[Suzerain of Sheol]

Jordan never really sold me on his characters. His females all seem like variations on the same theme. There have been essays written on the sexism in the books, but I won't get into it here.

The main characters are pretty solid (you know, Rand, Mat, Perrin, Thom, Egwene, et al) but beyond that, there's just so many side characters that they kind of get lost in the shuffle. Fleshing out that many characters is an insane task, and I don't really feel like Jordan lived up to it. And I think his books would have been better served if he didn't introduce so many and had just kept the plot focused on the characters everyone actually cares about -- the ones the audience has been following since book 1.

Out of curiosity, have you ever read the Malazan Book of the Fallen series? That one's kind of similar to WoT in that it has really high-powered magic, hundreds of characters, and is extremely long both page-wise and book-wise. It's my personal favorite series, but it's definitely not for everyone. You might like it, though.