The Gathering Storm - First Impressions *SPOILERS*

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Snape fizzled horribly though... Sigh.

[Shard]

Well I do agree that Brandon is doing a great job on the books.

I just don't think Verin's reveal was a curall, it did help get rid of the BA out of the Tower but they are still alive and out there. There is still a Forsaken, Messanna in the Tower along with the Four Seachan assassins. At any rate they had found a way to confirm who was a BA with the Oath Rod so Egwene would have done the Re-swearing without Verin's big reveal. I am also certain that Verin's reveal was in RJ's notes and it was just a way to wrap up all the Verin plot threads. I don't know how this scene would have happened had it just been RJ but I liked it anyways.

[douglas]

Thanks, Kazman, I musta missed that somewhere. 

People are not supposed to be recommending racy stuff on this thread!  Problem is, what's mild for one is way over-the-top for another.  One or two scenes of mostly-off-camera sex, and quite a bit of action-related violence, is O.K. by me, but many would consider what I tolerate intolerable.  Torture scenes are sometimes important, but more often these days they are indulgent/gratuitous/kinky.  That's why I started this thread, to help me sift through the disgusting and get to really good fantasy and sci fi without wading through what I consider distasteful content myself.   

How'd that post get here?  I think you meant to post in this thread.

[gwoodhouse]

Ages, huh?  His first novel was published 6 years ago.  Now, while I have become a huge BWS fan, and have read all his books, I find myself wanting more information about the worlds he creates.  I understand why he was writing small, but I am looking forward to his first Epic, and writing Wot will no doubt only make him better.

6 years is a long time to say i can't really say i've been reading "grown up" novels for more than 10 years. And nooooo, please Brandon, don't learn from Jordan too much and start writing "Epic" books ("Epic" from the above comment i'm reading as long, slow, overly descriptive and trying to be clever reads with plot used as a tool to peice the description together rather than the focus of the book). Your books are ace and shouldn't change a bit.

Also, you should write more on Warbreaker universe, magic from colours is ace.

You honestly think RJ and Tor couldn't have made as much, if not more, money by closing this series and writing outriggers?

Yes - After reading WoT the first time i wouldn't have bought any more of Jordans books on other series/same world. If you say "I'm going to write a 10 book series" then do it in 10 books. Not wait until 1000's have bought 7-8 of them and then think "Oh, i'm getting a good amount of cash from this, i'll keep going". RJ could have easily fit the plot that has/will happened in 10 books, heck, he could have done it in 6-7 really juicy fantastic books instead of drawing it ever outward.

As Brandon has shown by him writing just one of the books and it being action packed and containing as much plot as the last 5 books combined.

[Shard]

Ages, huh?  His first novel was published 6 years ago.  Now, while I have become a huge BWS fan, and have read all his books, I find myself wanting more information about the worlds he creates.  I understand why he was writing small, but I am looking forward to his first Epic, and writing Wot will no doubt only make him better.

6 years is a long time to say i can't really say i've been reading "grown up" novels for more than 10 years. And nooooo, please Brandon, don't learn from Jordan too much and start writing "Epic" books ("Epic" from the above comment i'm reading as long, slow, overly descriptive and trying to be clever reads with plot used as a tool to peice the description together rather than the focus of the book). Your books are ace and shouldn't change a bit.

Also, you should write more on Warbreaker universe, magic from colours is ace.

You honestly think RJ and Tor couldn't have made as much, if not more, money by closing this series and writing outriggers?

Yes - After reading WoT the first time i wouldn't have bought any more of Jordans books on other series/same world. If you say "I'm going to write a 10 book series" then do it in 10 books. Not wait until 1000's have bought 7-8 of them and then think "Oh, i'm getting a good amount of cash from this, i'll keep going". RJ could have easily fit the plot that has/will happened in 10 books, heck, he could have done it in 6-7 really juicy fantastic books instead of drawing it ever outward.

As Brandon has shown by him writing just one of the books and it being action packed and containing as much plot as the last 5 books combined.

Well Brandon has gone on record saying he's planning a 10 book epic called "Way of Kings"

[Patriotic Kaz]

Lord of the Rings is "Epic" and isn't near as long as WoT. Not too mention you have no understanding of how the market works, or who RJ was as a person (money isn't important on your deathbed and he STILL kept writing).  If WoT was shorter he wouldn't have lost a large percentage of his fan base... and he did i.e. my father after crown of swords.

[mtbikemom]

Thanks, Kazman, I musta missed that somewhere. 

People are not supposed to be recommending racy stuff on this thread!  Problem is, what's mild for one is way over-the-top for another.  One or two scenes of mostly-off-camera sex, and quite a bit of action-related violence, is O.K. by me, but many would consider what I tolerate intolerable.  Torture scenes are sometimes important, but more often these days they are indulgent/gratuitous/kinky.  That's why I started this thread, to help me sift through the disgusting and get to really good fantasy and sci fi without wading through what I consider distasteful content myself.   

