Winter's Heart

2.50/5.00 “The male and female halves of the True Source were alike and unlike, attracting and repelling, fighting against each other, as they worked together to drive the Wheel of Time.”

Winter's Heart is disappointing on so many levels. Most of this book is made up of nothing. The four main plot lines in this book are all boring and are all mostly side plots, with the exception of Rand's plot. Most importantly, none of the plot lines were interesting. This book is a sub-standard entry into the WoT.

Some good parts include significant progress in the Rand-3 women romance plot line (although it is so cringe and I am just happy its over, but it was still funny), end of the major plot line with Rand and WoT in general and some fun times with Mat. Perrin's story in this book is just completely unreadable. I did actually enjoy my time with Mat in this book and the whole Seanchan world building, even though the strory moved so slowly and felt repetitive of book 7. Elayne's plot line is slightly better than Perrin but is completely uninteresting.

The end of this book is surprising but feels so badly executed. The villains are turned into clowns in struggle with a predictable outcome.

Emotional Impact -> I enjoyed Mat's part of this book, but the plot there is bad. Otherwise this book was bad. The first 200 pages are unreadable. I am not interested in the Perrin-Faile-Massima plot. Please end this torture. Rand's plot is boring and ends with some progress but the Shadar Logoth battle was not as good as I had hoped. There were so many good things that happened in this book, like male-female bonding.... but the book is so boring. Characters -> Rand goes in reverse. His character development has been so good so far, but this book spoils it. Nynaeve and Mat was probably the best part. There are so many things the characters just don't talk about, and it looks like it's just to save the melodrama for future books. This is getting annoying. What a cringe moment for Mat, feeling sad to leave the woman who has been raping him! I hope they acknowledge this at some point as Stockholm Syndrome. Cadsuane as a main character is a hard pill to swallow. Dollar-store Moiraine here is another terrible angry and violent female character in this book series. At this point, the sheer number of badly written female characters are outnumbering the good ones...Plot -> Oh god.. please this was so bad. And why did they resurrect Lanfear! I liked her as a villain and now she is a joke. I fucking hate the Perrin plot, just die!!!! The cleansing was a huge step and I wanted this to happen so I am a bit happy it is over, but I did not like how this was executed. Oh god, that moment when Elayne was like please fuck me too.... so cringe. Prose -> On the border of bad. I had to search the book for a single line that sounds quotable. Nothing really stood out to me. The persistent problems of WoT prose are all hitting their highs in this book (so far as I have readWorldbuilding -> Least impressive of WoT so far. So much of this book was melodrama. There is some good Sea Folk, Seanchan and Far Madding world building. I hate the Sea Folk, Seriously the most annoying set of characters I have read.

Gasp! The plot lines move! Astounding! But seriously, the good thing about this book is that major plots lines are actually moving a bit and certain events that we've been expecting for the past 2 books have finally occurred (well, at least, they're starting to). Mat is given much needed limelight, after being a little absent in the previous book. There's a reduction in the lovey-dovey parts of the previous 2. Those are the good parts. The bad parts? Well, as you know, the main female characters are still performing their trademark action numerous times, and most of them described as if you haven't read about them for at least 5 or 6 books now. There's still a lot of filler, especially at the start of the book. Again, excruciating details for very trivial characters, dialogues, and events; but ironically, not enough reminder text or hints for the incredibly large number of supporting casts for each of the main characters - making recalling who they are very difficult. Still, if you've read this far, you're probably just persevering for the sake of wanting to know how it's going to end, and any review won't really change your mind.

This series just keeps getting better and better!

I don't know what else I can say in a review without giving away spoilers, or that I haven't already said in previous reviews. If you've made it this far into this huge series, a review from some random stranger isn't going to change your mind about whether to continue or not.

I will say, bordering on a spoiler, that the last chapter is crazy intense...and I don't think I hate Cadsuane nearly as much as I once did. ;-P