A Crown of Swords: Book Seven of The Wheel of Time

I agree with the previous reviews that this was a good story linking great ones, but the wonderful narration by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer makes it as riveting as all the others. The narrators provide nuances to the numerous characters that is a wonder to listen to.

Great series + Great narration = must read

I have really enjoyed books 1-7 of this series. Yes, they are long, and in the case of this one, seem to end so abruptly, I'm left checking to see if somehow I missed a section... I love the characters, the world, the dialog, the narrators...and would recommend these books to everyone who likes good fantasy.

The world Jordan has created for this series is very complex. I really like the concepts of the wheel, the pattern, etc., and how the events could be taking place at any time - past or future - and how the age of legends may have even been recognizable to someone from present day earth. I also like how it makes me think about what could have come before us on this planet, and how maybe we've just "forgotten" about the "legends" of our creator and dark one...

It is very frustrating that Audible does not have book 8...but from what I understand, maybe enrolling in a 12 step program now is the right thing to do. I did go back and get New Spring - which is surprisingly entertaining so far, but I think after that I'll just be done with this series...

The story throughout these first 7 books is complex and compelling. They do keep my interest although I must say the detail of every dress, coat, room, blanket and expression is a bit tiresome and there are so many characters I find it difficult to remember who is who... where they are in this vast world, who is on who's side, etc. The first book or two where the main characters were introduced and where all were in the story at the same time made the story and plot cleaner for me. By book 7, I long for information about my favorite characters, wonder why... with the "One Power" and other advantages they have they can't seem to get together, or believe or even understand each other.

And I listened to the book "incredulously" over how many times the author uses the word "Incredulously". Can't they look at each other in disbelief... just once?
Perhaps you notice it more while listening to the book than reading it... particularly when you are listening to the series back to back but I would seriously like to find out how many times that word was used in this story... and to buy the author a thesaurus.

The rest of the series

I enjoy the scenes with the "lessor" characters... The scenes involving the main character are always so angry.

No

I enjoy the variety of characters and societies that Jordan created. They make you happy, proud, excited, angry and disgusted. Fun to read.

This was the hardest one to get thru up to this point. So many names and sub-plots. I love the series but this one was a chore to get thru. I may have made an error by listening to this one right after book 6. The ending of that book had me going so I plunged ahead without cleansing my palate with another book in between. I made it thru and the book was okay but I found my attention drifting quite a bit.

The quality of this audio is as always awesome, but this part of the story was definately not Jordan's best work of this series. Listen to get the jist, but know this is not the best part of the story.

I would say buy the hard copy and read it yourself.The narration ruins the experience.

My remarks are about the series. I have run out of patience with this book. There are, unnecessarily, two narrators. In the first few volumes it is as if they never met or spoke to each other. The woman seemed to try out a variety of pronunciations for character names, different from his pronunciations. But now in this book they apparently have finally met and decided to apply a weird accent to Elaine's lines. I can't enjoy the story if I can't think about the words except for waiting for them to mispronounce or use a really awful simpering accent for Elaine.

No! I lost out on the story. Destroyed by lousy narration.

Where are the bloody editors? Does anyone listen to this stuff before you put it out here for real money? Why didn't you give this to Simon Vance?

I really like this book, though it's not the best in the series. I read the book years ago, but lost interest due to long waiting between books. Since the series has been finished of, I wanted to give it a second try. I like to go back-and-forth between (kindle) book and audio book, so I thought I've give this one a try.

A lot of audible books has great readers, but this is not one of them. There are two readers who alternate. The female reader has the most terrible accent I've heard. I would use the word 'annoying' to best describe my experience. I admit that the fall from the excellent performance in "Cloud Atlas" that I had just read/listened to (I alternate between book and audio) might be unjust to this performance, but it anyway stands out as a bad performance. So bad that I couldn't finish it off as an audio book, but decided to stay with the pocket book.

Loved the first few books in this series, so I bought the rest all at once. Sadly they by this book there are just too many characters in too many places doing a whole lot of nothing. It really feels like he has run out or story and is just dragging along to fill the pages.

A great start to the series became too slow, too complicated, and too boring.

Great perfomers both

Bored