When, in my imagination at least, WoT occupies a middle ground of an approachable fairy tale combined with aspects folk tales/more recent fiction...such as "The Talisman", "Oliver Twist", "Robinson Crusoe" and etc so the artwork either seems too fantastic, not mundane enough or not exciting.

"The Wheel of Time" seems to require a fine balance where you go back to certain eras to figure out what features RJ was inspired by, while giving it an antiquarian feel - a different kind of Dark Ages, for example, where "The Fall of the Roman Empire" is replaced by a regression from a Victorian era, to a medieval era, and a slow limp back to the 16th century.