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Title: Crossroads of Twilight
Author: Robert Jordan
ISBN: 0812571339
Format: Paperback - 822 pages
Rating: Overall Concept - 7/10
Execution - 6/10

This is the tenth book in a series wherein the average page count doesn't drop below 700. That is like reading twice as many standard trade paperbacks.
This series has literally hundreds of characters and is has such depth of world development that it often requires the reader to read a book summary of the previous novels in the series once the new one is released, in order to be fully up to speed with the events.

After reading the HUGE event that left off the 9th book of the series, I was expecting some serious 'dominoes' to fall in this book. However, this book decided to focus on several events that were well disjointed from this seminal event and kinda left me lacking.

I have read several disparaging reviews of this book on the internet and have several friends who seem VERY dissapointed by it. I think this may have made the dissapointment a little smaller for me as my expectations had been lowered.

I will say that given the number of pages the author had in this book, there really did not seem to be any major events until the last 10 pages. Even the seminal event of the previous novel was glossed over and was almost made anticlimatic.

This book was very much a filler and I feel that this is because the author is attempting to setup very, very particular events to occur and he needed this book to setup all the necessary precursors to these events.

My greatest dissappointment is that the next book in this series that the author choose to release isn't the 11th but a prequel. And apparently he is going to release another prequel before he releases book 11.

This makes me wonder if he has written himself into a corner and doesn't know how to finish the series with the expectations that his fans and his previous books are generating.

Perhaps he can take a cue from another favourite author of mine, Neil Gaiman, when he commented at his ending of his fan favourite Sandman series that this was his series and his ending, and that he knew he couldn't make everyone happy with regards to the ending and that the only advice he could offer to those that didn't like the ending to just go ahead a write their own.

Oh well, hopefully Robert Jordan won't take so long with the series that he will perish before he can properly finish it, as odds are his publishers will pay some unknown author a pittance to finish it or some egotistical prig will decide to take on the mantle and 'run with it'.