Books like To the Blight

This series is both entertaining and hugely frustrating. At 11 books averaging 800 pages apiece, it's quite a time investment. The plusses: + Robert Jordan has a knack for compelling plot. I really, really wanted to know what happened next at nearly every turn. + The concepts are original - excepting of course that he takes the same stuff from Tolkien that everyone else does - and pretty nifty. I especially like the Yin/Yang idea of the one power and its male and female halves. + The characters are generally compelling, especially the ones with significant power (the trio of main characters, and various high-level bad guys). + Climactic scenes deliver what you want! Bad guys get their due! Good guys kick ass! It's fun.The minuses: - RJ tends to get WAY too caught up in a horribly juvenile girl vs. boy sort of war, which gets tiresome early on in the series, and infuriating by the end. - Most of the characters constantly behave like whiny adolescents. Everyone is always "demanding" something from others. People who are themselves incredibly rude frequently slap others for being insolent. Again, it gets old fast. - He has an obvious formula for character behavior which started to drive me absolutely insane by the third or fourth book. For example, women who are scared always "sick up"; women who are angry "smooth their skirts"; men who are angry have incredibly cold eyes; etc. - You could make a case that every book could easily lose 200 pages or so and be far better for it. - Worst of all - RJ never quite finished what he was doing before he died. So the series comes to an abrupt, incredibly unsatisfying end. (Personally, I wanted it all to end by about book seven or eight.) My feeling is that even if he had lived, the series would probably have gone on to book twenty without ending. Ending it didn't seem to be on his task list. - Book nine is the last one with anything useful to offer. Book ten was such a horrid (I mean HORRIBLE) read that I didn't even bother with book eleven - I just read the chapter summaries online.If you are interested in these books, but have not yet read the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, please run (don't walk) to the bookstore and get that instead. You will be far happier.