashes back to the beginning when Leon Wood hires Ray Lovell to look into the disappearance and possible murder of Rose Janko, his daughter who has been missing for over six years.  Leon makes it clear that he chose Ray due to his gypsy heritage since this should make it easier for him to investigate in the gypsy community than if he were a complete outsider.  Leon hasn't seen his daughter since her marriage seven years before, and while he has wondered if it is true that Rose ran off after giving birth to a son or whether she was in fact murdered by her husband or his family, it is only now that he has decided to act on his suspicions.  Knowing that it will be difficult to find traces after this long period of time, Ray takes the case and finds himself drawn to some members of the Janko family.  The novel flashes back and forth between Ray and JJ, Rose's husband's nephew/first cousin once removed, giving the reader insight into the Janko family, their unfortunate family history, and JJ's moments of teen angst.

 

Rose and Ivo's son, Christo, has inherited the family disease which has already killed a large portion of the males of the family.  As a result, they have a rather small gypsy family, and though they struggle to hold onto the old ways, the family consists of only JJ, his mother and his grandparents; Tene, his great-uncle and grandmother's brother, Tene's son, Ivo, and Christo.  Everyone else has died over the years, due to the family disease or curse, cancer or in Ivo's sister's case, an accident.  The only exception is Tene's youngest sister, Lulu, who has assimilated and lives in the city, having very little contact with her family.  As Ray comes around with questions, JJ begins to wonder about his family's past, and whether they are in fact hiding secrets from him.

 

As the novel progresses, Ray develops an odd type of relationship with the Jankos.  In the process of a divorce, he finds himself drawn to Lulu, and his interactions with the family in some ways make it seem like he was hired by them rather than by Rose's father.  Certainly, he doesn't want to alienate his only leads, but Ray develops a great deal of interest in their lives and involves himself quite a bit, all while trying to answer the questions of Rose's whereabouts, and the slew of unfortunate deaths in the Jankos' pasts.

 

Overall, I mostly liked this novel.  The author certainly kept her readers guessing, and while I saw a few reviews make comments about twist endings, I honestly don't feel like it was completely out there - Penney had certainly thrown hints out throughout the novel so the reveleations at the end could all be traced back to various comments throughout the novel.  However, I did feel like the novel dragged a little bit.  While I was curious to learn more about the disease in addition to the truth, there were a few points where I felt like it was time to get moving.  JJ definitely goes through a bit of teen angst in the middle which I found a bit obnoxious but then again, teen angst tends to be annoying unless you're the one experiencing it.  Ray is also a damaged character, still reeling from the fact that his wife, whom he was deeply in love with, cheated on him and left him.  I was kind of surprised by the way some of the characters acted, because while the Jankos are protective and close knit on the one hand, they also seem rather friendly and accommodating to Ray, even though they must know that he suspects them of some type of foul play regarding Rose.  Basically, the characters didn't always make the most sense to me, but generally, I thought it was an engaging and slightly moody mystery novel.

Book 6: A Memory of Light

A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time, Book 14) by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

 

The Wheel of Time series is now complete after 14 novels, somewhere between 13,000 and 14,000 pages, one prequel, and countless characters.  I think even the most hardcore fans of the series can agree that it was time.  Obviously, after a thirteen novel commitment, anyone that's gotten that far is going to finish regardless of what anyone else might say.  I'm sure I could tell you it was all just a dream, and you'd be pissed, but you'd still read it just to really justify that anger.  Fortunately, that's not how it ends.  (If you have never read the series, and are debating whether you should or not, the review contains spoilers for the rest of the series; however, I wrap up in the last two paragraphs with a discussion of whether or not you should consider starting the series.)

