but yes, Jordan is certainly responsible for the mid-series and the planning of the ending, for good or bad.

I don't see the problems with the mid/late series the same way you do. The focus of my interests in WOT is different than yours. Personally I never had any problem with the "slow pace", for instance. I never really cared much for the "epic core" on which WOT was told either, so getting on with that never was a bother for me. It would come when it would come. I never enjoyed WOT for its literay qualities etiher. I don't pick a book by Jordan, Dumas and so on when I want to be dazzled by the prose, challenged intellectually (except to test my memory or analytical skills perhaps!) and so on. There are days for creative haute cuisine, and others for solid classics by great chefs, and days where I prefer well made home cooking. WOT for me is more like the third kind. TOM... well... TOM felt more like someone started out wanting to cook a great home meal but failed. It happens to everyone.



I've thought for a long time that Jordan's great mistake is WH. The Cleansing made an almost irresistible climax, and Jordan didn't resist ir and sent Rand ahead of the others in order to get it. Tons of problems arose from this, and it resulted in COT, where the storylines he had left hanging in order to "cut to the chase" with Rand came back to hit him right in the face later. About a third of the COT belonged in WH, another third belonged with KOD, and the rest was filler material RJ didn't need and which, if it wasn't for the fact he had decided to make that part of the story a full book, rightly belonged on the "cutting room floor".

I think RJ's done a fair job at getting things back on track for the finale with KOD, though. Some of it still suffered from his decisions re: WH/COT, but on the whole it managed to bring all the storylines to the point at which the finale he had in mind could start.

I sort of disagree about Perrin. I think his storyarc is at once one of the better conceived in the series, and one which suffered the most from the various pacing problems RJ encountered. I think one of RJ's mistakes was not to leave Perrin out of the series for one, maybe two more books, while he concentrated on the other storyline (another weakness may have been the whole Ebou Dar storyline, the KIn etc. - Jordan really got out of his way just to make Mat and Tuon meet, and get the Seafolk and Kin into the story). . He brought Perrin out of the TR and sent him to Athe south too soon. Other than this, the storyline is well balanced and coherent, and if told over the course of maybe two books, it would have been quite excellent (better than Mat's certainly). The problem is that for timeline reasons, Jordan had to spread it over too many books, certainly more than the events to be told justified. I don't think the problem is that it should have reached its climaxes earlier, and I don't think the problem is that Jordan should have created more events between Perrin's arrival in Ghealdan and Malden either. I think the problem is more that Jordan had too much yet to tell in the other storylines for Perrin's arc to start again so early. It's a shame, in a way, because Perrin's story is more solid, more coherent than others that got "bloated" (Elayne's for instance, Mat's post LOC as well, Egwene's as well most likely... though the way Sanderson sent overboard so many of the subplots around Egwene may also give the wrong idea that Jordan didn't have something more clever in mind for all this stuff)..

So I don't think I agree with you it's Jordan's fault for the most part if the finale feels underwhelming so far. I look at all the story points in TGS and TOM, and I think used properly (among other things, if they had ran in parallel, mirroring, completing or contrasting one another), they would have made a great first and second acts in the Jordan style (of course for those who enjoyed Jordan's style of storytelling!).

For me, the major problems are, first, that Brandon made a big mistake to divide the book the way he did when half the first act wasn't even written to make an enligthened decision, stacking together the two more dramatic storylines, and ending up for TOM with all the material that didn't really could make a good book, and secondly, while Jordan's literary skills were hardly a big selling point or appeal to reading WOT (more like an obstacle to many to enjoy it, though not to me personally.. I find Jordan's prose unobtrusive and innofensive, for the most part. I've seen much, much better, and much worse too ) TOM is a really, really badly written book. Much of it reads like a draft, the book barely has any structure at all, the creative editing is complacent to the shortcomings of the novel at best, the continuity editing is worse than it was in TGS and the line editing is worse than pretty much anything I've seen coming out of a major publisher in many, many years. Some of the problems couldn't be fixed, it was too late now that TGS had been published to correct the structural problems it caused to the rest of the material. That's no excuse for the continuity problems or the terrible line editing, though. That rather feels like the book was rushed to the press and should have come out six months later.

TOM just makes me give up on expecting much fun from reading the last book. I'll read it when it comes out, but I certainly won't spend any time eagerly awaiting it. I certainly won't go on a crusade against Sanderson or anything like this either (let alone accuse him of having ruined WOT or some such nonsense..), or lost all respect for his rather amazing dedication to the project because, IMO, he and the team around him failed to deliver a good book , and made bad calls on how to divide the books. It may not even be a matter of skills as such, so much as being given an impossible task. He did what he could under difficult circumstances, commercial contingencies played against everyone too, and he's probably the best choice for these books. Probably no one but Jordan could have written AMOL in any way that would fully satisfy me, and I've been aware of this the moment he died. Brandon also obviously wasn't given enough time for this job, but then he probably wouldn't have accepted it if he had realized from the start it might take him not one but 5 years to write AMOL properly either.

But that is just explanations and attenuating circumstances for why TOM might have failed to deliver. If I were to judge Sanderson as a writer in general, that would have to be taken into account to be fair to him. This is his worse novel by a long shot, but there are reasons why it's the case. But as I was judging TOM strictly on the the book as it stands, on my reading experience, no matter who wrote it or under which circumstances... none of this changes anything to the fact that IMO, TOM is a really bad novel. Perhaps it's the best it could be, but then again it's still bad for all that.