How to Write a Fantasy Story: All you'll ever need.
After seeing Lord of the Rings, and having read a mess of tedious fantasy novels, I was struck with the formula for all fantasy stories. With these simple guidelines you too can create the next masterpiece.

Locations
The key successful fantasy place names is to have what the landmark is followed by the word of and then a sinister sounding description or made up word. The Mountain of Dread, Halls of Death, Forest of Darkness, or Plains of Ice for example. For made up words see below.

Names. People and Places
People should have names that are mangled phonetic versions of regular names. "Whilyium" instead of William. It's best to have physical trait or skill after the name rather than a surname. So our hero "Whilyium" becomes "Whilyium the Quick". Or you can just use that trait as a surname, "Whilyium Quick." Don't forget to use the lonely letters in the alphabet that don't see much action.
.....This works for human character but for non-human characters or place names (especially if the place was named by non-humans or in an ancient tongue) you need to be a little fancier. To be exotic double "a" words are quick and easy, "Baaku." For a really good fantasy name it needs to be extremely difficult if not impossible to pronounce and for good measure have some apostrophes thrown in. Fx'zaaku'a'zkim for example.

Plot
Fantasy stories are all centered on a quest. You take a couple of characters who have never been out of their village and give them the responsibility to save something important. Like all life or the very fabric of existence. Someone or the spirit of someone is always trying to "sunder" or unweave things. Sometimes this is for revenge or because they're just plain grumpy. But it is usually up to a farmer or village boy to squelch all the sundering.
.....So now we have Whilyium the Quick and his childhood friend Harwold Idyldaiz, the village lay about, with the quest to keep the Dark Lord Fx'zaaku'a'zkim from sundering the fabric of existence. Of course they need a reason to take up this quest other than for the sheer heck of it. Usually one of them would have to be a chosen one and someone with knowledge of this will come to their village. A wizard perhaps, or Baaku from the Forest or Darkness. Baaku is an elf-like being with wisdom and a peaceful manner that humans could never possess.
......For this example a wizard will come to the village and sweep the two boys off to adventure. Now that they are on their quest you need to throw in a lot of side adventures that really don't add to the story. Say that Harwold is falsely accused of stealing. This will help your story be pointlessly long and span several volumes. After the first couple become best sellers don't let the story end. Drag it out to at least eight books. Fans will read on because they wasted so much time on the early books that started out good that they have to see how it all ends, even though they ceased to care long ago.
.....Also their quest needs to drag in other characters. Maybe now Baaku can be in our story. Each character needs to bring one bit of knowledge or skill that will be needed at a crucial moment regardless of how useless the character seems. Each of these characters needs to use a different weapon. Bow and arrows work for quick agile characters and an axe for stocky characters with beards.

The Ending
It's best to end with opening to potential sequels. For example the Dark Lord is simply imprisoned rather than destroyed. The farm boy hero should end up a king of some fashion because he was actually the descendant of a great king from a few thousand years ago. He will have also married the female character who hated him through most of the story. Squeeze her into the story somehow it's not important. Harwold would probably become a great and respected warrior. Maybe he will have grown a beard and had a hidden talent with a sword.

Some Follow-Up Points
Here are some bullet points of things to throw in.
* Magic chanting.
* References to an ancient and wiser age that managed to destroy itself anyway.
* Palaces and landmarks should be on such a grand scale that in real life it couldn't actually be built.
* Anything evil should be black and possibly oily.
* Don't be afraid to have bright lights as part of any scene.
* All non-human characters live for a really long time!

Personally I have enjoyed every single one of the WoT books and if some were slower than others action wise the story still moved along. But Knife of Dreams is the first book in a long while too actually resolve plotlines.

Jordan seems to have focused this book on Mat and Perrin rather than Rand who we only see two or three times. Finally after 3 books of Perrin procrastinating he finally makes his move on the Aiel and rescues my most hated character Faile. With Mat we finally see the Moraine plotline brought into play which is very exciting, and he finally sorts things out with Tuon. As for Rand, he seems to be solely focused on preparing for the imminent Tarmon Gai'don, which means Min, Elayne and Aviehnda thankfully get much less screentime. There are some nice little segments to finish plotlines for Lan, Nyneave and Galad. But really the most exciting parts of the book are from Egwenes point of view. After so much bickering and politics you feel like something is actually going to happen in the White Tower.

Jordan seems to have ignored a lot of the smaller characters in this book, as well as giving the Chosen even less time on the page than he usually does. It feels like things are moving towards the Last Battle quite quickly but you have to wonder how RJ is going to finish this in one more book as he has promised. Either AMoL will be a big mess or as I'm hoping, RJ will pull a miracle out of the bag and stun the world with his genius story telling. Might be too much to hope for, but if anyone can do it he can.

The book definitely moves the story line forward, and at an exciting pace.
The plot lines that get handled the most are really the ones that you expected to go forward in this book after the dissappointment in the previous two books. And as for Jordan being done with the series in one more book... well take a look at his personal web page... he has a rare blood disease and his health is failing we are all lucky that he feels able to finish the series even though everyone agrees he should do it in 2-4 books. There will be some satisfaction in Jordan finishing the series and getting a 'true' ending even though it may be rushed.

It was in amazing condition, I am very pleased with the product.