The grand finale of The Wheel of Time. It’s the longest series of novels I’ve ever finished, and even when the series was at its low points, I was always excited to see how it would all eventually end. Once Brandon Sanderson took over and breathed new life into the series, I was even more excited to see how he’d bring it over the finish line. Since the whole setting was built around the idea that this was a universe with circular time, I was sure it was going to be something really clever and profound.
Sadly, it seems I built it up too much in my mind. Since the first novel (I think) everyone has been talking about how The Last Battle is on its way. This battle takes up and enormous chunk of this book, but… it’s just a battle. It goes on for ages and ages and fits inside one massive chapter (which, according to my Kindle and based on my reading speeds, took 6 hours to read) and there’s not much to set it apart from what we’ve seen elsewhere in the series – just soldiers and Aes Sedai fighting Trollocs and the other Shadow forces all fighting each other.
One thing that sets it apart is that some characters actually die, but quite tellingly, I fond myself not really feeling anything for them. Weirdly, it was the death of one of the side characters which resonated with me the most, because I always admired her and (unlike other characters) very little was made of her death, so it seemed quite shocking and brutal. After spending so much time with these characters, I felt like I should feel a greater sense of loss at their deaths.
Something else that bothered me was that it felt like the novel failed to deliver on what I really felt was the whole point of The Wheel of Time. I’ve now read the entire series, and (mild spoiler alert) it never does anything with the concept of circular time. I was drawn to this series because I thought that it was really cool to have a universe built around that… but then this is only ever a piece of background information. Yes, some characters’ previous lives are relevant, but it never really goes further back than someone’s last life, so could just be a regular reincarnation-based setting. On top of that, I now know that Moiraine’s return never leads to anything really interesting either, she’s mostly just there, which sucks, because she is my favourite Wheel of Time character and I was so excited for her coming back. It’s especially disappointing that there’s never a substantial interaction with her and Lan. I wanted closure between them.
I don’t mean to say that I didn’t like this book – I did. There were some really cool scenes with Birgitte in the last battle, and she was actually used in a pretty clever way. There’s also a sense of a finality to it all, and I am pleased to see this story that I’ve been reading for so long come to a conclusion. I wasn’t exactly bored as I read it, just underwhelmed, so it was better than some of the other books. It’s a shame though, because The Gathering Storm gave me high hopes for a satisfying conclusion… only for it to kind of just be the same as a lot of the other books. I guess after sticking around for 14 massive novels, I just wanted more of a payoff.
Rating: 6.1/10
