So there are parts of it that I really like. The focus on dreams and the horror in them was super cool. I like hearing about the world and the different cultures and how different everyone speaks and dresses. I have liked the character development too, especially Perrin's. I actually felt like I related to his wolf stuff as a trans person.
But hooooooollllyyy shit how about a cis het sit down honey you need to fucking relax. Men and women aren't seperate fucking species you nonce. Also why can no one ever say what they mean?? In general but especially men and womens interactions are like halfway between a conversation and a discussion of platonic forms. I can't fucking handle it. It's bad enough that he can't seem to describe women without first establishing their relationship to men, and that he sees liking men as a moral thing, and everything I've mentioned so far.
But when Mr. Jordan decided to include dom/sub dynamics into THE FUCKING MAGIC SYSTEM I sincerely ragequit. FOR FUCKS SAKE. Not only that but a woman having to ask a man is treated like its a degrading, dishonorable thing, and the women who just sorta ask and want things like affection and sex are seen as strange and other! A woman flirted with a man you haven't even confessed to and you are contemplating kidnapping?? Murder??
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
anyway the books really are neat but I am 50 shades of gay and I don't think it's going to get any better. Maybe when sanderson takes over it does but those are just the last two books soooooooooooo. I guess I could read summaries and then go to the last two books but I could also just read another series, considering red rising or malazaan book of the fallen. or kingkiller chronicles.
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
if anyone does want to vouch for it feel free, I'm already feeling pretty stockholmy
The Aiel are pretty well covered culturally by the end of book 5, if you want to stick it out. Not really sure gender dynamics are so much better there, but as a cishet man I'm sure don't have as clear a perspective on that. (The historical stuff in there is cool enough that I'd personally argue it's worth suffering through another book or two, since you're not too far from it now. I won't explain what I mean, but it's really cool.) But as others have mentioned, all of this stuff you're talking about only gets worse, especially in books 8 and 9, at which point I remember being incredibly frustrated and wanting to shake the characters and be like "GO TALK TO HER/HIM FOR FUCK'S SAKE; YOU ARE ON THE SAME FUCKING SIDE HERE!" And I was a sexist teenage cishet boy at the time. So...yeah.
Edit: Oh, one more thing: there are hints of lesbianism in the White Tower, not sure if you've seen them yet, but they do exist.
Well, I'm glad that the Aiel stuff is as cool as I was hoping it to be. I might keep reading through book 5 but honestly I think that if I did that it would just make it harder to put down. There might be some youtubers who have put out some good WoT content that would be worth a watch.
I'd probably pop a blood vessel
I will say that all of this was less difficult to handle when I re-read it recently. I guess because I knew it was coming, and I kinda just relaxed and expected the plot to crawl along in books 7-10, and knew that the men and women were going to stubbornly refuse to actually talk to each other and thus make unfair assumptions about each other's motives and goals and actions, it wasn't as hard to handle as it was when I read it the first time. Not sure how useful that is for you, though.
Edit: To borrow a phrase from Sanderson, you gotta put journey before destination with WoT. The destination isn't bad, but the series is all about the journey to get there, you know?