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blandstalker · 10-03-2012, 07:35 PM

I gave up on them, which was not an easy decision because I really loved the first four or five. The first was good. The second was clunky, but showed potential. And the next few were pure gold, with a vibrant world and dynamic characters and lots of incredible stuff happening.

And then the pace slowed and nothing would happen for hundreds of pages. I detested the endless Mat marches, Egwene at camp doing nothing, and characters going through the motions looking for the newest McGuffin. Bowl of the Winds, was it? I had resisted the criticisms that it was padded or he was writing his retirement, but it really did seem bloated and aimless and no longer even interesting to me. With some books, the more time you spend with the characters, the more you love them or love to hate them. Here, I found how much they grated on me, and a seemingly endless supply of 'more' is not necessarily better.

After the stunt with Mat, where the book ended on a cliffhanger and the next gargantuan book didn't even bother to check in on him, I hung up my hat. I don't even like Mat, but that was ridiculous. It crystallized in my mind that it was no longer about the character or the story or, for that matter, the readers.