Jordan could of finished his series with less books.
There were a few books in there that seemed to of been published just to generate sales because is just dragged on.
on the plus side, I did discover Branden Sanderson & enjoy his books greatly.
Honestly, from the writing perspective, while it is fun to throw in plot twists and side plots, you quickly find yourself "painted into a corner" and the hardest thing I have found is to write your way out of it while still keeping the reader's attention. WoT suffered greatly from this, and GoT would never have continued if HBO hadn't picked it up. For two years Martin wouldn't work on the next book because he didn't know how to go from where he had taken it to where he wanted it to go. I still don't think he knows how to make the transition, and the last book painted him even closer to the corner. HBO sees this and has already laid the groundwork to diverge from the written books, either by ignoring some of the seemingly irrelevant side plots or by simply rewriting certain characters.
The first two books of Fire and Ice were excellent, revolutionary in ways. If you thought the series on HBO was graphic, then you didn't read the books because the sex and violence in there is ten times more intense. Book three was good, not great, and book four started to really drag and get convoluted. The last book just plain sucked with no resolution whatsoever and even more complications. If anything, all it did was define how badly he is painted into a corner. There is still great potential to pull it off, but I don't know if he has the stamina to do it. Writing a long story is tough, and when you have a story so twisted and tangled up with plotlines that diverged so far from the main story, it is just plain difficult and boring to try to pull it back together.
WoT was good, but after the third book started to drag horribly. In order to spice it up and keep the interest, he kept introducing new characters and sub-plots, and by book 8 it was so confusing you pretty much had to read straight from book one to know what was going on. However, I think Sanderson did a fantastic job tying it up and finishing it off. It would have been a better story if Jordan had cut out about 5 books in between, not to mention he would have finished it before dying.
I LOVE a good epic story line because it means I can keep reading a story for months. However, nobody has been able to really pull it off throughout the entire series. Mission Earth got straight up bizarre when Hubbard got senile, and I believe the last 3 books were ghost written by someone else. I never read the Harry Potters because I had already seen the movies and I don't want to invest that kind of time into a series where I already know the outcome. Sword of Truth was OK, but mostly because he actually made each book a complete story on it's own. However, now that it is finished, I tried to read his continuation and found it horrible and impossible to read.
I will continue to watch GoT on HBO, and I will even buy the next book when it comes out, although by then the series on TV might have already taken it in a better direction. We will see...