The Gathering Storm is the twelfth volume in Robert Jordan’s sprawling The Wheel of Time series. Jordan unfortunately and sadly died in 2007, before completing the last chunk of the series, and Brandon Sanderson (author of several excellent but less-well-known fantasy novels) was hired to finish this and the following two books that round off the series based on Jordan's notes, outlines, and completed sections.

In theory, it should have led to disaster: typically one writer finishing a series begun by another is an ill-advised idea that only leads to very bad books. So far as this volume goes, at least, the handover has succeeded. There's a real spark and fire here; if you're a fan of the earlier books, and you haven't gotten completely jaded to the entire The Wheel of Time series by now, you will love this one as well. Promise. Whilst there are a few moments in The Gathering Storm where you think, "I don't think Robert Jordan would have done things quite like that," there's never a moment where you think, "He definitely wouldn't have done that at all!".

This is quite possibly my favourite book in the series. Like many loyal readers. I felt that after book 5 or 6 the story grew too slow and cumbersome; while books 7-10 in particular may not have been action-packed, I enjoyed all of them, and felt they all added something significant to the story. Sure, it got slow at times, and sure, he probably could have trimmed it down. But the hours of reading pleasure they gave me, I wouldn't trade. However, if the series had been slowing, then The Gathering Storm was a sledgehammer between the eyes telling you to wake up. The action is fast paced, the storyline is constantly moving and building, the subplots get resolved, and the main characters develop and grow. The decisions reached are logical and reasonable. There is not a single page in the entire book that does not contribute to the story. All in all, I am pretty thrilled, and hope that the next couple books continue as strongly as this one. ( )

A worthy successor to the previous 11 books in the series with seamless writing between the 2 authors. ( )

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from The Gathering Storm. I like the Wheel of Time series. I like Brandon Sanderson. However, I tend to be somewhat wary of these "posthumous collaborations," because usually they're only a step or two above fanfic (if that).

In the case of The Gathering Storm, mt worries were unfounded. This is a truly excellent continuation of the series. I think it's actually better than some of the middle of the series novels where Jordan let the plot lag a bit too much. The plot doesn't lag here, and Rand's character actually develops.

My only complaint, is a general complaint with the series: there are too damn many major characters. This means that many of the characters from the past who were interesting seem to either be given less time in the novel (Mat doesn't show up until halfway through) or disappear altogether (Elayne for instance doesn't get anything more than a few mentions). Even so, this is a good book.

Truly epic! Mr. Sanderson did an amazing job taking over this series after Mr. Jordan's death. I can't wait for the final two books to see how this fantasic story ends! ( )

Long-awaited - especially as I let Mike read it first - this is the first posthumous instalment of the Wheel of Time, and as a result very exciting. And in fact it turns out to be pretty exciting in content too. Sanderson does a very good job of capturing Jordan's style - if you didn't know you'd hardly notice the hand of another author on the reins. I think this one does well in not trying to tell us what people are doing when they're not doing much: Elayne is noticeably almost entirely absent. Egwene and Rand both play pretty starring roles though. One struggling for the white tower, the other ceasing to struggle to remain human. Rand's parts of the story are very dark in places, but done well. I definitely enjoyed this, but dread to think that there are still two more to come, and probably a year at least to wait between each of them. ( )

A much awaited book that builds up for the Final Battle... Brilliant but boring at times, especially when all Rand does is move all over the land with the new-found power of Travelling. ( )

Summary: The Last Battle is coming, and coming quickly; the Dark One's touch has never been more evident in the world. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, is mankind's only chance of defeating the Dark One in the Last Battle... but how can anyone prepare for a responsibility like that? Rand has conquered almost half of the known world, but his hold of the various countries is fracturing, and he knows mankind must present a united front if they are to have any hope of survival. To that end, he tries to make peace with the Seanchan invaders, but even that may be for naught if Rand cannot learn to control the darkness and hardness that he has tried for so long to cultivate in his soul.

