This is a no-spoiler post

I was a college freshman when I first read Robert Jordan's "The Eye of the World." That was 19 years ago. Over the past month and a half, I've been re-reading my way through Jordan's epic series which now stands at 12 volumes. It's the sort of thing you have to do when the series is so long and -- as a result of Jordan's death two years ago -- the previous volume came out four years ago.

First, let me offer an update on "Crossroads of Twilight" -- the 10th volume in the series. When I first read that book back in Jan. 2003, I was unimpressed. And I wasn't the only one. That installment is only about 1 1/2 stars on Amazon. Having read the entire series thus far in just a few weeks, that novel's lack of action is more excusable. Jordan spent that book arranging the dominos for the inevitable tumble that would be the series conclusion. That's fine once you've got all the books out, but when you have to wait two years between learning the latest plot twists -- something needs to actually happen.

“The Gathering Storm” is the first installment of the three-book finale of the series. Back in 2005, Jordan wrote that the next book would be the last. I knew at the time that there was no way that Jordan could wrap up all the loose ends in a satisfying manner in just one book. Author Brandon Sanderson has been tasked with completing the series and he’s done a pretty good job.

After hearing Sanderson would be completing the series, I read several of his books – the Mistborn series and “Elantris” – and enjoyed them. But it can be much tougher to pick up an established series by a popular author and make it work.

In the first few chapters, I could tell it wasn’t the same author. There were some turns of phrase and descriptions which just didn’t read right – and after you’ve read 11 straight books by one author – you can become very attuned to the author’s voice. After about 120 pages, however, that slightly annoying buzzing in the background as I read just seemed to disappear. I’m still not sure if it was me becoming acclimated to Sanderson’s writing or Sanderson more capably mimicking Jordan’s writing style, but the issue went away and I became thoroughly engrossed in the story.

The four year wait has been worth it. The end is in sight and the substantive steps that have been made toward that ultimate end are satisfying. With Amazon selling the book for less than half the cover price, don’t wait for the paperback.