I am glad that BS has taken over, but I am willing to bet that nobody (with a reasonable writing talent) has RJs eclectic mix of interest in epic fantasy/history novel with a hodgepodge mixture of other attributes such as long introspective internal monologues, huge supporting cast, and a sympathetic view toward the female protagonists.

It is not too surprising that they chose someone well capable of writing in the epic fantasy style that can adapt to write historic fiction but doesn't support the other stuff as well. Many readers (and especially the pure fantasy readers) will prefer this. But if I had to guess more than a few readers were attracted to RJ because of the quirks. I count myself among them I used to like reading SF (or I used to think I did until I realized that most of the books like the Thomas Covenant series just made me miserable); now WoT is the only SF series I can read. It wouldn't surprise if the 'unconventional fans' who like WoT because of its quirks are a majority.

With only one more book to go BS has absolutely no reason to care about us 'unconventional' fans other than professional pride. We are either going to buy the last book or not. And if he hasn't gotten us to want to buy his own series with the first two books he isn't going to do it with the last. He may have reason to care about how the popular SF reviewers review it/ but that has nothing to do with us oddballs.

I do think that BS has 'professional pride' in that he wants to keep it as true to RJs vision as possible. The more time he spends with the re-read and recovering from possible burnout the better.

Who knows, maybe in another re-read he will gain a better appreciation of some of the characters he had troubles with.