partial review: the wheel of time

i'm near the end of book six right now, which means just over halfway through the series. here's my thoughts on it so far:

--the storyline is still good, but it takes too damn long to get anywhere. if the characters spent half as much time doing things that they spent talking about doing those things, the books could be several hundred pages shorter without losing anything.

--pretty much all of the female characters suck. the only exceptions in my mind are moiraine right before she died, at which point she was finally useful, and min, who seems to be the only one not trying to control or manipulate rand in some way. and maybe birgitte, who can occasionally talk some sense into elayne. the rest of them spend their time being pissed at men and trying to manipulate them, thinking that they know best. egwene, for example, spends half of her time complaining how big rand's head is getting (which i personally don't see happening), and the other half running around with a seriously inflated head of her own, especially now that she's amrylin, thinking that she and the "little tower" know more about what's good for him than he does. in some ways, they remind me of kim from 24: pretty to look at, but also pretty useless

--i'll still finish the series. i've made too big of a time commitment to it to quit now. and pat, now i think my vote counts for something. jordan's story, while good, is not better than tolkien.

--update--
potential spoiler alert. although i think that the only people who read this are either farther in the series than me, or really don't care what happens.

so. my guess, for the last half or so of the book, is that mazrim taim is demandred. that, and i'm tired of rand being such a pansy. he made it through this book without killing a single forsaken. in my opinion, he should pick up callandor and that ter'angreal that links him to the huge crystal-ball guy sangreal (literally "holy grail" or "royal blood", depending on where you split it... jordan borrowed bits from some interesting places...), and go out and kick everybody's asses.