The glacial pacing of Books 7-11 is obvious by this book. That's Jordan's fault, and his fault alone. He didn't need to wait to get Perrin and Galad together (hell, he could have resolved the Malden storyline in one novel, or two at the most). He could have moved Mat forward earlier as well, to provide more Mat-Tuon interaction (since it still doesn't make any sense why they're together other than "prophecy" ). The Aviendha storyline could have taken place earlier, too.

Essentially, Jordan let this whole thing get away from him. That's his fault, not Sanderson's. He lost track of the pacing and he even lost track of the timeline. Yes, Sanderson isn't great at picking up the mess, but he didn't make the mess.

Is the writing extremely substandard? Hell yes. Some of the wolf dream sequences were so poorly written I just skimmed quickly. A lot of the cliches were repeated. A lot of motivations were completely lacking (and I still don't understand how/when/why Moiraine and Thom got together...did Jordan put a chapter into a book that was missing from mine?). At the end of the day, though, the substandard writing is an attempt at quickly resolving a lot of unresolved subplots and cleaning up a colossal mess that Jordan left.

Yes, I'm blaming a dead guy.