So, let's get this straight. Is there any area where the Shadow's plans have actually succeeded, a Lightside leading character has actually died, or even failed to come together with the love of his/her life? To summarise:

Graendal (the impossible to outwit Forsaken) fails to kill Perrin through a convoluted plot that makes no sense and is overcomplicated to the 100th degree. This while a simple reversed gateway weave would have allowed her to Travel into Perrin's tent, assasinate both him and Faile in less than 5 seconds, and leave again without breaking a sweat. Instead, she is now mindtrapped.

Fail.

Mesaana, despite being nothing out of the ordinary in TAR (and far, far from Moghedien or Lanfear's level of mastery in the Dreamworld) decides to take on Egwene (a natural born Dreamer) in the one area where Egwene can actually stand up to her and is defeated.

Fail.

Perrin and Slayer's long awaited battle takes on virtually the exact same incredibly unlikely pattern as Nynaeve and Moghedien's Dreamworld help to Rand during the battle against Rahvin, with Perrin "just happening" to arrive at the White Tower of all places at the exact same moment when Egwene just happens to be battling Mesaana in TAR, of all places. And this leads to Mesaana's defeat. Fail again.

Berelain meets Galad and falls in love to live happily ever after.

Morgase marries Tallanvor to live happily ever after.

Moiraine is rescued and marries Thom to live happily ever after.

Perrin and Faile make up to live happily ever after. (I at least thought Graendal would hurt Perrin by killing Faile, but nope, that would be too close to an actual success for the Shadow.)

Egwene ( 20 year old girl) once again politically outwits 100 year old Sitters and strengthens her hold over the Tower while at the same time getting full control over Aes Sedai interactions with Rand.

Elayne - despite being pregnant and less than 20 years old, manages to build a vast arsenal of cannons, outwits all political opponents, and strengthens her army immensely by various political maneuvres and machinations.

Despite overwhelming Trolloc armies and assaults, they struggle to even defeat one minor city in a borderland nation with most of its army away in Far Madding. This while every major Lightside character involved in the battle survives, as usual.

The bottomline is that despite promises of things growing darker in the last books, it seems to me that every plot involving lightside protagonists of import ends up with the lightsiders succeeding without exception, and more importantly AT NO COST to themselves.

Essentially ToM can be reduced to the following equation:

Ligthside gains = Graendal defeated, Mesaana dead, Arangar dead, Slayer defeated, Andor strengtened, Whitecloaks converted, Prophet dead, cannons built, White Tower unified and stabilized, Moiraine saved, all lightsiders married off to their various soulmates.

Shadow gains: One dead wolf.

(And by the way, Hopper's death was actually more heartbreaking to me than if Faile, Egwene, Elayne and Perrin had all died. But, emotionally troubling as it was, it hardly advanced the cause of Shadow much.

Seems like the history of failure for the Forsaken in particular continues unabated.

All that is left is quickly wrapping up the Last Battle (which we've already been shown is a sure thing, thanks to Aviendha's visions), and Bob's your uncle.