Rating: 
Summary: Did I buy the director's cut by mistake?
Review: ***2.5 stars***Because my copy of this book has about 400 pages of material that is completely worthless, does nothing to advance the plot or enhance character development, and is a general waste of time. And yet I'm still giving it a slightly higher rating than the last one. Why? Well, despite my above comments, I think number 5 is actually more focused and moves a bit better than number 4. This is not so much an endorsement of Fires of Heaven as a recognition of how Shadow Rising was so horrendously written. Fires of Heaven still has most of the problems that plagued Shadow Rising. Needless summation of previous events, characters reduced to caricatures, saying in 50 pages what could be more effectively done in 10 or 20, etc... it just has the feel that Jordan has totally lost control of his series and is drifting aimlessly. He seems to have written the parts of the story that he was sure about in the first few books, but then he let the scope of his series overwhelm him and so now, with this book and the previous one, he has produced 2000+ pages of material that can only be described as very disappointing, after showing some promise in books 2 and 3. Final caveat: lots of this book take place in Telaranriod, and that bothers me because Telaranriod is one of the sillier, more illogical concepts developed in this series. The notion of a "dreamworld" which is an actual physical copy of the real world, but where nothing is permanent except for injuries to a person's body is a metaphysical nightmare of an idea that Jordan really botched thoroughly.
But is this surprising? By now, no.
Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Novel
Review: The Fires of Heaven is the first glimpse of what will plague the later novels. I had problems reading the first 500 pages, but after that the novel was great, even the parts concerning Nynaeve and Elayne. However, the first 500 pages probably took me four times as long to read as the last 480. They were slow and contained almost no action. I actually caught myself rereading sentences because I could not understood what they meant. But even the beginning was really too bad, just not as good as the second half, and the second half more than made up for the beginning. What happens. Rand chases Coudalin into Cairhien. Mat is becoming a great general. Rand's Aiel fight the Shaido. Moraine fights Lanfear. Nynaeve fights Moghedian. Rand fights Rahvin. Who wins? The final two hundred pages are jammed packed with action and excitement. But the best part of the novel is that Faile is only mentioned once. She is without a doubt the worst character ever created. This next line is for anyone who has read the novel already. Looking at the copyright date on the cover, it has been ten years since Jordan killed Moraine and probably twelve since Egwene's dream of Thom pulling a blue crystal out of fire. It's been ten years. When is something going to happen here. Anyway, this is still a great novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Average, Slightly Better Than Last One
Review: I'm going to start this review with an assumption; that you've read the first 4 books in the Wheel of Time series. I'm going to make a second assumption; that you're not sure if you want to embark on a 1000 page long journey to...wherever the next one goes. That's a start. If those assumptions are right, then this review may help you. If not, maybe this review will serve to give you an idea of how Jordan writes. Failing those 2, I have no idea why you might be reading this. But I'll do my best to entertain you. Jordan can put words together. Like a bricklayer, he can slap words down and cement them in place with the best of them. As you read the book, you never stumble through pages of narrative. If the procession of words is a foundation, Jordan builds a good one. It's fairly easy to walk through the pages of the book because Jordan is, in general, a good wordsmith. What's he not necessarily good at is getting to the point. His well built foundation often times supports a minimal structure. This book is better than the 4th in the series. But after several hundred pages, you begin to seriously wonder why you're still reading it. After roughly 600 pages, I asked myself, "Is this going anywhere?" I was reminded of the Talking Heads song, Road to Nowhere. I'm actually being serious. Eventually it does go somewhere, and that's what makes this book better than the 4th in the series. That, and the fact that the last 100 pages serve as the conclusion. In contrast, I think book #4 was wrapped up in about 5 pages. However, I'd be lying if I said I had trouble putting it down. The truth is, Jordan slogs through another loooooooong book to tell a relatively normal length story; but with a lot of words added to describe things you don't necessarily want to read. Jordan must work under some restriction where he is required to maintain a conservation of feminine anger in any book he writes. One of the problems I have with the average Jordan character is that they more often than not act like a pre-teen with a sour disposition. Resonant with this is Jordan's lack of character development. This book does a better job in that regard. However, some characters regress. Some that acted with composure in the previous books suddenly get, as strange as it sounds, immature. Another annoyance I have with Jordan is his vocabulary. In one sentence, he actually uses the expression, "Languid hauteur." Are you serious? I feel as though I am the object of Jordan's attempt to learn a new word every week. I'm not here to build my vocabulary. I just want to read a fantasy story. Others