Re: Pacing was really off. *spoilers* - Edit 1
Before modification by Kythorian at 04/11/2010 09:21:02 PM
First of all, I definitely enjoyed ToM, though I concur with the (large number of) readers who claim that TGS was a better book and story.
While a lot ended up happening in ToM, I felt that the pacing and plot structure detracted from the book.
Regarding pacing, every event save one (Moiraine's rescue, and perhap Rand's scenes) were extremely dragged out (in Rand's case, it is fair, he got a lot of TGS).
I mean did we really need so many Perrin training scenes? Or was it necessary for us to be privy to all of Mat's days in Andor? Let's not even begin to touch on Elayne's forever-quest of political maneuvering! Even the DO's struggle pales in comparison to that!
Many of these scenarios were interesting in their own right, but we're on the penultimate chapter of the series. Thesee mini-events (Perrin's training, or Mat's battle with the Gholam) really are extensions of their larger arcs and they should have been dealt with gradually across the last few books instead of the info-dumping that went on in ToM.
(for this, perhaps RJ is to blame in not resolving the arcs in a more timely, balanced fashion. or perhaps with his way with words, we'd have a sligtly larger story with these "dragged out bits" not feeling like filler content. *shrug
All in all, I wish we we received more of a process instead of getting revelation after revelation. I greatly enjoyed Aviendha's, Rand's and Nynaeve's arcs. The WT stuff was cool but somehow it fell a little flat after Egwene`s episodes in TGS. Perrin was definitely fun to read about, as was Mat. I didn`t think I`d enjoy their arcs as much as I did.
My second issue lies with the fractured timeline. While I enjoyed the device in TGS (am I in the minorityÉ) - I thought it gave the overall WoT story some much-needed energy and speed - I found myself often confused in ToM. Rather than being intrigued by the events and wondering what the story sequence was, I found myself getting frustrated at all the jumping around (the fracturing of TGS storylines with ToM storylines was plain annoying).
I`m curious as to what your thoughts are 
I pretty much completely disagree. I thought that Perrin's training scenes were very important. If he had just all the sudden shown up after just one training scene and started fighting Slayer evenly(or almost, at least), made balefire go away, contemptuously disbelieved Egwene's creations, etc...It would have rung false. We needed to See Perrin begin to become the King of the Wolf-Dream.
The Elayne stuff was...well, she is annoying, even if less so, but in order to accomplish what she did, it was pretty much as fast as it was possible to go. I guess RJ might have had her just not claim the Sun Throne, but that would have left just a hanging plot thread.
I didn't have any trouble keeping up with the plot-lines. The only time it mattered, which was basically when two people's timelines were actually going to intersect, there were hints given of where they stood, such as when Perrin witnesses Rand's Dragonmount revelation, etc. Otherwise, the timelines were independent of eachother, so you didn't really need to know exactly how far back Perrin was from Rand in the chapter before at any given time. It just didn't matter.
I still have not decided if I like it better than ToM or not yet, but I don't think that it really suffered from either of these issued.