So, I finished it. It helped, of course, being able to start around the midpoint.

I was reading it while helping out at the Downtown Holiday Market, using my usual sales pitch of ignoring customers while burying my nose in a book. I think this tactic works because people feel compelled to actually buy something, because otherwise they’ve risked interrupting me in the midst of expanding my mind whilst reading for absolutely no purpose.

A man in his late thirties (good Lord, my age!) stopped, after having bought a onesie and a dress for his fourteen month old daughter, to talk with me about the book and series.

His feelings seemed similar to mine. It’s not that it’s great series, but there is something compelling and addictive about it and once you’ve invested something in what is, really, a huge investment overall, you feel like you have to see it through to the end.

The Path of Daggers is a pretty good. The best in a couple of books, at least. It is quite sprawling and Jordan doesn’t have the feel for sprawl that George R.R. Martin has. Martin is able to create and maintain a wide variety of very interesting secondary characters, but Jordan isn’t as able to make them compelling. But, he does give some good space and good story lines to several of the main companions. Also, the main character, Rand al’Thor, is allowed to be less grating and depressing to read.

It’s the Lord of the Rings effect. Frodo, on his own, would be insufferable to read about. Thankfully, he is always in the company of more enjoyable fellows (Samwise Gamgee, mainly) and plenty of column space is devoted to the always fun to follow adventures of Merry and Pippin and the gentle ribbing and budding love (yes, love; not romantic love, of course, but The Lord of the Rings is ultimately about the great love between friends and brothers in spirit) between Legolas and Gimli.

Tolkien possibly could write about romantic love, but chooses not to, on the whole (I have always suspected that he lacked the talent for romance, knew it, and so chose not to; but he does do some good depictions of comfortable, conjugal love, as between Tom Bombadil and Goldberry). Jordan can’t write romance, but chooses to do so anyway.

All that criticism, I know. But I did say that ‘The Path of Daggers is a pretty good.’ And it is. The propulsion of the plot picks up and you can start to feel as if he’s not just adding plot threads to drag this out, but is starting to pull things together. Conflicts are coming to a head and you can taste resolutions in the air.