Today during my (way too short) lunchbreak, I finished Robert Jordan’s Knife Of Dreams. Yes, I’m kind of surprised that I picked it up too, after totally skipping Crossroads of Twilight because I couldn’t be arsed, but I heard some good reviews and it’s been too long since I’ve read something new, so I read it anyway. And lo and behold, it’s not even all that bad. It’s actually even quite good at points. Because sweet people, Things. Get. Resolved.

The way the book is written, it’s very clear that Jordan made himself a list with bulletpoints called Things To Resolve In This Fucking Book, printed it out and hung it above his desk while sitting down to plan & write this book. I recognize it very clearly because that’s the way I worked when finishing up Balance for myself. I had clear goals for every passage I wrote. And so did Jordan. Every passage had something to accomplish, some hint, remark or action that the POV character did to push the plot along. It was a relief to read this after the sitting around and twiddling thumbs that most of the characters did in the last two or three books.
Still, the book has some faults. Some of the characters are clearly insufferable. I kept hoping for Elayne to trip over her shoelaces and break her neck, and Egwene was just a total fucking bitch. But for the rest; Rand had some very interesting screentime, Mat did some cool things, and let’s not forget Nynaeve who actually did some very constructive stuff. It was lovely to see everyone get off their lazy asses to realize that yes, Tarmon Gai’don is upon them and they should really sit down to do something about that.

I don’t think, however, that the next book will be the last one. He’ll need one more: 13 books in total. One for every Forsaken. *grins* No seriously, in the next book they need to resolve a rescue mission storyline, the WT needs to stand strong again, and then in the last book he can sit down to write the bloody Last Battle. He can’t do that all in one book, it’d be rushed to the point of awfulness. Robin Hobb can pull a thing like that off, but I don’t think Jordan can. Not everything writes as tightly as Hobb, and that’s okay.