It’s difficult to be objective here. If you’ve read the first twelve books in the series, you’ll read this one. If you haven’t, then you won’t open this volume any time soon!

Towers of Midnight is the penultimate book in a monster-sized series. As such, it’s job was to tie up a lot of loose ends so the final book can be a focused climax. Sanderson tied up loose ends quite neatly—maybe too predictably at times.

The biggest loose end was Perrin and the Whitecloaks. Don’t let the cover fool you. Matrim, Thom and the Tower of Genji might get the cover real-estate but this is Perrin’s book. Mat and the tower took a mere hundred or so pages at the end of the book.

There were some brilliant scenes. Without giving anything away, you’ll enjoy the best tel’arin’rhiod battle imaginable. There’s also a twist in Rhuidian that has me rethinking the whole series.

In the end, I didn’t find Towers of Midnight as compelling or as unified as Sanderson’s first effort in the series—but I’m not sure it could have been given the miscellany of threads woven throughout the books. It’s still a fine volume that leaves you salivating for the conclusion.

Jordan, Robert and Brandon Sanderson. Towers of Midnight. Tor, 2010. The Wheel of Time 13.