As the final, concluding entry in the Wheel of Time fantasy novel series, A Memory of Light is, on one level, absolutely the easiest book in the series to analyze. After more than a dozen volumes each averaging on their own in excess of 300,000 words, very few if any readers open A Memory of Light in search of writing to rival Herman Melville. The novel itself is, in a sense, the white whale, finally spotted after nearly a quarter of a century, thirteen volumes, two authors and one death. Only one thing really matters anymore by this point: does Ahab catch the whale or does the whale catch Ahab.
Or, in other words, does the finale satisfy all (or at least most) of the expectations that been building up over the commitment one has made to the Wheel of Time or does it disappointment. Or, to engage yet another metaphor: is A Memory of Light the equivalent of The Godfather, Part II or The Godfather, Part III? If the latter, then analysis is absolutely beside the point because the book has fulfilled its purpose. If the latter, then analysis is absolutely unavoidable because somebody had better explain what went wrong.
The analysis here beside the point. Among the various and widespread rankings of the best-to-worst books in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light does not always come out on top one-hundred percent of the time. It is most certainly not the flip side of Crossroads of Twilight, almost universally devalued as the worst. It is not universal, no, but it is definitely close. Let’s put it into a perspective a bit more fundamentally appropriate than The Godfather movies: a far greater majority of readers closed the cover on this book entirely content with how things turned out than those viewers who left the theater on opening day of Return of the Jedi.
A Memory of Light is, really, a textbook example that filmmakers creating trilogies (comprised of either three or four parts!) should study. The book is epic fantasy fiction in every sense of the word, weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages in both hardcore and paperback editions. If you listened to the audiobook version straight through, it would require staying awake for almost two days. Of course, all word count really means is that it is making big promises. And what it promises is no small potatoes. The Wheel of Time is a series that integrates so many subplots that it is actually something close to a miracle readers don’t forget some of them. The mere volume of the book is an unspoken promise to readers by the writer who took upon himself the unenviable job of completing the vision originated and vigorously pursued by another person. Buy this thing as a bookstore, lug it home, pop a pain pill for the ache in your back or arms, find yourself a comfy place to sit for the next week and here’s what you’ll get: the answers to all your questions.
But wait, there’s more. Because what Sanderson does is not merely tied up those loose ends and deliver on what is, after all, the entire purpose of the book in the first place: the long-delayed showdown between good and evil. That would be enough, most surely, and it would be a hard-hearted reader who attacked the guy hired to get the thing finished for failing to hit hard on all those multiple examples of foreshadowing Robert Jordan subtly hid five, eight or ten book earlier. But he actually manages to pull that off as well.
There is a reason why A Memory of Light ranks so universally high on the radar of Wheel of Time’s most devoted fanbase and it is not simply because he didn’t screw it up. Not by a long shot. He managed to do with even George Lucas and Francis Coppola could not manage: bringing their artistic vision to a completion that satisfies on every level.
