A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

Ah Jordan, your wordiness,  your massive detail, your thick books that could easily injure someone if thrown at them.  If you've come this far you realize that Crown of Swords is the seventh book in the Wheel of Time series.  Or at least I hope you realize that.  If you've somehow stumbled along this far without starting at the first book you need to turn around or become hopelessly lost.

Bad things happened to Rand in the sixth book, and he's trying to recover from them and sort out some new world order in this book.  Which means the Aes Sedai have no idea what is in store for them.  Nynaeve and Elayne are still in Ebou Dar, hoping to find an artifact that will restore the weather.  But they've been running into dead ends all over the place, and having power struggles with the other Aes Sedai in residence.  And Egwene, she's just trying to get herself out of the mire that she's been placed into as head of the Aes Sedai.

All of the characters are a little better this time around, at least compared to how they were in the first book.  I don't think we'll ever get our sweet innocent Emond's Fielder's from the first book back, but at least we have glimmers of them every once in awhile.  Rand is still distant, and I actually found his story in this one not as compelling as the others, but luckily he's surrounded by good characters.  Like Min, who is spunky and assured of herself.  Nynaeve is still my favorite, if only because I remember how she originally was.  I think she'll get better as the series go on, at least she seems to be improving.  But it does anger me that Jordan sunk her character a little too low.  Elayne I've never been overly fond of.  I recognize she's important, but she's not relatable at all.  Egwene is a good character though, and holds up well under pressure.

Jordan's book seem to be a lot of detail at the beginning, and then a climactic scene at the end whether it be a battle, or mystery, or cliffhanger.  There's always enough to keep you going to the next book though.  This book is no different, you had to wade through a massive amount of detail about dresses, culture, war, etc. with the plot line woven in with it.  Some might not care for that amount of detail, but I like the way Jordan does it so it hasn't been a problem for me.  It's also notable that there are so many things going on it's easy to miss something.  Every time I reread this series I find a new clue I hadn't noticed the previous time, and it makes the series really come together.

The series is still running pretty smoothly.  I know it starts to lag coming up, but I can't help but still like it quite a bit at this point.

A Crown of Swords
Copyright 1996
684 pages