Knife of Dreams (Wheel of Time, 11) Audio CD – Unabridged, October 11, 2005

Robert Jordan was a great writer. The WHEEL of TIME series was a pleasure to read. In depth stories, characters, plots, and suspense masterfully woven together to produce such an outstanding series. At times the names and places get confusing but the author includes an index of names and places with their spelling and pronunciation along with a brief synopsis. Read the series again and like the HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RINGS, you pickup a lot of things you probably missed the first time through!

This is a great fantasy series. Very original, exciting and well developed. There is consistent high quality between the books in the series with no deterioration from Book 1 to 11. I fear I’m nearing the end of the series and don’t want it to end. I love the characters, drama, tension, universal themes and the fullness of the world and culture described. There is a lot of depth, detail and complexity. My only fault is there might be too much detail and repetitive style descriptions for some readers.

While it still doesn't compare to the first four or five books, Knife of Dreams is probably the best novel in the Wheel of Time series since Fires of Heaven. The good news is numerous plot lines advance and the writing shows the effect of a full editing cycle. The bad news is that the good writing here oddly illuminates how much of a hole author Robert Jordan dug for himself with the mess of the previous novels - with it being made very clear even a writer of his talent probably won't be able to resolve the plethora of details even with another couple of books. I take a star off for letting a number of details and characters slip along with another half star for a pace that at times returns to near-plodding, but I'll round it up from 3.5 stars to four for the progress here that makes me have high hopes for the next book.It is outright scary to think of how many top selling authors have come and gone since Jordan started this series. In 1990, Lemony Snicket was a sophomore in college, J. K. Rowling had just taken that fateful train ride back to London, and most of the top sellers on the sci-fi/fantasy lists hadn't been published even in fan magazines. My rating here is standalone and does not reflect my frustration with how Jordan has dragged this out; read my reviews of Crossroads and New Spring if you doubt that. (Incidentally, Jordan claims to never have read a review on Amazon, having stated that "if you're going to get your heart checked out, would you go to a doctor (professional reviewer) or walk up to a guy on the street?" Oh well.)Although not spectacular, Knife of Dreams finally gives hope again. Without spoiling things, many plotlines raised in the last few books advance. Perrin's attempts to recover Faile, Mat's escape with and courtship of Tuon, Elayne's struggle for her crown, and a few miscellaneous issues resolve. More significantly and more satisfyingly, Jordan really does make progress on some plotlines that have been promised since the first few books - Egwene's struggle to truly be the Amyrlin Seat, the implications of Lan as Aan'allein, and miraculously, even some movement on the long (1995!) dormant Eel- and Aelfinn plotline. There are also some remarkable new point-of-view (Tuon, Loial!) perspectives that add to the details of the world without having to write hundreds of pages. Finally, the book also shows the effort of being at Tor for more than a month before publication like the last four or five novels; Jordan isn't allowed to go off into tangents - and thankfully, no major new characters get introduced - and in general the writing is generally crisper.Unfortunately, it's not enough. Jordan has created so many irrelevant plotlines and characters from the sixth book onwards that even with a workmanlike effort to clean up here the mess is still very much present. A glaring result is that the main plot - what the Dragon Reborn is doing - not only receives merely cursory attention but also doesn't show up until Chapter 18, or 385 pages into a 760 page book. The not-particularly-engaging Windfinder and Tower-divided stories get far too much coverage without moving much, a number of major characters besides Rand (like Min, Nynaeve, and Aviendha) get very little stage time with more minor players like Galina and various Shaido characters receiving far too much, other interesting plots like the Forsaken move barely at all with minimal coverage, and of all the advancements above only the Egwene line really feels satisfying. (If Jordan had advanced the other main characters as much as Egwene this would have been a much better book.) The problem is clear. The last really good WoT book, Fires of Heaven, had roughly four or five major plotlines; this has at least ten thanks to the mess of the last few books. While Jordan and his editor state unequivocally that this will be finished in one more book (thankfully planned to be completed before any more prequels), all the new material he's added makes this doubtful and is now standing directly in the way of a great wrapup.Jordan's goal was to have fans sweating by the end of the book; for me, I didn't get there as this doesn't qualify as a cliffhanger by any means. Over the summer, I actually reread all the previous books and the good news is the bad ones make more sense as part of a sequential order - and at least Jordan is somewhere close to his old form, so this isn't bad. But then again, it's not great either. Still, it deserves 3.5 stars and is worth buying in hardcover rather than waiting. For the first time in years, I look forward to the next novel.September 2007: My sympathies to Jordan's lovely wife Harriet on his recent passing. For those who are interested, the notes he left as the basis of the massive final book, A Memory of Light, will be completed and published in 3 separate books by Brandon Sanderson.

FREAKING FINALLY ★★★★★ StarsAfter 3 books that went basically nowhere with minuscule plot development FINALLY and I mean FINALLY the story took off and things HAPPENEDIt’s like Jordan had a check list of things to tick off and he just went done the list….✔ - Perrin looking for Faile and getting his woman back✔ - Egwene actually doing something useful. Sure she had to get captured and put in the white tower to do it but finally her story arc is way more interesting.✔ - Nynaeve and Lan finally getting a little relationship fleshing out and one of my favorite moments of the series. Way to go all Aes Sedea on your man Nynaeve. This is probably the only time I will approve of such a move.✔ - Avienda cutting strings from Elayne. Maybe it will be her turn with Rand again soon.✔ - Rand outing another of the Forsaken. The price might be a little heavy but he just keeps on swimming. Actually I love him and Min together, she seems to get him better than anyone else and I love how in her own way she is just as strong or actually stronger than him. (view spoiler)✔ - Mat and Tuon playing courting games that seem more like battle strategy I LOVE THEM SO MUCH TOGETHER✔ - Thom finally telling us what is in that letter that Moraince left for him how many books ago. Well we get to read it AND I’m so excited about where that is going to lead our crew.✔ - The Elayne the Daughter Heir finally finding her place. Whether it is on the Lion throne or not you will just have to read to see. Her arc is actually my least favorite maybe because so much time is spent on the pregnancy and sometimes she is so smart and THEN she does that very stupid thing towards the end that just leads me to believe she isn’t even close to ready to be a Queen.✔ - Birgetta being awesome as always. Why would we need Galad or Gawyn again to protect Elayne??? I just don’t know. I’m pretty sure I know who Gaidal Cain is reincarnated as *crosses fingers* that is my favorite deviant in training (view spoiler)And Much Much more…. A few characters get the comeuppances that they deserve and it is so gratifying.Was it worth going through three pretty slow books to get to some awesome? The jury is still out. For me yeah probably since Sanderson is finishing out this series and I read ~200 books a year so no biggy. But for someone else who doesn’t get to read so much and has to pick and choose probably not unless you are into extreme worldbuilding.Very excited to start the into the end with my favorite Epic Fantasy Writer the fantastic Brandon Sanderson.

Great Author!

As I understand this was the last book book managed to write before he died. Unlike otjer books, these one was more dinamic, and closed some events that were moving very slowly over last 2 books, like Faile captivity and Mat vs the Daughter of nine moons. Hope Brandon Sanderson close out of the last 3 books is up to the challenge

Easy to download. Fantastic set of books.

This version of the Ebook is missing partial paragraphs. One page will end in a hyphen, and the next page will start with the new paragraph. I have the physical hard cover version of this book and I have confirmed that there are at least 2 sections that are missing partial paragraphs.

Non troppo concentrato sulle minuterie delle vite dei numerosissimi caratteri