And if that is all I have in my review? It'd be a lump of turd.

But he hasn't raised any issue about sex and violence. His complaints about the absence of sex have nothing to do with his complaint that the good guy Trolloc battles are boring, except that the first comes immediately after the next.
If he had tried to analyze this aspect of the book, it would have been very obvious because he'd have to go from treating RJ like some mindless drone who writes the first thing that comes to his mind to one who has a motive when he writes something.

The prose issues are certainly there, but only insofar, I think, as saying that this isn't anything great. For the most part, the prose is inoffensive, barely noticeable at all. That might be a complaint he could make, how usually drab it is, how Jordan seems to rarely try and come up with something beautiful, despite the fact that his story presents many opportunities for moments of great prose. But that isn't something Robert's is talking about.

He made a close brush to actually talking about the characters when he (legitimately) criticized the romance in the novels. But what of other stuff? I'd argue that while Jordan never wrote complicated, characters, he does succeed more than most fantasy authors in creating memorable characters who grow and change in a realistic manner. Who they are, and their original beliefs affect their actions as much as the events of the books change them. And tSR is a good place to notice that, because this is the first time our bunch of heroes has stopped merely reacting to their enemies but actually have their own plans. Which is why they successfully defy Moiraine, and we are shown that what seemed great wisdom and power was but a show. A mention of at least some of these aspects would have made me take him seriously. But he bothered with none of it.

I'd say there is a big shift. The first three books may be passable adventure novels, but they never manage to give the impression that what the characters are doing matters much to the world. As the characters were busy facing sundry threats, we never saw them contemplating how what they did could change the world.

That begins to change with this book, and it is best seen in what I like to call "study" scenes, where characters are in a room for the whole scene, and all that is happening is that they're talking. But, events of the world are reveled to the reader (not as info-dumps) as their relevance to the actions of the characters are discussed as well.

Part of this is because our characters are moving up in the world. They are no longer sleeping in the loft worried about the cold. But more importantly, the focus of the story itself has shifted. What began as a "lets survive the villains, use our swords and magic, find the next object of power and save the day story" has morphed into something different, something closer to the political stories a lot of present day fantasies are. By the time LoC came out in 1994, I should think that there was no other fantasy series that concerned itself so much with the currents of politics, communication and perspective.

Another way this impacted the scenes is the way non-PoV characters were presented in a scene. In the earlier books, they are usually talking pieces of furniture. As the weight and importance of all of the major characters increases, so too do the conversations and the interactions between them seem better rounded, having more weight.


Let's see.

It appears in this book, specifically in connection to the Aiel he so easily dismisses as pointless. With other Prophesies, there is wiggle room, but with the Aiel, it is made clear to Rand that he is going to massively shake them up, and destroy more than he can save. He even begins in this book.
If there is one aspect of the series that I think RJ handled well, it is this. This knowledge changes Rand, but slowly, each thing building to the next, till we see the events in tGS. RJ doesn't sugar coat this aspect of the story at all, and this has the important effect of keeping the readers sympathetic to Rand even when he descends into serious ass-holery. It is an area where I find most authors failing. The obvious cases like Goodkind, but also people like GRRM (with Jon Snow). All too often, the hero of the story finds sudden inspiration to be ultra-competent or some quickly resolved emotional crisis which leaves him emotionally stable and ready to face the future.
In some ways, perhaps, the is the best legacy of this series. I suspect Rand is, in a way, and inspiration for the "failed savior" who's the villain in Sanderson's first Mistborn novel. And maybe other such failed heroes.

Nice one (and I believe you). But this is hardly something you expect to do when someone with experience in the field is writing a review, no?

Good point about the Jains not being an obvious reference. But while naming them may be beyond Robert's, the critical scene of this book, where Rand sees through the eyes of his Aiel ancestors into their non-violent past, should at least have clued him in to the fact that there are some very non-Fremen influences that have been woven into Aiel society.
More importantly, those events make it abundantly clear to the blindest of readers what the importance of the Aiel is to the story, yet Robert's found no reason to comment upon it. The reason is probably that he skimmed through all this and got the significance of nothing, but that is hardly excusable.

Can't say I agree with your assessment of why his piece is worth a read though. Plenty of new people enter message boards with their own assessments and ideas of what the books mean. And while it will take time before they are seen as people worth reading and paying attention to (if they are good), there is no "drowning" out of interpretations. Not a month goes by without someone complaining about the pace of the books, or the women or a host of other things. And they are heard because they don't completely deride the books and then provide no concrete basis for their judgment.

I mean, look at his final list of "wise sayings". It is abundantly clear he read one that irked him, and to juice up his review, he randomly picked out sentences from the book and added them. As someone pointed out, some of those were normal dialogue, and none of those were as absurd as he implied them to be. It is the kind of thing I despise.


That might have been the case if he had actually shown that he read the books, considered them, and then reviewed them. That is blatantly not the case.

I was just explaining why it is not much discussed.

I haven't read them, but apparently some of RJ's other works had a lot more sex, so it doesn't seem like he's against it in writing or something. But certainly an interesting issue to discuss.


That should be fun to read.

I can see some of the points too. Which is why I said nothing at all when he reviewed the first three books. I don't think them as terrible as he does, but I can understand. Didn't stop me from noticing that he was getting repetitive, and failing to treat each book by its own merits.