Should I read WoT?

[Mulk]

I rather morbidly predicted Jordan would die prior to finishing his work sometime around book 8.  I stuck with it because I had to know the end.  I'm a completionist, if I start a work I'm going to finish it. The only exception I ever made was for ASOIAF - after reading book 1 I never picked up another one and have never been tempted to.

In my view, Jordan's greatest issue was his inability to figure out how to get to the end he had envisioned from where he was. His greatest weakness (though it is also a strength) was a fondness for complex storytelling that eventually resulted in stunning levels of named characters and viewpoints, not to mention complexity of prophecy and politics that had him taking years to make sure he wasn't messing up on details in order to publish the next work.  As a writer, he had a fondness for repeated phrasings and visuals that drove me nuts at times.

I tell you all that to tell you that in spite of these things it is a very good work in totality and worth the time if you can allot it.  Some of the battle stuff is just epic in scope, he has a gift for description that is Tolkienian at times, you'll be able to visualize pretty well a lot of locales that he is describing, and the characters are memorable.  StormingTexan has a great point about the timeline of the book - despite it taking 14 books to complete, it's a relatively short timeline and when you keep that in mind, it makes some of the characters' seeming intransigence make a lot more sense - it took a lot of books for them to change but not all that much time in the grand scheme of things.