We're back on board with the Readthrough of Time, now moving to New Spring, a prequel published first as a novella in the Legends compilation and later expanded into a larger book.
Considering how immensely negative I was about Crossroads of Twilight, going back to a prequel, which one assumes will spend too much time on stuff that doesn't matter, would work out poorly. I was happy to be wrong.
New Spring is mostly about Moiraine and the Aes Sedai. As a 350ish page novel, it means that it has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Much of it is similar to what we saw in the prologue of Winter's Heart and some of the best of the early books regarding understanding and describing the Aes Sedai. There are some truly great scenes here, some nice hints, good callbacks, etc. It's a solid read.
The book certainly does meander, but given the small size of the book, it's held in check. This would work great as a stand-alone, and I almost wish I read it out of publication order in a way, as I might have found some of the overabundance of everything in the recent books more tolerable as a result. I don't know - it kind of speaks to my criticisms of the books on a whole: there's a good story in here somewhere if Jordan could have been bothered to trim away the fat.
I'm not going to say that this actually makes me optimistic for Knife of Dreams, but the series has effectively reeled me back in again, and I suppose that's worth something. What that something is? Your guess is as good as mine.
A new promotion from our friends at Macmillan has come about, though: Pre-order A Memory of Light and get a free iPhone case. It actually looks pretty nifty, and there are details of the promotion at the link.
Available to buy at Book Depository.
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