He realized that he had learned one thing. Trust was a knife, and the hilt was as sharp as the blade.

I like that Jordan continues to keep consistency with POV chapters. You are able to get involved in the story of where the character is at, progress their tale, introduce a conflict and then move on to the next character. This book felt like a lot of chess pieces were moved in to position, moves were planned, but very little execution occurred.

The follow through that did happen (ie: involvement of Seanchan) was excellent. The inclusion of the Seanchan POV was great because this villainous group of people has a voice now and you can hope to learn their motives as they raid through the countryside.

If there were half star rating this would be a solid 3.5. On par with most of the books in the series, but the slightly slower start to the story and tiresome explanations and run on sentences became tedious while the chess pieces were slowly moved from one area to another. The amount of setup in Book #8 has been plentiful, so hopefully Book #9 delivers on some of this follow through.