I barely look at this site anymore, but for you I'll make an exception.

That pretty much sums it up!

Like you I usually liked Elayne enough, but I generally disliked what Sanderson did with her.

Jordan was unsure what he wanted her to do with Cairhien. He had noted down she might claim the nation on her own before TG, or that she was forced to accept that Rand handed it to her as part of his treaty at Merrilor. Obviously he hadn't developed this much, and Sanderson (who needed filler because of the book split) came up with this unconvincing way to make her claim the throne, and like most of his forays into WOT politics it was too simplistic and a let down (much like the resolution to the Tower conflict, for which RJ had written essentially dialogues for Egwene, which Brandon ended up using in different scenes than planned as he spit the dinner with Elaida in two. It looks like RJ was planning a much shorter "let's raise the stakes" Egwene's story line. There was only one dinner and it was on the day of her first scene, so she ended up in a cell almost immediately and met various people there, quite possibly in a mega scene similar to the one she had in KoD. So basically Elaida won, and Egwene had to move pieces on the board from her cell, until the Hall finally agreed to move and force Elaida to release her. That was the long battle of wits. The Seanchan attack did the rest.

Of course there's no way Jordan would have had Alviarin go missing in action in that part of the story, nor most likely Mesaana. He had built up to something in KOD, and Brandon didn't pick it up.

Indeed.

This was one of the more interesting aspects of the confrontation, that and Rand refusing to engage beyond making Demandred believe he was leading.

Brandon's execution was a little lacking, but on the whole this was good, and an excellent final use of Graendal.

Which of course would never have happened if not for the fact of the book split.

In a "one book" version, Graendal would still have been busy with Rand. It's was always very clearly Cyndane RJ was planning to use against Perrin (she would have used the opportunity that Moridin had tasked her to kill Perrin... to hide from her boss she intended to use him). Brandon would have had to devise a way to hide the fact it was her until she finally reveals herself (as Lanfear) to Perrin (again, this was only necessary not to give away too much of the Lanfear/Perrin story line in AMOL... Jordan was quite the expert at obscuring Lanfear's motives and would not have needed all that in a one book version). Brandon wanted a more visible threat than Slayer for his "extended version" of Perrin's story line, so he recycled Graendal (who I'm sure was supposed to be punished and brought back as Hessalam after Rand's attack, not after this pathetic excuse for a non-Graendal like plot using Graendal that Sanderson invented).

That's my major gripe with AMOL: the military aspects were way overdone, and boring beside.

That's understandable, though. Brandon doesn't have much of a military background and not much of an instinct to determine which details the reader needs and not. He had to get external help, like Allan, who scripted/planned the battles for him. The result felt as if Brandon didn't master enough all that happened to skip details or create ellipses where it was dramatically more interesting. He seems to have followed a plan, trying to cram all of the military stuff he could, afraid he might miss something and readers would get lost, while forgetting to anchor them, in Jordan's style, in important character moments.

I much preferred Jordan more impressionistic approach to battle, of course.

It reminded me of RJ's comment when people complained we had not seen this or that Forsaken at the Cleansing: I'm writing drama, not battle summaries.

To my taste Sanderson's TG was too much military history and not quite enough WOT-style character drama.

Exactly.

Exactly my thought too. I was very disappointed to virtually not have a single POV from DF during TG... what do people like Alviarin thought of it? Could we please have a POV of Siuan about what happened to Bryne? Etc.

I would have taken more scenes like the one with Ila.

This has been a major point of criticism at the time of release.

You're right: Brandon has severely underplayed the OP factor (and cut arbitrarily (and without even a rationale behin dit) channeler numbers by the hundreds and thousands in place... each Aiel Clan had several hundred WO who could channel, for e.g. (the Shaido alone had 500). Aviendha should have had a whole army of WO, not a handful and being forced to rely on Cadsuane's followers).

My theory on this is that again it comes from Sanderson not mastering enough early modern military matters to take his ease and enter the speculative zone by factoring massive numbers of channelers of someone else's magic system into it. So he mostly used them episodically for "feats" and such (much as he does in his own books), or for Ayyad vs. AS etc. He didn't truly integrated channelers with the rest. His "advisors" most likely had troubles juggling with them while attempting to script an early modern battle too. It's really something only Jordan would have been totally comfortable to do, but that doesn't change the disappointment on how this was handled.

Sanderson said the Murandians left.. off-screen.

He basically brought them to Merrilor to deflate the Roedran red-herring, which he did in a poor way. He really should have left them to sit the LB at home, if you ask me!

I like the madness and the idea he got fooled by prophecies. Personally I would have thrown a clue that Shara prophecies, like Seanchan's, have been tampered with by Ishamael...

Very thin. I was reminded of the character (was it Tom? or Lan? Or an AS to Egwene?) who called others stupid for believing Hawkwing stopped in the middle of battles to get into duels as the stories say he did. I thought it hilarious that Gawyn apparently didn't know this, but after the first joke it got old.

I thought the last plot of Lanfear was one of the highlights of AMOL. In fact I think Perrin's story and Faile's, were some of the best handled in this book. Faile with all the misfits trying to bring back the Horn to Mat, bringing things full circle, was brilliant if not perfectly executed.

Another one of my favourite parts in AMOL.

Definitely. Brandon ran wild with his f*cking Androl and it overshadowed the whole thing, pushing Logain almost out of the plot. That was very cheap.

She got killed when Ayyad attacked Tuon's HQ. That was also Brandon's invention: there was absolutely nothing about Siuan in the LB in RJ's notes (it's probably the reason why Brandon chose to have Egwene push her aside). All he had to even indicate she was there was the GC stuff. It's Harriet who got the idea that the Viewing "if you are separated clause" wasn't yet over with what happened in the Tower and she told Brandon to kill Siuan. She found it more logical, since something bad happened to Bryne.

Well, that depends on whose predictions! I've argued for years Cadsuane would be there in RJ's last scene!