Book Review: Path of Daggers

The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Wow. Definitely the low point of the series for me so far. I suggest a retitling of the book: The Path of Not Really Much Important Happens. Really. What do you have of significance? True, Elayne and the gang fix the weather, but that happens right at the beginning of the book (and I would argue should have happened at the end of Book 7, really). Then you have her traipse off and start the interminable “I want to win Andor on my own” campaign. Perrin goes and does a whole lot of not much with the Prophet, and then Faile gets captured–an interesting development, but one that’s just tacked on as an afterthought, to be explored later. Rand goes and does crazy stuff with the One Power and the Seanchan, and then he manages to not get killed by some rogue Asha’man. And Mat? The guy who might have died at the end of Book 7? We don’t get more the hints at his continued existence. What does this translate into?

Filler.

Almost a whole book of filler. There were swathes of pages where I skimmed. Entire chunks of chapters where all that happened was a character stood there thinking. And thinking. And thinking. I love these characters, too–but I don’t love anyone enough to just listen to their thoughts on life for pages on end.

My complaints about the Forsaken taking a backseat in the last book pale to their almost entire absence in this one. And . . . I don’t feel like complaining anymore. Two stars out of five. That sums it up for me. It’s got to get better from here on out. Right?

I’ve got a bad feeling about this . . .

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