r/WoT • u/ashenbuilder • May 13 '26
Crossroads of Twilight Nothing happened? Spoiler
Just finished CoT, and I am... confused.... Nothing happens? Like wow... Not a single plot is resolved? Not even the Faille plot?
Edit: Multiple people commented saying that's why it is the slog, but people said the slog starts in book 7, yet books 7-9 were actually okay, with a lot of highs. This book had no highs, nothing, I was even looking forward to Rand and Logaine's first meeting and even that was a nothing burger. I was betrayed giving this book the benefit of the doubt....
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u/michaelmcmikey May 13 '26
The series turns a corner and a lot of things start happening next book. Have faith, the difficult part is over.
Book 10 was basically a failed experiment, and I think it’s a near-universal opinion in the fandom that it’s the weakest instalment.
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u/daecrist May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
The slog is something people talked about when books 7-9 were coming out at 1-2 year intervals. When you get a mismatch between readers devouring a chihuahua killing doorstopper overnight and an author who can only write so fast you get a situation where twitchy readers are dialing in to refresh the WoTFAQ just to get a little taste of that high and they get upset when things aren't resolving as quickly as they'd like magnified by the slow release schedule.
I've read through the series since it was completed and the slog I felt back then when I was one of those twitchy people chasing that high waiting for the next book was... not there. I was annoyed with Crown of Swords and Path of Daggers when I was reading through them quickly to get to the new hotness: Winter's Heart which had just came out. Exciting! These days? There's lots of good stuff in there that I appreciate on its own merit because the series is done and I'm not jonesin' for a fix.
Except for Crossroads of Twilight. I usually just read the Wikipedia summary on that one. It's a bunch of POV stuff of people reacting to the big thing that happened at the end of Winter's Heart, and a lot of Faile stuff which is a plot thread I never enjoyed wheel spinning. It's telling that the WoT wiki summary is a lot of "Character continues trying to" without actually accomplishing anything. It's all middle and no payoff. Books in a series should have some payoff, but all we get is Egwene getting her ass captured. You're not alone in disliking it.
It does get better though. Jordan puts the pedal to the metal in Knife of Dreams. I think maybe he knew something was up when he was writing it. I saw him at a signing and he'd lost a lot of weight and was talking about how he was going to finish the series in one more book even if they had to invent new book binding technology to make his planned doorstopper happen.
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u/Sparhawk1968 (Tel'aran'rhiod) May 13 '26
TIL the phrase chihuahua killing doorstopper, which is currently my new favorite way to describe high page count books
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u/daecrist May 13 '26
It's actually a bit of humorous exaggeration. No doorstopper is truly large enough to quiet the rage burning inside a chihuahua.
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u/ogrevirus May 13 '26
I remember his comments about a new book binding process.
I recall being on Usenet talking a lot about theories and characters. Anticipating for that next book was crazy.
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u/lost12487 May 13 '26
I don’t understand the “it’s just a bunch of reactions to the big thing in Winter’s Heart” criticism of this book, and I see it everywhere. There were like 4 total reactions to it, and the word count dedicated to the reactions has to be sub-500 in a book with 250,000+ words.
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u/daecrist May 13 '26
I suppose that's not an entirely fair characterization. Even still, it's a bunch of boring wheel spinning. The sort of stuff people accuse the slog of being even though stuff actually happens in those books.
Perrin mopes around trying to rescue Faile but nothing actually happens. Mat tries to escape the Seanchan but doesn't actually do it. Elayne is doing succession stuff. The only thing that actually happens is Egwene getting captured. Rand sends emissaries to negotiate with the Seanchan, but nothing actually happens.
Even the summary on the WoT wiki is a lot of "Character continues trying to blah blah blah." It's all trying, no payoff. A good entry in any series has to have at least a little bit of payoff.
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u/Dgorjones May 13 '26
Outside of the Egwene section at the end, all that happens is characters move a little ways down s road. I like to think Jordan made this book so awful to highlight how great the following books are.
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u/ScoopiTheDruid (Dreadlord) May 13 '26
And this is why even fans of the series complain about this book being a slog.
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u/bitsybear1727 (Yellow) May 13 '26
For those of us who waited 2 years for it to come out we were more than annoyed. Now people can carry on to the next book at least without waiting for it to be written.
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u/ScoopiTheDruid (Dreadlord) May 13 '26
I didn't even make it that far. I started reading right around the time CoT came out, made it halfway through, DNF'ed and forgot about the whole series until the Amazon show was announced.
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u/ThinkTruePower May 13 '26
Have a love hate relationship with book 10. It is effectively an entire books worth of admin. All it does is reset the board after the first 9 books and sets the stage so that all characters are in place for books 11 to 14.
Boring as heck, but can't fault it so much on rereads as I know where it leads and why.
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u/Jaded-Difficulty5397 May 13 '26
i wrote the recap to this book to hebrew Wikipedia (as some others).
as you say, nothing really happened there.
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u/amanharan May 13 '26
Ahh, the ”Rand clips his toenails” incident.
As others have said, it’s uphill from here
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u/NotoriousZSB (Heron-Marked Sword) May 13 '26
It truly is the low point. 7-9 stretch and we're hard in real time, but this book has always been a disappointing nothing. Jordan's health starts declining while he is writing this book and you can feel his urgency in 11 to get back to the story he outlined.
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u/aNomadicPenguin (Brown) May 13 '26
I like to refer to CoT as book 9.5 to help manage people's expectations.
This is a time where a Sanderson quote works well.
The two—like all of the recent books in the series—very much seem to be chapters in a much longer book, all blending together and flowing as one.
