This Book Does Not Quite Deserve A Crown (A Crown of Swords - Robert Jordan)

Member Name: andyoz

Product:	A Crown of Swords - Robert Jordan
Date:	13/07/09 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Robert Jordan Wrote It

Disadvantages: Slow in places

Six down and five to go! My goodness there are alot of books in this series! So here we are the seventh book in the series, A crown of swords follows on from the Dragon reborn. This is from the epic series of books known as the Wheel of time my fantasy writer Robert Jordan.

This book came out in May 0f 1996. Thats nearly a two year wait for this one then! A big gap, not sure what Jordan was upto in that time but he seems to have slowed in his writing. No doubt this was frustrating for the fans after the last book which was simply stunning, so now they were eager to get a copy of this one and resume the story! I know I was anyway!

Yet again we are given a prologue at the start of this book, something that has now become a regular feature in all the books. I'm not a big fan of these as I think they are somewhat unneccesary and just confuse the reader, they did me anyway.

So again there are a few different stories to follow as we are now used to in Jordans books. The first sees Rand the Dragon reborn go down to Illian where one of the foresaken has power. An old character Padain Fain is back on the scene and hehas Matts old dagger from Shadar Logoth, this is a very dangerous weapon in the hands of anyone, but especially Fain!

Another main line of the story sees Egwene al'Vere and Siuan Sanche trying to get the rebel Aes Sedai to move against Elaidas Aes Sedai back in the white tower. There is all kinds of mind games and manipulation going on here.

Probably the most interesting of the story lines in this book is Elayne Trakand, Nynaeve al'Meara, and Mat Cauthon as they search for the Bowl of winds, a powerful item of magic that will help control the changing climate. Then Mat becomes seperated when seaching for his young friend Olver and gets involved in the battle with the Seanchan.

So quite alot to go at there, plenty of interesting stories to follow. In this book I find the story with the Aes Sedai a little boring, a feel as if the story is starting to repeat itself somewhat and were going round in circles a little. However the other bits of story are still very interesting and there is plenty to keep the reader gripped.

Robert Jordan could probably write an awful book and people would still read it by now, everyone is hooked on the storyline and desperate to find out the fate of the major characters. This is certainly not an awful book and I did enjoy it, but do feel Jordan was maybe running low on ideas by this stage.

So overall a good book, but not a great book. One I was happy to get through and carry on with the series. You have to read this if your going through the series as there are important develpoments that you can't leave out. And it's still a good read.

Summary: Another decent offering