I'm through. What a ride. I'm both sad and happy that it's over. I'd name The Wheel of Time the best of epic — read: Tolkienesque — fantasy. It started out like any other high fantasy book but developed into so much more.
The first fantasy series I read was Shannara. Good fun. I advanced to Midkemia — Magician is still, in my mind, the best coming-of-age mage story ever. And lastly I graduated to WoT. Each series was a step up in my opinion. I kept reading various other works that were fun but didn't resonate as much with me, like Dragonlance (ok), some Drizz't books (meh), Aurian (ok), Lord of the Rings, Assassin books (ok), Sword of Truth (ok soap opera). The first series after those that gripped me like before was A Game of Thrones, but that's already very different; fantasy seems to branch of in different directions nowadays, which of course has its own merits.
What I liked most about the Wheel of Time was the sheer amount of detail in everything. Things that others apparently found "slow", I reveled in. The magic, cultures, factions, landscape and clothing descriptions. And the names — Robert Jordan's names for his characters and everything were so … flowing. Or I just read so much about them that they grew on me (although "Asha'man" always reminded me of Saiya-jin from Dragonball for some reason, hehe). I must say that Brandon Sanderson, albeit one of my favorite authors of modern times, doesn't quite have the same knack for names.
R.I.P. Robert Jordan.
Thanks for finishing, Brandon Sanderson.