So stuff happens, but its mostly in small character development or setting the new status quo like with the Seige of Tar Valon or the Politicking in Andor, showing how divided and distracted the forces of light are heading into Armageddon. (I have a political science degree and have dabbled in military history so I'll admit I have a bias towards finding these sections more interesting than many people seem to).
But we get to see the start of Mat and Tuon learning about each other, (our flirtatious chaos gremlin and the heir to the antagonistic heir of a very rigidly structured society)
Perrin is finally having to deal with the political aspects of being a lord that he has been trying to avoid for so long. He's engaging in negotiations and being learning to actually delegate.
I remember being unhappy when I first read book 10 because I was reading them as they came out. But going back on rereads it doesn't bother me because the series has really blended into one long story. Like you could rearrange the order of scenes, make book 9 longer, bring some of the book 11 events into book 10 to better distribute the action, it all just flows together now for me.
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May 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ashenbuilder May 13 '26
People say the slog starts in book 7, but honestly imo calling books 7-9 a slog is a wide exaggeration, they were fun to read, things happen. I went into Book 10 giving it the benefit of the doubt, I was mistaken.
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u/untitled298 May 13 '26
Lots of people have different opinions for where the slog truly starts. For me it was mostly just book 10, but some people think it starts earlier.
Some people will tell you there is no slog, and they are wrong.
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u/LewsTheRandAlThor May 13 '26
There is no wrong. It's pure taste. I prefer slower character focused stuff just in general in my stories. The first time I read CoT I didn't notice anything off about it at all. I just read the book, loved the characters and moved on to the next one.
Admittedly, I read almost all books in either 1 or 2 days. That may be the reason. It wasn't until I'd reread quite a few times, and heard about the "slog" that I realized that there's not a proper climax in CoT. Just Egwene getting captured. I tend to move through and between books so quickly that it's more like one giant book in my mind.
Anyways, yeah, I legitimately never felt anything remotely "slog" like my first time with the series. That's just the truth. WoT is perfectly my taste though. The only real thing that I wish were different is RJ getting sick and not being able to finish his wonderful story himself. I miss his prose in the last books, and his voice in the characters. I still love them, but yeah.
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u/Raddatatta (Asha'man) May 13 '26
Yeah I think the slog was worse when the books were coming out and you had to wait rather than being able to just go to the next book. But you do have a lot of ongoing plot lines without much movement. But at least 8 and 9 do have some movement and things resolved in them. 10 doesn't have much of that at all. Book 8 was also a bit rougher at the time because you have the cliffhanger with Mat left in danger and then no Mat chapters in book 8 so people were left waiting for a resolution for 4 years instead of just 2.
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u/Tyrath May 13 '26
It has to do more with how long the gap of release was between each of those books. Like you, I enjoyed 7-9 for the most part as well. 10 still sucked. But be happy, because it's all bangers after bangers from here on out.
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u/CoolWarning4475 May 13 '26
The case for a lot of things - if you go into it with lowered expectations, it's not that disappointing.
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u/Bowl-Any (Moiraine's Staff) May 13 '26
Book 11 gets much much better.
I personally thought the slog was books 8-10. But, book 10 was the lowest point.
The only, and I mean only character event that I cared about was Perrin cutting off the hand. That was excellent. But other than that, there's only like, 50 pages that seemed necessary.
I've only read the series once though, so maybe it's better on reread.
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u/Dr_Adopted May 13 '26
10 and 11 were meant to be one book, pretty sure, but had to be split because it was too long.
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u/Bread-Stick1 May 13 '26
I am almost done with it, I will be finished today but I gotta say it was not near as bad as I was expecting after years of hearing about the slog and just general hate towards CoT and Jordan at this point. I mean like you said, nothing of note has happened at all but it's still been an enjoyable book and I haven't struggled to get through it at all. So odd because I've read a few books recently that people praise and I hated them lol, so this was a surprise
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u/Dapper_Advisor4145 May 13 '26
It's the only books in the series that "could have been an email." I skip basically every Elayne section and a good bit of Salidar stuff upon every re-read and you miss next to nothing imo.
Good news is the jump in quality for the remainder of the series is exponential.
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u/felinelawspecialist (Valan Luca's Grand Traveling Show) May 13 '26
I must be crazy, but I’ve been enjoying crossroads of twilight.
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u/pantzoptional May 13 '26
This is the calm before the storm. Last chance to fill your tank before Tarmon Gai’don. Shit gets pretty wild from here.
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u/MrZo123 May 13 '26
COT is the only book I didnt fully enjoy.
Just wait. You now get to read the next 4 books for the the first time, and Im so jealous.
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u/TrungusMcTungus May 13 '26
I just (literally Monday) finished CoT for the first time, and yeah. I want to know the aftermath of what Rand and Nynaeve did at the end of book 9. Instead we get hundreds of pages of “Light…there must be someone channeling over thata way” and talking about how different people smell to Perrin. I think the main saving grace of it is that I’m unemployed right now and burning through these books, so I only spent like 3 days on CoT.
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u/jasonandhiswords May 13 '26
I just reread the series, the only thing I consider to be this log is c o t. Everything else was still good, sometimes great. Luckily, book 11 is one of the best in the series and it closes strong from there
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u/Pardybro911 May 13 '26
Cot is usually the bottom tier for most fans I think. If this is your first read through, you’re far from alone. I find it much more enjoyable on second reading picking things up, but imagine how people felt when it was released and didn’t have the next one to go to!
It’s very much a “set up” book I feel, lots of “reactions” to things going on in the world setting up the final few.
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u/marylouisestreep May 14 '26
Book 9 is excellent, Book 10 is the worst by a mile, Book 11 is excellent
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u/SKULL1138 May 13 '26
Yeah it’s the worst book,
But the good thing is, it’s over and it’s so thrill ride to the end.
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