WOT: A Memory of Light (Finish Tarmon Gai'don!)

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41

Another good summary
http://www.thonky.com/wot/

The first part of Chapter 3 of AMOL
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/29/168075551/exclusive-first-read-a-memory-of-light-by-robert-jordan-and-brandon-sanderson

And spoiler time, Tor is releasing a sentence from the last book to tease fans. In spoilers:

light spoilers

[spoiler][INDENT]“It had been useful at Maradon. Nobody knew he had it. That was important.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“I should like to hear one of your stories. Perhaps you could tell me of the time your father and you visited Shara?” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Being married is not so bad, Perrin. Why didn’t you tell me it was not so bad? I think I am rather fond of it." (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Pass his bond to me.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Creator shelter us,” she whispered.

Mat scowled. “You know, that’s what Tuon said.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]The right thing had always seemed clear to Galad before, but never had it felt as right as this. Those streaks of light were like indicators on a map, arrows pointing his way. The Light itself guided him. It had prepared him, placed him here at this moment. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Nobody travels the Ways,” Ituralde said, aghast. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Egwene strode around a frozen pillar of glass in her dream. It almost looked like a column of light. What did it mean? She could not interpret it. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]The letter was written in Mat’s hand. And, Elayne noticed with amusement, the handwriting was much neater and the spelling much better in this one than the one he’d sent her weeks ago. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“And farewell to you, old friend,” she said to the air. “Until I dream again.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“One more thing, the marath’damane…”
“I’ll deal with those channelers personally,” Mat said.
She gawked at him as if he were insane. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Enough talk. You will bed me now.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“We must spread the word to all of our allies,” Amys said. “We must not use this weave.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]That, she replied back, is something one should never, never say to an Aes Sedai. Ever. (Sentance from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“It is a simple thing, to stop a man’s heart,” Cadsuane said, arms folded. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Do not cut off your foot for fear that a snake will bite it, Perrin Aybara. Do not make a terrible mistake because you fear something that seems worse. This is all I will say on the topic.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“It is one of the three things which I will require of you. Your payment, to me, in exchange for my life.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Fortuona ignored her, standing. “This woman is my new Soe’feia. Holy woman, she who may not be touched. We have been blessed. Let it be known.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“What did you do to your eye?”
“A little accident with a corkscrew and thirteen angry innkeepers.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]As Tam attacked again, Rand lifted the sword and- ( Partial sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]And you don’t feel a small measure of pride? Egwene asked herself. Rand al’Thor, once simple village boy and your near-betrothed, now the most powerful man in the world? You don’t feel proud of what he’s done? (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Why are you helping me?” Perrin demanded.
“I’m fond of you, Perrin.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Light burn me,” Rand said. “You’re not him, are you?” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“There were many good years. Good decades, good centuries. We believed we were living in paradise. Perhaps that was our downfall. We wanted our lives to be perfect, so we ignored imperfections. Problems were magnified through inattention, and war might have become inevitable if the Bore hadn’t ever been made.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Oh, blood and ashes, no!” Cadsuane said, spinning on them. “No, no, no.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Uno’s topknot danced as he continued to blaspheme. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Peaches!” Rand said, aghast. Everyone knew those were poisonous. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“But this . . . this isn’t about blacksmithing, Perrin…”
“Of course it is,” Perrin said. How could Rand not see that?
(Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Didn’t you once lead a band of thieves out of this forest?”
Birgitte grimaced. “I was hoping you hadn’t heard that one.”
(Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Rand strode forward, lifting his arms out to the sides. Grass sprouted in waves, red blossoms burst from the ground like a blush upon the land. The storm stilled, the dark clouds burned away by light. (Sentence from aMoL)

A joyful song, a song of awe and wonder, though she could not understand the words. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]He doesn’t want to fight in Andor, Elayne thought. He doesn’t want to fight alongside me. He wishes the break to be clean. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Rand stiffened. He’d known what he was doing, on some level, but to hear it explained was disconcerting. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]If the end of the Aiel was the sacrifice required for Rand to win, she would make it. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]What did you do when the One Power failed, the thing you relied upon to raise you above common folk? (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]The Blight had consumed the Two Rivers. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]“Run, Bela,” Faile said. “If you’ve kept any strength back, now is the time to use it. Please. Run, girl. Run.” (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]I AM THE ONLY HONESTY YOUR WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Humankind did not have days remaining, but hours. (Sentence from aMoL)
[/INDENT][/spoiler]

42

I’m the opposite. Jordan created a great world and a great mythology (built from mashing hints of a lot of other mythology). After the first two or three books, I kept reading in hopes of being drawn into this mythology more. Unfortunately, it simply devolved into trite genre fiction. Books 4-9 are just one mashed up blur to me.

