I was originally a great fan of the Wheel of Time series. Robert Jordan's gift of spinning worlds into focus was quite awe-inspiring for my then-teenage self. At about book #8, however, it became quite obvious that Jordan had "sold-out" and was just cranking out as many books as fast as he can whack them out on a typewriter. Each book was a half-mix of reiteration of the same concepts from the series (power corrupts, men don't get women, vice versa, the wheel weaves, politics & war, etc), and the other half spinning wildly tangential story lines while never quite tying up the old ones. This formula worked for the few half-dozen books, but one gets the feeling that Jordan's editor must have throw up her hands at some point, because the weight of these multiple story arcs end up bogging down the plot so much that in these later books literally nothing happens *FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK*. Each few chapters introduces some story arc, inches the plot forward ever so slightly, and then jumps to another thread. Someone from Tor Books needed to put his foot down and say "Enough already, stick to these character and finish the blasted story!!"