Maybe it's just the overload of reading all through Wheel of Time in one (barely interrupted) flow. Or it's that I should put the by now dreaded 'Yes, it's leangthy' into this review again. Or maybe CoS is really a low point in the series. I don't rightly know.

But it IS lengthy and it DOES feel like a lot of pages contain zero action, just repetitions of descriptions of personalities and locations that we've by now read over and over again. Nyneave is always angry and will never understand, why other people don't just do what she says, seeing as she's clearly wiser than any 3 people combined. Rand constantly suffers from self-doubt and questions his own sanity. Mat chases every skirt, while being disgusted at other men chasing skirts. Perrin, Mat and Rand all believe to never understand women, while being convinced, the other two friends have an easy time of 'handling' women. It's ALL been said over and over.

There's still cool bits in there. Some even relating to the very complaints above, when the monotony of the characters finally gets broken (Mat and Tylin, Nynaeve and Lan). The overarching story get's advanced some (not much, but some).

So, in short, if you want to get to the end of WoT, then this is a book you'll have to read. Everyone else probably has little to no reason to touch it.