 

Now, I won't say that this novel is perfect - this novel is supposed to be about the Final Battle between Rand al'Thor and the Dark One, the thing this whole series has been building up to for over 20 years (though surprisingly only two have passed in the series), and it still takes almost half the novel to get all the pieces into position.  Not that I necessarily wanted to read just about the battle, but it's amazing how many things still had to be moved and decided this late in the game.  For example, the novel has to wrap up events going on at the Black Tower, and I'm not sure if I'd just forgotten this, but the descriptions of saidin and saidar are rather rapey, aren't they?  Well, at least the ones concerning the male version of the Source, saidin, are since it's something that has to be seized.  In fact, I'm sure extensive papers could be written on the idea of consent and The Wheel of Time, with saidin/saidar and bonds and circles as metaphors for sex.  Anyway, the novel begins with a war council, which concludes with Egwene agreeing to break the seals at the right time, Rand preparing to go fight the Dark One, and Elayne being placed in charge of all the nations' armies.  The four remaining great battle captains are each placed in charge of one of four fronts, and off they go.  Rand heads to Shayol Gul accompanied by Nynaeve, Moiraine and Aviendha as well as an army to hold off anyone that may try to interfere with his final stand.  The Aes Sedai led by Egwene take on the forces at Kandor, while Elayne focuses her energies at Andor as she oversees the entire war, and Lan is up fighting in the Blight with a large force.  Mat and Perrin each have their own battles and tests to do to support Rand, Mat with the Seanchan and his new wife's people, while Perrin is tying up loose ends with Slayer.  To be honest, I kind of feel bad for Perrin because at some point, he went from having a rather strong story line (he saved his people at the Two Rivers, he can talk to wolves) to having the most boring story of the three or six.  I mean Rand isn't that exciting because he fits within the prototype of the hero, but Perrin spends a majority of the novel trying to track one guy down.  Of course, Nynaeve's story has practically been wrapped up since her wedding, and though she is one of the most powerful Aes Sedai in memory, she is basically in sidekick mode.  At some point in the series, Egwene and Mat transitioned into my favorite characters, at least of the main six (or eight if we include all of Rand's love interests) - all the characters display growth, so it's not necessarily that they show the most but they certainly make the most of their transformations, Egwene being the youngest Amyrlin in history and Mat being the great gambler war leader.  Now if only Egwene's love interest could be as interesting as Mat's wife Tuon instead of the whiny Gawyn who has an inferiority complex.  I basically want to strangle him myself every time he shows up on the scene, and he was the one character whose death I was actively hoping for and waiting on.

 

Sanderson manages to send a nod to most of the better characters from the series. but the battle pieces are so extensive that there isn't too much time devoted to many of them.  Still, it's better to at least see some characters from the series make a quick appearance, such as Elyas, another man with Perrin's wolf connection, than not have them appear at all.  Now one of the things I have been saying about the series for a while is that it's hard to care too much about what happens to the main characters because they all have to survive for the final battle.  Bad things may happen to them, but the reader knows they will make it to the end.  That doesn't mean the series isn't littered with dead minor characters, but there is none of the shock that comes from reading A Song of Ice and Fire.  Does that mean that Jordan/Sanderson makes up for this in the final battle?  Yes and no.  The troops are overwhelmed, the death tolls are massive, some of my favorite characters that aren't part of the main six die, and not all of them survive, but it certainly doesn't reach Martin levels.  Additionally, after 14 novels and way too many tangents even some of the deaths that I feel should have been more effective didn't really leave me that concerned or sad.  However, there is one death in particular that packs a good punch (although the death that was most powerful to me in the series as a whole was Hopper's).  I also liked some of the twists that occurred concerning the battles, and how Sanderson/Jordan dealt with having epic battles of differing lengths occurring simultaneously.  Due to time being out of whack and slipping, the further from Shayol Gul one is, the more time passes.  As a result, Rand is in battle for minutes/hours, while the Aiel guarding Shayol Gul are engaged in a battle lasting a few days, and then further away in the kingdom, it is taking days and possibly weeks (my concept of time is exactly that great to begin with).

