Toward the end as the number of story arcs and number of characters start to balloon, the books kind of lose the pacing that made the early books such a joy to read.

That being said, I absolutely love the resolution that Jordan starts toward in Knife of Dreams, you can feel the finality starting to bubble under the surface, and I can most definitely see how Jordan viewed this as the second to last book of the series.

A Memory of Light's release in January is definitely going to be a bittersweet moment for fantasy lit.