Gathering Storm Title

[Shard]

Rj wasn't diagnosed until after Knife of Dreams.

[Renoard]

I think the pacing is just fine as long as you realize that it's not 11 books in the traditional sense.  It's a very long novel with several volumes.  Books like 8 and nine aren't dead, their just the lulls between major conflicts.  I think I would have enjoyed the series less if he'd taken the time to build a classical plot line for each volume.  As it was there were redundancies where he was forced to remind the reader of what went before.  Having to summarize sufficiently to make each volume a concise novel would had exacerbated that problem and played havoc with the character arcs and plotlines that pass from volume to volume.

[Wolfstar]

Rj wasn't diagnosed until after Knife of Dreams.

Are you sure?  Not that I'm doubting you, that's just not the impression I got.

[SarahG]

According to Wikipedia, Knife of Dreams came out 10/11/05 and Robert Jordan announced his diagnosis 3/23/06.  Of course, he may have been ill for awhile before that, but it's unlikely he knew he was dying while he was actually writing Book 11.

[Cynewulf]

According to his blog, he had his first symptom around May 2005, sometime after having turned in the manuscript for KoD. He was diagnosed in December the same year, and announced it in March 06, as Sarah says.

[Shard]

Plus there's this Youtube video of him in Dec '05 stating that he DID NOT have cancer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN6snUw4LQs

I also remember the diagnosis coming out some time after the book did.

[Patriotic Kaz]

Ahh but memory is a fragile thing

[Shard]

Yeah tell me about it. The mind can play tricks on you, HOWEVER in this case I KNOW the revelation of his sickness came AFTER KoD.

[darkelf]

Just thought I'd drop in my two cents on the title.
  I can understand some of the points that have been made concerning "The Gathering Storm" as the title for the first book.I think that the title is more fitting than many are giving it credit for. After all, this is probably going to be the book where everything is coming together leading up to the final battle(the storm)
   With all that RJ did for and meant to Harriet, TOR, Brandon and everyone else involved in this project I don't believe that they would do anything that they know he would be against. Give them the same open-mindedness that RJ would be afforded.
   I started this series twenty years ago with a copy i received free at MidSouth Con and the end is in sight I am more than willing to reserve judgement until it is done. I am saddened that RJ couldn't finish it himself but VERY grateful that Harriet is allowing someone else to and that Brandon is willing to take this on even though he knows that many RJ fans are gonna be rough  on him no matter what he does.

[Renoard]

It's a huge gamble to take on someone else's established work, with big potential rewards.  No one coerces a writer to take an opportunity like this and it's part of the deal that you WILL be judged, critiqued and marketed.

[Wolfstar]

Yeah tell me about it. The mind can play tricks on you, HOWEVER in this case I KNOW the revelation of his sickness came AFTER KoD.

I actually didn't jump on the WoT train until after he was already diagnosed and had announced it all, so it's not even a matter of my mind, just mixed facts after the fact, haha.

Hmm, that does a great job of tossing my theory out the door though, haha.  Regardless, I still think KoD was more on track with the early series.

[SarahG]

I suppose if you really want to salvage your theory, you could speculate that Robert Jordan had some sort of psychic premonition of his death, a few years ahead of time while writing Knife of Dreams.  Or that an Aes Sedai Foretold it for him.

But yeah, I think probably he just realized he'd better start tying things up if he wanted to finish the story in 12 books, which turned out not to be possible after all.  He should have had this revelation a couple of books sooner.

[Shaggy]

But then maybe the books would've been worse.

I liked KoD a lot.

[Shard]

Just before KoD came out I think he was well aware that the fans wanted more and even stated that alot was going to get done in KoD. I think CoT was honestly manuvering chess pieces into the the right places.

[Shaggy]

I think a lot of the previous books were setup-kind of things.