A Memory of Light by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

I feel like I've been punched in the stomach. The wind is completely out of me, I'm gasping for breath, and I feel surprised and hurt. Part of this is due to the fact that a series I've been following since I was in middle school is now over, part of it is because it didn't resolve anything for me. But anyways, I need to through my usual spiel of this being part of a series. This is the fourteenth and final book in the Wheel of Time series. Start at the beginning if you wish to tackle this mammoth collection of words, do not start at this book.

The Last Battle is here. Everyone who can fight is and they are holding back the forces of the Dark Lord. Rand, meanwhile, has gone to face the Dark One, confident in his ability to destroy him forever. Elayne, Egwene, Mat, Perrin and others all have their own duties and battles to fight. Something must remain if Rand wins his battle, and they have to keep people alive.

I don't know what happened to my beloved characters in this book. Sanderson was doing so well with them (excepting Mat) that it seemed odd he would switch them up at a time like this. They were all shells of their former selves. Perrin was probably the best overall. He at least had interesting things to do and they were believable based on the previous actions of his in the series. Mat, well he's still a gambler, still the comedian, but it's forced and like the previous two books, just not in line with his character as Jordan created him. Egwene was ok, I was disappointed with where the book took her plot-line but at least she's as strong as she's ever been. Aviendha and Min had minimal roles, so I'm still not sure if I'm pleased with their performance or not.

This book was mostly battles. Sure, they were well done descriptions of battles, but it wasn't what I expected a nine-hundred page book to be dominated by. Some unfinished business was resolved, but a lot of it was still open. And the ending? Well, let's just say that it felt incomplete and wrong to me. But I won't give away any more than that. Compared to the other two books that Sanderson co-authored this one lagged a bit in pace because of all those battles. I think a lot of it was extraneous and could have been cut out to provide more time for the important resolution of the series type of writing. We were so eagerly waiting for the end of this series, that it is easy to see why a lot of people would be disappointed by a lot of things. But I do think that a lot of that disappointment could have been avoided by better paying attention to Jordan's tone of the original books. That was something that just wasn't in this one.

I'm probably going to go bury myself in another book just to escape the release of emotions this one gave me. I'm sorry it's over and I almost wish I wouldn't have read the last book so I could still have my own ending in my head. But at least I have some sort of ending.

A Memory of Light
Copyright 2012
909 pages