I agree. We found ourselves with a writer not very comfortable who had to write a quasi-military fiction and had to rely on research and planning done for him. The result is sorely lacking in what makes the novels of Cornwell or O'Brien and co. interesting: they're dead accurate historically, and detailed, but remain primarily character-focused stories. AMOL rather felt like Brandon lost the characters in the middle of all that. Aside from token scenes (and scenes that felt too much like he needed to update us on all the flanking and rushing and retreating on each front), he also remained way, way too close to the leaders. With RJ it would have been more the story of how the characters went through TG, and he would have brought us the most interesting of those vignettes, which wouldn't have necessarily taken place near one or the other of the HQ. Brandon tried to make it too much the story of the campaign (which wasn't especially gripping, beside), featuring WOT characters and some WOT-like scenes.
Of course it would have helped had Brandon been able to write Mat Cauthon at all. In the light of what RJ really planned (Mat, between his fears of Rand, his fears for Tuon and his traumatic rescue of Moiraine found it was all too much to handle and he broke (the Hand that falters) finally deciding to flee his duty and go hide in his wife's skirts in Ebou Dar). Brandon really totally ruined Mat. He didn't seem to have understood that RJ had darkened Mat more and more in COT/KOD and would have brought him to the edge, where he might lose the readers's sympathy (much like Egwene has done with a good part of the readership), before redeeming him. To be honest, I don't think anyone but RJ could have the fine balancing act this would have required to work, but Brandon was still a far cry from pulling this off decently, with his Mat the buffoon. He focused on the humor aspect of the trickster when RJ more and more focused Mat on deadpan humor and the darker kind of "practical jokes" (Mat's trickster tricks in KOD were killing Seanchan left and right, merely a prelude to the giant prank he would pull off at TG for Demandred, sacrificing "half the Light" to save the world, much as he had given an eye for Moiraine.
My theory: it's the book split again.
Brandon planned out the arcs based on the outline, and filling gaps, (and got editorial/story meetings about this with TJ) at the very beginning of the process.
My guess is this was when he planned to have a series of short scenes building up to the Demandred reveal.
The problem I see is that this really belonged in the prologue and through acts 1 and 2. With the (damned) book split, Brandon pushed this to AMOL and it was too little too late. Harriet thought it slowed down (and already plowing, if you ask me) AMOL too much and seemed out of place.
There were two ways to approach this. Brandon went with the "I am you father" option of making Demandred's arrival on the scene a "big plot twist". It's cool for about 2 seconds, then readers like you and me start wondering if we'll get the build up to this in flashback or something, and feel let down when in the end it never comes. Personally I hate storytellers who gamble everything on a plot twist like that. I don't mind plot twists, but not at the expense of proper build up, or the sacrifice of great character moments. People forget that Lucas didn't do this retcon (which he never liked, by the way) for suspense but because he had simplified his larger arc for ANH, so certain it would not get a sequel.
Even better, in my book, would have been to anticipate the problem and start the build up of Bao in TGS where it belonged, strongly hinting it was Demandred circa the epilogue (as a downside to Rand's epiphany). Instead of a cheap "where's Waldo" mystery, we would have gotten a great build up, and instead of a "surprise", suspense would have been built on anticipating what Demandred would do with his Sharan army. and pestering about the main characters not uniting, be ultra pissed off that Mat flees to Ebou Dar leaving the military leadership in Elayne's hands, with most of the WO going with Aviendha and Rand to SG. Yes but... that leaves only Egwene and her AS, Cadsuane's circle and a a few Ash'aman to divide between Caemlyn, Kandor and Lan.. not good when the reader knows Demandred will appear with hundreds of Ayyad and Taim remains in control and as now Alviarin and the BA with him. Not good at all... where will they strike? Is Egwene doomed, or Elayne, or Lan.. or will he strike at Rand at SG? Or will Mat return in time?
They could have played up the Sharan stuff to make you wonder if they were going to be a problem Rand would have to overcome to win their allegiance, or ride to the rescue at the last moment or whatever, and then, Oh crap! They're bad and that's actually Demandred! So THAT'S where he's been!
That's the one. Thanks.
Yup. He had begged Harriet to let him have one character he could make his own. He picked this "background extra" Asha'man and fleshed him out. That's legitimate and could have been cool and unobtrusive had he controlled himself. Instead he went nuts and totally overdid it, raising his bit player to one of the foremost secondary players in the finale, ending up with a whole Sanderson-style side-arc in the middle of a WOT book. This was done at the expense of the existing BT players, not to mention this ends up taking way too much space in the three books.
The worse for me is that he again gave the whole a humorous tone (with bad jokes IMO, but I'm really allergic to his humor) that ill-fitted the arc, to which RJ had given ominous SS overtones. And the laughably bad part is that since he had Androl escape before the end, Mr. Sanderson didn't even see fit to give us the big pay off of the actual retaking of the BT from the Shadow, which we could presume all this Androl stuff was building to...
My guess is that RJ didn't leave notes because he intended to kill Siuan Sanche one way or another during TG, at the most appropriate moment. I think Harriet made the right call, but Brandon handled it poorly, without a Siuan POV (the worse is that we didn't get an update of how she dealt with what happened to Bryne). She wasn't a good character to choose for one of those shocking "it's war, people die without rhyme or reason at any time and without last words" moments. Oh, it's realistic, but for that sort of realism people can read biographies. In a novel that's just bad storytelling and wasting good drama.
And the whole "charity" thing became a smokescreen for laziness, or to hide how rushed they worked. RJ had thousands of bit players to choose from, and nearly all the "fan-based" character, Sanderson had several options in RJ's roster to chose from. Not doing that was little more than sparring himself the trouble. Sanderson writes too fast to integrate the kind of mini-arcs with bit players RJ was so fond of (two-three mentions of this and that Maiden, leaving us a mini puzzle as to what went on... only to tell us in another background scene three books later). Those vanished completely in the Sanderson penned books.
I really wished they had made the effort to leave blanks and return in further drafts to fill them with RJ-style background bits, and making the effort to track down which of the existing character could play these parts.
I agree, the names were very distracting, and beside those picket fences were just that: picket fences.
It also annoyed me no end that for several recurring small parts, Sanderson simply invented (or inflated the role of) a character which he used all the time (I'm thinking among others of Naeff, which got to do nearly all the Asha'man bit player jobs in two books.. before vanishing completely when Androl took center stage). Again Sanderson was either too overwhelmed or lazy or rushed to properly "cast" those scenes with players like Narishma, Flinn and company.
Some of which had even criticize Sanderson for doing this in TGS only to find themselves included in TOM or AMOL.
The most annoying was the last one, with the "comedy inn" in the middle of the BT (and not because it happened to have been Linda who was parodied in that one). That was so off tone for that story line, and unlike the one in Caemlyn this one seemed to last and last.
. *NM*