I was exactly like you, and stuck with the book exactly for the same reason as you (recommendation from Gollum lol, and other people raving about it).
I bought the book in 2005, and it took me about 4 turns to finish it (last year). I'm so happy i read it, took me a bit of time to get used to Eriksons style of writing (which yes is great, but did take time to jumping around all the time). The thing really helped me with the first half of the bookw as reading the list of characters and if I couldn't rememeber who they were, checking that out again.
It is a good book, so perservere, as it is definatly worth it
