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The Gathering Storm Review

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1The Gathering Storm Review Empty The Gathering Storm Review Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:54 pm

Fresh03

Fresh03
Ninja
Ninja

Alrighty, after a week vacation in Montana I finally got home and was able to finish the Gathering Storm, the 12th Book in the ever popular Wheel of Time series.

I'll give a little history on how this book came about after Robert Jordan's death.

For a couple of volumes the Wheel of Time series kind of got weighed down by it's own complex world and sheer number of storylines that it had going. That changed with the last book, the Knife of Dreams as Jordan picked up the pace ans started to move the series towards it's conclusion.

Originally Robert Jordan intended for the 12th book to be the conclusion of the series, but his untimely death prior to completing the novel left the future of the series up in the air.

In stepped Brandon Sanderson, a young up and coming writer, who I honestly had no idea who he was prior to the announcement that he was finishing the series at the behest of Robert Jordan's family. I've since read all of Sanderson's available work, and while it's very good in it's own right, I honestly didn't know if Sanderson had it in him or was the right person to finish the series. Anywho, due to the sheer imensity of the last book at the point where Sanderson was in writing it, the last book was split into three books, the Gathering Storm being the first of those three.

All caught up on the how, now onto the actual book

As I said before, I had some reservations on whether Sanderson was capable of completeing this series. Well, Sanderson proved me wrong in a big way.

The Gathering Storm picks up where the Knife of Dreams left off, Rand is cutting himself off from his own humanity on purpose so that he can "Do what needs to be done" which does little besides drive him nuttier than a fruit cake, and as the novel progresses you begin to wonder if Rand will even make it to the last battle at all. Of course you've got the prerequisite Ae'sedai scheming, but for once they're trying to do what's best for Rand whether he sees it or not.

The other big chunk of this book is about Egwene's struggle as the Amrylin Seat and a captive of the White Tower at the same time as she works to reunite the Tower from within as she has to stand by and watch Elaida's abuses of power get more and more extreme.

You see most of the other main characters, Perrin and Mat make small one or two chapter story arcs that are fairly self contained compared to their large roles in the Knife of Dreams and while it was nice to see them and what they're up to, those chapters kind of felt like place holders to remind us that they're still out there and we'll be seeing more of them, presumably in the next book due to it's title "The Towers of Midnight".

The first couple of Chapters are pretty much just info dumps to catch you up and refresh what's been happening with Rand and Egwene, which was nice since it’s been a couple of years since I finished “Knife of Dreams”, but once you get past those the story starts rolling and doesn't let up until the very end of the book.

There were very few noticeable parts where you could tell where Sanderson and Jordan's written sections occurred, which in and of itself is very impressive on Sanderson's part as he was able to duplicate Jordan's description heavy dialogue to a T and the story flowed chapter after chapter.

I loved the parallel story lines of Rand and Egewene as you watch Rand sink further and further into madness and hopelessness and Egwene unrepentant hope as she endures for the sake of the Tower. The ending was very fitting as both stories tie up together in a way that was incredibly satisfying, if a touch predictably.

I'd give the Gathering Storm a solid 4/5, my favorite book of the series is still the Shadow Rising, but this volume certainly packs a wallop all on it's own, it was action packed, tons of movement on several major story arcs takes place, and there were several WTF moments, particularly during Rand's story line. If you're a fan of the series you probably already have this book, but it's a very good chapter in the Wheel of Time series as a whole and is very close to being my favorite book in the series, if you're not a fan of this series or just starting in on the series obviously this is not the place to jump in as you'll likely be lost a chapter in.

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