I will preface my rant be stating that I don't know if it is completely fair. Some of my problems with tGS may be WoT fatigue. I think I remember having some similar feeling of disappointment a little after KoD and it is now close to my favorite WoT book.

My main dislike of tGS is not what happens in it. As everyone says 'stuff happens'. The main criteria of a great book is not that stuff happens though but how it unfolds. In that way I find tGS to be lacking, but only compared to the quality of the other WoT books. tGS is the only WoT book that I have read where the summaries are more interesting then how it occurs. As of this moment, I have no desire to reread the book, for instance.

tGS, more than any other WoT book is a classic SF book. It pace is jerky. It jumps around from PoV to PoV. It is way too dramatic with overly preachy dialogue. In short it designed from front to back to tug at the heart strings and to surprise the reader at every turn. SF readers like Larry, my wife, and the local bookstore owner will love it and think it to be a much better book.

Why do I think that is a bad thing? Well maybe it isn't, but for me it is. I prefer the much more subtle style of RJ. I like slower paced and more personal works like for instance the Disney TV series Anne of Green Gables or romantic comedies like when harry met sally. I don't like melodrama. To me SF fans are typically drama addicts that liked to be jerked around. They are like people who put too much salt on everything and have lost their sense of taste. tGS is like the other WoT books but with way too much salt for my taste.

Two things I found to be particularly irksome. The first is the way that BS jumps from PoV to PoV with each chapter. Some people like that because it added a sense of excitement and movement. But to me it broke up the continuity and added to the confusion. I turn the page wanting to know more about what happened to Mat and its about Rand, grrr.. Worse, the chapters seem to jump around in time.

This reminds me of children writing reports. When children write a report that is suppose to be a certain length they try to make it look longer then it is with larger fonts and margins, double spaced, etc. But once they grow up and have more to say they give up that habit. The same is true for writers. Beginning writers who haven't developed a good sense of continuity and action can hide that fact by jumping around. Experienced writers show off their writing skills in continuity and excitement by not jumping around. BS is a better writer and doesn't need to use lame tricks to invoke a false sense of excitement, IMHO.

The second thing I found irritating is tGS's dialogue and inner thoughts are way too preachy and long. The areas that really jumped out at me were Aviendha's worship of Elayne, Mat's diatribe against women, and some of Egwene's speeches. In most of those cases all BS had to do was cut everything but the first sentence. We get it from the first sentence, why does it have to go on and on and on.
tGS is a good book, but I wonder if overall it is even as good as CoT.

I apologize for the rant. Most of you will probably like tGS much more then most other WoT book and that is fine. BS should write to be as true to RJs vision and to please as many fans as he can doing that. He shouldn't have to worry about pleasing me. Myself, I still enjoy WoT and probably will continue to do so. (BS has done a fine job.) But with this book, I can honestly say that I miss RJ's writing.

RabidWombat