Most people think that the series went into a nosedive after book 7, and it's probably true. The pace was abysmal compared to the previous books.

I felt that a lot of the plots were drawn out unnecessarily. I am a "visceral Perrin hater" so perhaps its unfair, but it really did seem like the most unbelievably infinite quest to find Faile, with lots of meaningless rants, and equally loathsome Faile PoV's to mirror it. Add to that the soul-destroying quest to gain the Lion Throne (Elayne 'cleverly' dealing with belligerent nobility set against the backdrop of the imminent end of the world) and the endless quest for Egwene to become Amyrlin (Salidar seemed to move at Shayol Ghul time speed), and you've got a lot of wasted pages. I personally recall my disbelief at the end of each book that the Tower was not united yet again.

And I'm not going to mention CoT too much. I've always said its a disgrace that we were subjected to that. The idea of subjecting us to, among others,retrospective PoV's of the Cleansing, was just the ultimate low point of the series.

So yeah, Brandon screwed it up, but so did RJ. Don't believe me? Go look at people's expectations prior to each book and see how their expectations carried forward as each new book came out. The blurbs of each book were often wrong in their own content i.e. Egwene al'Vere must hurry to unite the Tower etc. The latter half of the series assumed an irresponsible, glacial pace that forced the original writer himself to say that come hell or high water, he'll finish with AMOL no matter what. It seems even he lost control of the series.