Tor Books A Memory of Light: Fourteen of the Wheel of Time

The final volume of Robert Jordan's vision brought to you by Brandon Sanderson (who also wrote the previous several volumes and was loyal to Jordan's ideas and writing). I can't believe it's over!! I've been reading and re-reading them for YEARS (just as well I bought hardbacks from the third volume (and bought the first 3 in hardback once I was hooked!!)... I even re-read them all before finally daring to open this one. I was not disappointed!! It's a huge undertaking so I can't begin to tell you the story, but I can recommend them completely!! Start on Book One and by the end of that, you'll want to live there and never come home!!

Overall, I really enjoyed AMOL, and this enjoyment was probably increased by my surprise at the feeling itself. I first picked the housebrick of a book up almost in two minds whether to read it or just let it wait. I just wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it and was approaching it a bit like a chore that I didn't really want to do, but knew needed doing. It didn't take too long before I was rewarded however, as I was sucked in not just by the desire to see this through, after some 11,000 pages of reading in the series, but also by the gripping writing style employed by Sanderson.The scale of the book is immense, and as number 14 in the series, it has to be in order to bring everything together to a fitting close. I feel that there are just too many characters to keep a good track of, but for a series covering 14 novels, that's always going to be difficult - I think it's a case of introducing new characters as necessary but having so few as a percentage killed off. In a fantasy of this scope, I'd normally expect to see a fair number of these characters bite the dust before we get to book 14 - heck, if GRR Martin was writing it, we'd probably be left with just half a dozen named characters left and the last battle fought by heroic unknowns.Speaking of which, I joked to a friend that I'd just started the last battle and I was only halfway through the book, so either it's a really long battle, or we have an ending like the cinematic version of the Return of the King - where we get half out of our seats to go home and then realise it's coming back to the screen with another 10 minutes of footage. And then another 10 minutes. As it happens, it was a really long battle. The actual battle itself is almost entirely encompassed in one single chapter, but that chapter is 190 pages long. It's a beast. To satisfy my curiosity, I just counted and between us, my wife and I have about half a dozen books that are barely longer than this one chapter in terms of number of pages. Counting up an average looking page within the chapter and extrapolating a figure from there gives a rough estimate of somewhere in the region of 70,000 words. For a single chapter.Anyway, putting aside my amazement at the size of the chapter, I can see why it was done, and this bit for me is one of the best things about AMOL as a climax to the whole Wheel of Time series. There are 13 books leading up to this one, there's a cast of around a hundred named characters who are going to be involved in the last battle (I just pulled that number out of the air, but I really don't think I'm exaggerating much, if at all). To do it any justice, the last battle really has to be epic, and my word it delivers.Sometimes, thinking back on it, it almost seems like the entire book is dedicated to the last battle and nothing much else happens. There's plenty I can remember happening before we get to the battle itself, but somehow those bits all seem to be just prologues to Tarmon Gai'don anyway, and in a sense that's exactly what they are. Over the last couple of books it's been gradually happening, and leading up to the last battle in AMOL we see the final threads all being caught and pulled together.In the battle itself, as well as seeing a sequence of events befitting the build up we've been given, there's also some neat little extras. I think my favourite of these is probably the use of newly learnt magics, and mostly in the way gateways are used as more than just Travelling aids. I think this brings a big touch of realism to the battle, as you have commanders seeking every advantage they can get and people trying out new things, letting their imaginations loose with the powers they have at their disposal.It takes something special to keep a battle going for 190 pages, even one fought over several fronts before they all pull together, but I think I've read enough of his work to realise that Sanderson is indeed something special. The last battle is a real life or death fight, one last roll of the dice for both sides, with everything thrown at it - the name kind of gives it away really. To have the last battle over in a few smaller chapters just wouldn't have worked. It really needed to be on a scale rarely, if ever, imagined in fantasy writing. Now, obviously I've not read every novel, or every series out there, but for me at least, this was epic writing on a scale never seen before.I think if anything, the one part that I least liked about AMOL is the epilogue. I'd read that this was written by Jordan and added to the end of the book exactly as he'd intended it, and I like how everyone in the process stayed true to that as, after all, it's his story. For me, there was a noticeable change in the writing style when I turned that last page on Sanderson's writing and moved on to Jordan's. I also feel that the epilogue needed to be a bit longer, maybe a bit more fleshed out. To me, it almost seemed like it barely touched on a couple of major characters, and it's not until I went back to check that I realised there's actually a couple of pages split over two or three sections, but these characters still don't get the sort of send off I'd have thought they'd earned.

