That's also what I think should have been done. For the quality of the book, and the integrity of RJ's vision, it was the clear answer, especially when RJ himself was so adamant what was left could only be told as one book. He saw no good way of dividing it in 2 or more, and he was most likely right. That left only one solution: writing the whole, and dividing it as 2 or 3 volumes as required by publication, and releasing them at once or over a period of 3 or 6 months at most.

It's clear as day that for Brandon and Harriet to bring out the best they could out of RJ's notes and outlines, it would really have worked best if they could finish the whole thing before dividing it. RJ could have done it differently, because it was his story, and it had it all in his mind. IMO, Brandon and Harriet just didn't see enough of the whole picture yet by the end of 2008. Brandon was probably to caught up in Rand's and Egwene's arcs to see how the whole picture would eventually fit together. Few in their place but RJ probably would have, and this wasn't helped by the fact Brandon was working story line by storyline (and I'm not saying working like this doesn't make sense - on the contrary... but this method almost makes it essential to finish everything before polishing up the book's structure at a later phase).

And yeah, I'm perfectly aware that this was a huge connundrum and there were issues involved other than literary matters. It meant what Brandon had already written wasn't publishable in 2009 and he had to reach what's now the ending of TOM before he worked to divide the material in two volumes. As per Brandon's own explanation, that was pretty much the conclusion they had initially reached, but then he came up with this plan for an alternative, by keeping only the two storylines already written, reworking the timing of certain events and so on, ending up with TGS. Harriet and Doherty greenlit the idea. It saved them from a few problems. One was that announcing all at once that the book would not only be split in two or three but that the first volume would not come out before fall 2010 would have sparked much anger (and start rumours that actually they were having problems completing the book). Another problem would have been that volume one was an act one, and Jordan had planned AMOL with an act one that was mostly a descent into darkness. AMOL vol 1 not only wouldn't have resolved anything, but it would have been fairly depressing. That's not exactly the perfect opener to a "trilogy", unless you can jump right away into the companion volume with act 2, that ended with a series of elating moments: Rand's epiphany, Egwene's victory, Moiraine's rescue, the forging of the Hammer, the destruction of Mesaana,the casting down of Graendal, Slayer stumbling, Nynaeve bonding Lan - and a final bang: Rand announcing he would break the seals and the LB was starting. Together, that formed an impressive finale for act 2, at last rekindling hope, and launching the LB in a very epic mode... and this aspect got ruined now.

Using Rand's epiphany and Egwene's victory as the ending of act 1 instead diluted the impact a lot. TOM doesn't work for me as an act 2. It's tainted from start to finish by Rand's epiphany, that killed most of the suspense. It didn't help either that Perrin's and Mat's arcs were not designed by RJ to stand on their own, and clearly the showcase of the beginning of AMOL was given to Rand and Egwene's parallel stories. To fill TOM, Perrin's story was stretched out. It started with the"plot twist" planned by RJ: Masema gets killed, and the main problem changes to become Galad. But that got diluted beyond belief by Brandon. It felt like Perrin and Galad sat around forever. Fight or don't fight each other, but get on with it please! All the proper "ducks" were aligned, and they all dutifully showed up, but it felt to me fairly flat, with huge pacing problems. This was a storyline that called for faster developments and many ellipses, in the vein of Perrin's arc in TSR... and I suspect massively it's how RJ planned to write it, each Perrin episode coming as Rand dove a bit further in darkness, and Egwene's efforts only put her in new, more dire problems.

It's a bit the same way with Mat, though less acute. I think the comic relief Elayne and him provided in TOM was a bit flat, because the rest was not dramatic enough, missing the parallel predicaments of Egwene and Rand which were to be the core of the drama in acts 1-2. I also think a key element of his storyline that didn't work for me was the delay, the roadblock Verin had placed. In a chronological book, the book RJ envisionned, the "roadblock" of the letter would have been extremely dramatic, as Rand's darkness would constantly have reminded us of Min's viewing that without Moiraine he would fail. We should have read Mat's storyline telling ourselves : "please Mat, find a way out of this, Moiraine is badly needed now. Toward the end of the second act, Rand had cast out everyone else who could help.. Nynaeve, Cadsuane.. and finally his dad... and finally Mat was caught in Ghenjei... Moiraine's rescue would come to late, perhaps.. and then comes Veins of Gold, and we finally understand Moiraine's role in something else altogether.

