s with many other reviews in this section, I initially wrote this one in a daily blog, and long before I invented the categorized scoring system. I'm sticking one in now, but it's not quite what I would have said at the time.  I have not reread the novel since I first read it, though oddly enough I have bought it. I bought a hardcover copy for $3 at a book clearance, since the cover had a cut down the spine. A cut that I fixed in 30 seconds with some invisible tape.

Also see my comments on Robert Jordan and his WoT series on the Robert Jordan author page.

Anyway, Crossroads is about the weakest of the 10 Wheel of Time novels, and it's the first (and probably only) one I'm going to review on this site. It's hard to review any of the Wheel of Time novels individually, because they are all part of a longer and much larger story. Each novel is sort of a chapter in the epic, with storylines that continue into it from what came before, and out of it to what's coming later. The same characters are in each novel as well, though some are featured more in one book or another, and there are occasionally new characters as well.

This one gets the lowest plot score of any novel in the WoT series, since so little happens in any of the 5 major plot threads in this one. As many Amazon reviewers lament, this is essentially a 640 page transition between book 9 and book 11. As for my comments on the novel, written shortly after reading it in early February 2003, read on. 

February 8, 2003

While I was waiting for my reserved copy of the Crossroads of Twilight to come into the library, I checked out some reviews online.  Unlike movie reviews, which simply abound online, I don't know of any good sources for "professional" book reviews.  There are usually 8 or 10 of them in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine, which is online, but website.  Generally the book reviews I see are amateur ones, on amazon.com or other book selling websites.  However these are worth a look, if you go in expecting very populist sentimentalities.

I had seen the ones for Crossroads on Amazon US and Amazon UK, and as you can see if you click those links, they are pretty brutal.  A typical quote.

1 Star
I have been a fan of Robert Jordan's books have the past five years and have read all of his books multiple times. However, Crossroads of Twilight was a let down. After waiting two and a half years I found this book to be unsatisfying. The plot devolpment was horrible, very subpar in comparison to Jordan's other novels. The circumstrances the characters find themselves in the beginning of the novel are nearly identical to those at the end.

For the people that are big fans, like myself, I assume you will go on to by the book despite my criticism. For the people that are considering, skip it. You can go from the book 9 to book 11 (whenever that comes out) and not miss anything.

Another typical quote.  Very typical.  The reviews could all be copying each other, they are so similar in their disappointment.

1 Star
After eagerly waiting two years for this book, I'm at loss of words to describe how bad CoT is. Nothing happens in this book, some minor plotlines advance slightly, but basically the whole 640 pages is just setup for the next book. Sure, Jordan sets up things nicely for the next book, but that doesn't make CoT interesting, it makes what is about to happen interesting. After this, I don't have faith left in Jordan though.

They are right, but it's not that bad.  Yes, it is almost all set up and background info and nothing really happens in terms of action.  There are no fights, no battles, no mage duels, and not even any high speed pursuit or chase scenes, other than one very short pursuit of an attempted traitor/assassin.  There isn't any excitement, basically.

However it's not as boring and pointless as many of the reviewers make it out to be.  Not exactly high praise, I'll admit.

I need to update the Robert Jordan section on the Fantasy Novelists review page, though ironically, what I say on it, written almost a year ago, is what most of these people seem to think now. In fact it's pretty accurate, but since I wrote that I reread the entire series, books 1-9 starting in November or so, and going steadily through them until I finished book 9 about two weeks ago, and got on the wait list at the library for book 10, which came out in early January. Anyway, rereading the series I gained a greater appreciation for it.  Both for his writing and for the plotting and events.

He takes a great deal of time to set things up and carry them through, but if you read the novels in sequence you don't mind the several hundred page stretches of no action, since you've got another book next up.

I still found book one pretty boring, though less so than the first time I read it.  Book two is pretty good, and then 3 and 4 are excellent.  Three I noted especially, since there are three plot threads going, and all 3 are engrossing and moving along rapidly.  Most times in a novel when there are 2 or 3 threads going, one of them is far more interesting than the other(s), and you sort of hurry through one to get back to the other. But Jordan pulled them all off very well.  Books 3-7 or so are all pretty solid, but by about 8 the story line is too fractured and is bogging down, 9 isn't much better, and then 10, the new one, is probably the worst in terms of anything happening.

Lots happens in terms of discussion and character development and conversation, but very little in terms of plot advancement.  This isn't due to the book dragging that much, or skimping on events, it's just that there is way too much going on with every plot thread.  The book begins with five major things going on.

1) Rand and Cadasune and company have just tried to cleanse the male half of Saidin and Rand thinks they've succeeded, but we don't know for sure. This was the big action finish to Book Nine.

2) Perrin is trying to chase down the Aiel who have kidnapped his wife and others.

3) Mat has kidnapped the Daughter of the Nine Moons who he is destined to marry.

4) Elayne is trying to become queen in Camelyn and dealing with the Kin and Sea folk.

5) Egwene is leading the rebel half of the White Tower in a siege of Tar Valon.

The book takes probably 250 pages to introduce the later four items on this list, (not getting to anything of the #1 thread until almost the end of the novel) and bring us up to date on what they've been doing in the last two weeks or so, when book 9 was focusing almost exclusively on the Rand and Cadasune thread.

It then returns to all of them for another 50 pages or so each, advancing each thread slightly, all over basically the same chronological time period, which is about another 2-3 weeks.  There is then a very short return to what Rand is doing (and in theory he is the most important character in the world) and some more of Mat and Egwene's threads.  And that's pretty much it.

None of these threads are resolved, and a couple of them look poised to split off into additional sub plots, and none of them appear likely to merge any time soon.

