Re: Robert Jordan died.
WoT was originally a trilogy when it was bought, and then when the initial books were popular it turned into a 5 book series. When that was popular, they gave him free reign. They also let him have his wife be his editor (which explains the bloat). I remember that book 6 was the first one where people were like: "Oh, well that was just a set-up for book 7." Anyhow, looking back I do see that the Asmodean thing is what saved book 5 from being seen as sucking. People were too involved with arguing about who killed him to judge the book on its own merits.
In a way, I'm happy that it got bloated. Not because it made the story better, but because we got more of a chance to get inside RJ's mind.
<geek>I'm happy that he wasn't balefired out of the pattern, as the books were a good contribution to the genre - whatever anyone may think of them. </geek>
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