The penultimate volume is busiest when it is also most satisfying. People must arrive, old promises need answers, and several threads have to find an emotional stopping point before the end can begin. That could feel like housekeeping. Much of it instead feels like the series remembering the attachments that made its size worthwhile.
Perrin's relationship with his own strength finally receives a more decisive examination. I wish some of that reckoning had come earlier, but the underlying question remains sound: refusing to acknowledge your power does not free you from responsibility for it. Mat's story draws on a different form of commitment, where a promise retains its force long after making it stops being convenient.
The timelines can be awkward to orient yourself within, and the sheer number of converging tasks occasionally shows through the storytelling. Yet the volume gives long-standing relationships space to matter. Its best passages feel earned by accumulated history rather than by a last-minute appeal to importance.
— Cory Lane