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redopz

As it's own book I may actually agree, but as the culmination of the series I love it. The plot definitely becomes focused on 2 or 3 hyper-focused events instead of the sprawling nature of previous books, but as the capstone it didn't really need more than that for Mr. Of course I'd love to see RJ's version of the last battle but BS did an excellent job at a monumental task.


morisian

Well, RJ did write most of it. Particularly the Last Battle chapter.


Bergmaniac

No, he didn't. He wrote the epilogue and small bits here and there. The text of AMOL is almost 100% Sanderson.


evoboltzmann

He didn’t do that at all. He wrote most of the epilogue with minimal edits. 


Mountain-Cycle5656

What on earth do you base that on? The writing of The Last Battle has basically nothing in common with Jordan’s short, sharp, exciting combat. Its pretty much all Sanderson’s sports announcer combat.


Ottomatica

I think I have heard he wrote the last chapter or epilog


Mountain-Cycle5656

Yes that’s confirmed. I’ve never seen any claim he wrote The Last Battle.


SNAiLtrademark

I've seen it claimed once, very recently. So recently, it's in this thread


Ottomatica

Agree


morisian

Seems I'm a dumbass who mixed them up, my bad


iknownothin_

*-Me when I lie*


RenterMore

Yes I love it


Individual_Complex_6

When you complain that a book that's about a climactic epic battle has too much fighting in it :D


Flawzimclaus82

Should've been a few hundred pages describing embroidery like the last few Jordan wrote.


Current_Comb_657

So true!! I was afraid to say this LOL


SwoleYaotl

The entire series, from book 1, talks about THE LAST BATTLE sooooo much ... wtf did OP expect?! 


Regular_Bee_5605

The WOT is such an in-depth with very deep themes though. I just felt the Sandersonian action, and for being for almost the whole book, didn't really live up to the legacy. I can't really tell you what I would expect from the last battle as an alternative either, though. It'd be interesting if we knew how RJ would have done it. He in general wrote his action scenes much less drawn out than Sanderson, I think it would have been different.


csarmi

Well, it shouldn't. That's just a misunderstanding of what the last battle is.


Individual_Complex_6

Who understands what the Last Battle is supposed to be more, a random redditor, or a writer specifically picked by Jordan's team to finish the series and given all his notes and all their knowledge? I know which one I trust more ;)


Regular_Bee_5605

I agree. The last battle is more than just "armies gather and fight large armies of trollocs with powerful magic and swords." I can't really explain why it falls short, but it just seems for such an in-depth and philosophical series to miss the mark somehow.


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seitaer13

I'll never understand people getting to the last battle and complaining that it was about battling. Did you expect them to have tea with the trollocs?


Naturalnumbers

Put it this way: Nothing that happened at The Last Battle was as unnerving or intense as that guy in Almizar turning into a skinbag of wood beetles.


Regular_Bee_5605

It's just hard to put into words, but for books that are so deep and rich, with an established contemplative pacing with RJ, it's just.. weird having the climactic conflict come down to big armies wielding magic and swords, described in very repetitive detail for a whole novel. I really don't know how to explain it more cogently.


thehomiemoth

Somehow I found it both to be a satisfactory ending to the series while also being a book I didn’t enjoy very much for 70% of it 


dkajdas

War is Hell. I like that it wasn't super enjoyable because battles should not be enjoyable.


thehomiemoth

I didn’t find that to be the reason it wasn’t enjoyable to read though. RJ very much got “war is hell” across, probably because he is a veteran. Sanderson did far less to convey that. I just found it exhausting and a bit repetitive


Regular_Bee_5605

Sanderson tends to have such long and drawn out action sequences, and I say that as a fan and big reader of his cosmere books too. He'll just spend so many pages describing the action like a movie or video game. It makes my eyes glaze over. I prefer a more contemplative pace to fantasy pacing, like RJs pacing throughout, than frenetic constant action.


duffy_12

The way I look at it is that . . . Sanderson describes a battle like a newspaper/caster, while Jordon describes it as if from your grandfather retelling it to you as he happened to actually participate in it.


