Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's The Gathering Storm.

As I've probably typed quite a few times now, Book 12 of The Wheel Of Time series was only partially finished by the original author, since he'd passed on in 2007. Sanderson is the new author to finish off the series, and as per my relatively-outraged post here (outrage for different reasons), he'll be doing the writing for the next two books.

I just finished the book, and I'd have to say, it was much better than I thought it'd be. Much, much better.

I was a bit nitpicky at the beginning, especially with the first few chapters, since they were so many italicised words in there that weren't in Old Tongue!! It was a bit jarring at first because Jordan hardly ever used italics in his narrations, except when referring to terms in Old Tongue. Luckily, I got used to the writing, and there were not much italicised regular words to distract me from then on.

Well, fellow fans who've complained about the length and filler-iness of some books *cough*Books 6-8*cough* and yet stuck by all this time (as in, me), this book is very similar to Book 11, except better. At least one major storyline was wrapped up, several hundred people got theirs, and even more dark random mayhem happening to poor random civilians.

And another onetwo bites the dust! I think you know the Ones ;)

Many, many Dreams and Foretellings come true, with the major one close in the end a battle that, though not as long as Dumai's Wells, is far, far more awesome. Highlight below if you wanna know what that's about ^^
The Seanchan siege of the White Tower.

The most major character development to happen in this book is of Rand. He did a complete 180˚ in this, a transition discussed in many of the previous books, and made things all the more intense. Most of the chapters are focused on Rand and Egwene; with the occasional Mat, about two from Perrin, and absolutely no chapter from Elayne's POV.


[In a way, I'm kinda glad. Her arc kinda bored me in the previous book, even though she finally defeated the rebel Houses.]

I did get a kick out of trying to guess which parts were his and which parts were Jordan. The names of the new characters are a bit obvious, since some had Indian origins. I've not read any of Sanderson's work, so I cannot be sure, but some comments on Tor's webpage for the book mentioned that it's fairly obvious between the writing styles. The Foreword from Sanderson mentioned that he did not try to copy Jordan's style of writing (but of course), but the purist in me still kinda wished he did.

I love how the ending was written. I've never paid much attention to the excerpts from the prophecies and other brouhaha usually written at the end of each Book, but I did to this. It explained a lot, and for Rand, it's on a really positive note.

At least, unless I misread that section, which I really hope I didn't 'cuz it'd be a total bummer if I did.