Hard to put it in the grand scheme of things, I'd have to do a full series reread before I could 'rank' it or anything, but I thought it was good. Maybe it was because I knew what to expect from the different writing style, but there weren't sections (like in TGS) where I had to cringe and skip over them (like rand standing and waving his fist saying 'damn you dark one!' or Cadsuane 'breaking' Semirhage). Mostly flowed pretty well.

I actually quite liked that we jumped around in time alot; I felt that, given the choice between putting all of Perrin and Mat at the start to catch up with Rand & Egwene, or putting all stories together even though one is ahead by a few weeks, I would choose the latter. Narrative flow wasn't sacrificed, and Sanderson obviously didn't think their fans were idiots and could tell the difference between 2 storylines given enough cues (ie. Tam was with 2 groups of people at once in the book, but it was clear enough what was happening when).

There were a few annoying inconsistencies, the most glaring of which was Grady telling Perrin that the taint was clean, which he did a few books ago as well.

I liked the fact that they avoided doing a Rand PoV (save the dream one in the epilogue), as it built up the mystique of the new 'balanced' Rand a bit more. I appreciated the scene where he wept in public to his father; that was really the confirming moment that he'd changed. I also appreciated that they kept the Lan sections short, as that was the most poorly written character (compared with how he'd been built up for books), and probably the hardest to write well.

I also thought the Tower of Ghenji chapters were well written, the best that Sanderson has done with Mat's character. The Aviendha memory sequences were quite compelling, and well placed in the book. The epilogue was really great, and served as a great reminder that no matter how much you get your act together as the forces of good, there's always gonna be some chaos thrown in the mix.

As far as plot developments, of course it was exciting to have some things feel like they were wrapping up (and other things opening huge question marks), but it seems like the book could have had 100 more pages and set up better thematically for a 'final' book, if they had included: a) a resolution, or at least fighting climax, of the Black Tower storyline, b) the same with the Seanchan, and c) ended with Rand meeting with the rulers of the world saying 'let's get ready to rumble' sort of thing. I'm just unsure that all of those things can be treated properly in the final book.

Anyway, pretty good, no major disappointments, just happy to see that things are finally wrapping up.