Well I wouldn't say they were 'up front' with the religion thing. Aside from one main group of 'good guys' being Wiccan, there wasn't much discussion about the subject except that they didn't make anyone convert, they just let them experience the feeling of not belonging for a change and most converted. I liked that part since it felt in line with my own personal beliefs that most religions are there just to provide a
sense of belonging somewhere. I didn't feel the 'Uh-ohhhh...' until the ending of the original trilogy when the Wiccan leader proclaimed a prophecy at their child's birth. I felt the stirrings of a good s-f novel flipping over to a fantasy series. The reason that upsets me is that they went to such great pains to test the conditions to which they were now forced to live in a
scientific and
methodical way. That was half the fun of them, trying to figure out exactly what could cause basic laws of physics to be altered and could it ever happen? Was it localized or to what extent had the change occurred? Is it possible that it happened before?
Given that any technology sufficiently advanced from the viewers point of view can be seen as 'magic', I would have been more comfortable with aliens vs dieties manipulating the planet. Aliens would have an agenda where dieties seem to more like kids with a magnifying glass looking for ant hills...
As far as the Robert Jordan books go, I made it up to the one dedicated to finding a magic punch bowl... Really? The whole world is about to be destroyed, their only chance to prevent is has gone insane and all of a sudden they're worried about global warming enough to warrant an entire book
That combined with undoing the progress of the first few books with a couple paragraphs... Pretty much told me that he had NO idea how to end the series and was waiting to see how Terry Goodkind managed it. Not that the Sword of Truth series didn't have a couple stalled books in it, he just wasn't as blatant.