Book Review: The Gathering Storm By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

I've reposted an updated version of my review of The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson on goodreads.  This is a review that I wrote and put up a little over a year ago, but never gave to the magazine I write for, because I had plans of doing my Wheel of Time retrospective.  I've rewritten parts of it, and fixed a few grammatical errors as well.  I'm still rereading the book at the moment, in fact I've only really just begun, but I figured I might as well get the review all polished up for publication as soon as possible.  As my grandfather always used to say, "never leave for tomorrow, what can be done today."

This is my second favorite book in the series, despite a slew of continuity errors and such that resulted from the rush to get the book published, and the change in writers.  I feel that these things are completely understandable under the circumstances, and that the rest of the book shines so brightly as an excellent example of bringing characters to their knees before finally allowing them to find the light that I, frankly, don't care about the errors.  The story of this book is just so beautiful, and well played out that I'm willing to forgive almost any number of small errors that were the result of the circumstances.  Brandon Sanderson took an impossible task and turned an excellent book out of it that Robert Jordan himself would have been proud of.