Winter's Heart: Wheel of Time, Book 9

I really like this series...I read and listen through it periodically. This specific book is good too...for me it's where the story starts to get exciting again after a couple of books that kind of drag.I don't have a lot of time to sit and read, so I listen to a lot of books on Audible. This series is a treat for me because I have the books on Kindle and Audible, and they synchronize with each other. I can listen a while, then read a while, then listen again without losing my place.With this particular book in the series, I noticed that my Kindle version was not staying synced with my Audible version. So I opted to delete the Audible book and download the narration in the Kindle app. It's the same recording, but I figured since I was accessing both through the Kindle app, they would stay synched up better. For most of the book they have, though the word highlighting has been a few lines off from the narration for a good portion of the book...but that wasn't a huge deal. At least it got me to the right page page.But there are other problems. First, the narration periodically repeats a full sentence. It's a simple editing mistake, and mostly just annoying.Worst of all, a significant portion of the book is missing. Chapter 32, Chapter 33, and most of Chapter 34 are just not there. I hope that Amazon will fix this problem!

I need not mention for the umpteenth time what a sucker I am for a good ending; but this one definitely pushed what was likely going to be a three star book up to a four. The last hundred pages or so were extremely entertaining; and the final chapter was hugely important to the series at large, perhaps rivaling the final chapter of Lord of Chaos as my favorite of the series.As is typical with my WoT reviews, there will be very light spoilers below (things like which characters appear in this installment), and then I will place a spoiler hidden section at the end to mention more specific things.So, I feel I must mention I do have to eat my words a tiny bit. I even alluded to the fact that I may have to do so in my review of book eight. This one was slow. Slower than the ones that came before it, and I think the time it took me to read it is evidence of that. I want to be clear though; do not read 'slow' as 'bad' because that would be a mistake. It's a good book; it's just that certain events taking place right now are not fast-paced. Plain and simple.I did have a hunch as I moved farther into the book though, and I looked this up to confirm it; the tenth book, Crossroads of Twilight, takes place concurrently with Winter's Heart. Similar to what GRRM did with his fourth and fifth Song of Ice and Fire books, if I understand correctly. What this is, basically, is a natural inevitability of a spreading of plot lines. Our POV characters are distant from each other, so rather than get all of our characters in one book with a glacial pace, we get only some of them so that things can move a bit quicker (albeit still not very quickly). So there are some marked characters almost entirely missing from this installment. Egwene for instance, whose absence is felt heavier than most simply because of where her plot line was heading at the end of book eight. Perrin also has very little time. Now, from a more positive perspective, this allowed us to spend time with some characters who I thought were sorely lacking screen time; namely Mat. I think we have more Mat POV chapters in Winter's Heart than in any other book, which I loved as I think his plot line is one of the more interesting ones in the series. And while even his story line throughout the book lagged a little, by the end it was intensely readable, and I really can't wait to see what happens with him next. Though, I imagine I'll have to wait until book eleven to do so. Rand's plot line was also excellent in this one, but it always is, so it's sort of a given.So I have our missing POVs to look forward to for book ten, and the results of the absolutely insane final chapter of book nine to anticipate for book eleven. As always I am enthralled with the world Jordan has created, and I've spent so much time with these characters that I can't help but love spending more. I was also very impressed with Jordan's playing with POV in this one; especially in the last chapter. There have been times in the past where I criticized his POV changes and inclusions as feeling unnatural or forced; not the case in Winter's Heart. Not the case at all. I also loved getting some enlightening POV chapters from the Seanchan, as well as the Atha'an Miere.Crossroads of Twilight is up next.

I love this series! It is my favorite fantasy series of all time. Sure some of the books are not as exciting as others but life is like that too. I am on my third reread of the series. In this reread, I am adding all of the books and their corresponding Whispersync Audible narration to my Kindle library.Why is there no narration available for this book? The series is 14 books long and 13 of the books have the Whispersync narration available. Come on, Amazon! Is this an oversight? Please add the narration so I can complete my Kindle library of these books.

The first five books pulled me into the world so quickly that I raved to all of my friends that they needed to pick up this series and read it immediately. Then I read the eighth and ninth book. I am dismayed that Jordan seems to care more about discribing minor set pieces than pushing a story forward, with the amount of pages in this book I expected something to happen. This point may be off topic but I'm also upset with audible/amazon that at my time of purchase this audiobook cost nearly 42 dollars, while the rest in the series were a maximum of 14.

No one gets to book 9 without knowing two things:- when this saga drags, IT DRAGS...- we are going to see this through!At this point, talking about the weak points of Jordan's massively ambitious saga is redundant. You already know about the poorly written female characters, about the long chapters of nothing happening and you're already comfortable when a chapter is on the POV of a random character you've never heard before and do not have the patience to start caring.Props to Jordan for, 9 books in, still work on developing new characters, but I'm maxed out. I can't care, even be interested, in these seanchan/Shaido/random city plot device characters.Fortunately, the end of the book brings back the focus on the battle we really care about.On the book 10 it is, then...

This one was pretty great! I really enjoyed it, though it wasn't the best of them. There are some pretty ridiculous scenes and for some reason Mr. Jordan got into this habit of saying "Something really awesome is about to happen" then going to someone else and talking about their buttons and their soup for 20 pages. When you get back to the awesome thing, it's over and he says "Wowie, it was awesome, you should've been there, but those buttons and that soup was more important." Still this was a good one and I slammed through it. Now, book 10 is just outright torture. Did not like book 10 and almost gave it 2 stars; so enjoy this one. I hear books 11 and one are great.

