I started this year reading a lot of Wheel of Time. I stalled in the second half of my reread for too long and really had to rush to finish before A Memory of Light hit. I did just manage it, but reading four Wheel of Time books doesn’t really leave a lot of time for other reading during the month, as I managed only 2 other books. One of those, Outlining Your Novel by K.M Weiland, I don’t have anything to say about. It is exactly what it sounds like.

Knife of Dreams

Robert Jordan

The Gathering Storm

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Towers of Midnight

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

A Memory of Light

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I still plan on writing reread posts on the last few WoT books, but I will have to do that later. I’m kind of taking a break from the series. It has been more than a month since I read A Memory of Light and in large my thoughts haven’t changed. However, the more I think about it, the more I think of the book as Sanderson’s rather than Jordan’s. There are parts that are clearly Jordan, but the tone feels largely Sanderson. A lot of it has to do with how much of it is a battle scene, a detailed campaign. I realize that the series has been building to Tar’mon Gaidon, a literal last battle, so there would be war, but in the Jordan books battle scenes tend to be short, chaotic and horrific. In AMoL, it is more clinical, more a historical recounting than caught in the moment emotion. Not that there isn’t any of that, or that it isn’t well written. It is just different from, say Dumai’s Wells. Still, AMoL is a better ending that we should have been expecting.

The Last Dragonslayer

Jasper Fforde

This is Fforde writing a Young Adult novel and it is exactly what one would expect. This feels a lot like his Thursday Next series, only a touch simpler and with a generally younger focus. This is in no way a bad thing. It is different enough that is doesn’t just feel like Thursday for kids, but it maintains the same wit and imagination. The world of The Last Dragonslayer is interesting in its own right, with it touch of Harry Potter with big magical organization, though here the big problem is magic in recession. I’m not generally a big reader of YA fiction, but as long as Fforde keeps his sense of humor, I’ll keep reading what he writes, no matter how it is classified.