Meanwhile, Egwene, the Amyrlin Seat of the rebel Aes Sedai, is a captive within the White Tower. She is subject to severe punishments at the command of Elaida, the irrational and power-mad Amyrlin, but worse than the pain of any beating is watching the White Tower crumble from within. She knows the Aes Sedai need to be strong, and the Tower must be whole in order to aid Rand at Tarmon Gaidon, but how can a prisoner possibly manage such a daunting task?

Review: If you would have asked me, before reading this book, if either Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson had a distinctive writing style, I would have said no. Not that they're not both good writers, but just that neither has a way with words that would enable me to point to a passage and say 'There, that sounds like Sanderson' the way I could with Guy Gavriel Kay or Michael Chabon. However, as I discovered within the first few pages of the prologue, just because neither has a distinctive style, also does not mean that they have the same style. Sanderson addresses this in his author's note, saying that he did not try to emulate Jordan's style, choosing to stay true to the characters and the story, but to tell it in his own words. And that's fine; Sanderson is an accomplished writer whose books I enjoy. On the other hand, I will admit it was initially a little bit jarring to come across paragraphs or sentences that were decidedly un-Jordan-like.

I adapted quickly, though, and truth be told, Sanderson does an excellent job of maintaining continuity not only with the storyline, but more importantly, with the feel of the characters. Egwene's POV chapters still feel like Egwene, Perrin still sounds like Perrin, Rand still feels like a complete dolt who you just want to kick in the shins until he finally loosens up a little. I was somewhat worried about Mat; he's got a pretty distinctive voice - one that is easy to imitate, but hard to get right - plus Mat's first chapter doesn't come until almost midway through the book. To my delight, though, that chapter starts with Mat delivering a (*very* Mat-ish) monologue about women... followed by Talmanes making fun of the way Mat talks in a way that is not only hilarious, but also pokes gentle fun at Mat (and by extension, Jordan), and just generally lets us know that Sanderson gets it.

And that's the reason why I think having Sanderson take over after Jordan's death has worked where so many multi-author continuations have failed: Sanderson gets it. He wants the series to turn out well as much as any of the rest of us do. He's a fan too. But, unlike the average fanboy or fangirl, he's also an accomplished writer in his own stead, with the chops to pull it off. And that combination of talent and passion are what makes The Gathering Storm a worthy continuation instead of merely an acceptable one.

Okay, enough about the writing, let's talk about what actually happens. In short? TOTALLY AWESOME. It is not hyperbole to say that I laughed, I cried, I spent large chunks of the book with a pit of dread in my stomach because so many things were going so terribly wrong for the characters, and I quite literally stood up and cheered out loud at at least two points. (There may even have been fist-pumping.) There are prophecies fulfilled, storylines wrapped up, mysteries solved, and a wealth of wonderful and memorable and just perfect character moments.

I know there are also those out there who are apprehensive over the fact that Brandon Sanderson's contribution was initially going to be one book... and then two... and now finally three. I was certainly a little worried myself that the split would result in something patchy and without a satisfying end point (I'm looking at you, A Feast for Crows.) But that worry was completely baseless; The Gathering Storm has some of the most complete narrative arcs of any book in the series, not to mention one of the most satisfying endings. Just excellent. 5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Don't start here if you haven't read any of the previous 11 books, obviously. However, The Gathering Storm strongly reminded me why I love this series so much, why it was worth sticking it out through some of the slower books. It made me want to go start the series over from the beginning, and (although I wouldn't have thought it possible), it made me even more eager to get my hands on the next installment. ( )

This book is a great beginning to the end of the series. The new author has a slightly different writing style, but he knows the characters and the story so well that you will still get completely caught up in the story. This book doesn't focus on all of the story lines that have been forming, but it does continue to build upon some of the major ones with some great battle scenes thrown in! If this book is a good indication on how the new author will finish the series, I can't wait to read the remaining two! ( )

Fans of the Wheel of Time series should absolutely love this one! Stuff happens! The end is definitely coming soon, both within the story and literally with only two more books to go.

