The most anticipated reunion of all the time happens in this book with a few fireworks and three related characters getting hilarious headaches.
The daughter-heir plays the Daes Dae’mar (Game of Houses) really well while dealing with the factions in her kingdom and the rulers outside of Andor.
Golden-eyes forms an alliance with a nuisance to rescue someone and that someone is also trying their best to plot their escape.
Cadsuane is shining dangerously and gloriously in this book. She always has an ace up her sleeve and now we know what that dangling hair bun jewellery is all about.
There is a new kingdom introduced and the wonderful world-building continues.
We finally get a good many chapters on the blower-of-the-Horn-of-Valere and they are the best! Everyone wants to escape the “returned rulers” and it looks like Mat-bloody-flaming-Cauthon is their saviour. His antics and those of the people surrounding him are humorous and his point-of-view chapters are full of a cleverly crafted plot.
The book is slower than the previous books but those ending chapters more than make up for the slog. There is a major incident that happens towards the end and the multiple points-of-view paragraphs of the same incident are breathtaking to read!
The real identity of a recurring secondary character is revealed at the end and that is the biggest plot twist! I’m actually trying to think how he/she contributed to the positive aspects in the plot. Robert Jordan hid this character in two layers!
The only annoying aspects of the book are a multitude of similarly named characters. But that is true for all the books of the Wheel of Time series.
Overall, I enjoyed this book but it was not so bad contrary to the negative reviews expressed on Goodreads. It is slower but when does so slow equates to bad?