Amazon advise me to consider explaining why I bought this book. . . I don't need to though, do I? If you are looking at buying the 14th book in a serie and you haven't read the preceding thirteen then DON'T. Go to Book One and we'll see you in about three years. And, lucky you - you haven't had to wait . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . for this final glorious volume.So - was it worth the wait? Yes, definitely, in spades. Even if the end had been truly dreadful there is no way you could stop reading here, is there? You'd want to know, right? And in this book you find out the answers to pretty much everything with the final, brutal exception of What Happened Next - but that's only because the story does finally end, no matter how much you wish it wouldn't.And what do we get in this final volume? The Last Battle(s). A detailed, comprehensive account of the final struggle of the Light and Dark. Everyone turns up (somewhere, if only briefly) and their fate is described. The battles are long and difficult and you will feel every last twist and turn in your gut even though you (think you) know how it all turns out. Does it match what happened in your head? Almost certainly not. Does that make the story a Bad End or a Cop Out or some other failure? Definitely not. This, then, is the End of the Story and you know you deserve that closure.Objectively speaking I like Brandon Sanderson - the feel of the books is good and faithful and really the only major change is that there is a lot less spanking of maidens of all kinds and the book is the better for that lack of unnecessary fan service. In every other way Brandon does an excellent job of finishing this up in a believable, continuous way. He does a better job of being Robert Jordan than Eoin Colfer did of being Douglas Adams, and that's saying something.Buy this book and have all your questions answered then. Or don't - and writhe in despair until someone shows you mercy and buys it for you. Either way you will read it and weep.

Finally `The Wheel of Time' turns full circle. After over two decades and the death of the original author this immense saga reaches its end. After all this time is it worth the wait?Any novel that comes at the end of a fourteen book series is going to have a pretty unique reception. Fans of the series will no doubt enjoy this long awaited conclusion but, even though it is well written and eventful, any reader foolish enough to read this book and not the others will have no clue what is going on. This is not a stand-alone novel.The rewards for regular readers are great, however. Although the novel, despite being the final volume, still doesn't really feel it will reach any type of conclusion for the first half of it. There is plenty of action but it is generally all concerned with the back and forth of battle and strategy. It isn't until two thirds of the way through, with the start of a massive two-hundred page chapter, that the authors finally deliver on all they have promised in the previous books.There have been so many characters in `The Wheel of Time' that inevitably not all of them get covered satisfactorily. The authors do a good job though in covering as many as they reasonably can. To cover the inexhaustible list of characters in entirety would mean that the book became lists and information dumps. Although there is a little of this it is thankfully and skilfully kept to a minimum. All the characters are dealt with in the depth they deserve considering their role in the epic. As to be hoped, Rand, Matt, Perrin, Egwene, Nyneave and Elayne all receive plenty of attention. In many ways the events of the final volume revolve around them and they are all given satisfying ends to their personal journeys.Although the journey to reach the end of the saga has had its flaws along the way (ie too many characters to keep track of and some very long winded episodes where nothing really happens) the end result is all it was promised to be. Between the two writers they have produced a finale that fans of the series would have hoped for. This volume is also probably one of the better books overall (although the first three volumes are very hard to beat). The only negative is that it is a shame that Robert Jordan didn't live to witness the culmination of this fabulous saga he created.

There were times when I thought that I might not live long enough to reach the conclusion but I am very glad I did. The last 2 vols. (13 and & 14) are pure vintage Jordan. If one was cynical it seems that Mr Sanderson was asked by the publishers to e x p a n d the story to provide the publishers with more funds. Where the Jordan story moved with great pace and inventiveness, the padding was slow and honestly a bit pointless. I have heard that Jordan had mostly finished the story before his death ( the last 2 volumes)I especially did not read Vol 13 before the arrival of vol14 and I am very gald I waited as it remindes me of my reading the first 6 vols one after the other. It is a shame that we had to wait so long for the quality. I would suggest that anyone who started now would be best advised to concentrate on the Jordan Vols and then go to the last 2.