Book: New Spring, Robert Jordan

New Spring is a welcome change to the saga that is A Wheel of Time. It's short, digestible, coherent... and pretty much fixes all the issues I've been having with the current volumes in the main series that I'm reading. It's also a surprise to find what it is about: after being warned that it was full of spoilers for the main timeline I was excited to start it... only to find that a lot of it was pretty redundant. That doesn't make it a bad read - on the contrary in fact since it make it less vital and more of a pleasure. That said, I'm a bit reluctant to say too much in case it does spoil it for anyone reading.

I liked it, and in some ways I'm a little cautious of having to go back to the slog that is the main franchise - and yet it has me eager to continue on that journey. Which is pretty much the whole point of a prequel really, so the job's done here.