Winter's Heart

Wheel of Time, Book 9

By: Robert Jordan

Narrated by: Kate Reading, Michael Kramer

Length: 24 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

The Wheel of Time is now an original series on Prime Video, starring Rosamund Pike as Moiraine!

In Winter's Heart, the ninth novel in Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time®, Rand al'Thor and his friends face personal trials in their quests to build alliances against the Dark One.

After locating Masema Dagar, the Prophet of the Dragon, on Rand’s behalf, Perrin Aybara returns to his encampment to discover his wife Faile has been abducted by the Shaido Aiel. Determined to reclaim her, Perrin forgoes his mission, risking his army in pursuit of a dangerous and unpredictable enemy.

Wounded and trapped in the Seanchan-occupied city of Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon is awaiting an opportunity to leave. But he is not the only one in hiding. Three Aes Sedai are desperate to escape. As Mat seeks a way to smuggle them all out of the city, he encounters his own prophesized fate when he meets the Daughter of the Nine Moons.

Rand himself is on a mission of vengeance. He has tracked the traitorous Asha’man who tried to kill him to Far Madding. It is a city where no one is capable of channeling the One Power, leaving Rand vulnerable to those who would stop at nothing to destroy the Dragon Reborn…

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The last six books in series were all instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, and The Eye of the World was named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.

The Wheel of Time®
New Spring: The Novel
#1 The Eye of the World
#2 The Great Hunt
#3 The Dragon Reborn
#4 The Shadow Rising
#5 The Fires of Heaven
#6 Lord of Chaos
#7 A Crown of Swords
#8 The Path of Daggers
#9 Winter's Heart
#10 Crossroads of Twilight
#11 Knife of Dreams

By Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
#12 The Gathering Storm
#13 Towers of Midnight
#14 A Memory of Light

By Robert Jordan and Teresa Patterson
The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

By Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons
The Wheel of Time Companion

By Robert Jordan and Amy Romanczuk
Patterns of the Wheel: Coloring Art Based on Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time

Enchanted? Listen to more books in The Wheel of Time series.

©2000 The Bandersnatch Group, Inc. (P)2011 Audio Renaissance

love this series

love it every time..this is my favorite book. f a v o r I t e

A favorite!

It does move slow at times, but many important things happen. I love this series.

Great performance by Kate & Michael, but substandard editing

This must be the worst audio-edited WoT book that I've come across so far. Full paragraphs are repeated (happened over ten times), and there was a mistake or two by the readers.

Regarding the book, nothing much happens in it except the last 20 pages or so and we're left in limbo about the fate of two important characters. Also, there's a lot of confusing business with the Forsaken.

epic

love how rand cleans the souce epic listen thank you thank you Michael and Kate for amazing reading

One of my favorites in the series excellent!!!

The range in this book 9 with many previous foreshadowing coming to a head and great depth in both the story and the performance. Very satisfying throughout

Part of the slog for sure but...

This book has several great things in it, but is definitely a slog book still. The ending is what really makes this one worth reading though.

Winter’s Heart

Nice to see Mat again, prologue and last chapter were amazing. Everything in the middle is relatively mediocre, but less character description than in TPoD.

Awesome

Love to hear the rendering of the two narrator's. The voices and dialects used give the story new life in my minds eye.

Clean!

Here, the author picks up steam, building on the foundations laid in the immediately previous books. Here we see the seeds of change sprout, and the characters bloom. Here the up hill labour of the previous installments crest, and begins the descent. The Cleansing gives one a taste of the glory to come!

Not top tier, but certainly doesn’t feel like the middle of the “slog”.

I’m quite conflicted on this one. Supposedly, this is the heart of the infamous “slog”. Yet I feel this one was actually quite an engaging read. There wasn’t necessarily a ton of action, but unlike some entries, I never felt during this one that nothing was happening. There was always a source of tension and something important was always going on. There were multiple major developments, some with a capital M, and there wasn’t much time wasted. Definitely didn’t feel at all like the heart of a slog.

However, just like the last one, it didn’t feel like a whole book. Several plot lines here just felt like they were getting started when they were dropped for the rest of the book. Just as books 7&8 felt like they should have been combined, this one just feels like part 1 of a bigger book. Well, except for the ending, but I’ll get back to that.

I did love this one for one major reason: multiple different minor characters and plot lines that came up and then were seemingly forgotten in book 4 finally resurfaced! My greatest criticism with this series has been that Jordan seems to have so many things going on that he looses track of some or just decides he has to cut some that he’s spent a lot of time setting up in ignominious and unsatisfying ways. And it’s always a relief when he reassures the reader that he hasn’t done that!

WARNING: I HAVE AVOIDED DIRECT SPOILERS IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH, BUT I AM AFRAID THAT AFTER READING THIS, YOU WILL STILL BE ABLE TO PREDICT THE ENDING OF THE BOOK PRETTY SOON INTO IT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

And then the ending, which I am not quite sure how to feel towards. In itself, it is the most epic ending since book 6, and one heck of an exciting chapter. However, it could have had so much more weight if it had been more set up. I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but it just didn’t have nearly enough set up in my opinion. It is a huge moment in the story, but just didn’t feel quite as big as it was because it was only foreshadowed earlier in the book and the whole book isn’t entirely focused on getting there directly, more on solving problems that need taken care of first. Until the last chapter I thought this would be the end goal that the next few books would build up to, and then it just happened. In that sense, it was quite similar to book 7’s ending but worse. And then the outcome appears to have just removed one of the most fascinating elements of the story before that element has even had the chance to really have a huge impact on the story itself. We’ll see what the rest of the series does with it, there are hints that the outcome might not have been so simple as it seems, but this could potentially make the whole series way less interesting to me and be an unsatisfying way to handle this story element.

All in all, not as bad as some book rankings led me to expect, but not by any means one of the best. I think my opinion on the major events here will be effected by how the next few books build off of them.