The Dragon Reborn

I am so conflicted about this book.
I spent the majority of reading it pissed off and/or confused.

Here's why (this is going to be a long one, sorry):

Characters - Almost all of the main characters are detestable. Arrogant, ignorant, rude, stubborn, impulsive and ungrateful. Think about their behaviour and tell me it's not true. Could you imagine having to travel with these people, or even spend a day with them, throwing tantrums about everything?
I am tired of characters who keep insisting that they will not be manipulated, while being manipulative. Of characters who demand to be told everything, while being unwilling to share anything themselves, or even to ask a question in a normal tone.
I'm even more tired of rude women, waving long-handled wooden spoons, yelling and bossing men around. In the entire book, there were exactly 2 notable women, who could be considered somewhat reasonable - Moiraine and Elayne (and even Elayne was quite arrogant at times). All the others grated on my nerves endlessly.
The characters were the main reason for my displeasure with this book, and this series so far. I have always found them somewhat annoying, but until this moment I was hoping for some sort of growth, for some sort of an arc. I'm starting to doubt there will ever be any. At this point, if any of them died, I wouldn't care one bit.

Relationships - The author seems to be unable to write human relationships of any sort. The love subplots, the arguments, the day to day communication between people - all of those are written choppy and clunky. None of it is believable. Every time I feel as though we are missing the setup for what we are looking at. It makes it feel unnatural and frustrating.
Pretty much none of the behaviour people exhibited made sense. It seems as though it was added there to serve the plot (not that it did in most cases), without a second thought of whether it made sense or not. Can anyone show me the setup for Egwene and Nynaeve's fight, please? Or the point of it, for that matter?
I understand that human communication is often complicated. But the author seems content to just show us conflicts and arguments, and call it bonding between characters. Completely omitting any actual endearing moments between them. Can you show me one scene in this book that displays any acts of warmth or kindness? Any friendly conversation between people?

Too much of... everything - Too many named characters and places. Too much repetitiveness. I lost the track of named inns and named innkeepers, of named random characters met on the road. Not all of whom were needed and mostly bloated the storyline unnecessarily.
What happened to the white cloaks we read about in the beginning? Why put them in the book at all? What happened to Thom? If you think about it, did he have any prominent role in this book? If he wasn't in it, would anything change?
I am tired of reading about the embroidery of dresses and shirts, or the silverwork on boots, or the cut of trousers... As an example, around the 80% mark of the book, the author has written the description of the garments in a given city 3 times from 3 different characters. In detail! Followed by 3 pages(!!!) description of the city. Which was already described prior to it... Who the hell needs that??
Creating an atmosphere is important and I love it. But this was too much. It felt like a filler, and artificially dragged the plot.

Rushed ending - To contrast the above, the ending went really quick, and I wanted more, because it was well written. But a lot was omitted. As though the author was tired of describing the town, so he just wanted to be rid of the ending as fast as possible.

The one thing that saves this book is the plot. I am curious about what is going to happen next, and all the above didn't diminish my interest. I will continue with the next book as a single last chance for this series.

Sorry for the long review.