So a saga 20 years in the making finally ends...
For me, the Wheel of Time began in my secondary school days. Which was a damn long time ago. This was roughly around when book 6; Lord of Chaos, was out. At the time, I quickly finished book 1 and just kept devouring the rest of the books until I hit book 6. At which point, the long wait begun... Let me just put it in perspective, that was in 1995. This is 2012. I waited SEVENTEEN years for the series to finish.
So how was the last book? Looooong. As usual. Lots of plot points appear and are resolved, most of which had been predicted by the fans due to the various plot points that had previously been built up, as well as all the prophecies about what would happen. So what happens? Warning spoilers abound.
Rand goes to meet the leaders and discusses his plan for the saving the world but in return he wants them all to agree to a peace treaty. Egwene starts bitching around about how he doesn't know what he's doing and how she's responsible for the seals surrounding the Dark One because her title is 'The watcher of the Seals'. It's like 'wtf?' Seriously, the Aes Sedai DIDN'T EVEN know where the seals were for 3000+ years. Rand found most of them and how would Egwene; a relatively new Amyrlin even know more about the seals than Rand; who has the memories of his past lifes in him. So Egwene's just being annoying as usual.
Then there's the subplot to do with the Black Tower. To be honest, I was expecting a lot more ...fighting. Though it was creepy and tense to see them slowly turning the Ashaman to the dark side while the good guys struggled to get free.
Sadly the Seanchen don't get balefired off the earth. They are still HONESTLY one of the MOST annoying subgroups ever created. Especially Tuon; who basically 'kidnaps' Min and then forces her to serve the Empire. All because Min can see visions. Tuon; you dumb fuck, did it ever occur to you that maybe it's not wise to force the love of the Dragon Reborn; the most powerful man alive, into serving your shitty empire? Holy crap, someone please just wipe the Seanchen off the damn face of the earth!
On the plus side, Gawyn gets killed. Served him right. He was pretty much damn annoying throughout book 6-14. I can understand the whole 'wanting revenge for your mother' bit, but considering he had a)no proof and only had rumours as any sort of basis and b)wanted to kill Rand; who's basically the chosen one and the only possibly way for the light to win over the dark one, despite knowing what it would mean, meant he was an incredibly whiny bitch with no goddamn sense of priorities. Or sense really. Although to be honest, characters in WoT really need to stop saying they would let the world burn before so and so happened.
Ending was as expected. Won't spoil everything for you but needless to say, Rand lives. Wasn't too impressed by how the fight between him and Dark one turned out. Just felt like it was missing a lot of tension but to be fair, Brandon Sanderson isn't really that great at writing tense scenes. Or conversation. I've always felt his conversation didn't flow naturally at all; as in several times during his writing, I've had to stop and go "Real people do NOT speak this way".
On the other hand, having an ending to Wheel of Time is still better than not having an ending.
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