I'd suggest to avoid the Wheel of Time. Jordan was a decent world-builder, but he really didn't know when to stop with the repeated descriptions.
Personally, the one trope I hate the most is this tendency of JP, but also KR, novels to have antagonists or just, for the lack of a better word, opponents that are basically paper-thin cutouts that serve only to glorify the protagonist. It's always "X walks in, acts like a retard that spent his youth in the looney bin, shittalks protagonist or his harem/flunkies, gets effortlessly dunked on by the protagonist, never returns to the story". So many of these stories use these mono-dimensional condoms to jerk the protagonist's awesomeness (always to the cheering of the readers, who probably project the bullies that tormented them on the baddies or something), often right after he pulled an ever-stronger power of some cosmic butthole - and what better way to show off the protagonist's undeserved prowess, than by using an expendable "character", amirite?
I hate this trope even more than the concept of harems, which can at least be written decently - this trope is literally a symptom of a shitty writer.