A review by dda9
A Memory of Light by Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan

5.0

Before reading “A Memory of Light” I would have given Jordan’s/Sanderon’s Wheel of Time series three stars. The first few books are good fantasy. The middle of the series slows down considerably. Book ten was a chore. Book eleven was more interesting and it kept getting better, but it couldn’t make up for the enormous effort required to slog through four or five thousand pages that, frankly, weren’t that compelling. “A Memory of Light” changed that. The Wheel of Time finale is easily one of the most wonderful and poignant books I have ever read. This is the first book that has evoked such feelings of loss from the characters, and such satisfaction from the plot resolution since I read Lloydd Alexander’s “The High King” (Book five of The Chronicles of Prydain) as a boy. This book alone raises the series to four stars simply for setting up this book.
I would also add that this is the most complex novel that I have ever read. With a character count in the realm of “War and Peace” and world creation that rivals—dare I say surpasses—Tolkien, this series is immersive like nothing else. Despite the sometimes slow moving plot, Jordan, then Sanderson do a wonderful job with character development so that by “A Memory of Light” the reader is heavily invested with each character. Sanderson does a marvelous job bringing together the multitude of strings of the plot that Jordan created to weave a fantastic story.
This book started out at a normal pace, but by the mid-point, the plot seemed to be moving so fast that I wasn’t ready for the developments. It sometimes left me (figuratively) out of breath.
I don’t know that I will ever make it through the entire wheel of time series again, but I will definitely reread “A Memory of Light.”