Crossroads of Twilight (Wheel of Time) (Paperback)

I was equally rapt about the many pages devoted to the adjustment of clothing such as shawls and skirts.

Just as interesting were the chapters on characters sitting around wondering what to do next. Almost as interesting as the large parties of old and new characters travelling to unknown destinations on an unknown timetable for unknown reasons.

There is a major mistep in this book where the tracks of a group of hell hounds appear. Fortunately the creatures were not sighted and did not go near any characters narrowly avoiding the jarring intrusion of action or suspense into an otherwise pleasant book.

Some people have claimed this book is a setup for book 11. This is incorrect. The blurb on the back cover of this book is a setup for book 11, the contents of this book do not really expand on the blurb and are not a requirement for moving on to book 11.

This book has been long awaited by anyone who's read the last nine, something Jordan must be aware of. Even the most diehard fans (and I'm one of them) must be wanting Jordan to get on with it, to advance the plot a little. This book doesn't do that. There are sections dealing with Perrin, Mat, Egwene, Elayne and (briefly) Rand himself, but none of them really take the story anywhere. Perrin starts out on a search & rescue mission for Faile and by the end of the book he's still on a search & rescue mission for Faile, Mat is trying to leave Seanchan territory and still is at the end of the book, the siege of Tar Valon and the choosing of the Queen of Andor go precisely nowhere and Rand does nothing of significance. 680 pages and hardly anything happens.

To be fair, it does seem, in all the above cases, as if something is about to happen (in fact the Egwene and Mat storylines do have significant events happen right at the end, but even these just set up a situation for the next volume to deal with), so volume 11 may well have a lot of action in it. But I would have liked some here, I've been waiting over a year after all. Even if it meant the book being longer, I don't mind 1100 page novels, in fact I quite like them.

And this is more disappointing because the prologue, which I downloaded from Kazaa a few months back (can you believe that Jordan got upset because people like me refused to pay twice for the same piece of writing?) did have lots of tantalising hints of action. It seemed that a counterattack was going to be launched on the Seanchan and the Black Tower was going to be split. But none of these promising plotlines come to fruition. The possible split in the Black tower is mentioned once and the counterattack on the Seanchan not at all.

Like most people who've read the other nine I can't see any way to stop now, I've invested too much in it. And there is some interesting character development and some slight movement on some sub plots. However for £18 and a wait of nearly 2 years I had expected more. But, like Nick Hornby and Arsenal in the seventies, I'm stuck with what's dished out to me and can see no way out of it.

Jordan has said that he hopes to finish by volume 12, something I can't see happening given how little happened here. But I still hope he'll recover his earlier style, the interesting and excellent books that drew me into this series. Hopefully he will recover and start to write decently again. A bit like Arsenal in the 80s.