Let me start by just saying that I am not so wowed that I simply need to read this story:
Super-advanced, super-civilized and peaceful people who use magic found a way to contact what is basically, a hyper-powerful Satan, and the result was that the world went from utter peace to massacres and anarchy. Everyone nearly died trying to stop it, but they didn't put the world back in order and Evil was still a powerfully-influential force. Nearly 3000 years later, this 17-century European-like continent has women who control all the magic in the world. Men who have magic are dangerous and feared and bad, but Good relies on the reborn spirit of the most famous man ever who won a Pyhrric victory in stopping Evil the first time is the only guy who can stop it this time. But he doesn't know anything about this! And the legions of Evil are everywhere and powerful! And even the other good guys are scared of him or want to control him in a way that may not be for the best! And he's just an ignorant youngster with no education but a lot of heart!

I don't care if it's a movie series, a "quality" syfy show (hahaha!), or a novel: I don't find that plot - even throwing in cool things like Lanfear, Ishy, gholam, sangreal, or Mat, or other juicy "cool stuff" - to be so interesting that I have to try it. Or have to keep enjoying it.

It's the way the story was told that made it so addictive. The more I think about it, the more I feel that the beast got away from RJ after LoC. Because I have read lots of literature, and a bit of trash too, but I found TEotW, TGH, TDR, and TSR, to be completely engrossing.

I think I found LoC the same way, but I can't quite remember and I should reread before I opine. I'm sure that ACoS onward sees the series take a dip in many ways. It's more like the 6th series of a tv show - it's extremely rare that it makes successful efforts and good experiments; or doesn't lapse into been-there-before in a way that either (a) indicates they didn't pull off what they were going for or (b) have run out of ideas.

Although RJ had clearly not run out of ideas - even up to the end (dammit) - his execution was not so strong as the series went on. Things he tried for didn't work, some choices could have been handled differently (impliedly also: for the better), and the level of "drag" or repetition really does mount to the degree of "kinda unacceptable."

I'll address the rest in part 2