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Jul 26, 2017Jectoons rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
Jordan's fourth volume in a 14 volume long epic continues to deliver, with epic battles, fullfilled prophecies and a bunch of other cool stuff. Without a doubt, this series contains the best example I've ever found of intricate, detailed world building; Jordan has made an exceptional job creating the environments and cultures in The Wheel of Time. Everything has a history, everything feels real and plausible; his magic system is intricate (I know The Power is not "magic" per se, but it can serve as such for the purpose of description) and well developed, too. The story concerning the trials and efforts of the Dragon Reborn is also fantastic, with amazing and gripping moments, particularly massive battles or one-on-one encounters, mostly fueled as well by the richness of the world where it transpires. I cannot say how thoroughly I enjoy both the world building and the story. But the characters. The characters are almost as enjoyable as those two other elements, true, but they are, simply put, emotionally unrealistic. Jordan seems to build his characters based solely on their gender, and then adding extra details to make them "interesting". And while the whole "gender is a key element in the magic system and history of the world" thing is obvious, it would be silly not to note how much it hinders the progress of his characters. It's almost painful to see how caricaturized the relationships are between characters of different genders. Like. Women are always plotting and trying to control men, especially by "making them think we dont want to control them", keeping secrets and always angry at how "men are always hotheaded and obnoxious"... which in the novel they are, for no reason! And men feel the same way about women, getting angry at not understanding them, at their ever changing ways.... So basically men and women in this book are caricaturized stereotypes of the real men and women. At the beginning I thought that would change, but 4 books in I find that it just wont. Which is a shame, since it hinders the reading of it, when you exhale in exaperation at how easily they would solve their problems if they didnbehave and treat the other gender as stereotypes. Sigh. I will finish the series, but I will never be comfortable with the way Jordan writes characters. Everything else is great.