I don't believe the WoT series is as "big" of a story as you make it out to be. Complicated series, with tons of minor character "moving parts"? Yes. But certainly not an overly complex tale. If it were, I highly doubt it'd have a massive following, to be honest. Don't know why you think it's "incomprehensible" that Roberts (or others) would think the first book was better than the fourth and latter books: it does have more defined plot structure and flow to it. The latter books begin to meander so much that one may be pardoned if s/he wonders if the point had been lost among so many secondary subpoints. Doubtless, there is an argument to be made that all these subplots might make for a tapestry, but at what cost? Having millions of words devoted to creating all these subplots risks overshadowing the primary plot and the lack of focus on the forest for just a few quaint trees. It's not that readers who dislike the series increasingly as it putters along are "confused." It's rather that for many, the series appears to be more and more of a mess with each passing volume, as the author(s) struggled to tame the brambles of these branching side stories. As is the case with a volume such as CoT, the action became choked up in the having to account for all the minor details that could have been shorn from the series without hurting the potential power of the closing narrative.



The "mythical engineering," in my honest opinion, is vastly disappointing. There is little subtlety to it, as entire "real world" cultures are borrowed nearly whole cloth without any major alterations made. Having a mishmash of French, Spanish, Persian, Japanese, Tudor English, and a few other cultural elements thrown together in a fashion that depends upon a reader's stereotypical views of those societies/locales gets rather wearisome over time. Perhaps it's because I have a grad degree in cultural history and I see through the parlor trappings and feel the laziness and faults in the portrayals. The settings are a sham to me. Trying to retro-"engineer" disparate myths into a fantasy setting is rather ham-handed, considering the narrative acrobatics RJ had to do just to shoehorn in references to stories whose actual origins had to deal with very different matters than the ones he tried to imply. It just felt silly and rather stupid, to be honest. Perhaps some enjoyed it, but I wouldn't be surprised if for those who had a grounding in cultural traditions that the seams were so visible as to make the entire affair risible.

And again, remember that Roberts is not writing a formal review. I would imagine he would have had a lot more to say if he were writing those reviews for say Strange Horizons (where he just had an interesting review of Philip K. Dick's VALIS novels posted last week).