There might be a half-decent story here, under all the bloat and the endless mystic mumbo-jumbo of wheels turning and so forth (at which point I lose all patience) but it's bloody hard to make out. There comes a point in fantasy when you're world-building and over-complicating for the sake of it instead of for the sake of story - and this book has not only reached that point, it's left it far in the rear view mirror. I had to force myself to keep reading; large swathes of it were unbelievably tedious.

It's not utterly dire. There are some moments of invention which caught my attention - I did enjoy the Ogier and the creepy Way travelling, the idea of the Aes Sedai and gendered magic - and although the main character might well have been called Bland instead of Rand, I did like Lan and Nynaeve. But for the most part, it's a perfect example of why I struggle with a lot of epic fantasy... the story is so inflated that I just stop caring.