i'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said, so this may not generate much discussion, but i want to get this down anyway...

* all in all, i think the ending was *ok* with the possible exception of "hey, where did moridin's body go, and why is rand's stuff gone too?" for that matter, "did anyone think to guard the body of the forsaken that rand dragged out of shayol ghul?"

* if sanderson is not currently working on a hollywood blockbuster action movie, he should totally submit aMoL as his first screenplay. when i read the RJ books, i imagine the OP just being a part of what the characters who can channel are doing. when i read the sanderson interpretations, i can see the cheesy CGI effects rather than the power being part of the natural order of things

* the various attempts at demandred's life: gawyn's plot line was telegraphed from the first page he was mentioned on. typical action movie sidekick cliche imho. the warrior who is upset he isn't actually fighting and dying, being given a magical ring(s) to allow himself to disappear (gee, wonder where i've heard that before....). the only thing he didn't do was mutter "i know what i have to do...."

galad's attempt was at least somewhat less cliche, although we still got the typical "i will avenge your death, my brother" speech before he, too, failed.

logain's attempt was the most realistic, in that he realized right away he was completely overmatched and got his ass out of there before getting killed. it was still dumb, but at least he had the most sense of all of them.

lan's attempt was too corny action movie cliche. between the rain of arrows to allow him an untouched passage to demandred -- meaning the light's army was close enough to hit the middle of the trolloc army with arrows, but not so close that they were completely engaged in fighting -- and "sheathing the sword" to take out demandred, followed by his subsequent lack of getting killed to death by the surprised sharans, and this was the least satisfying way to take out a forsaken since "You? NO!"

* the resealing of the DO's prison was probably my favorite scene, simply because it was actually clever and i had a feeling callandor would end up "switching sides" but i didn't imagine it would be done in quite such stylish fashion.

* egwene's death scene was kind of pitiful when you get right down to it. she had a chance to burn out in a blaze of glory, but instead she turns into a pillar of glass. she would have been better served turning into a pillar of salt, which each major character's horse would lick and be magically given new strength and/or rise from the dead, especially bela

* mat's "battle uniform" was quite possibly the stupidest thing sanderson has ever done with mat's character. here is the seanchan army with their intimidating armor and disciplined ranks, grim determination on each and every face, and then their leaders are wearing 1920's style wool coats and bustling around like they're going to break out into a chorus of "boola boola" at any moment. i half expected them to name him ka'ahuna which would of course mean "the great one" in the old tongue. and then he and furyk karede would organize a panty raid on the sorority of the white tower

* the aiel dreadlords were not unexpected, but i wish we had a little more time to develop them into the weapon they were supposed to be.

* i would be very very interested in knowing how little of "the last battle" was RJ's actual notes. my impression is that he simply wrote "egwene dies, taim dies, siuan dies, gawyn dies, birgitte dies, demandred, bashere, tenobia, bryne, et al" and sanderson made the rest up by looking up cavalry and pikemen on wikipedia. i don't expect him to have RJ's seemingly encyclopedic imagination of melee warfare, but at least he kept with the RJ tradition of endless repetition of the same phrases over and over and over again.

* i realize this is the last book ever and it took some time to get here. i can't help but wonder how much closer to RJ's vision it would have been if he had skipped KoD and tGS, or at least condensed them to a single volume and waited until the end to write NS. i also can't help but wish that some other prolific author like piers anthony or c.j. cherryh could have written even one of the last three books. at least we would not have to trip over "anyway, blah blah blah blah blah" or aiel using contractions when they have up to this point spoken without them far more often. anyway, i'm glad it's finally over and i will probably never read aMoL ever again, sad to say...