First and foremost, I am quite willing to state that I found Wheel of Time a fun and exciting diversion for the first six books. In fact, I think that The Dragon Reborn through Lord of Chaos are some of the most exciting fantasy books I read.

After Lord of Chaos, however, the series began to suffer tremendously. I don't think Jordan was sick at that early date. He was just getting greedy and dragging things out when the whole series would probably have been done in nine books if he kept to his pace from Books IV-VI (Dragon Reborn was slightly slower, though I still enjoyed it a lot). He added in unnecessary side stories, he actually went back and rewrote events that had already taken place (Salidar Aes Sedai travelling through the Gateway) and he protracted things for no good reason.

People who came late to the series don't quite appreciate the frustration that each successive book, starting with Book VII, generated in fans (and yes, I was one of them). Fans waited year after year, only to hear about dresses, and horses' names, and stout Two Rivers woolens, when they wanted exciting fantasy books with thrilling conclusions. If you care to look in the Wayback Machine, my prediction of what was going to happen in Book IX (I believe) was, essentially "nothing" (I called it "The Vanishing Bridle" ). I was already irritated at that point, and we hadn't even got to Crossroads of Twilight, the non-event of a book that was essentially a waste of paper.

The funny thing is that not only did Jordan start to milk the series for fun and profit, but he also somehow encouraged (unintentionally, I think) the Jordan apologists to defend his blatant attempt at cashing in while dragging things out as a rich and textured "character development", which it obviously was not. They began to see the series as a masterpiece and discuss it as though it were one.

Back in the old days at wotmania, there weren't a lot of people who waxed poetic about Jordan's style or the rich world he created, at least not when I started going there. People had theories about what was GOING to happen and what HAD happened that we didn't get explicit confirmation of (Asmodean's killer, the Taimandred theory, the mystery of Thom's surviving Whitebridge, what "his Blood on the rocks of Shayol Ghul" meant - I said it was a reference to the Aiel, etc. ). This sort of speculation was fun.

Things change. People change. The world changes. Writers go bad. Readers go crazy and idolize their favorite authors. The person who sent a theory about Taim and Demandred to wotmania back in 1999 under the name "The Voice of Lews Therin" became disgusted with the decline in quality of the series as entertainment and the attempts to call it something more than entertainment.

And that brings us to the last point - we're not at a Jordan fansite anymore. It's a site for people to discuss books. It's a site where people can be critical of the fanboys of any author. That's part of the interaction.

I think it's clear now what's going to happen - all the kings of the earth assemble at the Field of Merrilor, Mat arrives and says Trollocs are attacking Caemlyn, everyone goes to fight them, Taim arrives to help the Trollocs, Rand is mortally wounded. The ladies take him to Tar Valon to try to save him, and then he is saved somehow (either staying in the same body or in a new body) and he goes to Shayol Ghul, wins and ends up sealing the Bore properly, but everyone thinks he's dead. The End.

Either way, it doesn't really matter.