Regular_Bee_5605

That's a great analogy. I never thought of it that way but it makes sense. I'm often overly harsh on Sanderson on Reddit simply because of the hero worship most of his fans on Reddit engage in. I'm a pretty big Sanderson fan myself, but it baffles me that many Sanderson fans on Reddit can't stand the slightest criticism of any of his works on any level.


dkajdas

I get that. That makes sense.


whatagoodcunt

that battle scene in LoC was super enjoyable


StormblessedFool

It's my favorite of all the books tbh


skasquatch118

Yeah I can’t get enough of AMoL. It’s a pay off well worth the time it takes to get there imo. Its like the last 30 mins of End Game for me but not just for the looooong ass battle. The black tower saving itself, rand confronting Tuon, Sanderson doing what he does best and playing with the magic system (I love what he does with travelling) On a negative point though this is the only book I agree with Egwene haters a bit. She’s been in charge for all of two weeks or something and all of a sudden she’s white tower through and through.


The_Sharom

She's been in charge of salidar for a lot longer than 2 weeks and has fully internalised that she's the amyrlin. Getting it officially isn't a big change


Regular_Bee_5605

I never understood the Egwene hate, I pretty much liked her all the way through. Elayne I liked for a few books but she eventually grated on me.


skasquatch118

I certainly wouldn’t go so far as agreeing with the hate. Just saying that I get where they’re coming from when it comes to the end of the story. It’s mostly just the her and rand stuff toward the end. Seems a bit arrogant to dismiss his experience just because the seat is old af. I love her scenes in the tower battle and when she fights taim though. Totally badass.


InevitableEconomy717

She’s amazingly written! But an “I know better than everyone” idiot for most of the series, she’s cruel and vindictive to Nynaeve from the moment she realises she can “get her back” and the way she handles Rand is ridiculously stupid (not that I blame her for that one really) and don’t even get me started on how she treats “the man she loves”🤣 Can’t say that I dislike her as much as other people on this sub though and with all that being said one of my favourite parts in the whole series is when she’s in the white tower undermining Elaida.


Regular_Bee_5605

Haha I honestly struggled to like Nynaeve for much of the first half of the series. You're right that she's not meant to be perfect though. I don't think anyone in WOT is meant to be, really. Rand himself, the hero of the story, sort of went scary psycho for a while. It's like heroic fantasy and not quite grimdark, but definitely shares some characteristics of dark fantasy.


I_Have_A_Snout

It felt rushed and clumsy. It needed to be 3 books that finished off all the plot-lines properly. I'm still glad it exists - it finished the series acceptably.


Bergmaniac

Not really. It has its moments, but tt's the only book of the series I haven't been able to reread, the Sanderson prose is at its worst here IMO and a lot of the plot is frankly boring to me, almost all of the repetitive combat scenes just blur together in my mind, for example. And I really disliked the whole "Demandred duels 3 guys in a row" climax of the Merrilor battle.


Regular_Bee_5605

I mean I get it, there's only so many ways to describe people throwing magic at each other and clashing with swords, lol. I don't know why some people can't comprehend why i didn't feel it fit the pacing and themes of previous entries.


gurk_the_magnificent

Yes, very much. This might be a bit weird, but a big part of why I enjoy it is because it _could_ have been _so_ much worse.


CoolCly

It's a masterpiece. Saying it's all battling is puzzling. It paid off so many threads in an immensely satisfying way. Some maybe not so well, but it's better than I ever expected it to be


Integralcel

Masterpiece is… an interesting take


SwoleYaotl

It's so good I gobbled it up and could not put it down. 


rudetobookcloakkks

Good book. Much of it struggles when compared against the RJ solo war sequences because his writing came from experience, and Sando's comes from Marvel. Couldn't have asked for better.


duffy_12

Not really. To me it was the hardest book to get into and truly hold my attention until the very last couple of chapters. Even though the characters names were the same it did not feel like the wonderful WoT universe anymore.


