"Towards the end, Jordan writes in a way that might even betray that most un-Wheel of Time quality, ironic self-awareness (‘so many fabulations drifted out that telling reality from nonsense became difficult’, 363). But no; it’s all painfully earnest; he really thinks that we will be interested in all this clothing, and furnishings, and terrible terrible sentence constructions...This is the conclusion to which I have come: Jordan is the Fantasy-writing equivalent of this Belgian man, rolling his marbles endlessly, happily round and round the same track. He’s enjoying himself. It’s not really for our benefit (although it's performed under the polite fiction that it is). It's for his own benefit, and does us no harm. Can’t we leave it at that?"