I'm now about 1 third into AMOL and I've been wondering about the number of POVs we see in this book and particularly within each chapter. I haven't even gotten to the famous "more than 80 POVs in one chapter" people have been talking about since October, but already it became apparent that the number of POVs per chapter is high in this book. When I realised that (and got annoyed with it, because there are WAY to many changes back and forward) it occurred to me that the number of POVs has been rising ever since BS took over (disregarding the Prologues). Before RJ died there already were several chapters with more than one POV (primarily the final chapters of several book, which showed the same events from different viewpoints), but BS clearly has more.

Now, this could be because of two reasons. 1) BS has a completely different writing style, and a different way of dealing with different plot threads, or 2) this was deliberate. And by deliberate I mean that it signifies the Pattern budging and stretching and bending, just like the corridors of the WT in ToM.

It nicely parallels what happened way back in TEotW, where Rand's sickness is signified by a number of chapters that were in the wrong order. RJ said that this was deliberate (if we discount the retconning possibility).

If 2 is true, I keep waiting for moment when I think "did I just miss anything?", followed by "Oh, didn't that happen a couple chapters back"?