Ok, done with all the Cycle of Arawn and Cycle of Galand books. The last one drove me all the way up the wall and back down again 6 times. Robertson insists on spending 3 chapters in a row saying "the party is having a hard time advancing to the next level of skill". To his credit, he manages to do so without repeating the same words in the same order too often, but it's still annoying. Also, he has a tendency to traipse off on rabbit trails in the middle of battle sequences to reiterate recent events or explore the inner philosophical meandering of characters who are about to be sliced into bits by magic or swords. I get the feeling he does it on purpose to force the reader into a sense of impatience and suspense, but that feels like cheating.
ETA: There are parts where it's clearly evident what the protagonists need to do in order to solve some puzzle or problem in order to advance the story, but a third of the book is spent waiting for them to figure it out. That seems to happen more frequently the farther in the series you go, and it's intensely frustrating. Hopefully, Robertson fixes this bug in his program.
Anyway, next is Oathbringer, which looks like it's about 900 pages long so maybe it'll wash enough of the taste of this one out of my brain to let me read the next one when it arrives next spring.
