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Notes -
That's fascinating. As a male who read the 4th-7th books when they came out, I primarily recall being severely disappointed by the 7th book, in a large part because of the quality of writing in the action scenes. And perhaps I'm seeing connections where there aren't any, but I have to wonder about this apparent male/female pattern and the terrible quality of action in so many movies and TV shows that are pushed for their female leads and female production team these days.
Off the top of my head, the awful combat action in shows like Disney's Echo and Amazon's Rings of Power come to mind, but perhaps the most stark example is The Matrix: Resurrections, which was directed by the woman version of one of the male directors of the original Matrix trilogy, and which was about as severe a drop-off in quality of action as you can get in a franchise, with the combat barely comprehensible half the time and not making any sense from the combatants' point of view all of the time. This is in contrast to the first film (and even its 1st 2 awful sequels) which had very clearly visible combat where each movement by each combatant made sense (within this fictional wushu-inspired universe) and flowed into one another as if they were attempting to mime out what a real fight would look like where 2 combatants are really trying to kill each other with all their might. Unlike the 4th film (directed by a woman), the 1st 3 films (directed in half by the same person, but as a man), displayed an understanding that a fight scene is more than just 2 people waving their feet and fists around each other in fancy looking ways.
And this is where I'm probably projecting or jumping to conclusions, but with the well-known difference between men and women in terms of "thing-oriented" and "people-oriented," I wonder if men are more scrutinizing about action scenes actually making sense, while women are more accepting of them if the underlying emotional thrust is there. As a man, when I read/view a scene in which 2 people are fighting, I pay attention to how each person reacts to each punch or kick and get disenchanted when I see them behaving in ways that don't make sense given their motivation in the moment to survive and kill the other guy; for women, perhaps they're less bothered by it and just think the important part is "A defeated B at the cost of C, which leads to D," and the how that defeat occurred is just extraneous details.
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