With so many loose ends to tie up, I thought it was a pretty good final book for a series that at one point I thought would never see an ending. I read it pretty fast but this is what stood out to me...
Egwene dying....seriously! One of my fave super-girls...who had some of the most awesome moments in the series overall once she came into her going down in literally a blaze of glory just felt unfair. I wanted her & Gawyn to grow old together while whipping the White Tower back into shape. I suppose you knew she had to die once Gawyn put on the Bloodknive's rings cuz you knew he would die but still....not cool!
Bela! Dead! Agh!
It felt like the entire battle happening within Shayol Ghul - for Rand, Nynaeve, Moiraine etc was just skimped on. Nynaeve was the deus ex machina to keep Alanna alive just long enuf to release Rand's bond so it didn't cripple him as he was fighting the Dark One? I know he needed 2 women there to help channel Callandor properly but still, compared to the vastness of battle outside the cave & elsewhere in the world, it was a bit boring....
Padan Fain's story line was a great big build up for a whole lotta nothing...I mean he's creating an army of zombie trollocs and then just goes down like a marshmallow? Granted it made sense that Matt would kill him but still, a serious let down when you realize that he never even had another confrontation with Rand after spending the prior 13 books raving about their coming confrontation.
The whole Black Tower storyline annoyed the crap outta me - Rand knew that Taim was rotten, knew that he left men in Taim's grasp that wouldn't be able to fight back against him and yet did nothing. Even if it was a trap - why didn't he do something to help the Asha'man? Or at least to get rid of Taim?
I thought it also sucked that Matt, Rand & Perrin never did get a chance to be together again before the "end". And to a smaller extent that the larger group with Nynaeve, Egwene, Loial, Aviendha & Min didn't either...would have been nice to see a reunion of some sort before all the shiz went down.
As for Rand becoming Moridin, it made sense to me in some ways - they were tied together in some kind of spiritual way following their balefire showdown in A Crown Of Swords. While Rand had to die to fulfill the Prophecies, this link and the fact that he, in essence, during the fight against the Dark One was representative of the Creator, would allow him to destroy Moridin and then take the husk of his body allowing the Dragon to die as well. The fact that he could light the pipe without channeling made me think he maintained the ability to manipulate the Pattern seen during his battle or that he was able to use the True Power now that the Dark One has been sealed away again. According to Sanderson, this epilogue was written almost entirely by Jordan and he said that Jordan had intended to leave certain things ambiguous and not give answers for everything.
I do wonder whether Rand will let Tam continue to believe he's dead...obviously Min, Aviendha & Elayne know he's still alive but whether it would be better to let the rest of the world think him dead (including his father) is definitely something to consider.
One of my fave moments in the entire book was probably Lan's charge to confront & kill Demandred...the mental picture of his ride and the path being cleared by burning arrows from the Two Rivers' bows...if they ever do make this series into a movie or mini-series, they better do this scene right as it was full of absolute awesomeness.
So much more to go over/thru but I think I want to read it again, a bit slower now just to find the things I skimmed over too quickly in my need to see what happened.
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