A review by willowbiblio
A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan

3.0

"It could crush you, that despair. But the act of creating something- anything- fought back."
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My favorite part was when the refugees showed up demanding to do their part, however small. It somehow perfectly captured that innate goodness that humans are capable of. In general, I think Jordan/Sanderson tried to do way too much here because there were so many characters and secondary plots to wrap up.

What should have been the most enthralling part of the book- Rand's confrontation with the Dark One- took a backseat to the battle. The battle was grotesque in its gratuitous use of character deaths. Bela and others felt like cheap shots for emotional reactions from the reader.

Also- bringing out the Sharans, an entirely new race, just to have human counterparts and a reason for Demandred to be there was massively disappointing and lazy from Jordan/Sanderson. It felt like an "oh shit we need to bring in this Forsaken we've been teasing all series but forgot to do it 8 books ago". It was way too late in the series to assimilate all of it. It sucks because their whole tattoo society thing was actually interesting and would have been such a better use of pages than things like Faile's kidnapping which did literally nothing for the plot.

So much of the series could have been trimmed out and it would have been a lot more readable and enjoyable. As it was, this book especially lumbered to a somewhat frustrating and limp conclusion. I really believed in the potential until the end but the execution of it all just left me disappointed.