Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson.When I started reading The Gathering Storm, the first book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series "co-authored" by Brandon Sanderson, I found the style difference between the two authors to be pretty jarring - particularly because I had just finished reading Jordan's last book, Knife of Dreams. However, after settling in to Sanderson's somewhat more casual, more quickly-moving style, I am definitely a convert. I thoroughly enjoyed Towers of Midnight, the second book by Sanderson, and breezed through the 1000+ pages (relatively speaking). I find Sanderson's manner of storytelling to be refreshing after the last couple of Wheel of Time books, which I have to say had been getting pretty unruly and tedious, even frustratingly redundant at times. Sanderson's fresh take on Jordan's work breathed some new life into it, unraveling the knots and propelling the plot forward - making it very exciting and gratifying to read after spending so many hours and hours with the characters over the course of 12 books. One of Sanderson's strengths is definitely the battle scenes. My husband and I have previously lamented a couple of battles in Jordan's previous books that definitely didn't give us the payoff they promised after hundreds of pages (or even several books) of lead-in. They were not fully developed and were over much too quickly, almost as if they were paraphrased. It seemed as if they weren't really Jordan's favorite thing to write, so he didn't linger too long on them. Sanderson, however, really does the battles justice. They are detailed to just the right amount of depth, including some descriptions of strategy, fighting sequences and such, and really highlighting the individual gifts of the heroic characters. I'm not hardcore enough to be a big fan of battle scenes generally, so it says something that I enjoyed them so fully. I'm now anxiously awaiting the next volume!
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