Wheel of Time series

I saw that this thread was started over a year ago, but I thought I'd throw in my two cents on the Wheel of Time.

I remember first picking up a hardbound copy of the Eye of The World at my middle school library when I was in eighth grade for a book report. My teacher promptly told me that I should maybe pick something that wasn't so big given that I only had two-three weeks to do the reports. I agreed at the time and picked up something Bradbury, but that summer I went back and finished EotW in a week. Then didn't continue the series for another five years or so.

Here's my suggestion for reading the series. Yes it can get slow, but for the most part the first 3-4 books are fairly action packed, fast paced, and provide enough world building information to keep you interested. The characters get fleshed out really well during this part of the story as well.

Do your best to get through books 5, 6, and if I remember correctly 7. They can get a bit slow and wordy compared to the first four, but they have some great scenes and a few bits of pivotal information to heat up your interest in the end. Plus there are some great major villian fights.

After book 7 (if you can make it through it and believe me I know, it took me four tries) stop and just read the wikipedia summaries of the rest of the books up to The Gathering Storm (the first book of the final three). If you read summaries of the missing books then you should have a good enough of concepts Jordan added to the story in them to not feel lost and the end books really pick back the pace back up.

I think Sanderson has done a good job with finishing up the series so far, but it helps that Jordan had the majority of it already mapped out prior to his death. I like him enough that I've picked book one of his own personal epic series, The Stormlight Archive, to read until A Memory of Light (the final WoT book) gets released. Apparently it's almost 50% done.