Oh, man, this one was rough. And by scanning a lot of the other reviews, it seems like I had the same problem a lot of other readers did. Namely, the women. And I don't know if this is a reflection on me, the writer, or the characters themselves, but boy, were they pretty awful in this one.

You spend a lot of time Nynaeve's head, and she is judgmental, spiteful, petty, mean-spirited, and just an all round jerk. I don't know what Elayne's deal was, she seemed to act out of character for most of the book. Egwene goes on and on about Rand's arrogance and big head(totally oblivious to her own galactic ego and superiority), but none of that is supported by the text. Nothing Rand does indicates any outsized ego, at all. In fact, he spends most of the book being pushed around by the women surrounding him, in particular Aviendha, who spends the whole book berating him because he isn't familiar with a totally foreign culture.

And Siuan and Leane, along with Min(who doesn't do a hell of lot) just rage around the countryside at each other.

It's a weird book. I really liked the first three, but this one was a tough read. I don't know if I'm just sexist, if Jordan is, or if the women are truly awful people, but they all felt like abusers. And, I'm not sure why it rankled me so much, but Aviendha's constant refrain of 'YOU BELONG TO ELAYNE' really irritated me. On top of that, the Aiel are getting hard to stomach, with their unending judgmentalness and disregard for any other culture, which is kind of a pet peeve of mine. There was lots of talk of oath-breakers, when I'm like, bro, these people are just farmers, they didn't break any oaths, you psychotic, death-loving maniacs!

So, all in all, a tough read for me. I plan on going at least one, maybe two more books, but if they all continue like this one, I'm going to have to give it up.

Two stars only because a lot of plot moved forward.