On the other hand, if Jordan had continued, we'd probably still only be on the events of book 12… though we'd still be at book 14. Yeah, Sanderson doesn't write as descriptively or let scenes breathe the same way... on the other hand, the brevity and the needs of the plot kind of move it along at a nice clip, at the same time. Sanderson gets most of the character voices right at least (though he struggles with Mat in the first book) and that's probably the most important part.
Anyway, about 243 pages into Memory of Light (and plan to get a few hundred more tonight) and its... a very strange experience.
Its the first WoT book I've gotten on day of release, in hardcover for one, so while the page count is smaller, the actual book is bigger and there's more words per page... so it FEELS like its taking me longer to get through it. This is more pronounced after doing 13 paperbacks of this series than it would be if I'd gone to a hardcover of something else. Its like "Well, I do about a page a minute in a paperback, 60-70 pages an hour." Its a bit less than that here, so its weird after 8 months of having a different pace.
I'm finding a little bit of delight and smile when some characters pop up and going "Oh hey, its THAT guy! Haven't seen you in a while!" And then realizing "that scene might be the last one you ever have..." and quite a few "oh crap, you can totally die here, not you!" moments. And even at this juncture there's a new fairly important character that I wish had shown up earlier in the series, I like him quite a bit.
The strangest part is, I'm simply... not tearing through the book. My reread of Gathering Storm was pretty quick, about a week... And Towers of Midnight, as new to me material, I read in four days having dedicated most of my weekend to it, to power through and get to the end. (The fastest I've EVER read a WoT book the first time.) And I suspect I'll speed up in the last third of this one, but I'm finding, VERY unusually for me... that I'm reading a single chapter, and then I'm okay with putting the book down and thinking "Okay, that's enough for now. I'll do something else for a bit. Get some work finished or make lunch or something."
I've been reading it since Tuesday, and I'm still only on page 243!
It's not any fault of the book's, its interesting and stuff is happening, but... somehow, the weight of it being the last seems to hang over it. I'm of course eager to see how it all ends of course, but at the same time... I'm not quite ready to get there. It's very strange the weight 14 years and thousands of pages (and a hardcover) put on something... I can only imagine what this book is to those that have read since the very start, 23 years ago, that participate actively in it talking to other fans and go to conventions and debate it.
It also makes me wonder what the hell the end of One Piece will do to me in 10 or 15 years... especially since thats going to be a chapter at a time rather than a big final volume all at once.
@tatermoog:
Book Twelve Spoilers:
! Cadsuane just spanked one of the Forsaken. What the hell, series? Seriously…what the hell?
Apparently that was very specifically in Jordan's notes. Sanderson was not a fan of it himself.