Let me start this post by saying I don't plan
on censoring myself as I talk about the book, so in other words SPOILER ALERT.
Stop reading now if you don't want to find out details of A Memory of Light.
First let me say that I am having a lot of
trouble writing this post. I have been reading The Wheel of Time for twenty
years and having the series end has been an odd mixture of sadness and elation.
One thing I was not counting on when I picked up the book was how much reading
it would remind me of the reading the other books in the series.
It took me about a week or so to read the book
and every time I sat it down I was forcefully reminded of reading the other
books. I am sure remembering reading TEOTW at my grandma's house, or reading
TGH sitting next to my dad (both of whom have passed away) contributed to the
sadness I was feeling at the end of the series. Not to mention that the
characters in these books have been an active part of my imagination for twenty
fricking years. I knew I was losing something as I finished the story but I was
very excited to do so.
Anyway, this book was epic in
its…um…epic-ness. Most of the book was fight scenes, but when you read a book
that is about the last battle between good and evil at the end of the world,
what else do you expect. This was a great example of the kinds of books they
wrote when I was a teenager, that just don't get published any more. Overall I
enjoyed the book.
Everything happened as I thought it would. The
bad ass character showed their badassery and killed like a billion trollocs.
Too bad there was five billion trollocs.
Eventually the heroes get worn down by sheer
numbers and then characters both big and small start dying by the boat load. Oh,
and to those of you that I had this discussion with before: Rand DID use the Dark One's own power against
it, ah ha!
Okay, okay Rand did not kill the Dark One,
letting Fain take his place…I'll give you that one.
The end was not what I expected but looking
back at the series as a whole I think it was very fitting. My one gripe being
that Rand sneaks off in his new body without letting his friends or his father
know he is alive. I get not advertising the fact that you lived but come on,
Tam deserves to know his boy is still (kind of) alive.
The novel wasn't perfect. There were a few
plot threads that never got tied up. There were a few meetings between
characters I wanted to see that never happened. And why did you have to kill
Bela? That poor horse got dragged all over the world, you could have let the
sad thing have a rest at the end of the series, but no you have to go and kill
it. I mean damn that horse didn't do anything to deserve that I-
…okay…I'm okay. But Bela? That's messed up.
Anyway, it was the Last Battle I was hoping
for though Rand's role was totally not what I was expecting.
Brandon Sanderson did a great job bringing
Robert Jordan's series to its conclusion. The writing reminded me a lot of Mr.
Jordan. I am curious how Jordan would have handled the descriptions and the
characters, in my opinion he had a great way of making characters jump off the
page, but after reading this book I think Sanderson might be better at writing
action scenes.
I have some thoughts on series as a whole, but
I think I will save that for another post, but until then
…it was not the ending. There are no endings,
and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was an ending.
