They’re getting longer. Book ten clocks in at almost forty pages longer than book nine. If I was reading this in hardback, I could kill man or stop a bullet. As it is, the paperback barely fits in my copious coat pocket, and a genre novel that were incapable of so fitting would seem like a betrayal of the trust between the reader and the author/publisher/editor.

As you may recall, after finishing the last book in the series, I was so excited that the taint had been cleansed from saidin (I don’t have time to explain all this to you; read about it on wikipedia). And while Rand may have become less of a whiny little punk, he’s also kind of absent. He gets a girl pregnant and not much else.

Crossroads of Twilight also reminded one of how Jordan loves to drag things out. In particular, I was reminded of the terrible absence of communication between people who, if they could have just spoken, would have solved a number longstanding, thorny issues in good order and moved on with saving the world from evil. To make matters worse, many of these people actually grew up together and have known each other their whole lives. Others actually meet and talk, yet somehow manage not to share the key data points that would illuminate things for each other. I know that this is medieval fantasy and there are no telephones, but I think that making a greater effort to explain things to your friend since infancy who also happens to be the prophesied savior of the world… well, it just makes sense.

Following that long rant, I’m going to give some credit to this book, the penultimate novel by Robert Jordan.

He left us on a rip roaring cliffhanger. I could tell you what happened, but it wouldn’t sound special out of context (Egwene is captured, I think by supporters of Elaida in Tar Valon; see, I told you it wouldn’t sound special). For some reason, this particular cliffhanger really struck me. I thought to myself, this is exciting. I want to know what comes next and not just because sheer volume of pages and books has bludgeoned me into wanting to doggedly finish. But, instead, actually kind of wanting to know what the heck is going to happen.

I feel sure that the next book will ruin that for me.

While I will be finishing the Wheel of Time this year and more than that, probably before the end of April, I’m not going to be reading book eleven (The Knife of Dreams, if you must know) for next week. I’m leaning towards a happy medium between genre fiction and literary fiction: C.S. Lewis.