1. The battle scenes were tedious. It wasn’t really the amount of battle but the disorientation of it all. Perhaps this is part because I listened to it on audio, but I did not really understand how things were arranged in Merrilor. I knew there was ‘the heights’, and ‘the river’, and ‘the ruins’ but didn’t really get how they were related to each other. This in turn led to a hard time when trying to understand the tactics envolved. Hence you couldn’t be shown Mat was a genius and had to be told so instead. Repeatedly.