Unfortunately as the series moves along, now at a tedious pace (apart from Robert Jordan’s explosive endings/final scenes), more and more characters enter the fray. More and more characters that I care less and less about. If all the confusing Aes Sedai names weren’t enough (Seaine, Saerin and Suana in the prologue to begin with), add the Aiel, Seanchan, Kin and Seafolk to the list. I almost wish George RR Martin would take over and kill a few characters here and there.The reason I love this series, though, is for the main cast, and the story overall. My only gripe regarding the main characters would be regarding Mat. It’s Book 9, and I’ve seen very little to explain why he seems to be such a fan favourite. I love the scenes that he’s been in so far (previous books), but they’ve been too few and far between. Would love to look up a statistic which illustrates how many chapters were devoted to each character. Mat seems to be woefully underrepresented, for such a charismatic and interesting character. (While he was missing for the entire first half of this book, he did have a significant portion of the second half devoted to him).As usual, the ending means I feel like grabbing the next book immediately to find out what happened. Which is a good thing.

This was never my favourite book in the WOT series, however I have to say that it has really grown on me this read through. The characters have such a depth and richness to them that you find yourself laughing, crying, and cheering amongst other things. Really love Mat, who this book sets up for his own ongoing saga.Much loved series

This is the second time that I have read through the Wheel of time since the series has been finished and I have a strongly different outlook on this book compared to the first time I read.There is no doubt that the pace of this book is slower the earlier books and it feels much more compartmentalized: The first section follows Perrin, the second follows Elayne, the third follows Mat and the fourth Rand.However, knowing what happens in the story subsequent to this book, I think the sequence of events laid out here can really be viewed as the foundations for the end of the series. It (and CoT) is a prologue for the final books, so many important things happen that can only be properly appreciated retrospectively.For this reason, WH gets 4 stars instead of 3 second time around.

After a few lacklustre offerings with little direction or plot, the Wheel of Time gets a jump start.As before there are many plots going on at once, we have Perrin looking for Faile, Elayne trying to gain the throne of Andor, Mat escaping the Seanchan in Ebou Dar, Egwene marching towards war with Tar Valon. Each of which gets a little mention, though some more than others and each has a different thing to interest you, revenge, political intrigue, suspense, and prospective battles. But the main reason to read this book is Rand's story and his preparations to cleanse Saidin.I am still a little annoyed at Jordan's structure of the plots, though. He seems to tell one story, then another, then another, then finishes with the climax, rather than merging them through the book. For example, the first few chapters are all about Perrin's story. Then we don't see him for the rest of the book. Mat gets the most story though (his is the only one that actually gets a satisfying conclusion), while Egwene gets nothing more than an appearance in Tel'aran'rhiod. Though, to be fair, if I had to read a hundred pages of her walking, I'd probably throw my Kindle out the window.Perrin's story is fairly straightforward, but we jump right into the action. It is a far quicker start than we have had since maybe the Dragon Reborn. He doesn't waste any time to go after Faile but just as it starts getting interesting, it ends and we have to wait for the next book.Elayne's story is, yet again, the weak point. Though, probably this is because I'm not a huge fan of overly political stories, even if I like a smattering of the genre in others. She meets up with the borderland rulers and thus brings them into the plot after being introduced at the beginning of the last book. This is yet another example of how Jordan doesn't seem to understand longterm storytelling. There are times you can do this kind of thing, and times you can't. The scene from Path of Daggers could have served as a portion of the prologue to this book and nothing would have been affected.Mat's story is definitely the second best part of Winter's Heart. After not appearing in the last book, he is back. He organises the escape of Aes Sedai while finally meeting the Daughter of the Nine Moons, and she is not what he expected. I liked how the Aes Sedai now have to depend on him to get them out. There is a rather touching scene where a Seanchan woman walks in on him and Joline. He grabs her and kisses her to hide her ageless face. Once she realises why he's doing it, she continues, but is crying while it's happening. Aes Sedai, those champions of cool serenity, are broken by the invaders.Rand prepares himself to disappear for a while following the attack on him from the Asha'man, but while doing so, he is also making preparations to cleanse Saidin, something he's been thinking of for a few books now. Also, in this book, he finally gets Elayne, Aviendha and Min together in a room for the first time. It's unfortunate that we don't get the first meeting of Min and Aviendha and we just jump into the three walking towards Rand, but it's kind of made up by their scenes after the meeting.It is the ending that is the reason to buy this book, if any more were needed. We haven't had a decent finale since Lord of Chaos, and certainly not one that felt natural since the Fires of Heaven, so this one is very welcome. It doesn't have any huge battles with thousands of men fighting, but the amount of the Power wielded is enough to make you feel as if it were. Since the introduction of the concept of the One Power in the Eye of the World, this is what we've been waiting for, to actually see the male and female halves being used together, to see Saidin and Saidar used in a battle. It is the closest we've ever got to witnessing the War of Power, and it is an immensely exciting and satisfying end.To conclude, it's still not perfect, but it is the best book since Fires of Heaven. Winter's Heart breathes new life into the series, along with some monumental changes. It is just such a shame it is to be followed by Crossroads of Twilight.

I love these characters so much and this book brings even more thrills and adventures. Possibly the quickest I have ever read a book. This one had me gripped from start to finish.There are always New twists and turns, totally unpredictable. The depth of Jordan's imagination amazes me. Pure brilliance.