Nope not the Amazon series. This is something new. It appears that they are going to do a trilogy based on the Wheel of Time’s Age of Legends. Those familiar with the series will know that this is the era that took place before the days of Rand Al’Thor. Its an interesting time period and there is a lot of background given on The Age of Legends in the Wheel of Time series and several of the heroes and villains of legend from that time make an appearance in Rand Al’Thor’s era. I dont know if this is going to be awesome or a complete disaster but the potential to make a great fantasy trilogy is there.
What kind of world is Wheel of Time anyway? Kind of your traditional fantasy, medieval times technology, with magic and creatures and so forth? People riding on horses?
cursed wizards, and braid tugging and skirt smoothing simulator
Yeah, that’s the “present day”. In the past though, there were higher levels of tech, and it was gauche or weird to walk around with swords. The tech level keeps cycling around like the rim of a hub-and-spoke deal.
You forgot sniffing and crossing arms beneath breasts. Jordan was, perhaps, the worst male author at writing women of all time. They all just disapproved of the men.
I assume this is going to be about the end of the age of legend. First movie establish characters, conspiracy, the need for moor powah, minor villain vanquished. Second movie culminating in letting the shadow out, powering up the forsaken with the true power, catastrophe. Third movie seals the bore, ending on kind of a bummer with saidin tainted and all the characters going mad or dying.
Oh, interesting. When I was reading these in high school the “age of legends” tidbits were among my favorite parts. I might actually watch these.
Yes, highly disapproving until the moment they decide to join the main character’s harem.
If I recall correctly, the “tech” was like more evolved magic and not technology as we understand it (accepting that sufficiently advanced technology appears as magic). I say this because a lot of power seems to be vested in certain individuals, rather than machines/systems/artifacts. While those exist, they seem to be evolved magic. But perhaps that was only the case in the last “high” point of the a repeating cycle and other iterations looked more like classic “sci fi” technology.
But as Djscman, much of the concept is built around the idea of a cycle of ever-repeating growth and collapse, with the same key players being reborn and doomed to play a similar role, age after age.
Uuuugggaaagh, I was going to say something to the effect that Goodkind was obviously a worse contemporary about writing women, but then you had to remind me about the harem. Gyeeeaaagh.
I mean they could share the crown of dead misogynist fantasy authors!
I really wouldn’t consider Jordan a misogynist. He clearly didn’t understand women, or how to write them, but his opinion of them seemed largely positive, at least from his work. Folks like Goodkind and that dude that writes the Gor books, waaaay worse. John Ringo, also.
Yeah, Jordan very much had a dorky 12-year-old’s perception of women. Made perfect sense when I was a dorky 12-14 year old myself. Now, not so much.
I thought Gor dude was just into that consensual BDSM dom/sub life, not a misogynist or whatever. But I’m not like exhaustively familiar with him or his work either so shrug.
Right, he isn’t misogynist (as far as I can tell), he was just awful at writing women. God knows I don’t possess any grand insight into the female mind myself, but if I was writing an epic fantasy series comprised of ten thousand page novels, I would just write them like people and leave the sniffing, arms crossed under breasts, and editorializing alone.
FWIW Jordan wrote a huge epic fantasy stuffed chock full of memorable and distinct female characters who were generally powerful and effective in a collection cultures where women were rulers and had social and political equality with men.
All that other stuff is accurate too, but in spite of its faintly embarrassing collection of female character ticks (and the harem) it is way more interested in women’s actualization than Tolkien or Hobb or any of the grimdark dudes.
Yes, no misogyny, just poor writing.
I read maybe 2/3 of the WoT books when I was a kid, so I have some familiarity with the setting but I don’t really remember that much. The idea of a movie (trilogy!) based on even the “contemporary” WoT setting, let alone Ye WoT Olden Days just gets a shrug. I suppose it has the same chances to be good as any other modern fantasy movie trilogy (what are those odds, anyway?), but I don’t think the setting improves them.
I guess there are lots of WoT fans (it was pretty huge, right?) so from a business perspective it probably makes sense as far as getting people in the door.
Yes it was. The first couple of books were really great, then it went into a slump of half a dozen pretty boring thousand page novels full of disapproving sniffing women until Jordan died and Sanderson finished it with a bang. In the middle there it was more about time invested, I had been reading the series since I was a little boy and I was goddamn well gonna finish it!
You don’t mean Robin Hobb, I assume?
Yeah, I do. There aren’t really any fully developed self-actualized female characters from the Fitz books, except maybe Bee? I like Hobbs’s novels way more than Jordan’s, and I think she’s really good at characterizations and totally uninterested at depicting any kind of utopia. But the major players in the Fitz books are all men: Fitz, the Fool, Chade, Verity, etc. Even Kettricken is sidelined by both her erstwhile husband and her son.
The other series in the same world have female lead characters however. Also one of the characters you listed there is female.