Was pretty solid closure to the series overall, with some amazing moments and a few meh ones.
- Egwene's death scene was seriously cool, it was a pretty awesome way to fully bring her around after how annoying she was at the beginning of the series but felt kind of anticlimatic to her storyline as a whole. They build her up as this revolutionary figure in the White Tower, then she dies instead of going on to actually implement her changes? It also made Siuan's death kinda meaningless, since right beforehand she's talking about how her legacy lives on through Egwene, but, nope.
- While Lan v. Demandred was incredibly hardcore, having already gone through it twice with Gawyn and Galad getting their asses kicked made it feel a little repetitive.
- Androl/Pevara were awesome the whole way through. Nice to get some more human characters who still kick serious ass.
- Logain was a bit hit and miss. he started out great, then went a bit off, while it was nice to get some insight into the effect his life had had on him, it seemed a bit out of place right at the climax of the series, although I guess it builds up to greater things. I was expecting a bit more from him, hoping he'd take down one of the forsaken or something
- Mat was amazing the whole way through. Complete 180 from how shitty he was when Sanderson first picked up the series. Although the whole Fain thing was really anticlimatic and just felt tacked on
- Perrin was almost a complete reverse, he was awesome in TGS/TOM but was basically on the sidelines or caught up in one shitty minor subplot the whole time, all he did was kill a side-villain who barely played a role through most of the series
- The idea of Moghedian suffering for the next few centuries as a Damane makes me warm and giddy inside. Although it does have some interesting implications when you consider that the Seanchan, who don't seem to have quite given up on their 'conquer the world!' obsession, now have access to a massive amount of knowledge from the AOL with which to arm their Damane. The Dragon's Peace ain't gonna last very long if Tuon has anything to say about it, unless maybe Hawking kicks some sense into her.
I felt like they could have cut a good 100 or so pages from the first half of the book, went into way too much detail about the different battles before Merrilor when they ended up being pretty inconsequential anyway
- Elayne was actually.... not as much of a pain in the ass as usual. Still the worst character in the series by a massive margin, but slightly less so. Birgitte's death/return was epic.
As was Loial, especially in that first scene where the Ogiers are charging into battle in Andor or Cairhien or wherever it was. Tam kicked ass too, that brofist moment with Lan was epic
- The whole Rand v. Dark One thing was way off, basically totally shifting the philosophical basis of the series. Instead of being something totally evil, completely outside creation, now he's apparently an essential part of maintaining free will or some bullshit. I guess Sanderson wanted a reason to not have Rand kill him, but it was pretty weak stuff. The DO was never some dualistic personification, he was a counterpart to the maker, who made creation with good/evil/free will in it, whereas the DO wanted to unmake it entirely. He didn't represent the freedom to make bad choices, but nihilism, total annihilation, total lack of choice
wtf was the deal with Rand at the end? They didn't do a good job of explaining exactly what happened there. Fan theories said he'd swap into Moridin's body, but it sounds like it was Moridin they burned in Rand's place. Which body was he in? And why did he lose the ability to channel, since it's been explicitly stated that channeling is linked to the individual's soul? And if he couldn't channel, how did he light his pipe? They'd stated that the trio were no longer Ta'Veren, so it wasn't that either. wtf happened there? And why?
That said, I think they did a good job keeping the whole fisher king theme going there, though it felt like I was reading an Excalibur novelization at times, all that talk about 'dragons this' and 'one with the land' that.
Anyone else think that Olver was Gaidal Cain after all? I know Rj denied it, but the evidence is so strong, and Birgitte specifically said she'd only be a few years younger, implying that she knows that he's already been born, and when it happened'
All in all, it was a good close to a series which has been a massive part of my literary life for the last 10 - 15 years. Can't really ask for much more, other than for some gaming companies to start pumping out licensed video games. Seriously, the setting is fucking gold for something like an RTS with RPG elements, or a bioware style party based RPG, or even an action RPG