Well... I disagree yet agree, because I don't see the point in having Perrin reach his pre-LB climax before the others reach theirs. I still think the main problem with Perrin's story line is that it was much simpler than the others (same for Rand), and the solution was either to streamline the others to match those two (simplify the Succession, and the White Tower conflict, and the events in Ebou Dar leading up to the kidnapping of Tuon), or to keep him out of the books until book 10 or so, or to come up with unplanned adventures for the character before he would go after Masema, so the whole capture/rescue/build up of his army started much later, went faster and reached the same point it did for the beginning of the finale.

For the rest, you're obviously having a problem with the whole concept behind WOT, and that's perfectly legimitate. You wish Jordan had kept it more to a fast paced epic focussed on the central conflict. If he had done that, yes certainly he could have reached the LB by book 6 to 8 at most, but it would have been a wholly different series, and one that a lot of its fans would like no more than those who would prefer a simpler/faster series like it now.

The problem is, that's not the sort of series Jordan meant to write. He wanted the series to be a mix of historical saga, family saga, old fashioned feuilleton à la Dumas mixed with old fashioned adventures à la Twain and co., all told in the context of the typical Fantasy cosmic conflict à la Tolkien as its background. The structural problems of the later books aside, the style and pace and tone of books 6 to 11 are dead on the money, considering the goals of Jordan for the series. Of course, that's not to everyone's taste (and not to the taste of that many Fantasy readers, the hardcore WOT fans who like the later books a lot often aren't big fans of Fantasy in general), and a criticism that can be levelled at Jordan is that his first three books were quite misleading as to where he really intended to bring this series. His whole notion that a Fantasy audience had to start in a more familiar setting before he could gradually bring the series where he intended was highly debatable, and the first three books stuck Jordan with an audience that was expecting something else out of it - based on his beginning, and grew more and more displeased with the books, while another part of the audience were more and more pleased with them, as they liked his approach.

Personally, I started late, and experienced the reverse problem. I had been sold on the series based on a description of how it was by books 6-7, and I was thoroughly disappointed by the first books, found them unoriginal, derivative and way too incidental. It wasn't until book 4 I started liking it, and getting some of what I had been told I'd find in those books.... For all their problems, I still much prefer the later books than the three first, especially book 2 that I think is the worst of the whole series and that took me forever to read, giving up and starting over many times.

I also tend to think the big problem of the series isn't the mid-series or the ending, it's how little Jordan accomplished in the early books. A full book virtually just to get the boys out of the Two Rivers to Caemlyn, one village looking just like the previous one at a time? A full book chasing the Horn of Valere, one day at a time? A full book just for Rand to get from Falme to Tear? Three full books just to resolve his first conflict with Ishamael (I was beginning to think these repetive and extremely boring battles with Ba'alzamon that change nothing would come at the end of each book to the bloody last one...)? It's the first three books that have been so painfully slow and simplistic, for the detailed story Jordan intended to tell before reaching the LB, and a reason for this is that Jordan has stretched into three books what he had devised first as one book, starting in EF and ending with a confrontation in Tear. They are eventful and fast-paced, but nearly all of it was "side adventures" and they've accomplished very little in the greater arc except to proclaim Rand the Dragon three times, and get him a nice sword. Jordan spent way, way too much time "introducing". He should probably have stuck to his original plan of ending book 1 with the claiming of Callandor. The ball would really have been going with the rest from book 2.... I think it's the "slow start" which is really to blame for the series pushing it past 6 or 7 books, even before the few bad calls in the late series, like the detour of Elayne in Ebou Dar for a book and a half (incl. the Farm and the extended arrival to Caemlyn)



That's book 8 that returned to Dumai's Wells for one Sevanna POV. You misremember about Salidar in book 9. What Jordan did is another sort of "mistake": getting a climax for the sake of a climax. He wanted Egwene's arc to end on a something momenteous and didn't have it, so he jumped ahead in time and showed the AS leaving for TV in the epilogue, before their timeline had actually reached this point. All he accomplished was getting a large chunk of the readers frustrated with WH, because we were all expecting the Tower conflict to reach, or begin to reach its climax soon.

ACOS is a very problematic book though, IMO, and I agree it's one of the really bad ones in the series (again, it doesn't mean some parts and chapters aren't fun, I just means as a whole this isn't a good novel, and what goes on there, or what didn't go on because the characters were caught in the ACOS stuff - like the Kin, slowed everything else in the next books). I think one of Jordan's major miscalculations was to give a full adventure in Ebou Dar to Elayne and Nynaeve, just to get his damn "AS weapon" plot device and a thematic female counterpart to the Cleansing, meanwhile blowing and stretching the Sammael/Rand conflict too much to get a climax for the book (Jordan's insistance on building the late books so they had a proper three-act structure, which meant devoting a lot of space to building up to an "artificial" climax in each book instead of moving on faster, is another of his problems).

This is one place where the series could really have moved on to a next stage, had Jordan decided to make the BOTW story much faster and aborting into a plot twist, ie: the girls found the Bowl more or less easily, but run into a gholam and Moghedien, and before they could leave the city the Seanchan attack, and somehow Mat is left behind, as Tuon arrives with Suroth. The girls return in a panic to the rebels after managing to use the Bowl, where Egwene uses this arrival of the Seanchan to force the Aes Sedai to declare war on Elaida and speed up the resolution, because another enemy is at the door. In the meantime, Rand has dealt with Sammael by mid-book, and the climax is a battle attempting to repel the Seanchan. Then all of TPOD and the first third of COT could have been condensed with Rand's story of the Cleansing in one book (9), and at the end of book 10, we would have reached the point where AMOL could begin, without loosing much at all of the story Jordan meant to tell, except the whole Tylin, Kin, Galina/Sevanna etc. stuff - none of which, I think even the most dedicated fans agree, is exactly a highlight of the late series.