I guess it’s nice that the series is finally concluding for those who stuck it out reading the WOT series. I’ve long since given up on it before Jordan passed away. I don’t recall which book but I was well into it when I realized that despite all the pages I had read, the plot hadn’t moved forward one iota. I stopped right there and haven’t been tempted to read WOT ever again.
Which book was it though? I can’t remember. I might even be describing the wrong sequence, the book I am thinking about was full of nothing but old aes sedai doddering around boring me to tears. Maybe it was another book that had Rand locked in the chest?
The battle of Dumai’s Wells is the ending for Lord of Chaos, the sixth book and is one of the highest points of the series in my opinion. There is so much dreck in the WoT series, yet I shall still read the final volume next week, for I am mostly a completionist.
I have read the first 6 books several times over the years and enjoyed them a great deal. In fact I read the first one in 90, the year I got married. I barely made it through 7 - 10 but they did pick up after that. Sanderson has done a great job with the books and I can’t wait to read the last one. I don’t think that he is as talented a writer as Jordan was but he has done well by the series.
Mainly I just feel sad for Jordan because he didn’t live long enough to see the end.
I read it before any other books were out. I’ve seen you claim this before and I don’t doubt you. However, I think it reads like a sequel was expected. I don’t think your information makes my interpretation wrong; I don’t necessarily think it’s in any way tricky to write a book in such a way that it allows room for more stories to be told in it’s universe with it’s characters. But it really did feel to me like it was book 1 of something.
At any rate, I liked the first book, really liked the second and third…and then sorta felt interest waning in the fourth and fifth and stopped halfway through the sixth. I guess what would be more fair to say is that Jordan set himself a task that was beyond his skills.
This. I tend to agree on the books; I really liked 4 and 5 when they came out but on re-reads later in life they didn’t hold up nearly as well. I would say that post-3 there are still interesting parts in the books (well. . . some of them) but they get fewer and farther between while the book size keeps growing and books keep coming out.
Jordan had a grand vision but no way to realize it, no question.
I’ve since re-read the first three and am trying to get up the muster to get through these now.
When you said “these”, were you referring to the 3 Sanderson works? Because I honestly think someone could do it. Give me one post - considerably less than the size of my “how to play ToEE” post (for historical reference) - and I think I could get you reasonably caught up on affairs, so that the first of the closing trilogy didn’t seem to crazy.
It’s amazing how little you would be missing from the space between books 3 and 12. We had 8 books where far fewer would have sufficed.
The battle of Dumai’s Wells was excellent. I recall a couple of other nice scenes as well, but overall the book was pretty dull.
Let’s be realistic here. To say that all of Jordan’s writing skills equate to a pinky on Sanderson is kinda dumb. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Jordan in the first place. Sure, he kinda lost it by around LoC, but there’s a reason why this series was popular and has continued for so long. And that’s Robert Jordan. You read the books and got invested in them, and hence the ending of the series, because you liked it, you liked the setting, and at least a few of those annoying characters and their repeated habits. Sure, Sanderson is moving everything along now, but that’s kinda because he has to. That’s what he’s being paid to do, and he has a limited amount of time (ie. books and effort spent away from his other worlds) to do it. And he’s a decent writer.
— Alan
Nah, not really. I’m here because I feel like I’ve already invested so much time reading these phonebook-sized tomes over the past 20 years that if I don’t finish it I’ve failed myself.
I’ll do what I always do: take the day off and read through the thing until I’m done. I’ve been doing that since the early 90s and I’m glad the saga will get the conclusion it deserves. I cannot tell you how many hours I spent on a WoT MOO back in the day, playing an Aiel named Ephraim, poring over the books in minute detail looking for Aiel tidbits to role-play.
Everything everyone else has said in this thread is pretty much true, but that still doesn’t take away from the epic scale of this world. It’s sad that RJ won’t be the one to finish things up, but from what I’ve read of his copious notes and the fact that he knew the end of the series from the very start, I think this is still his masterpiece in the truest sense of the word.
Hey, I remember this! I read the first few books back when I was in college, so that would’ve been early 90s. I didn’t know it was still going, to be honest. Is there a Cliff’s notes for this thing?
Some comments.
First, from the pure prose writing ability (forgetting about pace issues), I think Jordan was better than Sanderson. Which has improved nicely in the last years, in the other hand.
In fact, I wonder if some people are having some kind of revisionist view on the books. The last books are wonderful written by Sanderson, yeah… but aren’t the past books full of awesome stuff? Why did you read them, if not?
Saidin’s cleansing, Dumai’s Well, Rand in Cairhien, Mat in Ebou Dar, I loved all the Seanchan stuff, and hell, almost all from book 4 to 7. Etc etc, between smoothing skirts and tugging braids there is tons of good stuff. Personally I loved reading secondary povs like Elaida delusions :), even if some people thinks stuff like that slow down the story.
The worst book was Crossroad of Twilight, but already the next one, Knife of Dreams, the last book written by Jordan, was a marked improvement and return to the form, that’s why I think the last books are better because we are near the end already and stuff that had to happen from some time ago finally happen and they are awesome.
