I genuinely wonder how Robert Jordan sketched out this book? The next book evidently runs concurrently to this one. So when he wrote this one did he do so as a basic "background material" for the next book? Did he plan to do this ahead of time or did he make the decision to do so when he realized he had a bunch of B plots that he needed to partially resolve before he got to the "big action" end of this book.
Anyway, two major events happen in this book, and it feels like it should be a bigger deal, but you are so sort of overwhelmed by the amount of background noise going on that it is hard to even place them in perspective.