If you've never read this series but you love high fantasy, go find book one, "The Eye of the World," and get started ASAP.

If you enjoy complex storylines, strong characters, and places so detailed you feel like you're there, even if it's only make-believe, you will probably also enjoy this series. Magic is in here as are otherworldly creatures, so if you can suspend your belief for a while, pick up book one and get lost inside. ( )

So much has happened. The creator of the series died after writing 11 books. A new author was chosen to write finale. The last book sprawled into a trilogy of its own. With so much anticipation, could this book possibly live up to the expectations of this decade and a half long fanboy?

Absolutely yes.

This was the most compelling read since The Fires of Heaven—maybe even since The Dragon Reborn. The pacing's back to speed, with little shawl-shifting to be found. Sanderson excelled in an impossible situation. I had never heard of the guy before he was chosen for this role, but I'm thoroughly impressed. His Mistborn Saga (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages) is now on my agenda.

Egwene's plot line has advanced masterfully—with plenty of surprising moments. Mat & Perrin have remained pretty static—although Mat's mysterious letter has certainly set up something interesting for the next volume. Hints about Moraine abound. Most important was the development of Rand himself. At times I wasn't sure whether he would rise to hero or shrink to depot.

The ending was very satisfying—even without a grand battle climax like the rest of the books. There was enough action throughout the 700+ pages to reward the reader. The last chapter left me excited for the next book. I can hardly wait. ( )

Publication of The Gathering Storm, the 12th book in Robert Jordan's epic (in many senses of the word) fantasy series The Wheel of Time, was long overdue. The last volume, Knife of Dreams, was published all the way back in 2005, before the author's untimely death in 2007. I have to take a moment to reflect on the series, because since the first book was published (1990), my investment has slowly moved from "hey, this is a neat story, let's see where it goes" to "DAMMIT, I read all the others, I have to see this through to the end! Please promise me there will someday be an end?" A fantasy-reading endurance test, if you will. I am happy to report that The Gathering Storm is an improvement over some of the later installments of the series, particularly in terms of pacing and action. I do believe that Brandon Sanderson is absolutely the right author to continue and conclude the series (based on what is reputedly a large body of unfinished work left by Jordan). Sanderson's skill at big-picture plotting is vital to the task of bringing a giant mess of characters, motivations, and events to some kind of coherent endpoint. And if he can actually do it in the next two years/two volumes, well, I salute him.

The Gathering Storm, as its name suggests, sets the stage for the Last Battle between Rand Al'Thor (the Dragon Reborn) and the Dark One. Despite being rather heavy on the storm imagery, and omitting or reducing some viewpoints (Elayne, for example) that have been prominent in previous installments, the action moves along quickly and several large plot points are resolved. Mat is relegated to a comic relief role, Perrin hardly appears, and, PS, The Last Battle is coming! I don't have the energy to summarize the details here, but the reader spends a lot of time with Egwene, who is trying to restore the White Tower to unity, and Rand, who is (as usual) struggling with his sanity and becoming more and more of a pain in the ass à la Harry Potter in The Order of the Phoenix. There is a lot of moping and staring people down. As is customary after I take a multi-year break from this series, if I had a nickel for every minor character I had to look up (particularly various Aes Sedai), I'd have at least $2.00 right now. However, there's no way that I'm going back and re-reading every freakin' book again, because this is my Year of Not Re-Reading. Also it would take forever. I was satisfied with the character development and plot movement in this volume, although the urge to smack Rand upside the head was often very strong, and the ending seemed appropriate to the trajectory of the plotlines, leaving me optimistic about the next (and penultimate) volume. Bring it on! ( )

Random Comments review ( )

Finally! After such a long wait and unfortunate events, the series lives! As I suspected, having read a few of the works of Sanderson recently, he indeed was a very good choice to conclude the series. And the first part of the final trilogy convinced me of the need to break it into three parts, the least it did was give us something to read without waiting for the entire tome to be written, so I guess I have little reason to complain. Now about the book - It was really refreshing to read a story and plot by Jordan written in Sanderson's style. Unlike the previous volumes, the action was distributed uniformly over the entire book, I was actually a little fed up of the build of story in an entire volume and a battle squeezed in the last fourth of the book to take the storyline forward.

