Wheel of Time

[JP Dogberry]

Won't be hard, thanks to the new Free Trade agreement. Score another for The Man vs global diversity.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

well, this thread went off the wall...

I recently finished reading the WoT books. I'd read the first one during my senior year, and wasn't impressed enough to keep reading. But then a couple months ago I got bored and decided to try them out. Went through them all pretty fast.

I was entertained. I'll read the rest when they come out. I do not believe it's possible to finish the story satisfactorily in just two books, but Jordan is swearing he plans to do this. At the end of the Dumais Wells chapter with the big battle it says it's only a small sample of what's to come, and so far we've seen nothing even close. Things like this are pointing me to the belief that the end will be a letdown. But maybe if I expect the worst, I can be pleasantly surprised.

[EUOL]

Jordan doesn't, in my opinion, deserve the harsh criticism he's received.  But, I think I mentioned something along those lines earlier.  Either way, he is masterful at writing.  The entire project got kind of bloated, but he's been very successful with it.


I'm in the 'once he finishes them all, I'll go read them' camp.  I fizzled out around  book eight or nine.

[Entsuropi]

I'm in the 'once he finishes them all, I'll go read them' camp.  I fizzled out around  book eight or nine.

I got to book 11. He seems to be slowly tying up the loose ends - the other countries basically. Its quite amusing. Not only are critics wondering why he just doesn't finish it off, so are some characters. The north kingdoms sent an army down to ask Rand just what the hell was taking so long.

[Master Xaio]

I started reading WoT about 2 years ago now.  I agree with the general consensus, the first ones were good, now they are pathetic boring and generally irritating.  Since starting, I've managed to get to about the 8th book, after having to stop several times for breaks of months to recover from boredom ++

And incidentally, i like Terry Brooks.  The books did get repetitive and boring after a while, but generally I think he's a good writer.

*Crouches and waits for flames*

[EUOL]

I remember LOVING the first three when I read them years ago.

When I came back to try Scions, I got very bored.  Landover, however, had some amusing parts.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I confess a guilty enjoyment of all the Shanarra books I've read (all but one, I think). I have more hardcover Brooks books than anyone else. And his Star Wars Ep. 1 novelization was better at showing character motivations than the film was (Note, this is the ONLY Star Wars novel I have remotely thought was good, and I only purchased it because Brooks wrote it). You're probably tired of me saying it, but the Word and the Void series are immeasurably better than anything else he's done, and I recommend them even to Shanarra haters.

Brooks, whom I've met several times, is a really nice person as well.

[EUOL]

He has a nifty website too.

[Mistress of Darkness]

I like Brooks too. I got all the way to the new series where Bo is the Druid, but I haven't made it to the second book in the series. (I should borrow it from my brother since I gave it to him for Christmas in 2002.) I disagreed with what he was doing with Bo. It seemed to trivialize the characterization of Allanon in Wishsong that I liked.

I met Mr. Brooks (and he signed my copy of Wishsong) but he pronounced it Shan ar a , instead of shah Nahr a, which weirded me out.

I love David Eddings. I know his plots and characters are similar, and yet I've never seen anyone handle so many characters so comfortably before. And there really isn't as many direct correlations between the Belgariad/Mallorian and Elenium/Tamulli series as some people claim.

Patricia C. Wrede, juvenile fiction, is the one that I have the most hardbacks of. One day I will have all of her books in hardback. For now I am content to have the hardbacks of all of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. The cover art is much better.

[Fellfrosch]

I think the only hardbacks I own are the Harry Potters my mother in law buys and whatever free stuff I get from World Fantasy. The most books I own by any one author, however, is definitely Saberhagen.

[Spriggan]

I haven't read the WOT series, nor do I follow it.  But it seams funny to me that Jordan hasn't even finished the series and he's allready writeing Prequals to it.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

well, there's no rule that says you have to write your books in order.

I was going to say Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books are written in an order that's not very chronological, but the best example is probably CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. Apparently he preferred them to be ordered chronologically (I saw some recent edition that says "in the author's preferred order") but they were written in a very different order.

It's easier to get away with when you have a loosely-connected universe you're writing in (like Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe novels, which are in all sorts of places along the timeline), but with a series like WoT, if there's a story you feel should be told before the series is over, and it happens to be set before the other books so far, why not write it?

[Heahengel]

well, there's no rule that says you have to write your books in order.

Yeah, with most authors I would agree with you, but in this case I can't.  He is already angering huge numbers of fans with this perpetual series, that is never getting anywhere close to ending.  Yet he keeps promising that he will end it soon, and on top of that hes publishing a trilogy (I believe) of sequals (remember, WOT started as a trilogy I believe).  And hes writing slower and slower.

I don't really mind that the books are becoming more and more about a group of main characters rather than just one.  What bothers me is that  a) nothing is happening, and b) the prologues.  Each book they grow, become less and less about anything that is happening in the books, and more about introducing new chars and plot strands that are unnecessary (and that he swears he had planned on all along).  Even more annoyingly, he doesn't bother to mention a lot of these at all in the rest of the book.  It is one thing to add a new plot strand in a book if it is important to the book, but there are no reason for them.  Was anyone else annoyed that he added another famous general in the last books prologue, and then added him in to a few random discussions about the 'best generals in the world' just to make it seem like everyone had known about him all along?

Sorry about the rant.  I fall into the "I'm never going to buy another hardback from this man again, but I'll get the series in paperback and read them" category (but not the prequals).

[PaperSword]

I was forced through the first three, which i thought were great, and now i've stopped for the moment...a LONG moment...for a rest of his nonsense.

I have determined a formula for the series i think may need some revision and i dont mind if you help.

1. All characters begin in last location of previous book. All then note that they must "all" go to point D or be accidently led there by Rand's influence.

2. Haphazardly stumble around points A-C without accomplishing anything but splitting the group into three new, equally boring groups.

3. Now with one group each in points A, B, and C, they all decide that they "should" go to point D after all.

4. After much boring, useless detail and character flaws mentioned in their own heads, they do go to point D.

5. Point D is the battlefield of some climatic event near the end of the book to get you excited about getting the next one and reading it through.

6. You come to the realization of this pattern and stop reading, for the series could have ended nicely after book three.

7. Kick friend who introduced you to books.

8. Find Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and have a good read.

The last few were for humor, but the rest were nearly intelligent. I didnt like how each character was afraid of their own abilities, and unconfident, regardless of the situation.

Jordan spent a lot of time telling the reader that the characters needed to be somewhere, only for four chapters of useless running around was complete for everyone to know where to go and when. I wish they could be more like a D&D session, the DM explains something while another character was not present, but the player was. When the character returns, we "tell him what happened" as though he had been there the whole time.

[42]

I always recommend that people read Wheel of Time, particularly if I don't like them.