I discuss A Memory of Light in this post, so if you haven’t read it yet, you may want to hold up. I assure you, no plot spoilers are given, but sometimes an offhand comment about what was good and what wasn’t can feel like a spoiler nonetheless.
You’ve been warned.
Scrolling Space 
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I have a file on my computer with blog topics in it – I add new posts and drafts there periodically, whenever I have time really. The topic for this post has been sitting there for more than a month because I had assumed I would rip through the final book of the Wheel of Time.
Far from it.
I hate to admit this and I don’t know if it will change, but the book has been out for more than 6 weeks and I’m still only halfway through. If you’ve read it, don’t leave a comment on the plot because I still don’t want the ending spoiled, but I’m having a harder and harder time imagining how it will redeem itself.
I hate to say it, but this is not a very good book.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Wheel of Time.
I loved every book in it, even the slow, boring, seemingly pointless books that killed the series for a lot of my fellow readers.
Brandon Sanderson was a maestro in books 12 and 13, bringing back the immediacy of the series. At one point he reminded me that it had been only 2+ years within the book’s world since the story had started.
I was blown away.
Two years? It felt like the full 14 years I’ve been reading it (I discovered it after book 8, so I can’t imagine how people who started in 1991 must feel).
So, I was very, VERY excited for book 14. I couldn’t imagine a situation in which this book would NOT deliver on its promise.
And maybe it still will, but like many fantasy books with 900+ pages of content, it has failed to satisfy at this point. The first 100 pages were amazing. The next 300 were….not.
I’m stuck at page 450 and it is dragging on like nothing I’ve read in a very long time. It’s dull, it’s repetitive. It’s boring.
I’m stuck and have been for about three weeks. In that time I’ve ready 135 pages and 60 of that was in one day when I forced myself through.
Why?
Why does this book fail to deliver? Because there were too many loose ends to tie up, and there is no right way to do it.
Brandon Sanderson is a brilliant writer. He has done the best he could with what he was given and all due respect to Robert Jordan, but this story could not have ended well with this many details to tie up.
I’m going to keep this spoiler free for anyone waiting for the eBook, but the 200+ pages of battle after battle….NOT written by Robert Jordan (sorry Brandon, but you are no Jordan when it comes to battle scenes, I don’t care who you consulted for advice), is not good.
And don’t get me started on some of the end-points for key pieces of prophecy delivered throughout the series. It’s lazy.
It’s as if Brandon Sanderson sat there with a checklist and started ticking them off as he moved from moment to moment. The result was groan inducing.
So, I’m in the same mid-book slump I’ve been in for most of the Wheel of Time books since book 9…
It’s frustrating because part of me wants to jump ahead, find out what happened and go on to read a few new books that have been on my list for months. But the other part wants to savor the end of a series I’ve been reading since I was 16 years old. Twelve years and counting.
It’s a lot like business. Sometimes you get 90% of the way down a path you’ve created – a marketing plan you’ve set into motion – and you think “damn this is a bad idea” but know that you really should finish it out.
Do you keep going or quit and start something new?
As I’ve learned (and this is a relatively recent revelation) you finish it out. Maybe the book is awful…maybe your marketing campaign is a dead end…but you finish it out. You keep trying because if you don’t you’ll never know if it works. Who knows – maybe this book will blow my mind in the last 200 pages. I’m hoping.
So, yes, this is a very roundabout way of me telling you to keep at it. To keep trying and never give up on your smartest ideas, even if there are NO results along the way.
Something will happen along the way…eventually.
And even if not, you’ll know what DOESN’T work.
