A Memory of Light

At its core, the Wheel of Time series has always been about people. Lots and lots of people.

I came to this series late, when I started Eye of the World, Robert Jordan was already dead, and Brandon Sanderson had finished The Gathering Storm. I know a lot of people have complained about the verbosity of Jordan's series, and how for stretches throughout the books, nothing much happened. I disagree, but I suppose if I had to wait years in between book release dates, I'd have grumbled too. So this review is from someone who has read these books over the course of three years, and generally remembered major and minor characters along with all the intertwined plots.

I finished this hours ago, whilst at my job. Something had gone wrong with something somewhere, and my supervisor was running around trying to fix it. It was 5:40PM, and my coworkers and I were supposed to have been gone an hour before. I didn't care. While I should've been helping to solve whatever the problem was (I'm still not sure), I instead elected to finish A Memory of Light. While people rushed around me, my eyes never strayed from those final pages and I watched some of my favorite characters triumph, fail, laugh, find their loves, and in some cases, die.

I loved this book. Say what you will about the series, but it's complete, it was one hell of a ride, and I enjoyed it.

Everything is tied together in a way that works. Few people or events are slighted, and for a series fourteen books long, MoL does an impressive job of referencing just about every earlier piece.

Were there slow parts? You bet. Did some places leave me scratching my head? Yup. The story isn't perfect, because no story is.

I won't bother with plot details, because if you don't know what the Wheel of Time is about yet, why are you reading this? Yes, questions are answered. Yes, the Last Battle is fought and it is, an actual battle with swords and horses and Trollocs and Dreadlords. Yes, the Prophecies are fulfilled, and yes, it's totally rewarding to read it all.

900 pages is a lot, but they breezed by as I read.

I realize I'm kind of all over the place here, but it's also pretty late, I had a busy day, and the ending of MoL was emotional. In closing, I'll say that the Wheel of Time series is one of my favorite series of all time, filled with some of my favorite characters of all time, and I found this book to be a remarkable end.

Of course, it's not an ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it is an ending.

See what I did there?