To each his own. I've tried to split the paragraphs, and personally I think it worked really awesomely, added a whole new "cosmic" dimension to the scene, as if nature itself, reality itself, was waiting on Rand's decision to go on or unravel. You had Perrin as witness to the possible end of the world, and shared this perspective on Rand with him. His description of the surroundings, with the vortex, the killing winds and the stones flying completed Rand's of the fire and smoke of Dragonmount. The whole scene felt even more epic and apocalyptic, and Rand's inner struggle was even more impressive at the end.

Beyond that we'd have many divergences of opinion, as I don't rate TGS nearly as high as you do. I though one of its problems was precisely how much it felt like one of the early books - and so late it the series it seemed too simple, the lack of secondary storylines reducing the scope when the story should at this point have gotten more and more epic and grand. In hindsight this was completely artificial, following the decision by Brandon to divide the books as he did: RJ never intended that return to the style of the early series. With the TOM content added to TGS, early AMOL would have read like a much darker, much more dramatic KOD. With Rand's epiphany coming as it should have only 2/3 into the final book, the first and second acts would have been very dark and oppressive, which on the eve of the LB would have been majestic. Only the Mat/Elayne storyline would have relieved that a bit.

Most of the darkness was saved in TGS, because the two storylines that were to be the core of acts 1-2 were told in there. Perrin's, Mat's, Aviendha's, the BT's were to add to this gloom and despair. Even Moiraine's rescue, on purpose frustrating delayed in Caemlyn by the Verin letter device, would have contributed, thanks to the red herring that she was badly, badly needed by Rand. Now it TOM, this suspense around Moiraine is ruined - you know going into the book that Min's Viewing has nothing to do with saving Rand from his growing, perhaps soon fatal darkness. That quite reduced the feeling of frustation caused by the delays in Caemlyn, and after you tell right at the beginning that Rand is preparing a crucial meeting... all that was left was the suspense of the episode of the rescue itself - all the urgency was gone. Instead of contributing to suspense and gloom, Verin's letter just became a device to delay the rescue until the climax of the book. Following RJ's chronology, it should have been a lot more dramatic than that, as until the epiphany you really should have been expecting Moiraine's crucial role to have something to do with helping Rand. The set up for this was even there... early in TGS Rand was speaking of Moiraine as the only AS he could trust.

Aviendha's visions in Rhuidean, also occuring before the epiphany timeline wise, were not as effective when told after super-Rand is around. A lot of things weren't.

Sure, TGS on the whole worked as faster paced book, but dividing the books this way brought massive changes to RJ's intents for the finale. It completely changed how we were supposed to perceive this part of the ending. It's really a big change, even though it probably had all the events planned by RJ. As I said elsewhere on this topic, a novel/story is much more than the sum of episodes/chapters. I've realized only with TOM how deeply the decision to tell acts 1-2 of AMOL by dividing them following storylines rather than chronology and themes has changed the whole thing, and as this is one aspects I used to enjoy massively when RJ was at the helm, despite pacing flaws and all, I'm really underwhelmed by the result.

Of course, I understand perfectly that people who long had problems with RJ's writing and the later books actually could prefer things this way, but I hope they understand too how frustrating it can be for someone who was enjoying the later books, especially KOD, and would have preferred Brandon to remain more respectful, or perhaps I should just say more faithful, to the series's style. In my perspective, it's very fundamental changes he's made by altering the structure. I had worries after TGS despite all that satisfied me in it, and TOM was kind of a surprise, a bad one, in how worse the book split had made things than I thought. I never quite expected to end up so frustrated at the whole thing, to be honest. Brandon in interviews and such spoke as if he was aware of some of the flaws in TGS and intended to remedy to that in the next book. He didn't. Some of those flaws, in the timelines, in editing, were much worse.