have commented on this same phenomenon, so I'm not the only one who thinks that reading "haughty" 20 times in a 300 page stretch of narrative is odd. Another of Jordan's shortcomings is his ludicrous depiction of women. I'm not sure how many feminine rituals there are in the series now, but rest assured of this. No ritual exists in this book without female nudity. Whatever Jordan aims for with this, he misses so widely that I think he shot the wrong way. I won't even offer suggestions as to what exactly is going on there. I think we're supposed to be led to believe these books are built with a strong female presence. The reality of the matter is that most women in the book act like teenage girls who still think that boys might actually have cooties. The reverse is true also, with most male characters randomly veering off on his own train of thought in which he deduces every woman is 51 cards short of a deck. Maybe that's a fair assessment, considering the way Jordan portrays most of them. Even with all of this, the story is better than the last. The angry female characters are becoming less of an issue with Jordan, while building strength is becoming his predominant theme. The idea of the characters "building strength" is one I took from another reviewer, who suggests these stories are like a game of D&D being played out in a book. I think there's a lot of truth to that opinion. Every chapter we have a new skill being developed or learned. All of that said, again, it is a decent read. You cold do worse. Yeah, I'm sure you could do better but I'm not very well versed in fantasy stories to be able to say. So I'll probably pick up the 6th book because I am compelled to find out what happens. Truth be told, as lengthy as the book is, it's refreshing to get your money's worth when you buy it. As opposed to some of these 250 pages books, Jordan's sure have a lot of meat on them. A final tidbit about the story. At this point, there are over 30 characters in the book. Each occupies a story line, no matter how trivial the character. Granted, they are often intertwined so we're not reading three dozen narratives at once. Still, there are so many that Jordan left out at least 5 major characters this time. An entire book went by with no mention of Perrin and that story. Mind you, there were 1000 pages in which to do this. That tells you just how laboriously the narrative thickly flows through these 1000 pages. Jordan's acceptance that not all the good guys can get out scot free is a step forward. As is his character development and the more robust final showdown. I still think he's got some work to do in terms of shoring up the details of his story. Every book ending is roughly predictable, and this one is no different. But this is probably worth picking up if you're not sure whether or not you want to continue.
Rating: 
Summary: Slow, but fun
Review: The fith installment is not as good as the previous ones, but not by much. I personally did not like this book as much as the others, and for s few reasons. 1 Ending was dumb, i mean, really dumb
2 My favorite character, Perrin. Was not in the whole book! his name is mentioned about 3 times but you never actually hear about his adventure after saving Two Rivers, which was the best part in all the books
3 He had a lot of detail, but a lot of obvious things were missed by characters, sometimes you just wanted them to talk After all that is was a pretty good book, those there was one questionable part
Rating:
Summary: Well done, if poignant and sad ...
Review: It's rare that to get chills or an emotional response to fiction of any kind, but that has happened twice for me with Jordan novels, once in The Great Hunt, and once here. If you have gotten hooked on the Wheel of Time's earlier books, this will not likely disappoint you. The writing is starting to get a little ... dense here, but you will only be disappointed if you abandon the book early. Enjoy this book, because you have a lot of reading ahead of you that is less than stellar in Books 6, 7, and 8. There is noticable improvement in "Winter's Heart" ... but that's a 1500 pages away. In the meantime, things do move here, and if you have read 1-4, be prepared for a surprise by the end.
Rating:
Summary: This Wheel Turns Too Slowly
Review: There is a recurring theme in all of the reviews of the Wheel of Time books - eventually, it seems, reviewers become fed up with the slow pace and aggravating main characters and give up, with more giving up the further along in the series they go. I'm probably at that point now. Fires of Heaven has a remarkable ending, one that gets the adrenalin flowing, but reaching that end is a long, tedious slog. Fully half of the novel - the half featuring the mind-numbing adventures of Nynaeve and Elayne - is barely readable. The portions with Rand are much better than in the previous book, but are too frequently interrupted by more of the Wimpy Women to be fully enjoyed. It is not that Jordan cannot write women . . . well, okay, he can't, but some of the best moments of Fires of Heaven come when he lets us inside the heads of Min and Siuan Sanche. But far too often the women characters spend their time complaining about men, only to place themselves in situations where men have to rescue them, all the while obsessing over how much cleavage or leg they or other women are showing. It's cute for the first few hundred pages of the first book. By the time one hits page 4000 in the series, however, it is a complete turn-off. It took two weeks to muddle through the thousand pages of this one (and only two hours to get through the last two hundred). It is a serious question whether book six will be worth the effort.
