26th September 2026

The ninth book of the Wheel of Time is mostly focussed on Mat and what's happening to him as his destiny approaches. There are shorter parts with Rand and Elayne, and occasional minor characters - but two of the main characters don't even make an appearance.

From memory, this was where in my first readthrough I thought the story became plodding and slow. This time, I only really felt that in the very middle of this book, deep into Mat's plotline. Either end of the book felt like it moved at a good pace, both wrapping up cliffhangers from earlier and moving the overall story on in interesting ways.

As expected, there's a lot of world-building, especially with the new civilisation and new city that we separately get to visit. But it does feel like the story is moving towards the climax now - the various pieces are moving into position on the board to try to set them up towards the endgame.

I'm intrigued to find out how I find the next book on this re-read, as my memory says book ten was the low point before everything started to pick up pace again.

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9th May 2026

The eighth book, on second reading 16 years later, has the feeling of being about moving the chesspieces around the board to get them ready for the next bit of exciting play.

Structurally, we spend a chunk of chapters with each grouping of characters, rather than their stories being interspersed throughout. This provides good focus in a long tale and probably reduces confusion, but does mean if you're trapped as a reader in a part you enjoy less, you might struggle to get to the bit you really want.

On my previous reading I commented on barely believable coincidences, but I think that's not so troublesome this time round - one of the well-established concepts by this point of the story is that the trio of Rand, Perrin, and Mat have a magic to them which causes coincidences. On reflection, that's quite a genius bit of worldbuilding from Jordan to have right from the start and run through the series to justify all sorts of things.

It's not the greatest story as a standalone book, and from memory marks the point where the books became more functional and formulaic. That said there's some bits I strongly remember that still haven't arrived and are only being hinted at, so I'm keen to see them arrive in the next couple of books.

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8th February 2026

The seventh book is another exciting entry in the series, and moves around the characters with a good frequency - we get long enough to feel like it's not flitting, but not so long we get bored of any particular plotline before shuffling to the next.

And there's a lot happening, we spend time with all the main characters and they are all on their own journeys in this one, in differing parts of the world, and dealing with different problems.

I really enjoyed it, and was almost tempted to go on to book eight straight away. There's things happening now that I don't properly remember from before, which is interesting. The climax of this one though did feel like it came out of nowhere, so I'm not sure if my lack of memory meant I missed some of the hints that it was coming.

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29th December 2025

The sixth book of the Wheel of Time - and I've left it a little while since the fifth - and it does remind me of why I thought this was where it started to drag before.

The book covers a significant set of moments in the ongoing story, but does feel a bit like it's dipping into soap opera territory.

There are two really strong segments of the book - one in the middle and one at the end. Both of these feel vital to everything and switch into really compelling reading, and only the first was something I'd remembered from my previous reading.

But everything else feels a bit slow and draggy. The narrative moves between characters and locations at pace, which I remember being something that differs from later books. In one case however, there's a brief section near the start and then those characters seem entirely forgotten about until suddenly needed later.

Still a great series, but I'm less inspired to immediately pick up the next book.

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12th July 2025

Book five of my Wheel of Time re-read, and I felt like things picked up pace here. Rand is on the move, Egwene and Mat with him. Nynaeve and Elayne are also on the move. Perrin doesn't appear at all after having a massive role in the previous novel.

It's a good all round piece giving lots for the characters to do, new people to meet, and lots of big events and changes that feel like they are upping the drama of the whole series.

The narrative felt like it flowed well, moving between points of view at a good frequency to avoid feeling choppy without giving over big chunks to any one at a time. I have memories of the Salidar plot and that being an area I particularly liked on my first reading 16 years ago, so it's nice to see that coming along.

My only issue was that the ending felt a bit rushed. This might have been because I wasn't able to spend time properly focussed, so was reading in small chunks, but might have been a deliberate attempt to up the pace for the drama.

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21st June 2025

Onto book four in my Wheel of Time re-read. There's a lot going on, and we open with a contrast to the previous book by skipping around the various main characters fairly quickly. After a while though, this settles into long chunks of the book following a particular character, and I found this quite draining, and that I wanted to get through it to get to the other characters. I think for me, the jumping between them works better as a style for keeping my attention.

This feels like the book where the author has realised it's going to be more books than he thought to get to the end of this story, and so things slow down a bit. There's more world to explore, and that's very much what's happening here. One storyline takes us off to learn a new culture, their entire backstory, and set up stuff for future books. Another storyline finds another culture to explore, and provides an action setting for two characters who I felt got a bit of short shrift in the previous book. And the third takes us back home to see how things are changing and provide key character and world growth.

It's one of the longest books in the series and really felt it. Particularly once I'd passed the halfway point it felt a real slog trying to get through to the end - I really wanted it to be over faster. And yet I'm already craving returning to the world and getting on with book five.

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7th June 2025

I've rapidly reached book three in my Wheel of Time re-read, and this one is strikingly different from the first two. As readers, we're now cut off from Rand, the main character we'd been with so far, and instead get long chunks of narrative following the other four lead characters of the series, before some faster chopping between them as the climax approaches.

This style I think makes the story feel slower. There's a lot to get through that feels like exposition, or just lining characters up for things, rather than developing them and their action.

Again, there's a new character who I didn't remember appearing this early in the series. It still gives that feeling that Jordan intended for a six-book adventure, not the 15 books that this became. The overall plot feels like it's taking a bound forward in each book, reaching a key milestone at the end.

I am considering a longer break now before re-reading book four, but we shall see how that pans out.

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