Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's Towers of Midnight

Two months of procastination for me to sit down and read the remaining three-quarters of Towers of Midnight. Took me all of New Year weekend.

And Chinese New Year weekend is the perfect time for me to get my post up. I am happy :)

The focus in this book is on Perrin and Mat (as Book 12 is on Rand and Egwene), finally resolving their story-arcs, both of which felt like they've been going on forever. Eight books, to be exact. Eight, encyclopedia-sized tomes that probably weighed one kilo each.

Mat's arc is by far the most interesting (and awesome) in this book. Loved, loved how Mat defeated the gholam (though the explanation on the Kinswoman holding the gateway doesn't really hold water, but whatev), and loved, loved, loved how he found his way out from the lands of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn (the ashandarei, man! Oh-em-gee!!). His overall POV, however, felt off. Like his letter to Elayne. It was absolutely hilarious, but doesn't really seem like Mat to write her a letter. Illiterately. I always thought that Mat was better educated than that, and even if by not much, I always thought that he could spell.

Perrin was fantastic during the dream sequence in Tar Valon. "There is no balefire"."This wall does not exist". "These are not the Aes Sedai you are looking for". Very, very cool, but since the existence of the ability to break minds and change environments only came up in this book, it's such an obvious deus ex machina set-up. How else would Perrin been able to defeat Slayer, and Egwene with Mesaana?

[And the Aiel Wise Ones using camouflage? Simply, simply awesome.]

Speaking of Egwene and Mesaana, only 10 lines of story describing their fight?! I mean, it's Mesaa-fricken'-na, man! Lecturer, intellectual, Forsaken... I know Egwene is a very strong Dreamer and Mesaana has always been mediocre, but things just happened too fast.

Thom and Moiraine's romantic coming-of-togetherness feels forced. Very, very forced. Moiraine has been away for eight books, and even when she was around, we don't see much enough development between she and Thom to warrant them to want to get married after her rescue. All this while, I thought that the main reason why Thom would feel anything at all for Moiraine's supposed death was because she had promised to give him the name of the Sister who had ordered for Thom's nephew to be gentled without following proper protocol. Goes to show what I know.
Aviendha's POV, though short, paints a very dark and very bleak future for the Aiel. Aviendha goes through the second set of ter'angreal in Rhuidean, and her visions show that even the best of intentions lead to the worst decisions, which in turn, leads to the downfall of the Aiel.

What I don't get is how Aviendha saw the future instead of the past, which was what she was supposed to be shown as this time around, she went through the past-revealing ter'angreal. Apparently, she's supposed to be the exception to the rule (no explanation on this), but anyway, I'd like to see her explain her vision to the rest of her folk (in the next book, hopefully).

Book 13 also touches on the aftermath of Rand's epiphany from the end of Book 12. From a beautiful ending to Book 12, we see that Enlightened Rand, though Rand is a lot wiser than he was in the previous books, he isn't really Rand anymore, more towards a combination of all his past lives to make into one. And it's sad, in a way, because I wanted to see Rand (for all his flaws and whinings and reluctance to kill women in general) defeat the Dark One, not Third Age Lews Therin.

The timeline for each character in the book is terribly confusing. Perrin's arc only catches coincides with the end of Book 12 midway of Book 13, Mat's case with Verin's letter would mean that his arc in the book would've spanned days instead of months, seeing that Verin had warned him of an impending Shadowspawn attack on Caemlyn. I mean, even though Trollocs are big and bulky, I think they can amasse fast when they want to.

Overall, an excellent book in terms of plot development, with the final 10-15 chapters being absolutely awesome. Kudos to Sanderson pulling this book off; you can see how much less Jordan is in this one. However, the inconsistency in the slang, terms and vocabulary used is even more prominent in this book compared to Book 12, and so glaringly obvious that it takes your attention (mine, at any rate) away from the storyline, which shouldn't be the case.