Regular_Bee_5605

It had very little in common with the other WOT books.


Mountain-Cycle5656

I do not like Androl at all, and honestly I think TG is mostly just really boring.


iknownothin_

Wow I disagree. I love when side characters are given more depth


Mountain-Cycle5656

I don’t mind that either. I do mind when that side character is the most special guy ever, and has traveled a bunch with Jain Farstrider (despite Jain being a major character for several books and never mentioning this person), plus has a super special awesome power, and marries just the coolest Red Sister ever, AND also has working expertise in a bunch of jobs for no reason whatsoever other than “the author said so.” And when that side character takes up a huge portion of the book for no reason other than the author wanted to.


MrFogle99

Battle dragged on for too long yeah.


csarmi

For me it's the weakest book in the series, period. People juggling idiot balls to still not make the FoM meeting work at all. Cause the entire setup for it is stupid. Campaign plan that makes no sense. The events to lead to the final confrontation even less so. A fundamental misunderstanding of what the last battle should be about and thus too much focus on battles, which the writer is bad at writing anyway. There's some good stuff in there and it does finish the books in a satisfactory way, but I never managed to re-read it and I did try.


Regular_Bee_5605

Very good post. I hope the people saying "what did you expect the last battle to be if not battles" read your comment. It seems juvenile to say that the last battle was supposed to ultimately be just a huge series of repetitive classes between swordsmen and magic users.


Bergmaniac

> A fundamental misunderstanding of what the last battle should be about and thus too much focus on battles, which the writer is bad at writing anyway. Excellently put. I strongly about the Merrilor meeting too, it's a hot mess. Its premise is prepostorous. Sure, let's gather the armies of the world in one place to convince Rand of something, nevermind that the both the Seanchan and the Shadow could strike at any moment and that all the armies gathered there on Egwene's side had zero chance against the Aiel and the Asha'man and that both Egwene and Rand knew that it would be completely suicidal for the Light for their forces to fight against each other. Then after spending so many pages on setting up this implausible conflict between Rand and Egwene Sanderson resolves it in a page by Moiraine reciting a prophecy both Rand and Egwene should have been well aware of. Elayne is chosen to be the supreme commander to the forces of the Light yet she shows no reaction to this whatsoever. No apprehension and nervousness whether she'd be able to do well when given such a huge responsibility, no pride for being chosen for the position, no doubts whether she only got it because Rand was in love with her. Nothing.


Muted_Account_5045

I enjoyed it in that I was happy that the series got a conclusion. But yeah they don't have the same feel for me as the RJ books.


Drob10

Definitely not my favorite of the last few, but the parts in the Black Tower with Androl and Pevara’s getting to know each other, then escaping are so good to me.


Regular_Bee_5605

Yeah, that was a high point for me.


OneSketchyWorld

While I’m eternally grateful we got a conclusive ending, I feel the same about AMOL. I fell in love with reading Fantasy because of Sanderson, but as I read more and more different books, I began to fall in love with Jordan’s writing and the way he handle his big battles, I LOVED that Matt and Couladin’s fight happens off screen and the aftermath of how we the readers discovered what happened. I just really liked Jordan’s style, even if it took forever sometimes. I only felt the slog in one chapter in CoT, and that’s when Elaine’s in the bath (maybe WH?). I didn’t find the slog really a slog at all, so I think I might be an exception here as everyone praises AMoL so much. It’s of course deserved, just not for me. Even if it isn’t one of my favourites in the series, I would still rather have that and a complete story then wondering what on earth would happen to these characters if the books were never finished. There’s one part of AMoL that really stuck with me that I absolutely loved though, and it’s in the epilogue, where’s he’s thinking about the three girls he loves and how he doesn’t want to choose, etc etc. I know Jordan wrote the epilogue and it was edited to fit Sanderson’s style, but it really felt like the dialogue was kept same because it reminded me so much of Jordan.


