It is a huge relief to be done with this thing. What a waste of time. I no longer have any desire to finish this series. I'm going to keep the first three that I love, consider them ideally suited to being incomplete, and forget about the rest. This one was bloated with the author's boredom and it couldn't have been clearer that she just wanted to get through the story. Difficulties were solved in the most expedient way every time, full of deus ex machinas and inconsistent mind-power solutions; the main character has become a self-important little twat; the romantic tension was a mutant of its former compelling self; there were more irrelevant side characters with ridiculous names than grains of rice in the canister in my cupboard; and the writing was just plain bad, especially the dialogue. If anyone needs an example of why "telling" is bad storytelling, look no further. Entire plotlines were summarized by convenient character speeches: "This is what happened." There was exactly one paragraph that momentarily reminded me of the old style, but it was fleeting and not even important - just a random description of some landscape. The death of a friend was glossed over and sapped of all poignancy. In 1000 pages, there wasn't a single sentence or image I would take out of it with me. It saddens me to once again be confronted with the soured fruits of an author I used to love.