Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time) [Leather Bound]

Robert Jordan (Author), Brandon Sanderson (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wheel of Time | Publication Date: November 2, 2010

The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.

The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.

Perrin Aybara is now hunted by specters from his past: Whitecloaks, a slayer of wolves, and the responsibilities of leadership. All the while, an unseen foe is slowly pulling a noose tight around his neck. To prevail, he must seek answers in Tel’aran’rhiod and find a way--at long last--to master the wolf within him or lose himself to it forever.

Meanwhile, Matrim Cauthon prepares for the most difficult challenge of his life. The creatures beyond the stone gateways--the Aelfinn and the Eelfinn--have confused him, taunted him, and left him hanged, his memory stuffed with bits and pieces of other men’s lives. He had hoped that his last confrontation with them would be the end of it, but the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills. The time is coming when he will again have to dance with the Snakes and the Foxes, playing a game that cannot be won. The Tower of Ghenjei awaits, and its secrets will reveal the fate of a friend long lost.

This penultimate novel of Robert Jordan’s #1 New York Times bestselling series--the second of three based on materials he left behind when he died in 2007--brings dramatic and compelling developments to many threads in the Pattern. The end draws near.

Dovie’andi se tovya sagain. It’s time to toss the dice.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Author One-on-One: Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson
In an exclusive interview for Amazon.com, epic fantasy authors Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear) and Brandon Sanderson (Towers of Midnight) sat down to discuss collaborating with publishers, dealing with success, and what goes into creating and editing their work.

Read the full interview

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Jordan's epic is coming to its long awaited conclusion in the next book, so this installment (Book 13) exquisitely ratchets up the suspense. The last battle is coming, and Rand must garner the armies of nations, unite disparate allies, and as the Dragon Reborn, prepare to face the Dark One in combat. Fans will find the preparations of the multitude of characters exciting and satisfying. Michael Kramer and Kate Reading have narrated all of the previous books, and continue to give peerless performances. Both boast a wide range of vocals and accents, and perform all characters convincingly. Their readings and characterizations are complementary and consistent in manner and style so that the sprawling series is kept coherent. A Tor hardcover. (Nov.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Leather Bound: 864 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; Limited edition (November 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765328127
• ISBN-13: 978-0765328120
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.1 x 3.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (461 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,033,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

661 of 681 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 'Two Towers" of the Wheel of Time series, November 2, 2010

By 

T. Simons (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, Book Thirteen) (Hardcover)

If you've been waiting on this series to *finish* for as long as I have, this book is for you.

It's the next-to final volume in Robert Jordan's twenty-years-in-the-making Wheel of Time series, not the ending itself, but -- well, I'll explain below. If you're familiar with the series at all, you know that Jordan passed away before he could finish writing the final volumes, and you know that Brandon Sanderson, an expert writer in his own right, has been brought on to finish the final three books -- The Gathering Storm, released last year, this volume, Towers of Midnight, and a final volume, _A Memory of Light_, which seems likely to be released around March 2012.

Of those three volumes, this is the "Two Towers" equivalent: there's a heck of a lot of action and movement, but ultimately, this book is about things *finally* falling into position for the final confrontations -- if The Gathering Storm put the key in the ignition, this one turns it, and now all that's left is to watch the last volume put the pedal to the metal. There's a real sense throughout the book that the many, many characters and plots are all locking into place, falling towards their final intersections.

Sanderson's writing is excellent, and in some ways significantly improved since the last volume. Due to the nature of the coauthorship (Jordan wrote some sections of the last three books before he died, and Sanderson is completing the rest from Jordan's extensive outlines and notes), it's hard to know precisely how much we're seeing here of Brandon Sanderson's work and how much of Jordan's, but Sanderson does appear to have a few minor "tells" (chiefly, a tendency towards more modern diction and phrasing), and from those I'll venture a guess that this volume has significantly more of Sanderson's writing in it than Jordan's. That's no criticism, though, as Sanderson's an excellent writer in his own right; the most important thing is the story and the characters, and those Sanderson carries through clear as day. Whatever problems Sanderson might have had adapting to Jordan's voice, he's clearly been working on them, and his work has clearly paid off. He's still not pitch-perfect, and there are definitely still moments where you're reminded of the transfer, but overall there's a vast improvement, even in characters he seemed to "hiccup" on in Gathering Storm (such as Matrim Cauthon). The result is that every point-of-view character, at least, speaks clearly with a voice that's recognizably *their own*, the voices we've known for all the twenty-odd years some of us have been following this series.

