Regarding SE's opinion of Jordan

[Kaldric]

I'm sorry if this would be considered reviving an old thread, but I wanted to make a reply, and I don't know where better to make said reply than the thread in which the original comment was made.  If there is a better place to reply, please let me know and I'll post it there instead.

I just wanted to comment on the "repeated scarf" scenes.  I think the scenes you are talking about occur as Rand and Mat travel from Whitebridge to Caemlyn.

The way I read it, I always assumed it was an in medias res scene.  Rand and Mat are traveling, Mat already has the scarf around his eyes because he was blinded by the lightning, and Rand is sick from channeling the One Source.  We, the readers don't know all this because it hasn't been explained to us.  Rand thinks back to what has happened in the past few days, and then we read the account to discover what has happened up to that point.

This type of storytelling used to be a lot more common.  Apparently it has become so much less common that it isn't easily recognized, and is a source of confusion.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I know that's a prevailing theory about the scarf scene, but I don't think it was written clearly enough. It looks like a mistake rather than something that was done on purpose.

[Reaves]

Id say one of the things that make his stuff different is that he'll take something everyone has seen before (a werewolf) and make it something completely unique. There are literally dozens of these. More obvious ones are stuff the Forsaken talk about (elevators, phones). Trollocs i agree are uninspired, but a golem? (gholam) I was impressed.

Personally, i didnt like EOTW. The way i look at the series, when viewed as a whole is that the beginning and ends are bad (minus Knife of Dreams) but the middle is pretty good.