How'd that post get here?  I think you meant to post in this thread.

Oh, just wait till YOU'RE old!  ...er

[Shard]

Lord of the Rings is "Epic" and isn't near as long as WoT. Not too mention you have no understanding of how the market works, or who RJ was as a person (money isn't important on your deathbed and he STILL kept writing).  If WoT was shorter he wouldn't have lost a large percentage of his fan base... and he did i.e. my father after crown of swords.

Yes LotR is short but it seems to be a continuing work under Tolkien's Son. That doesn't change the fact that Brandon is planing a 10 book epic himself. It's hard to judge if RJ was milking the series or merely continuing to add content to a story he felt it needed. He may have lost fans but evidently not enough since his books after Crown of Swords consistently got New York Times best sellers. I thought books 1-7 were great and even enjoyed 8&9 greatly, the only one I consider weak was CoT. I don't think this series could ever have been a trilogy or even a six book series, this struggle was just too big for that small amount of books.

Tolkien's characters main plight was walking to a Volcano, while the rest of the cast ran around keeping Suaron's attention away from the ring bearer. Rather a simple plot when compared to WoT, or even Brandon''s work for that matter.

[Patriotic Kaz]

Doesn't change the fact that he misunderstands epic for meaning long

[Whitefire]

Back to the topic...

Excellent work, Mr. Brandon!

I can't find the words. The choice not to rush and squeeze the series ending into 1 volume seems to work great.  You did wonderful job with the characters, and the plot is vivid and spectacular.

I couldn't help myself thinking 'whose words am I reading at the moment', sometimes, but it's a thing that just can't be helped.

With your fresh style and fresh look at the series you have probably given it a big boost : )

If RJ was to write it, i suspect he might have chosen different chunks of the plot to fit into this book, leaving some events for later (yes, I'm aware that he intended to finish it quickly, in 1 volume, but... I don't believe it would happen). This is not to say that I have anything against your choices. Just a thought.

[Shard]

Doesn't change the fact that he misunderstands epic for meaning long

The dictionary disagrees with you:

Noun:
1 A long narrative poem telling of a hero's deeds

Adjective:

1 Very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale)

2 Constituting or having to do with or suggestive of a literary epic

It seems to me that Epic does indeed contain the meaning of being long or at least large. It never mattered how long it was going to be, Jordan always tried to write it as long as it needed to be, even Sanderson agrees with that in his blogs.

[Patriotic Kaz]

And what constitutes "Long".... also epic poems haven't been common for centuries. Now we write novels, so under your definition nothing in the fantasy genre is epic.


P.S.Beowolf is barely longer than a novella.

[mtbikemom]

Does not "epic" refer more to scope than length these days?  There are plenty of book series that are long, but so limited in scope that no one would classify them as epic, like C.S. Lewis's books.  There are better examples, I'm sure.  LotR is considered epic because of the wonderfully detailed (though emotionally restrained) world Mr. Tolkien created.  RJ took the genre of high fantasy, as he liked to call it, to sometimes ridiculous proportions.  If I need a website to recall who in the world I am reading about and what he/she has done in book 3-6, the character list has gotten way out of control.  But I'm still reading.

A novella-length poem is epic, to my way of thinking, just because it's amazing to sustain story and poetic structure for more than a few pages.  Prose is different.

I agree with Whitefire: Brandon is striking a good balance between stopping to smell roses and getting on with the story.  I think even better than Knife of Dreams, which felt rushed to me.  There was just that one Psych. 101 moment of "role-playing" in TGS that made me cringe a bit (like when I read the words "deal with it" or "relationship" in fantasy: modernisms, I think), but other than that, the story flowed nicely for me.

[Cynewulf]

If I need a website to recall who in the world I am reading about and what he/she has done in book 3-6, the character list has gotten way out of control.

It really has not. No one says that the character lists of the Norse sagas have gotten out of control even though everyone is called the same thing. It is good to have a story with more than a core cast of ten characters.

Agree with you on the modernisms, though. The "backstories" were one of those, a word I think was invented by American popular culture (ie Hollywood) in the seventies. Really jarring. I hope for the next book that they take the time for an even more extensive editing process. There were several continuity errors and "sloppy" language which took away some of the enjoyment. Only some, but those things could have been avoided if Sanderson had been given more time to study the series and benifited from a more thorough editing phase.

[Shard]

More through editing? Are you kidding me? Harriet, Maria, Brandon, and countless more that I can't remember were editing that book, they took several months to do so. Without the original Author we unfortunatly come to conflicts of interpreting the notes, it seems there were a few points where Maria saw the notes one way and Brandon another.