"Crossroads of Twilight" (The Wheel of Time Series, Book 10) by Robert Jordan

 

 

Author : Robert Jordan

Description : After the disappointments of the several books preceding this one, it came as a surprise to see that Jordan was returning to his A Game. There are still many problems even though this book was better then many of the last few in the series. Rereading them, especially when you can not get to the conclusion gives you a pause to really evaluate what each book is.

Again because we do not get to the end of the story, more can be found to fault the telling of the story. (You would know we had because some way 'THE END' would appear.) New details in the travelogue that is the The Wheel of Time occurs. Alton Brown cruising around the US on Asphalt, or Mark Twain in Roughing It. We have Jordan having created a map with a great many lands, so why not ensure we as the audience know how diverse it is.

The problem therein is that we don't care. The Map has never had the detail it needed to find a great many of the places mentioned. Battles can not be followed because they are impractical and are just literary voyeurisms. The battles could have been summed even more quickly, Good guys show up, have smaller force, use power to win. If you try to look at it in military context, it will do you no good, as will understanding logistics which Jordan tries to give a nod to.

Big armies need big food. Even the many thousands of Shaido need food, but they don't, and again with the contradictions when the Forsaken sent the septs all over to be destroyed, now they seem to be getting back together? Oh, Jordan smacks his head wanting a V-8, in revisionist writing, this is even better five or ten years after I originally wrote the other scenes that I'll just change things.

Another exploration of Tell, don't show is revisited in ever bigger details which as the writing started to be denser again, or the fonts tighter, showed that the travelogue needed to be expanded.

Screen time is also getting shorter and shorter for characters as each is fighting for time on camera. Including Rand. The Protagonist, but the series is so large, that he is not as important as he was before. We have to remember as early as book three we were already pushing off the center stage.

But as Rand points out, he is the one who has to show up at the final climax chapter to fight, everyone else we have grown fond of, does not really need to be there. Thus we get into the exploration of why they are on screen so much. They need to be ready.

In the early books of the Travelogue we saw how big the world was, and as the characters criss-crossed it, they were learning. But now they are as wise as I in the space of 3 years of book time and twenty years of reading time.