This is a spoiler for the plot, but at the same time, there is nothing to spoil, since nothing really happens. Here's what happens with those major threads during the book and how they are changed by the end.

1) We get maybe 20 pages of Rand and others in a small country manor, resting up and a tiny bit of Rand considering a treaty with the Seachan.

2) Perrin and his army find the Aiel, but can't do anything since they are outnumbered.  They then get off onto some weird side track about a haunted city and consider enlisting aid from the Seachan.

3) Mat and Tuon court a bit and the animal caravan travels very slowly across the country, and by the end nothing has changed except their location.

4) Elayne deals with schemers and spies and gathers political allies.  This one appears to be going somewhere early, and then isn't mentioned again for about the last 400 pages.

5) Egwene and half the tower sit around for a month, doing nothing except explaining why they can't take action (much to the reader's chagrin), until at the very end, in an attempt at an action cliffhanger, Egwene goes off by herself and gets captured by someone.  This section has by far the most boring parts.  One long scene before a meeting of the Tower must be 4 pages of description of what 20+ women are wearing and where they are sitting.  None of which turns out to be in any way relevant, even if you could keep all the names straight.

Frustrating as the lack of plot progress is, the lack of a big finish is even worse. In almost all of the other books, the last 30 pages were devoted to a huge action piece, with major plot advancement, death of bad guys, etc.  This often felt rather tacked on, as though Jordan was content to write a 900 page book, but realized about page 700 that he had to wrap things up shortly with some sort of a bang, so he'd just have Rand leap up and tear off to battle one of the Forsaken.  But tacked on or not, it was interesting to read, and did move things along.

Nothing of the sort happens in this book, and I think that's what really has everyone's panties in a bunch.  It's a lot easier to overlook 400 pages of build up if you at least get a big finish. Instead there's just 650 pages of build up, and about 50 pages of pay off, and these 50 are scattered all hell and tomorrow through the entire book, and none of the pay off is big enough to make the time spent worthwhile.

So Crossroads isn't awful, and it's not poorly written (at least not the prose) but you can make a case for the overall structure and pacing being very poorly-executed.  It's self-indulgent and negligent and lazy of the author and his editor, not knowing what to cut, what to condense, and what to speed up.  Jordan writes characters and interaction and plot complications very well, but he has become convinced that these are what people want, or at least are sufficient to keep the reader going.

Most fantasy is written in the "Big Bang" style, as I call it, where it's mostly boring character stuff, traveling, etc, but punctuated by big bangs of action and excitement that are usually good enough to keep the reader going until the next big bang. Jordan has definitely gotten into this now, and the major problem with book 10 is the lack of bangs, much less big ones.

Jordan plots brilliantly and must have incredible notes and outlines to keep everything straight and on pace, but he made some poor choices in going into so much detail about this and that, and as a result nothing happens.  I can see that the natural progression of the five major storylines (and several minor ones) is proceeding, and that any big bang stuff thrown into them in the course of book 10 would be artificial, sort of a "cut to the car chase" segment in a bad action movie.  But see, the author is supposed to realize that, and adjust accordingly.  Reorder some stuff, skimp on the details in some portion to move things along quickly, etc.  Some major chunks of boring stuff are presented quickly as a character thinks back over the last week or two, but lots of the rest of the book is living that week or two page by page, when 20 or 30 pages of bleh could have been presented as two paragraphs of memory.  That way the 700 pages of this book would take up 300 or 400 pages, with no reader the wiser for what they're missing, and we'd get to some of the plot threads paying off, while others were still building up.

The big ending of book 9 could easily have been postponed until about the middle of book 10, since the 4 other plot threads are taking place chronologically before the end of book 9, and then when the end of book 9 takes place the plot threads in book 10 are all worried about what's happening, and then what they find when they eventually investigate the scene of the big bang.  That all would have built reader anticipation and interest in what the hell was exactly happening there with Rand, and then when we read about it it would have been awesome.  It was good at the end of book 9, but I think anticipation and knowing something about it would have made it better in book 10.  So I wonder if he realized that book 9 had no big ending, and moved that up somewhat to provide it, and by so doing stripped out the central big bang from book 10, gutting it.

One aspect of his writing on these books that is interesting is the stealth and secrecy he uses. Not that they are mysteries, but all the narrative is entirely in 3rd person, from the PoV of various characters.  There is never anything omniscient.

So the reader never knows more than a given character knows, and often a lot less than that character knows, since while we hear their every thought during a given scene, there's no telling what else they know that they aren't thinking about right then.  We also are presented with the thoughts of dozens of characters every novel, so our total knowledge is quite large, but you're almost like a detective trying to hold all the plot threads and details in mind, and remember what one character said to another one 4 or 5 or 8 books ago. If you can you know what's going on and appreciate the cleverness of things, but quite often you do not remember who a minor character is and what they were last doing, when it's not presented in context.

I read all 9 novels within the last 90 days, as well as reading most of the massive Wheel of Time FAQ within the last month, and I was still often lost on which character was doing what.  Not the main ones, but there are dozens and dozens of various Aes Sedai with names and personalities, at least a dozen soldiers here or there, and miscellaneous servants and bad guys and warders and many more. All, or at least most of whom you need to keep track of to know what's going on at a given moment. I would never have remembered who was Black Ajah, or undercover Forsaken, or scheming with who, if I hadn't hit that up in the FAQ recently.

So if you've read the series up to this point, and if you've refreshed your memory with the FAQ, and if you have the free time, I'd say read Crossroads of Twilight.  There's no hurry though, any time before the next book comes out is fine, and it might be better if you read it closer to the next one, since there are so many little details and minor characters introduced/developed in this story that you'll no doubt need to remember it when you dig in to book 11, in 18 or 24 months.

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