The books are very enjoyable. Things are actually happening at a fast pace, instead of the ponderous, plodding pace of the previous five books. I think that Sanderson's decision to throw his hands up and say to hell with organizing the timelines properly was the best decision he could have made. Jordan was determined to keep the timelines lined up, and that caused his story to bog down. It caused the pointless waste that was Crossroads of Twilight. He appeared to feel obligated to add in dozens upon dozens of "filler" chapters to keep the timelines synched up while still switching points of view around and giving us all the characters. It was boring. It lacked storytelling verve.

This way left things a little disorienting from Perrin's story's point of view, but it was pretty easy to ignore. Yeah, so Tam was still there. Yeah, Graendal's timeline didn't really mesh with Perrin's even though they were connected. So what? I enjoyed the story of the events that happened and didn't feel the need to nitpick the way the timeline was presented. Perrin eventually matched up with Egwene and now we're golden(eyes).

If he had placed all of Perrin's chapters up to Tam's departure into Gathering Storm, he would also have needed to include Galad's chapters in Gathering Storm. That book was already big; those chapters would have made it too big, and it would have had a big focus on Perrin, where it was really Rand's book. It would have left Towers of Midnight significantly reduced in size. I'm happy with the decision that was made.

While Gathering Storm is a better book than Towers of Midnight, both are very acceptable to me, and I enjoyed them greatly. I like the humour Sanderson has brought back to the series (Elayne's hypocrisy and Nynaeve tugging on her braid and each of the ta'varen constantly wishing they were good with girls like the other two does not count as humour) -- yes, I even liked Mat's letter. I couldn't really stand Gawyn, but then I never could, so y'know. And yes, this one felt somewhat rushed, but there was a lot to do and only so many pages to do it in.

Let's face it. No disrespect to the man or his memory, because he created a series that has had a direct impact for the better on my life and I will always be grateful for that -- but with the way Jordan was writing, the incredibly slow and deliberate pace he was taking, the way he was adding extra filler chapters to pad out the story and synchronize timelines ... it would have taken him at least five more books to write the rest of this story, no matter what he said about fitting it into one. No author in the world could have done that without dropping half the plot threads in mid-stride, and an author with Jordan's increasingly ponderous precision would never have managed it unless the one volume was near on 5000 pages long.

I can't wait to get the last one, and a few years ago you would never have heard me saying that.