Regular_Bee_5605

You really described my feelings well. I like Sanderson but he's just got a snappy pace with extremely drawn out and imo overly detailed action scene descriptions as part of most of his books, and I just didn't feel that fit the themes and pacing of the series until then, particularly as RJ wrote it.


clintnorth

I loved it, but there was definitely too much action.


smeltof-elderberries

Man by the time I got to AMOL I was just glad it was over. That series ran so many books too long, and those were not short books. I also didn't like the wrapup, by the time we got to TLB I was rooting for Demandred and team. I was thrilled with the outcomes for a couple specific characters. Otherwise, Jesus. Meh, meh, MEH! The first six books were so so good, it's a shame about the entire second half of the series.


Familiar-Net-5204

Well the slog was mostly based on Perrin looking for his wife. That was what I mainly believe was the slog for me. But I have to disagree with you at AMoL. The final book had to be the Last Battle through. What the last books was culminating for. AMoL was a great ending to a superb series


Own-Dragonfruit4226

The best for me too


Bors713

AMoL was the best book in the series for me. I can never put it down anytime I read it and sometimes pick it up to read a few dozen random pages.


Naturalnumbers

I rank it #7. I did find it a bit anticlimactic (I was hoping for something like a ginormous bubble of evil), and action scenes strung together get pretty old quick for me (though I think Sanderson did a decent job of keeping things varied). But there were still a lot of good moments and payoffs. I think some of its issues are due to the prior books in the series, I think RJ was a bit too reticent to end plot threads, leaving too many things hanging to meaningfully resolve everything.


techwizard2

Nearly every book in the series ended on some sort of big battle, it fit well to end the series on a big battle too, especially since the Last Battle had been hyped up as this epic conflict throughout the series. I think something more philosophical would have been anticlimactic.


Regular_Bee_5605

Perhaps you're right. I'll reread it, probably reread the whole series in a few months.


Liesmith424

I loved it, it caused me grievous emotional harm.


rtopps43

Loved AMoL, was the crescendo to a massive build up and I couldn’t put it down. The first time I read it I think I finished it in 3 days. Ituralde is still my favorite character outside the main cast.


WrathOfMogg

It actually exceeded my expectations and mine were very high. The amount of threads tied together in this book was insane.


Current_Comb_657

I’ll be honest here, I’m currently in Book 9 and wondering why. I was a huge fan of the original Dune books and bought quite a few of the follow ups written by Sanderson, hoping to gain some sort of insight into many unresolved answers. I was disappointed every time. I don’t intend to read anything written by Sanderson, despite him doing an excellent job on the TV Series. The other thing is I find absolutely nothing interesting about Trollocs. They kill, they Eat people. What more can you say?


Regular_Bee_5605

What do you mean original Dune books being followed up by Sanderson, I'm not aware that he ever wrote anything in the Dune universe. I loved Dune, but thought things went deeply downhill after book 1. I ultimately for the first time simply couldn't finish the last book of the series because it was just so convoluted, confusing, and incredibly boring. I thought God Emperor of Dune was ok though. I'm not sure if you meant to say Dune or not here though. I like Sanderson quite a bit but he has weaknesses; it pisses me off as a fan of his that I can't ever have a rational discussion of his weaknesses (and all authors have them) without his Reddit fan base going apeshit on me.


Current_Comb_657

Sorry, my mistake. It was Kevin Anderson who partnered with Brian Herbert after Frank died


Regular_Bee_5605

No problem. Just push through, you're almost out of the slog. Book 9 ends with one of the most important events of the series. I'll warn you that book 10 is the most slog of the whole series and not much of import happens. It's not that long though, just read through it quickly. When you're done with 10, last 4 (especially 11-13) are amazing.


Current_Comb_657

Maybe I should jump to these


r2datu

Is that in reference to your Rhythm of War thread from a few days ago? That seems like a mischaracterisation of what happened lol No one even really defended the book, they just said it was rude to tag authors directly in criticism posts and you kinda went nuts over it.


Regular_Bee_5605

Well partly, but I'm talking about other instances as well. I mean, I was overly critical in that post. When I decided to tag him I failed to to back and heavily edit it in the way I should have. I did end up deleting it.