Reviews with content warning for Rape - A Crown of Swords

The 7th installment in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time epic.
These last few books have DRAGGED for me. They’re long and I end up REALLY enjoying only about 30% of the actual pages in the book.
There are a lot of things that bother me with this series, the biggest being mainly that I hate how Jordan portrays how men and women think about and interact with one another. That and like 90% of the women in his book seem to be some varying degree of Shrew. I’m assuming he wrote them that way because he thought he was writing a strong female character but man are they cringeworthy at times.
Yet, despite all this I still want to continue the series.

There were many plot points that happened in this book that I really liked. The build up to those plot points may have taken years off my life in reading, but when they were actually revealed I was a fan.

There was a scene in this book where it’s alluded that a man was raped by a woman and the whole thing is pretty much glossed over and brushed off as like a reverse “boys will be boys” since the female aggressor was one with power and title. I really struggled with how it was pretty much left up to the reader to actually label the event as rape. The aggressor is never confronted about it (that we see) and the victim seemingly ends up with a sort of Stockholm syndrome toward the aggressor at the end. The whole thing made me salty and left a bad taste in my mouth.

I think this book made me realize that Mat and Egwene are my favorite characters in the series, so their points of view were a treat to read. And any chapters involving the Forsaken are always a hit for me.
There’s also a development with Nynaeve that occurs in this book that made me fangirl hard.

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finlay27's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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kristen2193's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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coco05's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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jenna36's review against another edition

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adventurous inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Once again Jordan's worldbuilding and character development are fantastic. I heard this was the start of "the slog" but I actually thought the pacing and the pieces of the puzzle that came together in this book really kept me invested. Pretty much the last 200 or 300 pages of the book were absolutely phenomenal.

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karolinak's review

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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phi618's review against another edition

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2.75

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upsidedown10's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

At first, I was thinking I would really like this one. Honestly, the first half was really promising for me. I liked what was happening with the girls, even though nothing was really happening with Rand.

And then, it slowly got worse and worse until we reached the pinnacle of horrible plot points. Mat is raped by Tylin repeatedly and the way it is depicted made me sick. Watching Mat try his best to get away and hearing about his shame and confusion was horrifying. I don't think this is the main problem, however. Rape was a theme earlier in the book with Morgase and I think that was handled well. With Mat, though, we see him finally tell Elayne what happened and she laughs and tells him he is getting a taste of his own medicine. That's when I started to get honestly upset. This wasn't going to be handled well. We have seen that Mat doesn't like to chase after women unless they give him signals. He talks about enjoying the game of it. Tylin did not play the game fairly and her power over him is immense. If she comes back or if there is some sort of real romance between her and Mat in the future, I will absolutely lose my shit.

This leads into my main problem with the series. While I think that Nynaeve got wonderful internal character growth, I think that her interactions with men are regressing. I actually hate most of the interactions between men and women. I hate what the girls say about Mat and how much they refuse to thank him for saving their lives a few book ago. It's starting to drive me crazy.

I've already determined that I'm going to finish the series and I know that the slog is coming up and I will get through it, but I need a little break for now. Jesus.

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