These were some the most distracting things reading TGS and it doesn't seem to have improved.

It's been said by the various parties that Harriet already edited out a lot words and expressions she found too "modern" for WOT (and there was this story going, from Brandon himself IRRC, about the big argument over keeping the spelling constant and using the form of some words RJ was using. Brandon ended up finding an example where RJ had used the spelling he wanted to prove to Harriet), and while I understand she could not well rewrite the whole thing, I think she let slide way too much that could easily be fixed. The switches to contemporary terminology was one of those. There was the military ones, there was stuff in Aviendha's POVs too, IRRC.

I generally agree that attempting to mimic Jordan's style would have hindered Brandon's storytelling too much, feel very unnatural and could easily have turned into parody, but Harriet's too light hand was still somewhat of a disapointement. It seems she edited his WOT stuff too much as she would have one of his own books.

It wasn't book-breaking on the whole, but it spoiled my fun a lot of times (and alas, my hopes that it would be a "first read shock" and I would forget about that on re reads proved wrong)



(...)



Elayne worries me quite a bit too. I found none of the more sophisticated characters convincing in TGS. The dialogue of the secondary AS was all pretty badly handled, from Romanda to Lelaine, to those with Mat, and most noticeably Cadsuane. Then there was Graendal, and Tuon too had lost a lot of her luster.

I'm pretty sure we'll loose a lot of subtlety with Elayne.

I'm also afraid about Birgitte. She's another tricky character to write for. There's something reminescent of Mat in the way RJ wrote her, and in TGS Brandon showed one of the things that was hardest for him was to get into RJ's humor.

At least I hope for these two Brandon will sin by going a bit too bland rather than going over the top. Elayne has a very subtle, very understated and unassumed way of being funny. As for Birgitte, it's like Mat - a very fine line between right and too much and annoying.

That too, the "voices" and thoght processes, was disappointing in TGS. I had expected Harriet to polish things up more than she did. I guess she's been spoiled by RJ, who by all accounts had an extraordinary memory. It sounds like Harriet edited the dialogue in TGS more from her memory/instinct than, considering the writer was dead, go the long way and analyze prior scenes and nitpick over details. Alas, details often make the difference. On the whole, characterization was quite OK (on the whole not so surprising, given RJ had set up all the character development himself and Brandon "only" had to carry the players through plot points and fill holes), but that was undermined often by the dialogue/language/thought processes that were too unpolished.

That aside, the other major point of annoyance with Brandon for me is to have thrown overboard too many of the unsaid "rules". Jordan's storytelling was old fashioned, and his story was complex and vast enough as it is. The furthest RJ went was to have storylines that did not affect or cross one another follow different timelines. You couldn't always tell (for eg in COT) what Elayne was up to during Perrin's scenes (there was no reason for it either...), but the internal coherence of each storyline was always paramount and always respected. I'm massively pissed off Brandon decided to change that rule, like he did with the flashback scene in Distinctions. Already we have to cope with the fact Mat and Perrin's story won't progress in parallel with Rand/Egwene and both were already behind in KOD - the last thing we need is "cut scenes" from Rand's or Egwene's storyline pushed to TOM, and not only that but placed wherever Brandon wished instead of adhering to RJ's style of handling the various timelines.