There were still quite a few abrupt breaks, but with a storyline as vast as the one Wheel of Time boasts of, I suspect, they couldn't have been helped, though maybe managed a little better.

SPOILER ALERT:

It was quite interesting to see the first forsaken slain in the first one third and the second one sometime in the middle of the book, and none at the end! Though, out of the three, Perrin's story seems to be the dullest one, a little more exposure in this book would have helped. Mat's part, though larger than Perrin's, still left a lot to be desired. While Verin managed to get back to the White Tower, she would have dropped Mat with Elayne on her way! But we find absolutely no mention of the same in the book except Rand's one-liner viewing.

Rating: 4/5 ( )

This is the first book in the series written by someone other than Robert Jordan. Based on the large amount of notes left by Jordan, Brandon Sanderson does an excellent job with this book. For the most part, it reads like the other novels in the series, and finally starts to tie up some loose ends. This book mostly focuses on Egwene and Rand, with very little time spent with Perrin and just a bit with Matt. The book is a bit faster paced than most of the series, and the characters have developed a refreshing amount of self-knowledge. One of the better books in the series. ( )

I had to give this a 4 star and not a five for a couple of reasons. The first is that this is not the final book and I dearly wish it had been. The second is that even though most of the detailed descriptions are helpful, there were a few scenes where it seemed a little dragged out.

Spoiler-
I was happy to see the resolution (mostly) to one plot line. That would of course be Egwene. Obviously she still has some major work to do, but at least she is in place to do so. I was a little disappointed with Nynaeve in the beginning. This is one character who has seen the most growth throughout the series and at first she seemed to be sliding back into her old behavior. It wasn't until the talk she and Rand had that I saw some of the new maturity.

My biggest problem I had was in remembering all that had gone before. I really should have re-read at least Knife of Dreams before reading Storm.

All in all, a most worthy entry in the series. ( )

In short, excellent.

Brandon Sanderson nailed it. I was particularly impressed with his use of descriptive detail. WoT is the only non-YA fantasy series I've read aside from Lord of the Rings, which I disliked. That could by why I don't respond well to the descriptive world building technique that Robert Jordan used frequently earlier in the series. I can think of two clear instances where Sanderson used some small detail that would just snap the whole scene into place - it was quite effective.

The characters all grew and developed in ways that were a long time coming, and practically perfect. I laughed out loud with Mat and cheered for Egwene. The final installments can't come fast enough. ( )

Everyone of us reviewers are going to say it. It has been a long wait. And still not over. We have two years and two books to see it done.

But another seven hundred plus pages and a good day plus read. A great addition to the canon and only once did I feel that their was a scene that was probably completely written Jordan.

Spoilers

The division in the White Tower is resolved and at the end of the resolution of it, we have some hypotheticals that perhaps don't make so much sense, and take away allies that Rand certainly could have used, or that the Light could have used in their battle, but the last scene of this struggle, looks very much like Jordan wrote, or preached the entirety. It was one of the few things that did not ring true. Writers, seem to not think like people when they write a speech, and we have that problem here. Even as I write this critique, I pause, erase, backtrack and miss stuff. The longer a speech gets, the less believable it is, unless you have a teleprompter.

There is a goof. Sulin, when last I checked was hanging out with Perrin, not with Rand. With all these years and all these helpers, that is a goof that should not have been made. Or an explanation provided.

Then we have the errors of off stage people, not that they are errors, but time marches on. When entire subplots, in this case Elayne, or Perrin, are happening in the world and we don't check in, and with 750+ pages there is ample time to do so, the author has missed out on doing something that they should have.

