Knife of Dreams

The long-awaited book 11 is finally here, almost twenty years since book 1 came out. It was sad that Robert Jordan passed away before he could see to the completion of his epic series.

If you've read the previous ten books, there's probably no review that will stop you from reading book 11. For me, this book shows some of style and better editing of the first 5 books. A lot of plot lines actually progressed, and there's a lot less pointless ramblings and irrelevant tangents very much evident in books 6 to 10. The pacing is uneven; you'll still getting very slow parts, but at least there are faster-paced parts.

Brandon Sanderson will have a tough time wrapping up the story in his three books. It very clearly shows in this book that there's way too many plot lines. Unfortunately, many of the plot lines focused on in this book are not important, such as giving too much time to Galina and the Shaido. Egwene's story progressed the most, good progress in Mat's (including cool new perspectives) and Perrin's arcs. Lan's and Nynaeve's, Elayne's, and Rand's didn't progress as much as I'd like to see (Rand appeared only halfway through the book). There's also very little progress around the Forsaken. Still, the pacing and the actual progress in the storyline gives this book a very fresh feel compared to the quite horrible book 10, it's not as good as book 1, but it's good enough for me to like it.