My thoughts on the book
I finished the book last night. Overall I enjoyed it, but I wished there hadn't been quite as much focus on Perrin, who despite recent improvements is still easily my least favorite of the 6 main characters. Based on the title, cover, and book trailer, the one thing I was really looking forward to was the Tower of Ghenjei, which was pushed almost to the end of the book. And the other thing I was hoping to see was the Black Tower situation resolved, but that was barely mentioned (although the development we did get there was intriguing). Perrin himself - well, his situation needed to be resolved, and I did ultimately like the way he learned to reconcile his wolf and human natures, but I wish a lot of the stuff leading up to that had happened a couple books ago (and I think the way Perrin's timeline lagged behind the rest, with Tam being there for half the book despite joining Rand at the end of the previous book, was a sign of how poorly he had been handled for the previous few books - the Shaido stuff should have been resolved much faster).
I guess I wasn't as impressed by the hammer-forging scene as some were - it was pretty good, but I found myself thinking two things while reading it: "why does Perrin need *another* hammer?" and "oh boy, *another* rediscovered talent". Yeah.
When we finally did get to the Tower of Ghenjei, I felt it delivered - although like Leigh mentioned in her official review, there was nothing in the sequence that was really surprising, except for the use of the ashandarei - which admittedly was pretty cool. It was still a satisfying sequence. Jain's death was dramatic, although given the circumstances I couldn't help comparing it to Ingtar's death in TGH, and just thinking about Ingtar's scene gave me goosebumps - Jain's didn't really compare. Mat's sacrifice was good - it seemed that Mat had figured out more than I thought. (And Mat in general was handled a lot better than in the previous book - not perfect, but better).
The other great part of the book, completely unexpected, was Aviendha's experience in Rhuidean. That one really did approach the first Rhuidean sequence from TSR, which is really saying something, since the TSR Rhuidean sequence ranks up there as one of the most memorable and great sequences from the entire series (I group that with Dumai's Wells and the climax of TGH as the best scenes in the Wheel of Time). I hope she's able to prevent that future from coming to pass!