[This review has been with me for a long while now; I wanted to make sure I get all my thoughts down properly. I'm still quite struggling with my Star Trek II review, so double feature (in relation) is off the books for now.]
Reading this book gave me mixed feelings. Part of me is happy that the series has FINALLY come to an end; part of me is sad that the original author, Robert Jordan, didn't live to close it.
Most of all, there wouldn’t be any more WoT books to look forward to, after this.
I won't go into the storyline, because the scope of this entire book is immense. It’s what we expected for Tar’mon Gaidon, and the story doesn't let up, flitting from PoV to PoV like nobody's business, showing us what's going on on every front, with most of it steeped in battles and military maneuvers. It also shows how battles are fought and won in a war like this (all or nothing), and so many things and so much (technological?) progress happen that it almost feels like it's the Age of Legends.
The downside to it is that you don’t stay with each character for long, before you’re brought to another character in another location. This took some getting used to, considering the very one/two character-driven Books 12 (Rand/Egwene) and 13 (Mat/Perrin).
[And also, previous books that had devoted almost entire chapters to Elayne refusing goats’ milk only one character.]
One thing that stood out for me in A Memory of Light was how cinematic the scenes are. Where previous books would be great for iMax (all the detailing), the whole of AMoL seems to be made for a summer movie in general, due to pacing and also action. The beginning was slightly slow, but it was necessary to consolidate and position where everyone is supposed to be for the rest of the book.
The body count does hit an all-time high in this one, with many, many supporting characters and, shockingly, one main character (due to her stupid idiot of her husband!) biting the dust. Given how that doofus had been bungling things up (I don’t know who thought up this bloody stupid plot arc), it was almost a given that her death would soon follow after, but then again, we rarely get deaths told from the dying person’s PoV.
And considering how this character is at the forefront of the series, her written death wasn't all that special. Masema’s death from Book 12 stood out. It gave us an insight to an extremely minor character who, up until that point, used to glare at everyone until he became a fanatical zealot. That entire section was gripping, it made an impression, and it certainly lingered with me long after I've moved onto the rest of the story.
The book also posits a theory to good and evil. We all know how the WoT symbolises balance (male/female Aes Sedai symbol, etc.). The mental battle between Rand (our hero) and the Dark One (the Big Bad of the series) is a fascinating turn of events, where they each show a world without the other. It’s interesting to note that a world without the Dark One would be the same as a world with the Dark One; in the latter, all good had been removed from people, whereas in the former, all evil had been removed from people. Rand realises that good cannot exist without evil, and vice versa, which puts him in a bit of a bind since this is the last book and he needs to defeat the bad guy.
I was most excited to read the final chapter, especially when I found out that Jordan had written the last few scenes of the entire saga, and I was a bit stumped to find that Jordan had only (most likely) written the last bit of very, very last scene, which, though beautifully written and gave me goosebumps, just wasn’t enough.
*and here is where it gets spoilerrific!*
I’m completely okay with how the story turned out; it’s bittersweet, in a good way. I actually dig the idea of Rand riding into the sunset anonymously, him rearing up his horse like Zorro (struck out because I made that up; there are so many scenes in this book that would play out gloriously on film) as the wind rose up and blew the final sentences of the series into place.
It’s only the execution that I have issues with.
I feel that Rand owes it to Nynaeve, to Tam, Moiraine, Loial and all those close to him, to at least personally let them know he’s still alive but incognito. And unrealistically, how can Min and Co., be so outwardly nonchalant (so obvious that everyone notices it) about Rand's "death", and yet hope to hide the fact that Rand is still alive? If this is the actual ending that Jordan envisioned, it’s a crap way that disregards the feelings of all those who had stuck with Rand thick and thin through 14 flippin’ books.
I get Rand’s motivations for wanting some peace for a while. Yes, I can understand him taking a step back from ruling and letting the Power of Threewives run the world. But I can’t understand him just disappearing so without saying thank you and goodbye to all his friends. At least in The Lord of the Rings everyone said their farewells before sailing off in that massive ship.
[I don’t really follow LotR but I know those people were going away for a long, long time.]
I feel that Rand owes them that much.
Plus, switching bodies with Moridin: Nae’blis and all-around head Forsaken? Won’t people panic? Won’t people just go, “Hey, what happened to that guy that was lying next to Rand? Oh, no, he's still alive, he’s going to release the Dark One again!"
I don’t know whether Jordan is to blame for this final plot development, or whether it’s something Sanderson and Team Jordan (people in charge of editing and continuity) worked out because they were running out of time / pages and just wanted to get it over with. This whole resolution just doesn't gel well with me.
I'm not going to harp on my usual quibble with all books post-Jordan. I appreciate that Sanderson cuts to the chase (instead of describing every single bloody thing to the minutest detail until you lose track of what you’re supposed to be reading about in the first place), but I’m surprised that Team Jordan wasn’t able to eke out all those inconsistencies in Sanderson’s narrative style and language.
[Mind I said ‘narrative’ instead of ‘writing’. That’s how I knew that Jordan hadn’t written the final PoV. Too many contractions; Jordan very rarely (so rare it’s almost ‘never’) uses contractions in narratives; only in dialogue and in thoughts.]
Plus, there was even a ‘Yeah’ in the book (either from Egwene or Elayne), a word which does not exist in their lexicon. Considering the fact that I’ve skimmed through Books 8-10 (up till now, I'm of the impression that the only significant thing to happen is the Cleansing, in Book 9), I should not be noticing details like this.
There were also some loose ends (what bloody happened to Gaul? And did Juilin Sandar die?!) but all in all, it was a pretty satisfying ending to a saga that's been an integral part of my life, even though I came late to the series.
Jordan said he envisioned and wrote the ending at the very start of the series, and you can just tell that the final paragraphs of the book are definitely his. I'll end my post with his words:
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The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had finally begun to put forth buds.
The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored.
This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.
But it was an ending.
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