Karan

This is where the Wheel of Time turns from rollicking adventure where the action never stops to this incredibly complex tapestry, only... you don't necessarily love every bit of what's being put forward.

You'll start to get more selective, more picky in what you focus on lest it drive you to distraction. Where books 1-4 had grand arcs, book 5 has inertia, weight of plot history to be manoeuvred, and it starts to take a fair bit to turn the ship, because we're now on the epic fantasy high seas, not just on a river or pond.

My no. 1 bugbear is definitely the menagerie plot. Jordan spends far too much time working through that, and kills it off with limited actual character growth as a result. The second one is the emergence of the gender stereotypes and fixation (can't kill a woman! Even if she's about to gut you!) which draaaags so much on the rest of the books.

I was fine with a lack of Perrin but a lack of Moiraine POV or indeed even much interaction on-screen between Moiraine and Rand detracts here, given events at the end of the book. Mat coming into his own was worth it though. And this is where I mark the start of the slog; even if Lord of Chaos has its moments, so much starts here.