Book Review: Crossroads of Twilight

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Yikes. I’ll say that one more time. Yikes. If you’ve been reading these reviews, then you know that I’m a Wheel of Time fan. But no amount of fandom can salvage this book. I almost bumped it up to two stars, since the last 150 pages actually had some pretty cool stuff in them (Egwene’s capture and Mat’s courting of Tuon), but even those 150 pages really only have about 50-75 pages of Good in them. The rest of the book is filler.

F-I-L-L-E-R

This book could have been subtitled. Crossroads of Twilight: Stuff You Don’t Really Care About. I realized there was a reason I didn’t remember much of what happened in the book. It’s not because I’d only read it once or twice before–it’s because . . . nothing much happens in the book. After Winter’s Heart, where Stuff Happens–stuff we actually care about–this novel is reduced to the first 3/4, where we just get everybody’s daily routines while the Stuff from the last book is happening, and then the last 1/4 which advances the series a smidgen, but that’s about it.

No wonder fans got fed up.

There were swathes of the book that I found myself not just skimming, but literally flipping pages to find out when something else happened. I’m sorry, but the strength of this series isn’t found in 5 pages of densely packed text to describe what a scene looks like, or what a character had for breakfast. It’s found in engaging characters involved in engaging action.

If you’re a Mormon, you’ll get it when I say Crossroads of Twilight is the Second Nephi of the Wheel of Time. If you’re not, then suffice it to say that it’s hard reading.

Anyway–that’s enough of me being negative. I’ll move on now, and hope that the next book is better . . .

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