Rating:
Summary: The Last Great Wheel of Time Book
Review: Ah . . . if only Robert Jordan could go back to the end of this novel and we could forget what came after. This is the last installment of The Wheel of Time which truly engaged, surprised and excited. The thousands of potboiling pages which follow "The Fires of Heaven" are not horrible, but here is the last time all the characters had depth and complexity, not just melodrama. Read here and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely one of the best in the series (so far, anyway)
Review: There are certainly both positive and negative things about this book and the Wheel of Time series as a whole. There are only a certain number of ways we can read about how wonderful and terrible saidin can feel. Ice and fire, sweetness and vileness, etc. ad nauseum. But the reader gets the impression that Jordan wants us to understand exactly how it feels for male channelers, and the constant repetition of sweetness and vileness makes the end of Winter's Heart all the more poignant, even moving. I have to take issue with previous reviewers' problems with the book. Elayne, Nynaeve, Egwene, Rand, Mat etc. all act juvenile BECAUSE THEY ARE JUVENILE. Even Nynaeve, the eldest of this young group, is understood to be no older than 25. Being 24 myself, I can testify that these individuals are acting exactly as many of my peers would act given the same situations. I can't imagine what kind of stress it would produce to have the kinds of life-altering experiences these people have had. I understand it is fiction, but I think Jordan has done an excellent job portraying realistic characters and their reactions. I also don't understand one reviewer's statement about "Jordan's juvenile obsession with female nudity and sexuality." Honestly, the male characters are naked or in their "smallclothes" just as often as the girls are naked or in their "shifts". I would have to say Jordan is again being realistic. People change clothes. It happens. I think Jordan has anything BUT an obsession with nudity. He doesn't go into medical detail about body parts like some writers. Heck, one of our main characters didn't even have sex until the FOURTH book in the series. Sex is not meant to be a driving point in the story. Speaking of the story, I would have to join others in saying that the series has gone on longer than it maybe should have. But I'm sure Jordan is well aware of this fact himself, and doesn't need US to tell him that. That whole "many-headed monster" idea is probably truer than we think. As a budding writer myself, I can't imagine how difficult it would be to keep track of as many characters and storylines as Jordan is juggling. I would have to say he's doing admirably. Bravo, sir! I believe the story is meant to have a web, or Pattern. As I read the story AGAIN, I am struck by how clear it is that events are drawing to a conclusion, however bleak, far-off, and long-awaited it might be. I'm willing to wait and I respect Jordan as a writer trying to write the best story he can. I believe it was Stephen King (and please forgive me if I'm wrong) who once said, "Sometimes a story is just a story." I think we, as readers, would do well to remember that. I've been a fan of fantasy for as long as I've been able to read. In a literary sense, of course certain authors (Tolkien being a good example) are going to be better than others. Tolkien is probably looking down from whatever cloud he may be sitting on, and wishing we would all just let the authors in the genre he really created simply TELL THEIR OWN STORY. I think we need to stop comparing EVERYONE in the fantasy genre to Tolkien, LeGuin and others. Personally, I don't care for LeGuin. But that's my opinion. If you like Jordan's books, good for you. If you don't, well then good for you too. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Before I close this review, I would like to remind the readers who keep comparing Tolkien and Jordan of one thing. Please remember the VOLUMES of material concerning Middle-Earth that Tolkien never had a chance to have published before his death. I believe the "History of Middle-Earth" is pretty close to 12 volumes, if not more. Jordan doesn't have to worry about a professorship at Oxford, so he therefore has the time to do what Tolkien never did . . . truly complete his epic. I say again, Bravo Sir!!
Rating:
Summary: Best Fantasy Collection Ever Written
Review: I have been reading the Wheel of Time series since the first book came out and this is my favorite series ever. However, it's not for everyone. Jordan is probably the most descriptive writer I have ever read and he will describe everything he possibly can in one situation in order to set the mood properly. This makes his books, and the chapters, very long. Some people don't like long and descriptive, elaborate writing like this, I do, and I believe that Robert Jordan is the best author I have ever read. Read the series in order, starting from the first book, and it will make a lot more sense and be much more enjoyable reading. I've gone back and read all of them over again at least twice.
Rating:
Summary: 1000 pages in the life of the Aiel
Review: This book is long. I don't like starting any kind of review like that, it simply states the facts. It is a series for people who like long, descriptive books. Still, most long descriptive books contain action. For most of this book, I was waiting for the events of the previous book, which was incredible, to be followed up on. There were the accepted on their journey after the Black Ajah, there was the new army in the Two Rivers, and there was Egwene learning about dreams. None of that was resolved until the next book. Instead, this is all about Rand travelling with the Aiel, occassionally stopping on the increasingly uninteresting travels of Nynaeve and Elayne. Still, all of that changes suddenly, when the book pull an about face, and a memorable battle occurs, leaving a suprising number of victories for the ta'varen. Like any good journey, the Wheel of Time Books are long and tedious, but the end is always worth it.
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