Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

While it still doesn't compare to the first four or five books, Knife of Dreams is probably the best novel in the Wheel of Time series since Fires of Heaven. The good news is numerous plot lines advance and the writing shows the effect of a full editing cycle. The bad news is that the good writing here oddly illuminates how much of a hole author Robert Jordan dug for himself with the mess of the previous novels - with it being made very clear even a writer of his talent probably won't be able to resolve the plethora of details even with another couple of books. I take a star off for letting a number of details and characters slip along with another half star for a pace that at times returns to near-plodding, but I'll round it up from 3.5 stars to four for the progress here that makes me have high hopes for the next book. It is outright scary to think of how many top selling authors have come and gone since Jordan started this series. In 1990, Lemony Snicket was a sophomore in college, J. K. Rowling had just taken that fateful train ride back to London, and most of the top sellers on the sci-fi/fantasy lists hadn't been published even in fan magazines. My rating here is standalone and does not reflect my frustration with how Jordan has dragged this out; read my reviews of Crossroads and New Spring if you doubt that. (Incidentally, Jordan claims to never have read a review on Amazon, having stated that "if you're going to get your heart checked out, would you go to a doctor (professional reviewer) or walk up to a guy on the street?" Oh well.) Although not spectacular, Knife of Dreams finally gives hope again. Without spoiling things, many plotlines raised in the last few books advance. Perrin's attempts to recover Faile, Mat's escape with and courtship of Tuon, Elayne's struggle for her crown, and a few miscellaneous issues resolve. More significantly and more satisfyingly, Jordan really does make progress on some plotlines that have been promised since the first few books - Egwene's struggle to truly be the Amyrlin Seat, the implications of Lan as Aan'allein, and miraculously, even some movement on the long (1995!) dormant Eel- and Aelfinn plotline. There are also some remarkable new point-of-view (Tuon, Loial!) perspectives that add to the details of the world without having to write hundreds of pages. Finally, the book also shows the effort of being at Tor for more than a month before publication like the last four or five novels; Jordan isn't allowed to go off into tangents - and thankfully, no major new characters get introduced - and in general the writing is generally crisper. Unfortunately, it's not enough. Jordan has created so many irrelevant plotlines and characters from the sixth book onwards that even with a workmanlike effort to clean up here the mess is still very much present. A glaring result is that the main plot - what the Dragon Reborn is doing - not only receives merely cursory attention but also doesn't show up until Chapter 18, or 385 pages into a 760 page book. The not-particularly-engaging Windfinder and Tower-divided stories get far too much coverage without moving much, a number of major characters besides Rand (like Min, Nynaeve, and Aviendha) get very little stage time with more minor players like Galina and various Shaido characters receiving far too much, other interesting plots like the Forsaken move barely at all with minimal coverage, and of all the advancements above only the Egwene line really feels satisfying. (If Jordan had advanced the other main characters as much as Egwene this would have been a much better book.) The problem is clear. The last really good WoT book, Fires of Heaven, had roughly four or five major plotlines; this has at least ten thanks to the mess of the last few books. While Jordan and his editor state unequivocally that this will be finished in one more book (thankfully planned to be completed before any more prequels), all the new material he's added makes this doubtful and is now standing directly in the way of a great wrapup. Jordan's goal was to have fans sweating by the end of the book; for me, I didn't get there as this doesn't qualify as a cliffhanger by any means. Over the summer, I actually reread all the previous books and the good news is the bad ones make more sense as part of a sequential order - and at least Jordan is somewhere close to his old form, so this isn't bad. But then again, it's not great either. Still, it deserves 3.5 stars and is worth buying in hardcover rather than waiting. For the first time in years, I look forward to the next novel. September 2007: My sympathies to Jordan's lovely wife Harriet on his recent passing. For those who are interested, the notes he left as the basis of the massive final book, A Memory of Light, will be completed and published in 3 separate books by Brandon Sanderson.