I did actually (that is enjoy them), this was way back when the novels first started coming out. I was just a kid in school back then and had only read
LOTR,
Hobbit etc., this sort of thing was new at the time (huge EPIC series with multiple characters/POV's). Have to admit, the first three books rocked my world! and had he concluded the series then and there as a trilogy, then who knows, it could have been a great fantasy series and
Jordan would not have ended up being criticized as much.
Didn't mind the fourth (
The Shadow Rising) which kept advancing the plot albeit with bloat and fluff, though compare to the pace of first three, felt it's momentum slowing...trudged through the fifth volume (
The Fires of Heaven), but couldn't relate to it much as it mostly dealt with the exploits of the female characters, not that I have anything against female characters; by then I was expecting more of
Perrin,
Matt et al.
Lord of Chaos, the sixth in the sequence did better than The Fires of Heaven IMHO; some really interesting stuff happens (one being; one of the biggest and bloodiest battle scenes depicted thus far among eleven volumes out in
WOT,
Dumai's well?) but the said good stuff is just too far and few between and with a lot of filler added.
Here on things started to go downhill…books 7 to 10 was just crap, nothing much I can say there except for the fact that I read them
. In 9th (
Winters Heart) something so extraordinary happens in the WOT world…that I was naïve enough to forgive and had some inkling of hope for
Crossroads of Twilight But was brutally let down; “
It sucked to high heaven”
Werthead had said in his post, I couldn’t have said it better
. A
Knife of Dreams, the one leading up to the supposed grand finale;
A memory of Light is better written which a breath of fresh air; it closed a lot of subplots albeit a bit rushed.
I just hope
Brandon Sanderson, who is writing the final volume would deliver, wouldn’t want to be in his shoes, the amount of pressure he would be under is hard to fathom. But the good news is that
Jordan left a lot of material and it is said that he narrated the ending of
A Memory of Light to his wife and brother. So at least we know that the thing will close the way Jordan wanted it to end (which tend to be a nagging problem with a lot of series in similar circumstances...),
Sanderson doesn’t have to make it up, which IMHO saves him a lot of trouble and gives us fans, I hope, some closure.
Cheers, DeepThought