The Path Of Daggers (Wheel of Time, #8)

by Robert Jordan

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!

Oh boy, I finally made it through another Wheel of Time book. I feel like this took me forever even though I think I was faster than with the last one. I listened to this completely in audiobook form, otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have made it through.

It’s not that the story is bad it’s just taking forever and 15 days to get anywhere. Did the series really have to be this long? So many books, so many very long books. I want to know how the story ends but at this point, I’m just trying to get through the books Robert Jordan wrote so I can get to the ones Brandon Sanderson penned. I was told those are a lot nicer to read. Since I’ve never picked up any of his books, I’m rather curious, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about them. The other day I checked how many Jordan books I still need to drag myself through to get to that point and I let out a very big sigh when I realized we’re talking about three more novels.

The issue isn’t just that the books are long. First of all, Jordan tends to simply forget about some of his characters. Or at least that’s what it feels like. You’ll be reading 600+ pages about Rand and then about Nyneave and the rest of the Aes Sedai but Mat? Perrin? Never heard of again until Jordan suddenly seems to remember and maybe gives you one tiny chapter right at the end so you get a cliffhanger to drag you to the next book in the series. Maybe it’s just a me problem but I always hate it so much when authors do this.

I might not notice some storylines being forgotten about so much if at least the rest were more engaging. The biggest issue is just that every single character is so fucking annoying. I was willing to cut Rand some slack considering his situation (and prospective future), but I can’t anymore. His behavior is constantly irritating and aggravating and it just keeps getting worse. I understand that to some degree this is on purpose but that doesn’t make it any better.

In the other corner, we have Nyneave who just straight up pisses me off with every chapter I read about her. She has no excuse for constantly being such a bitch. She still acts like a child, essentially throwing a tantrum when things don’t go her way. You honestly would think that by now she would have learned how to behave but nope. Elayne is usually either mostly boring or also annoying, but to a lesser degree than Nyneave. At least for her, there seems to be some hope. In the beginning, I was somewhat fond of Nyneave but I just can’t with her anymore.