IMO, TOM is a bad novel with great scenes. Yes, it resolves many things and that aspect of it is fun. Getting the answer is fun as a fan, but that doesn't make a great book for all that. TOM hasn't much to offer but answers...

No, I don't think it was possible to make it much better after the decision to split AMOL the way Brandon chose to - that ship had sailed in early 2009. A lot of structural problems could have been avoided by abandonning the bad idea of using Rand and Egwene as "book ends. Creating false suspense around Rand's meeting in a month didn't work for me, not after the power of his epiphany overshadowing this massively. It would have worked better if this had surfaced by mid book only, chronologically. If Brandon absolutely insisted to have a Rand prologue scene, he could have stopped it with his intent to go to Egwene, and return to this only much later in the book. I still think it would have worked much better to leave Rand and Egwene out of it until the halfway mark in the book, and to use the colour swirls is a more clever way, to try to recreate some of the darkness going on in TGS, by making Perrin and Mat witness important turning points, and feel the weight of Rand's darkness somehow.

Yes, I think it would have created a big problem if they chose to delay the release of the first book, but most of all this is the consequence of having painted themselves into that corner by announcing at the same time Brandon was announced as the writer that the book would come out in a year... That's really the worst call of the whole enterprise. It should have been obvious by the summer of 2008 at the latest, when Brandon was still writing clusters 1 and 2 to the 2/3 mark (the start of TG) and had three more to do, that the deadline of fall 2009 was ridiculously off, completely irrealistic. Instead of preparing the fans for the fact the deadline would be pushed, they dithered and dithered until they didn't have much of a choice but to find a way to throw the fans a bone to chew on. That makes perfect sense commercially, but that doesn't make it a wise decision to re arrange and restructure at the last minute someone's else story, when that person had said in his opinion it couldn't be done and result in good books, and when about 2/3 of the story was only in outline form and notes. That was taking a big gamble, like it was a big gamble to announce a release date so early. TGS had the core of acts 1 and 2, so it did work well enough. TOM had the parallel material, and this was written yet, and IMO it didn't expand well into a novel of its own, so the gamble has failed.

Yes, it will be possible to mentally reconstruct the real novel out of this when it's all over, as Brandon was faithful enough to the events planned by RJ. That still won't bring back any of the emotional experience, the rollercoaster into darkness and out of it RJ had planned. That's gone for good.

But even though I see the problems and that previous decisions restricted Brandon and Harriet pretty much to the solution they adopted, none of this will make me say I find the structure of TGS and TOM good enough (let alone great), and that the book split benefited the series in any way, except commercially and for PR with the fans. I'm a little baffled by some of the comments praising the books, at least in what they choose to praise in them (like defending all the jumping around on the timeline... any source on storytelling will tell you this never should be done, except as flashbacks for specific purposes. It's an aspiring writer's mistake, for heaven's sake, and I find Brandon's excuse that there was no way around it pathetic: there was an extremely easy way around it: keep the Rand and Egwene scenes for the second half of the book, and focus on advancing Perrin first. It was as simple as that). It feels to me that people satisfy themselves with fairly little, like getting all the scenes they wanted, even scattered and deprived of much of their impact - in short, fast food WOT, being very undescriminate readers - and derive little of their actual enjoyment of the books from a well told story, with a proper dramatic structure, with logical parallel developments, unfolding themes - which is what RJ had planned and had plowed through the last books in order to achieve and synchronize everything so he could write the finale as he had planned it. No doubt a main reason why he had said he just couldn't see how he could split his finale, as their was a story in there for one great book, not two or more. T, IMO. He was absolutely right, IMO. To retain all its impact, the book needed to unfold chronologically, with all the themes coming together at the right moments and answering each other. Instead, we're getting all the events from the finale, in an admitedly faithful. The only way to deal with that, when it turned out the outline expanded on the page way too much for this to remain a single book, was to complete it and release the whole thing in 2 or 3 volumes. I'm quite convinced this would have been RJ's choice, and it would have been the prudent thing for Harriet to decide to do. Even if AMOL turns out awesome (which if they take the proper time to polish it up instead of rushing to publish it like TGS and TOM they have the potential of accomplishing), I see no way the first two volumes will ever be anything but underwhelming and a false start to the finale, plagued with structural problems and the wasting of much of its dramatic assets.