The Fires of Heaven

5.00/5.00 “Far Dareis Mai carries your honor, and you take ours away”.

The fifth installment of the Wheel of Time is rich in worldbuilding and filled with crazy twists and turns. As a welcome surprise, there is an excellent battle scene in the book, which superseded expectation and was woven beautifully in to the plot. However, Robert Jordan's writing is a point of frustration. His brilliance in writing a thematic and intricate plot, jaw-dropping twists, super-coherent and satisfying magic system, combined with incredible character moments, is dragged down by repetitive descriptions, innumerable pointless characters, cringeworthy romance and irritating character flaws.

I come out on the largely positive side for this book. The wheel weaves as the wheel wills. Glory be to the Lord Dragon Reborn! Hail Lord Mat!

Story/Plot -> Jaw dropping & unpredictable moments such as Birgette's return, Elayne bonding her as warder, Nyneave tearing Moghedien a new one, Rahvin being the final villain, the incredible battle, Mat killing Couladin, the amnesty and so much more! Even the Aviendha-Rand romance was enjoyable. I am really not enjoying the Elayne-Min-Rand part of this romance. I also cringed at the Elayne-Thom part, WTF was that. Remove romance from these books, and the story would be a perfect 10.Worldbuilding -> No need to rehash the extraordinary worldbuilding in WoT. It is outstanding as usual. The One Power and Tel'aran'rhiod is so well developed in this book, that it is mind blowing. I love how the story weaves around the magic system in such a wonderful way. Characters -> Rand and Moiraine steal the show here. Rand's madness, his relationship with Far Dareis Mai, with Moiraine is outstanding. The gut wrenching Moiraine death leading to Rand's character development is just heaven. I actually liked Galad? wow. On the other hand, listening to Nyneave's thoughts and opinions on men are just so vexing. If it wasn't for Rand and Moiraine, I would have dropped this score. And what a character moment for the Far Daries Mai leader Sulin! Dialogue/Prose -> I feel like the writing gets really bad in some places, but is decent overall The whole thing about Rand-Aviendha-Elayne-Min "romance" is just cringe worthy to read. Every time Rand is attracted to a woman, why does he have to talk about Min and Elayne ? I get what Robert Jordan is trying to do. He wants Rand to have three wives, a blonde, a red head and a brunette, which is just cringe for me. I would just go back and delete all romance from WoT books. And why does every female character think men are stupid ? Why do all the men think women are crazy? Why does it have to be stated and reminded every 5 mis ? Why is everyone so angry and violent ? Why do we need so much recap ? Why is every other female character described as "plump" (the only time to use this adjective is to describe a tomato!) ? Why do we care so much about necklines and dress colors ? I have decided to just accept this style of writing and adjust my expectations. I wanted to throw an above average score here, but I am going to give RJ the bonus for the dream world writing, the battle scenes, which are just excellent. Emotional Impact -> I really enjoyed the worldbuilding, the battles, the plot twists and the ending. I struggled with the writing here, but it didn't "bother" me as much as I just noticed the problems and wished it was better. Moiraine stole the show for me. This book scores high for her.