In fact I could swear more stuff happens in the prologue of KoD than in the enterity of CoT.
Nevermind that actually parts of all the new books of Sanderson aren’t Sanderson but written by Jordan in his two last years of life, so you can’t never be sure of what part is his, and the rest is written with RJ indications of what have to happen.
Look at the links i posted before.
That could explain reading the last books, after reading 11 books, you want to read the last 3 and finish the damn story, but… why did you read the fourth or the fith one, if you didn’t liked the firsrt ones?
edit: funnily enough, Brandon himself loved Robert Jordan writing.
I used to role play WOT on the Usenet forum in the 90s. Man, I was so into the books back then. Even ended up meeting the female Aiel that I had bonded. What a strange experience.
I enjoyed the first couple of books a great deal. After that, I was thousands of pages invested and felt obligated to finish. Until the Sanderson books, anyway, which are excellent.
Jag, so don’t keep us in suspense, what did you “compel” her to do through the warder bond? Did you play “maidens kiss the spear”?
(1) We’ve all moved on from that already
(2) Your second point is of no relevance. It’s true, absolutely. But Sanderson being a better writer than Jordan (or not), by any measure, has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that some of his writing has come in Jordan’s book series.
No, we’re absolutely not.
but aren’t the past books full of awesome stuff
It’s time we addressed this, I agree.
Saidin’s cleansing, Dumai’s Well, Rand in Cairhien, Mat in Ebou Dar, I loved all the Seanchan stuff, and hell, almost all from book 4 to 7. Etc etc, between smoothing skirts and tugging braids there is tons of good stuff. Personally I loved reading secondary povs like Elaida delusions :), even if some people thinks stuff like that slow down the story.
Matt in Ebou Dar is interesting at first but it goes on way too fucking long (this is being a running theme, and it applies to a bunch of different plot threads, from Matt to Egwene to Elayne); people will differ on whether they find it interesting or not (or for how long). I want to address The Wells, the Cleansing, al’Cair whatever, and various battles with Forsaken. Let’s add the time Rand tries to use Callandor to blow up the seachen army.
Books 4-12 are 6,903 pages. We probably just described a couple of hundred pages worth of stuff and no more. And yes, there is other cool stuff in there (indeed, the Two Rivers plot thread in Shadow Rising is good, excepting the Faile bits, which I loathe more retroactively. The next time I read of Faile smelling of jealousy or anger I’m going to kill myself). Outside of the Two Rivers, we’re talking about small moments. Moghedian climax in book 5; Nyaeneve healing Logain in 7, the first confrontation with the Gholam in Ebou Dar (again in 7 I think).
It’s not that the books were devoid of anything interesting (Rand hunting the rogue asha’men in Haddon Mirk was interesting). It’s that the interesting bits were swallowed up by 5+ thousand pages of uninteresting. And frankly, the quality of each of these events varies. And sometimes individual things are good but the larger plot threads they fit in Forming the Black Tower? Cool. Unveiling the Asha’men as the single most powerful military force on the planet? Cool. Going 6 books with mostly just letting the Black Tower sit there (especially when it’s obvious the direction it’s going to go in from the get go)? Absurd. Egwene’s rise to the seat of deposed Amyrlin, and the politics with the Rebels? Interesting, but again we’re talking about a 1000 page plot thread, and a lot of it is forgettable.
The problem isn’t that the books were devoid of interesting stuff. It’s that there was so much filler. You are correct that we don’t know how much of the new books is Sanderson and how much is Jordanm and yes we’re at the end so it’s wrap up time regardless. The evidence - which we’re going to start with book 4 and we’re going to include up through Knife of Dreams (fittingly, it and Shadow Rising are the best two books in this stretch, but they’re both somewhat mixed in terms of quality) - suggests that Sanderson has had a positive impact on the series.
And people read because they continued to hope that things would improve, because they were invested, and because they had disposable income, reading time, and a penchant for epic fantasy. And lots of other reasons besides.
For me the first book is a very forgettable one. It was in the second and third book where the proper WoT series started, and the part where all what it means the Wheel of Time is around books 4-6, where most of the factions and characters and their themes are properly exposed and detailed.
For me the first book had me hooked because I read it before I found GRRM and my Fantasy diet up to that point consisted mainly of D&D type novel ripoffs. (yes Salvatore, I’m looking at you!)
I agree that in the Wheel of Time there is filler (circus arc was too long, Black Tower resolution was too delayed, White Tower vs Salidar was decent but overlong, Windy Bowl arc was also too long, episodes where some characters just move from A to B, and only a fraction of the journey), more in the later books (7-10), but I suspect we disagree in the exact ratio. Given your opinion shown in the text, I suspect you consider filler lots of chapters I liked.
You say 5+ thousand pages of uninteresting. I say, err… 1500. Which I confess, are still a lot!
The quid about the series, I suppose, is how much you like the detailed, windy prose and the worldbuilding.