Purists will say that we saw Perrin, for two chapters? That we saw Mat, more than two chapters. That we saw Tuon, which if Jordan thought he was being true in the plot to this character I would not agree, and that Sanderson didn't correct it, I find problematical.

Why not have previously launched the attack and not been able to summon them back. For all the spells we have of Aes Sedai we still do not have very good communication spells except in the dream world. And we know the Seachan sul-dam and Damane don't do those. An attack could have been launched. Tuon, so influenced by her husband and knowing he was a strong man who had very strong friends, could have used her head. We take a great step back to where we were at the Great Hunt. The Seachan, even though manipulated, are really shadowspawn in their souls. They love to have wars. They love to kill. Else why not have a culture where the army is so much a part of it.

When you look at the work as a trilogy, oh so long ago. The Seachan were the perfect human army for this task. The Dark One would not want just loyal beasts to serve his interests. Nations dedicated to his ways made sense. Dragging it out so long changed the perspective of the bad guys. But Rand forced the issue. He actually was the nice guy we remember from the early books, and the pride of the Seachan brought back that their society, just as any Aes Sedai will tell you, is based upon evil principles. You really want Mat to go find his wife and paddle her butt until she won't be able to sit for a few years. Her pride will cause countless deaths, and those of women which all three of our Two Rivers boys can't tolerate.

Evil does not have a good day of it. And in the later books we were seeing more discussion by the evil players. Now, except for a couple scenes, they are sadly lacking. Where is the Gholam, I keep wanting to know.

So is it worthy of reading and rereading. It is one of the better ones, despite the few things I mentioned. A good chance to see plot lines wrapped up and bring us closer to the end. Now how many more days until the next volume? ( )

Boy, is it long. 750 pages of actual story. I suspect Jordan would have chopped out some of the less significant narrative but I can understand Sanderson felt he shouldn't and couldn't. There isn't much, if any, dross in there. And I can see now why we are going to have to put up with 3 volumes instead of one to finish it.

So, without plot spoilers, where are we now? Well, we don't hear anything about Andor (either the Lion Throne or the Black Tower). We don't actually get that much further with any of the plot lines, except one - the split White Tower. None of the principles gets an overt bonk, although Min is still with Rand and Siuan and Bryne do end up grinning. We do get a partial denouement regarding the Black Ajah and a couple of significant surprises (at least to me, and I have re-read all of the books this year).

It is, largely, a book about Egwene, with a strong second line about the Seanchen (although there is nothing here that has not been foretold, shadowed or actually done - Tuon was Empress in all but name at the end of Knife of Dreams and, not startlingly, peace and harmony does not magically break out in the West of the world - remember that the Prophecies of the Dragon are different in Seanchan) and enough about the other characters (nothing about Lan, though) there to keep you interested. Travelling does seem to make things much more disjointed.

Markedly, this is very similar to the easy-to-disregard middle volume of many good trilogies - they had too much plot for 2 books but not enough action for a proper threesome. Still, I have certainly read far, far worse and anybody who has got this far, having hacked their way through 11 previous volumes and the prequel is unlikely to stop now. And I am looking forward to Audible having it available. ( )

I have been waiting for this book for approximately four years. That's when the last book in this series came out. Then the author died and I gave up. Then a spectacular new author picked up the burden and delivered and oh boy did he deliver.
I have been waiting almost two weeks to write this as my local bookstore evidently thinks release dates are for sissies. Not that I am complaining. I read this 740 page novel in around six hours. It was that good. And more than just good, it was satisfying.
So often when you read books in a series, often in this series, you get to the end of the novel and there is no real conclusion. There might be some sort of ending, but no conclusion. It makes me want to throw the book and send nasty letters to the author for stringing me along. It also doesn't help that I am a sucker and get drawn in this way on a regular basis. (On a side note, this is one reason I like Brandon Sanderson so much. He writes stand alone novels, which is getting to be a lost art in sci-fi/fantasy.)
This book ended so well that even though there are two more books to come, I was content to just be at the place the story ended. Until next October anyway. ( )