Knife of Dreams holds a unique place within the Wheel of Time series of fantasy of novels and because of the quite particular details of that placement it may be difficult to fully judge the quality and value of novel relative to where fans place it within any sort of ranking difficulty. It has two distinctive elements working in its favor which may mean it is judged more highly within the series than it might otherwise be.
First off, this the Wheel of Time book that was written and completed (as far as anyone knows) entirely by Robert Jordan before his 2007 death. From that point, onward the series would completed by Brandon Sanderson using extensive notes and writings left behind by Jordan. So, in one sense, it can be said that Knife of Dreams brings the Wheel of Time series to an end in the sense of it being the singular vision of one writer. That aspect alone is worth at least a few extra value points in the eyes of any hardcore fan who has been reading the series from the beginning.
That said, there is also another element to analyzing the quality of Knife of Dreams that, paradoxically, is precisely related to what Robert Jordan had been producing immediately prior to the publication of this novel. The Godfather, Part III was released to almost universally bad reviews based only partly on its own cinematic quality. True enough, the final chapter (to date) of the Coppola’s Godfather saga is not a particularly good movie, but on its own merits it is hardly a flaming disaster (aside from the performance of Sofia Coppola). The main reason that reason that The Godfather, Part III was met with such vicious critical reaction is that in comparison to the first two it looks like a flaming disaster. The key element here is if the future holds The Godfather, Part IV it is almost a certainty it will be reviewed more favorably not necessarily because it is a solid film, but because it almost has to be an improvement over its predecessor.
This is the case with Knife of Dreams. In addition to carrying the inherent goodwill that comes with being the last novel in the series completed by Jordan, it also benefits by being the entry in the series which follows what is almost universally regarded as the worst Wheel of Time book. Crossroads of Twilight was not just considered the most disappointing book in the series to that point, it has maintained that status in the face of all subsequent releases. The combination of these elements working in unison serve to make analysis of Knife of Dreams a rare experiment. Can one’s judgment of its quality be based solely on its content or is it inevitable that some sort of subconscious psychological mechanism is at work making a reader judge it based on the emotional attachment to its being the culmination of the singular vision of its author? Or, likewise, comparing it unfairly to disappointment of what immediately came before?
It is interesting to check out the various lists made by fans which rank the Wheel of Time books in order of quality. Including an out-of-order prequel, the series is comprised of fifteen books and it is very close to being universally true that Knife of Dreams lands somewhere in the middle five of these book. The overwhelming judgement by fans is that this is neither one of the best nor one of the worst but fits in somewhere around the middle.
While this is almost universal, it is not completely so and this is the interesting thing. It is practically impossible to find anyone who ranks Knife of Dreams near the bottom of the list alongside Crossroads of Twilight, but it is relatively easy to find fans who will place it among their favorites. Almost no one seems to consider this to be the best book in the series, but a good many rank it number three or four. Which leads to the question at hand: what is it about this book that makes a small but not insignificant minority of readers consider Knife of Dreams to be so much better than the overwhelming consensus who have concluded it is neither great nor terrible?
It also leads one to contemplate whether book would rank so highly among that staunch minority if it was not the immediate follow-up to the universally agreed upon worst book in the series or if it were not the last of the books completed by Robert Jordan. This is a unique work that provides a rare opportunity to analyze just how difficult is it to judge the quality of a novel solely by its content and without any external conditions impacting that judgment.
