I also came away from Memory, Sorrow and Thorn disappointed. It had some great moments and great pacing througout, but the climax was, by comparison, underwhelming and over way too quickly. Then it wrapped up with a soothing epilogue that, for me, drained whatever impact the climax had.
I read and loved LotR when I was in junior high, which means everything after gives diminishing returns. Terry Brooks, for example, used too much backfill in the Shannara books and ground the narrative to a halt so that Allanon could hit us over the head with the history of the world, for pages and pages. Then the Nazgu--excuse me, the Skullbearers arrive, and we're off until Al's next Story Time. That said, I thought the second Scions of Shannara book was great. A very affecting story.
Then I headed over to Wheel of Time, which would have been a powerful trilogy in its original format. I left midway through the ~150 page prologue of Fires of Heaven and haven't looked back. I don't know what it is that keeps people coming back for the next installment. I can stand a woman's eyes turning into blue chips of ice only so many times
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So I've held back from Goodkind and Martin because I'm afraid of coming down with Jordanitis again. If anything, I will not touch either series until the whole thing is on the shelf.
In the long run, there are only so many iterations you can make on the Tolkien model, which is what the overwhelming majority of my fantasy reading material has been. Granted, I may just be looking to relive the Tolkien experience, but the other problem is that too many authors are trying to rewrite it.