Timewaster's Guide Archive

Be sure to get the hardback, my paperback copies have completely fallen apart from being read too much you'll love these books!

The only reason to collect paperbacks of the first two books is for the really nice b&w illustrations throughout.  I'm talking about the paperbacks that split each volume into two parts, the first titled From the Two Rivers.  The cover art is just as bad as usual.  All the drawings of the main characters within are good, I think, except maybe Rand's.  I've yet to see one that captured the complexity of that combination of moral integrity and inner chaos.  Hard to draw.  

Oh, now that I look, the artwork I like so much is from Wizards of the Coast and Sally Wern Comport.  No wonder.

(Slight spoiler alert!)

It's the moral integrity of the Two Rivers characters that kept me reading all the way to the end.  My biggest complaint about RJ's world is that he never explains where this comes from and why they (Two Rivers folk) seem to have a foundational sense of right and wrong and almost no one else that they encounter really does, except the Tinkers and a few others.  In the real world, there is some kind of codified belief system behind most societies who honor women and children and place a high value on all life in general.  I don't believe it occurs in a vacuum.  

I'd like to discuss the Aiel here and how their rejection of their moral code has changed them, how cheap life has become to them, but that would get into spoiler territory, so I won't say more.  It's interesting, though, and worthy of a thread someday if it has not already been discussed.  

(Nominal Spoiler section over)

 To Brandon Sanderson's credit, he does not gloss over this important detail, religion or lack of it, and often reveals why his characters believe and act as they do and I appreciate that.  And he does it without skewing everything toward his own belief system.  That is annoying to me even when it skews to my own!  Except for C.S. Lewis, who did it so well.

 I have to believe my fantasy or I can't enjoy it.  Is that so wrong??  There is only so much unbelief I am willing to suspend, in other words.  My above WOT complaint is mitigated tremendously by great character development and lots of unexpected and imaginative plot deviations.  That's probably why The Shadow Rising is my favorite book.

Try Carol Berg for a good five-parter that holds its own for the most part.  Son of Avonar is book one and book five of her The Bridges of D'Arnath series is the best of the bunch.  It's easy to start a series, difficult to end it well.  IM (not so humble) O, Ms. Berg gets better as she gets older.

Just wondering why no one has mentioned Encyclopedia WOT?  I have found this site invaluable when I run across a character that I don't remember.  It is exhaustive, to the point of TMI sometimes, but so very helpful for those of us with older brains.

 I did have one important plot development ruined once when I read too far down a character's time line, but, with discipline, this site can help one through books 6-11.  I even recommend reading the synopses of books 8 and 10 rather than the whole volumes rather than give up on the series in disgust.    

I also have loved the audio books for my third time through WOT.  Bad pronunciations aside, I love having these stories read to me in preparation for book 12.  Go, Brandon!

Winter's Heart has enough good stuff in it, I think, to read through.  I'll listen to that one as soon as my free library finds it for me.  I just download on my computer, then onto my iPod, and erase when it's through.   

Fun to read JoeC's posts... keep it up!