[By Nic Lindh on Saturday, 29 November 2003]
Book 10 in the Wheel of Time series. Wow. That’s a lot of words. Crossroads of Twilight continues the unfortunate trend in the last four or so books of being glacially slow. Essentially nothing happens. Oh, there’s a lot of activity, but the plot really doesn’t move forward very much at all. Which is becoming exceptionally frustrating.
I am a bit in awe of Mr. Jordan’s world building–it’s simply unparalleled, with an almost creepily obsessive attention to detail. It’s just that there’s nothing much happening in this fabulously detailed world right now. It would be great if somebody could go in and re-edit the series. Taking out most of the really pointless sub plots and streamlining the series would make it such an astonishing tour de force.
Last I heard Mr. Jordan had plotted for eight books, but we’re now up to ten with no end in sight. I seriously can’t see investing my time in more than a few more books unless the pace gets picked up significantly.