I'll avoid detailed plot summaries for fear of spoilers, apart from noting that the book focuses primarily on Perrin and Mat's storylines, overlapping much of the timeline in Gathering Storm and extending past it slightly, with significant further development for Rand, Galad, Gawyn, Egwene, and Elayne as well (in approximately that order, proportionally). Perrin especially gets a lot of development, and if you've ever thought anything like "Perrin used to be my favorite character, but. . . " you'll probably be very happy about the turn he takes in this volume.

The pacing is torrential, to the point that I read most of the book quite literally pacing around the room, too hooked to sit either myself or the book down. It does pay a price for that -- the action moves *so* quickly that at times some of the fine detail work is lost, some side-plots feel a little rushed through and some characters feel a little peripheral -- but it's probably a price worth paying at this point in the series.

The main defining trait of this volume, though, is that as I read it, I had the same sense of cascading finality that I get when I've almost solved a particularly nasty crossword puzzle or rubik's cube: the sense that after all that struggle and effort, *everything* is *finally* falling into place. At the end, it's pretty clear that all the dominoes are in line, the horses are at their starting gates, the match is poised above the fuse; all that's left is the flick, the home stretch, the final explosion. I'm looking forward to it. It's a feeling I've been waiting twenty-odd years for, and, well, to give in to understatement, it's pretty cool. If you've followed this series like I have, if you've been waiting for it too, you'll like this volume.

143 of 162 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Among the Best of the Series, November 2, 2010

By 

Isaac Stewart - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, Book Thirteen) (Hardcover)

Team Sanderson/Jordan knock another one out of the park with the penultimate volume of the Wheel of Time series. While The Gathering Storm was a wonderful book, I can see Sanderson's growth as a writer in Towers of Midnight. He's taken a lot of hard material and turned it into something that I can just almost pretend that Jordan wrote himself.

The biggest difference from Jordan's own books is that in ToM the pacing is break-neck.

If you're a fan of the series, you'll find moments to laugh and moments to cry and moments of extreme and wonderful emotion. I hate to sound cliched, but for those of us who have grown up with these characters, we start seeing some of the scenes that we've been waiting for for many years.

In my opinion, few other writers living could've pulled off so elegantly what Sanderson has accomplished in Towers of Midnight. Bravo! Onto Tarmon Gai'don!

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Last Battle, Part 1, November 2, 2010

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, Book Thirteen) (Hardcover)

After twelve books of slow-moving, intricate plotting (and a hefty dose of filler), the Last Battle against the Dark One is here.

So is "Towers of Midnight" good? Oh yeah. Brandon Sanderson and the late Robert Jordan came up with a solid penultimate volume, sprinkled with solid characterization, epic moments, and the occasional discovery that will probably have you bouncing and screaming with joy. It's a rich, fast-moving experience that will leave you on edge for the grand finale.

And yes, thanks for asking -- it IS hard to review this without spoiling too much.

While the previous book was more centered on Rand and his inner turmoil, this one centers on Mat and Perrin -- there are countless intertwined subplots in this one, but the important ones rest on those two. Specifically, Mat has to grapple with the gholam at long last, and Perrin has to work out his issues as well as his wolfish other side.

Tarmon Gai'don is coming, and Jordan and Sanderson really hammer it home that this will not be an easy or quick battle. "Towers of Midnight" has a lot riding on it: not only does it have to build up to an epic grand finale in the next book, but it has to start wrapping up all the important storylines. Does it deliver?

For the most part, yes -- Sanderson doesn't quite capture a few of the characters' personalities (such as Mat), but overall this is a smashing book. Sanderson's vibrant juggernaut prose actually meshes very well with Jordan's intricate, slow-moving storylines, and it feels much sleeker and less bogged down in minutiae.

And despite Tarmon Gai'don looming over the characters' heads, there are actually some funny moments (mostly from Mat) and some powerful, riveting ones that seem to leap out from the pages. Additionally, Jordan/Sanderson deal with some long-running subplots such as "Who killed Asmodean?" And without revealing too much, a favorite character returns after many books, although some unexpected revelations about said character had me scratching my head.

As I said, Perrin and Mat take center stage here -- and while Mat was a bit off in The Gathering Storm, Sanderson seems to have gotten a grip on his quirky sarcastic personality. And after getting put on the backburner for awhile, Perrin has a strong, action-filled arc in which some kinks are ironed out of his personality.

Actually, pretty much all the characters get at least SOME time, Egwene especially as she keeps grappling with problems in the White Tower. As for Rand, he's a little mixed -- he's finally gotten over his annoying wangst and whining, but he's now a little too mellow. Did someone slip him some pot between books?

With the series back on track and new blood injected into the prose, "The Towers of Midnight" is a powerful mixed experience -- it leaves you craving more, but also dreading the end.