Years ago, I had a brief but memorable relationship with a woman. It ended fairly amicably. Some years later we reconnected, and I was initially reminded of the good times. All those memories came flooding back, and it was exciting catching up on the years we’d been apart. And then, flushed with the realization that we ended it for a reason, I remembered how little I actually liked her. The wind was completely removed from my sails, and I limped back to safer waters.
This book reminded me of that. This series has been a slog. But I stuck with it because I knew that Brandon Sanderson was going to take it over, and I had high hopes that he’d save it. Well, he kind of did in the last book, The Gathering Storm. It was the best book in the entire series, and I found myself interested in characters that I had never liked.
So I began this book eagerly. For the first time, I wanted to read these books for the enjoyment of the story rather than the sense of completion for having finished the series I started 25 years ago
Until, that is, I realized that most of this book was just going to be catching up with all the characters who haven’t really been doing anything. This book is the set-up for the finale. It brings together all the disparate story lines, gathering everyone together for a pay-off we don’t actually get. Not until the next book, at least.
And I don’t even say this as a criticism of Brandon Sanderson. I don’t know what else he could’ve done, here. This series meandered so much over the last….seven books or so, and there were so many threads that needs to be resolved. I think he just had to sit down and kind of muscle through it. The Gathering Storm seemed more focused on the central characters: Rand, Egwene, and Nynaeve. Towers of Midnight needed to bring everyone else up to speed: Perrin/Faile, Mat, Thom/Moiraine, Gawyn, Galad, Elayne….
To be honest, I don’t particularly like these characters. Mat is probably the most enjoyable, and I will say that he was less insufferable than I generally found him under Robert Jordan, but I still wasn’t fully engaged. Not to the point that I was skipping ahead (which I had been doing), but there were a few times my mind wandered and I didn’t both to go back and catch myself up.
There were a few times I couldn’t help but wonder how much of these last three books had been written by Robert Jordan before his death, because this installment felt more like Jordan than The Gathering Storm did. But I would assume (rightly or not) that Jordan had accomplished more on the previous book than this one. Whatever the case, this book wasn’t my favorite, structurally speaking.
As to the characters themselves….well. Faile is almost a totally different character under Sanderson. I don’t know that I like her – but I definitely don’t hate her any more. So that’s progress. And Perrin is still a bit of a wet blanket, but he’s at least a warm one. Galad is a lot more well-rounded and identifiable, but his brother Gawyn was almost intolerable here. What annoyed me most is that, for much of the book, he’s pushing back against the imperiousness of the Aes Sedai, only to utterly give in and recognize his place as an inferior to Egwene. This is treated as some kind of victory of reason, and I found it fairly sickening. Not that I would’ve liked him if the resolution between them was more equitable, but it would’ve been nice to see some push back from a male character in one of these books.
Rand, once again, is largely forgotten about in favor of following the other characters around. This is partly necessity, I think. Rand is ready for the last battle – no one else is. Everyone has to get on the same page before we can get there.
Which just goes to show why it’s so important to get trapped in your own world building.
Overall, this was a fairly solid book in the series. But it does kind of suffer from “middle book syndrome” (even though it’s the thirteenth book in the series). Hopefully, the next book will have made the last year of my life worth it.
Anyway, I’m slouched over on my couch, trying my damnedest to not fall asleep. I don’t know if any of this is coherent.
The end is nigh.