Since no one else seems to be bringing her up, I though I'd mention (read: rave about) Michelle Sagara West. I've read the first (three? four? they blur together) Jordan books, mostly for lack of anything else to read at the time, and found the plot interesting, the characters flat, the world complicated but showing signs of being somewhat poorly thought out, and the pace slow beyond conception. To me, West is what Jordan -could- have been -- a detailed world and very complicated plot, but with three dimensional characters that I care for. The pacing is slow, but things do progress, and her current series promises to end with the next book (five). She has a few flaws that bug me -- she tends to just keep drawing more and more characters, and not minor ones, out of her hat, leaving the main characters of the first book of any series to drift into the background of future books. Since I care about the characters, it's frustrating to have to wait several hundred pages, at times, to get a glimpse of one or another. She also, based on the end of the two series she's completed, seems to believe that any climatic scene must include a great deal of people flying through the air and a lot of colorful fire, an excess of superficial magic that somewhat frustrates me, since I know/think she's capable of more depth. But all and all, I'd heartily recommend her Sun Sword series (starts with The Broken Crown, published under the name of Michelle West) and her Sundered series (starts with Into the Dark Lands, published under the name of Michelle Sagara, out of print and hard to come by). Her Hunter duology (Hunter's Oath, Hunter's Death) was something of a dissappointment to me, and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone who hasn't read and enjoyed the Sun Sword books; it provides illuminating background to those, but on its own I find it pretty weak. Claire