 

Still, I think this is overall a fitting end for the series.  Some things are left open, but most major plot points are tied off (though in my opinion some of those should have been tied of ages ago, and really didn't need to still be an issue, ie Padan Fain).  One thing that Sanderson was very good at doing is that he mostly didn't have things appear out of the blue at the end.  Even if some characters didn't appear until very late, at least someone had referenced them at some point previously so I already had been reminded of their existence rather than having to refer to the Encyclopedia.  This may not be a surprise considering that Sanderson is involved in writing both, but there is a line or two at the end that strongly reminded me of the end of the Mistborn trilogy.  I wonder if this was part of Harriet's decision to have Sanderson finish the series.   And this may sound horrible, but I'm rather glad that Sanderson took over the series, because I can't imagine how Jordan would have wrapped this all up given his last few novels.  Basically, if you have made it through this far, you will be mostly satisfied with how it ends though it isn't perfect, but the series stopped living up to its potential a long time ago.  While this novel isn't a "great novel," it works as well as it can given the issues that started appearing in the middle of the series to come to a good conclusion and makes the series feel complete.

 

Now a quick discussion on The Wheel of Time series.  Obviously I can't simply recommend this novel so the question is whether I would recommend the series.  I definitely wouldn't recommend this to just anyone - my dad has read the Codex Alera twice, he has read the Mistborn trilogy, and the first two novels of the Kingkiller Chronicles.  There is no way I would recommend this series to him - in fact, I would discourage him from reading it.  He would get bored with the middle part and stop.  No matter which way you look at it, the middle part of this series drags on and could have been condensed.  This is not just a matter of people not being patient and not appreciating world building as so many defenders argue - Jordan literally describes every single dress his characters wear or even think of wearing, one of the novels includes a scene where Elayne draws a bubble bath and it literally takes up four pages.  Fortunately, that's where scanning comes in.  I actually did enjoy some of the detail and extra intrigue when applied to things like societies and their cultural systems instead of clothes.  I think the problem becomes especially pronounced when you wait for two years for a novel only to discover that it is mostly devoted to setting up for later.  Since I came to the series late, I felt like some of the middle books dragged on occasion but I didn't have to wait two years to not get any answers, I could simply read the next novel.  So I think the middle drag is definitely still an issue but the fact that the series is now available as a whole should at least help with it.  Jordan is great at world building, adding lots of detail, and I liked that the characters had to deal with conflicts from different sources rather than simply the Dark One, and had to deal with day to day issues and politics.  However, at some points it went further than it needed to, and some of the secondary big bads were distracting rather than intimidating or interesting, especially past a certain point in the series. 

 

I want to say that this series is important because of its place in fantasy.  Certainly, many authors seem to credit Jordan as an inspiration, but unfortunately most of the fantasy I've read was written after Jordan so I can't really say if he was part of a trend or started it.  At this point, I expect fantasy to involve varied worlds and political plots.  Additionally while I could easily say "this reminds me of the Forsaken" when reading a more current novel, I could also say "the Forsaken are like ringwraiths with actual personalities."  And then of course there is what I would consider Jordan's major flaw (Sanderson tried to fix this, or at least, downplay it some, but it was still present in the last three novels of the series because you can't simply completely change everyone's personalities) - Jordan appears to be a huge believer in the battle of the sexes and a gender essentialist.  He has lots of women in positions of power and with power in his series, but they aren't necessarily very well written, and are at times interchangeable with all their annoyance and braid pulling.  Instead of actually communicating and explaining themselves logically, as soon as the women get around a man they become bossy nags (who secretly all just want/need a man).  They aren't much nicer to each other, depending on the novel and the situation.  And there are way too many comments about spanking.  Not to mention the fact that Rand gets three love interests (who agree to share him) - did I miss something, was this series written by a Mormon stay at home dad (sorry, bad Twilight joke)?  In fact, I'm under the impression that all three of the main women in the series were virgins, while most of the guys get to play the field a bit.  Jordan isn't necessarily repressed about sex, some of his powerful women rulers have lovers, but the three main ones?  As far as I know, they are virgins until they marry/find their true love etc and with the exception of Perrin, none of the guys do the same.  Basically, I don't know if I'd recommend the series.  I'm glad I read them, there were definitely some very good things and stories in the beginning and the end, but I don't think this is a series I'll ever reread.  I'm not sure if the good outweighs the bad, because some of the main characters were very boring and honestly, not really that likeable, and there were some very frustrating parts in the novels.  Still, I am glad I can say I read this if only because it means I can have an opinion on this series that has been a part of the fantasy world for over 20 years.