The Fires of Heaven

This is where the series begins to wear a bit thin. This book dragged, and probably could have been condensed with Book 6 to no ill-effect. Instead, we get 900+ pages where very little actually happens. The beginning, as we explore the Wastes with Rand and Co, and watch Nynaeve and Co, travel – but after a while, the story stagnates and it because tedious to read. You just want someone to DO something.
Jordan is known for his detail – and it really shows in this book. The story suffers as paragraph after paragraph is given over to minutiae. Trim the fat, please!
Despite this, the story does move forward (eventually) and we leave the characters in more danger than ever. I am eager to see what happens, although I hope the next novel does not plod like this one. ( )

In each book of this series, I have found Nynaeve increasingly annoying. In this one, my irritation turned to outright dislike. And where was Perrin? ( )

This is the fifth book in the Wheel of Time series. I enjoyed it a lot, maybe even a little more than the previous books. This was the first of the books that I hadn’t read previously, and it was great to finally be in brand new territory.

This isn’t to say the book doesn’t have some annoyances. The author really does tend to latch onto certain characteristics, attitudes, and mannerisms and then act as if they’re universal instead of just picking one or two characters to assign them to. The one that particularly struck me in this book, although not for the first time, was the muttering. Everybody mutters. Most exasperatingly, they often mutter snarky comments that they supposedly don’t want the people around them to hear. How many people do that in real life? I’ve known some people who do, yes, but it’s definitely not something I would consider common. Usually, if you have thoughts you want to keep to yourself, then you keep your mouth shut. If you actually want the object of your anger to hear you, then saying something rude under your breath doesn’t make it any less rude than if you’d had enough backbone to say it directly, and it just makes you look crazy on top of that.

Ok, I went off on a bit of a tangent there! I never knew muttering was one of my pet peeves, but this book may have pushed me over the edge. Anyway, after somewhere around the 100th mutter in this book, I took advantage of my Kindle to see just how many occurrences there are. This is what I found in the books I’ve downloaded to my Kindle, including variations of mutter such as muttered and muttering:
Book 1: 148 occurrences in 753 pages
Book 2: 121 occurrences in 721 pages
Book 3: 137 occurrences in 673 pages
Book 4: 190 occurrences in 1051 pages
Book 5: 141 occurrences in 926 pages
Book 6: 157 instances in 1049 pages
So, on average, we have some sort of a mutter about once every 5 to 6 pages. ::Stalks off muttering to myself about excessive muttering.::

I have a few additional spoiler-ish comments that I’ll put behind tags:
We learn near the end that Moghedien is in Salidar with Nynaeve, Elayne, and the others. She’s probably one of the characters we’ve met, but we don’t find out which one. I’m particularly curious about that. I've shot down all of my own guesses for various reasons.

Another thing that left me curious was when somebody killed Asmodean near the very end, but we didn’t find out who. The most likely answer would be one of the other forsaken, probably one of the ones plotting with Rahvin, but then why the mystery?

I assume (hope) Moiraine isn’t really dead and is just trapped now in the place that the mirror took her and Lanfear to. If so, I hope we’ll get to see her part of the story in the next book. I’d really like to learn more about the whole foxes/snakes thing going on behind those two mirrors. I expect this will cause some complications with Lan if/when she escapes.

Perrin didn’t show up at all in this book, so I hope he gets an interesting plot thread in the next book to make up for it. I also look forward to seeing the progression of the Aes Sedai storyline.

I thought this book left more loose ends than previous books did, not counting of course the main plot threads that one would expect to unfold slowly throughout the entire series. I had actually intended to take a short break for an unrelated standalone after this book since these last two books have been quite long, but now I’ve changed my mind. I’m looking forward too much to finding out what happens next. ( )

Loved all the stuff that happens. Asmodean, Moraine, Lanfear all dying. I mean, that introduces a lot of chaos and opens up the main characters to greater ranges of choice. And Rand dealing with the beginnings of the madness.

The battle between Rand and Rahvin[however you spell his name], was awesome! Balefire and portals, not much cooler than that.

The bad thing was that every single female character seemed to be angry, so angry that I would recommend counseling if they were a real person. Jordan really dropped the ball in characterization here. It really detracts from the plot and pulls you out of the flow of the story. Which is never good. ( )

*spoilers*
Well I just don't know what to say!! This series is great and just leaves you wanting to know more. I'm glad there are plenty more books for me to read!! I still love Nynaeve! I think she will be my favorite character until the end! Rand is just getting crazier but I suppose that is too be expected. I'm still not a fan of Egwene. I don't know what it is about her but she just drives me crazy. I love reading from Siuann POV too. I'm ready to read more about her fun with Gareth Bryne... I am wondering what is going on with Perrin and Loial though. The completely disappeared from this one! Poor Moiraine. It just is not going to be the same without her. Good riddance to Lanfaer. And who the heck did Asmodean see!!?!?! Bah...I think I need a little break before I start the next one.

( )