- B-Sand's writing: Things were a little off, and all too often the characters used idioms and expressions that are too characteristic of a 20th-21st century RW person. They are minor and of the sort that would be forgivable in an original work...except we have 11 books of examples of how people in WoT actually talk. In the first chapter I was annoyed at how often Cadsuane used the word "one" as a pronoun, but that seemed to have faded. I found the references to Rand as the Dragon to be the most glaring example of aberrant writing through the book. He was ALWAYS the Dragon Reborn or the Lord Dragon, and only simply called or referred to as "the Dragon" when discussing his role or philosophical ramifications or the like. If B-Sand (IMO, tGS was not bad enough to drop his abbreviation down to BS) was trying to show that people are now seeing Rand as becoming absorbed into the role and subsumed into the Dragon persona he was creating, it was handled poorly.

- "Veins of Gold": Why? That's a lame title of the chapter, especially since it did not have anything to do with what happened and was not actually used, IIRC.

- I undertand why RJ wanted to keep aMoL in one volume: this has the same unsatisfying feel of George RR Martin's Feast for Crows - it's not a book, it's half of a book.

- "The Death of Tuon": I laughed my ass off when I came across this title. I can just imagine the speculation and spoiler anguish when people saw this on the list of chapters! With all that crap about new names among the Seanchan, I guessed the meaning, but there must have been some pretty horrified or delighted reactions to the title, and more chagrin upon reading it.

- I like the Bloodknives. It makes sense that after 1,000 years of utilizing and manufacturing a ter'angreal to be your greatest weapon, a military organization would have been looking at other ways of using ter'angreal.

- Egwene was a little better in this book, but she won exactly as I predicted: through no real accomplishment of her own, but through outside circumstances giftwrapping a situation for her. Not that this should be any surprise, as that is how most of her success in the series has come, but those who might call this book a spectacular triumph for her as a character would be wrong.

- Regarding the Mat chapters, he feels the most changed in this book to me, but that isn't necessarily bad. B-Sand seems to have a better handle on writing wiseassery and backtalk. Talmanes characterization was a little too heavy-handed, which made it feel out of character, but it was not too bad or distracting.

- The Verin thing was rather appalling, I felt. It was a spectacular finish to her character, but the deus totally jumped all the way ex the machina and crapped all over the plot. "Oh by the way, here's a complete list of everything you need. The end."

- Rand's breakthrough was pretty cool. I'm glad he did it himself, and didn't need anyone to lead him through it.