CoT is, in my opinion, the most boring, pointless volume in the series. The entire book could have been combined with either Knife of Dreams or Winter's Heart and nothing of substance would have been lost. It's my belief that Jordan was working through some issues and trying to plot out the rest of the series, and did this book simply to buy time. So little happens compared to every other book in the series that I can't buy any other explanation. I regretted paying full price for this book, because it was dull, uninteresting, and only just barely managed to advance a small part of the plot. I can only say that people who enjoyed this book are reading the series for entirely different reasons than me, and have very different tastes in writing.