Book four of the Wheel of Time series is the best so far. Fewer of its subplots stall out without going anywhere, more of it is pulp action (if often unmotivated), and a greater part of what isn’t still manages to be relevant to the story being told in this book.
It’s still twice as long as it needs to be, riddled with traffic stops at the intersection of deep lore and unnecessary detail, and more interested in setting up future stories than meaningfully resolving plot threads. Threads that do end only seem to be step one of forty in establishing characters’ later heroics. When said heroes defeat major enemies, those foes always get away, preserved for later installments as in a saturday morning cartoon. The wheel is finally turning, but the carriage has yet to move.
The book is scattered with engaging content, but every time Jordan manages to string together five or ten good pages, you hit a brick wall of redundant setup or boring lore up to thirty pages long. While the lore is more plot-relevant than previous entries, the efficiency still isn’t there. If a skillfully written one-paragraph summary would suffice, bet on a detailed, in-depth thesis instead.
The book’s other weak points are glaring and many. Unmemorable side characters with scant presence in previous books return as if you should remember them: keep a wiki open. Relationships almost invariably consist of two characters in a domination-manipulation tug of war. This includes close friendships and romances; of the latter, there are many, and you’ll never learn why characters like each other. That budget was spent on vacuous physical descriptions and reminders of how sexy the cast is (which I suppose is as good an explanation as any to fall for a bland, generic protagonist). As in previous books, protagonists frequently discover vital information and hide it. Though a few characters have tenuous motivations for secrecy, most don’t and it’s clear at this point that it’s just a favored trick to raise drama and tension.
The book’s weak points make it very tiring to read. It doesn’t help that travel takes up a third of the story, especially when settling into the intrigue and politics of the book’s initial setting seemed to be a more promising narrative. An established setting would have taken advantage of all the characters introduced in the earlier chapters, and could have cut down on the indulgent physical descriptions of every new environment the characters visit.
What I liked, I liked better than anything from the book’s predecessors. Characters are driven and actively affect the world around them. You need to be tolerant of the uncritical “great man” view of history to enjoy the primary cast, but this book gets closer than ever to making them feel remarkable without just having mentor characters say how unprecedented their strength or abilities are.
Overall, you could do worse. I wouldn’t read the first three just to get here, but if you already have, give it a shot.
Content warning: generic fantasy monsters/violence, kidnapping, fat shaming, excessive ogling
Plot: 5
Characters: 3
Themes: 5
Prose: 4
Overall score: 20 point-of-view characters
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