Well, now that the last book is out I guess I can finally read through the entire series. I started it years ago and got about halfway through The Dragon Reborn until I learned about how the series just kept dragging and dragging with no end in sight. So I decided to stop and wait until the series was finally completed. I've got a lot of catching up to do...
Wow. Hard to imagine that this day finally arrived. I still remember when The Dragon Reborn hit the NYT list for the first time. There was much rejoicing in the Tor offices and we all went out to an Irish pub to celebrate! That was longer ago that I want to think about . . . .
I've just finished reading the last page of the last book. As expected, it was a relief and a little disappointing. Relief that the series was given a proper ending. Disappointing because I felt Brandon Sanderson didn't do a good job with the finale. It was a totally passionless account of Tarman Gai'don that could have been condensed into: Spoiler: A Memory of Light "The shadow attacked with overwhelming force and trickery. The forces of light suffered massive losses. People died. Mat saves the day. Perrin saves the day. Rand does what he needed to do. Light won, barely. A funeral pyre for the Dragon Reborn. End of story. " I suppose this is the best possible outcome given that Robert Jordan is dead and Brandon Sanderson inherited a pile of characters he has no investment in. As a result, there were no heroic send-offs even for characters who have been with us from book one. There was no poignant epilogue. It was like Lord of the Rings without Bilbo sailing to the Undying Lands, Harry Potter without seeing Harry, Hermione or Ron's kids in the future. There were a couple of loose ends that were never tidied up. The one that stands out the most for me is the prophecy about the Tinkers and their search for the song.
Keep in mind that when reading the ending, that the ending Robert Jordan originally intended was used by Brandon Sanderson in the book with a couple of slight very minuscule changes. So the ending is RJ's almost 100 percent. Jordan talked about having an open ended finale for the possibility of books (this was years ago) down the road so it would seem that Brandon and Harriet chose to honour this and keep it intact. I just started reading the book.
Further books down the road were more than a possibility when Jordan was doing his work on A Memory of Light. He had signed a contract for an "outrigger" trilogy set about ten years after the end of the series, and planned to start work on it as soon as A Memory of Light was finished. He'd described the premise for the trilogy; since some might regard it as a spoiler, I'll code it. [spoiler="outrigger" plot details]It would have followed Mat and Tuon in Seanchan.[/spoiler] Also, Jordan's notes make clear that the Tinkers will never find the Song; they're looking for something that doesn't exist in the way they think it does. Spoiler: A Memory of Light What Rand was doing in Tuon's garden was "the Song" in the sense of being the original thing the Tinkers are remembering, but they wouldn't recognize it if they heard it now. As Admiral Young says, the epilogue was written by Jordan, except for one scene (I'll say which in a spoiler box below), so he wouldn't have done any heroic send-offs beyond what you get there. Spoiler: epilogue The added scene is the one where Cadsuane is told she'll become Amyrlin; Sanderson hasn't said yet whether that's a detail from Jordan's notes or something he invented himself. I do think Jordan would have written a final book that was less focused on hundreds of pages of battle scenes and more on character interactions.
Wow! Just finished the last book in a marathon reading session until 4am. The Last Battle chapter was 200! pages itself! Every death had me stop reading for a few moments to soak it in and say, "I can't believe that happened!" I'm still shaking my head.
Well, now that the last book is finally out I've finally started delving back into the series. I read The Eye of the World last year, so I'm working on The Great Hunt now.