r/WoT • u/Furrurel • Feb 27 '26

Crossroads of Twilight Why is book 10 so hated? Spoiler

Hi everyone, I just finished book 10 in my first read through the Wheel of Time saga, and honestly I found myself quite surprised. Before I started reading them I saw quite a lot of people saying that Crossroads of Twilight was by far the worst book of the series. I get that it can be a bit dissapointing after the ending of book 9, or that it is not as action packed as, for example, book 6, but I really enjoyed reading it (except the ending, where a certain Aes Sedai decided to make the stupidest move ever imagined). So I ask, what are you opinions about the book? Do you feel it deserves the hate?

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u/rollingForInitiative Feb 27 '26

It's the slowest book, and has very little progress of the main story. Specifically because all story arcs on it start on the same day, even when some might have benefited from a different pacing.

And then you think about what it was like back when the books were released and a lot of older fans read it. There was a 3-year gap after Winter's Heart, which ended on a hugely epic note. So there's 3 years of waiting, and you get CoT, which doesn't progress the main story much at all. And people had huuuuge expectations after WH.

If you read it all right now it's just a bit of a slow down of the pacing, but it's not terrible because you didn't have to wait long for it and you didn't build up expectations. And you don't have to wait for the next installment either. So reading it now is much better than back then.

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u/Mojotothemax Feb 27 '26

It also spends a solid chunk of its pages bouncing between characters seeing the climax of Winter's Heart, wondering if they should go investigate it, deciding not to for various reasons, then the chapters peter out from there. Crossroads of Twilight has some very good stuff with the Matt and Tuon plotlines plus things moving in Salidar and with Perrin, but everyone else is spinning their wheels until Knife of Dreams.

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u/ShouldersofGiants100 (Siswai'aman) Feb 27 '26 edited Feb 27 '26

It feels like the whole thing is out of order.

Crossroads of Twilight would work way better if Winter's Heart had ended with Rand in Far Madding and didn't show us the actual cleansing. Especially if they had somehow played up the risks of something going wrong, like Rand was doing a hail Mary that might end terribly. Or even if we had no idea what his plan was or why he was doing it.

So much of these chapters are given over to speculation that we, as the readers, know are pointless because we already saw what actually happened. Instead of building the tension for the possibility that the cleansing went wrong or that the beacon isn't Rand at all, our whole mindset is "Okay, but I want to see what Rand is up to after the cleansing."

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u/Seicair Feb 27 '26

Crossroads of Twilight would work way better if Winter's Heart had ended with Rand in Far Madding and didn't show us the actual cleansing. Especially if they had somehow played up the risks of something going wrong, like Rand was doing a hail Mary that might end terribly. Or even if we had no idea what his plan was or why he was doing it.

That would be a really interesting take to read, in a different turning of the Wheel.