Taimandred was very clear to me. Asmodean got killed because Mazrim Taim had to appear in the next book. I also thought there was something odd about Bashere because of his reaction to Taim; he had seen him before, and there was something off about his reactions. It would have been a much better series if Jordan had stuck to it.

Of course, this was around the time he totally lost sight of the end of the series. It's like he axed Taimandred to completely switch the pacing and drag out things for five more books to explore some ideas, whereas the books through Lord of Chaos are very tight, move at an entertaining pace and continue to build to something great.

Everything after Book 6 is just a series of disappointments. Demandred is the gun that just refused to go off, and when he finally showed up, deus ex machina-style, in the last book, it was sort of too late to use him properly. The Last Battle was a bit too long and a bit too...conventional. Padan Fain had become too unwieldy and so he just has to get thrown in to wrap things up, the Forsaken continue to act in stupid ways and get themselves killed too easily, the Luc/Isam thing was just poorly finished...

Reading the reddit, it occurred to me that it would have been so much better not just if Taim were Demandred, but if Rand realized it (thanks to Lews Therin) and, instead of making Taim feel he was second best, continually praised him and made him feel as though he was not second, but first. Then, in the Last Battle, when everything is falling apart, Demandred can't bring himself to kill Rand, and his defection is all that saves the Light. THAT would be an interesting ending. Even more interesting, Rand realizes that he made the choice a long time ago and has been playing a double game, pretending to serve the Shadow but intentionally making mistakes to undermine plot after plot. And he's the one who helps Rand shift into a new body, a freshly killed nobody, and then he stays to help rebuild the world.

Instead we got three books talking about dresses and horses and "oh look over there, something just happened to the South" for an entire book, followed by a disappointingly conventional ending where everyone acted just like they were supposed to, and hardly anyone died until the end (keeping Graendal dead after Rand nuked her palace would have been better; killing one of the ta'veren in The Gathering Storm would have been even better - like Mat finding out that the dice/luck thing is actually a curse, and having ALL his luck run out all at once while he hears the Dark One laughing at him, or just killing Perrin because he and Epicfail were so damn irritating).

It was all so derivative, so predictable, so boring, ultimately. And it could have been so much better.