Everything about WoT was better for me when it was hinted at and remained a tantalizing mystery, rather than being revealed. The Borderlands, the Aiel, the Age of Legend, etc.

WoT is an incredible concept and setting. The meat of the books themselves are very forgettable. For me, that’s the beauty of Sanderson: he spins out worlds and settings with a regularity rather than beating them to death ala WoT.

43

I kind of understand that, I also like to enjoy new, original, mindbending settings, which Sanderson does with regularity, but I also like the extensive detailed worldbuilding of the WoT setting, full of different cultures, nations, costumes, armies, prophecies and factions.

44

Not to interrupt the Sanderson vs Jordan discussion, but anyone feel like posting predictions and who’s left standing post-Tarmon Gai’don? I think Jordan was foreshadowing Rand’s breaking of the past cycles by surviving the final battle, and if so his wife and publisher wouldn’t allow Sanderson to deviate, but I’m still up in the air over that one. Just because he’s no longer going batshit insane doesn’t mean Rand won’t have to sacrifice himself to save the world. I don’t know why, but I think Elayne’s a goner, Egwene will live to rule her country, Mat will live but not Perrin.

45

Not to interrupt the Sanderson vs Jordan discussion, but anyone feel like posting predictions and who’s left standing post-Tarmon Gai’don? I think Jordan was foreshadowing Rand’s breaking of the past cycles by surviving the final battle, and if so his wife and publisher wouldn’t allow Sanderson to deviate, but I’m still up in the air over that one. Just because he’s no longer going batshit insane doesn’t mean Rand won’t have to sacrifice himself to save the world. I don’t know why, but I think Elayne’s a goner, Egwene will live to rule her country, Mat will live but not Perrin.

46

I’m looking forward to some life catharsis anyway. I started with the series just as I entered adolescence, and here we are twenty odd years later or so and it’s finally coming to an end. I mean, in one sense I’m being silly, but in another sense I can’t help but feeling weird about the fact that in a week or so, I’m entering a chapter in my life where I won’t be waiting for the next Wheel of Time book to come out. Weird.

Over all this time I’ve always been kind of fascinated with the variety of polarized reactions to the series, and how they’ve changed over time, and how they’ve changed in reaction to the relative explosion of Too Long For Their Own Good Doorstop Fantasy Series as a genre. Myself, I think I’ve run the full suite of grief stages: From passionate love, to stubbornly defensive, to apologetic. Then to down yet hopeful, then to the vitriol and dismissive stage that most people land on. At some point though, I kind of came out of the other end of the tunnel in kind of a serene acceptance: The series is what it is, and it has its ups and its downs, but on the whole I really do love it, and I’m OK with that.

Stusser has it right when he highlights the lack of pacing as Jordan’s biggest problem. I think it’s interesting how this is less apparent in the earlier books. I think the problem is still there, but back in the first three books especially, RJ was way more willing to pull a magic teleport method out of his ass to get all his plot threads in the same place and time by the end of a book. Ta’veren, or whatever. If I had to guess why this changed it would be that those early books were written when he intended the series to be 5-6 books in length and he couldn’t even be guaranteed if the publisher’d give him that many. Once the series took off, I think he had the freedom to take his time and didn’t feel pressured to “cheat” in that kind of way any more.

The Shadow Rising was the first book to start a major plot arc that wasn’t resolved within the same book. (Big Trouble in the White Tower.) Lord of Chaos was the last book to resemble something “standalone.” (The comedy of errors leading to Dumai’s Wells.)

From Crown of Swords on, his writing pace slowed down considerably. The books got shorter and shorter, and they really lost all semblance of structure as singular works; I got the sense that he just sort of wrote one chapter after another until someone at the publisher got too stressed out about not having the next book on shelves, so they just packaged up what was done to that point and put it out the door. This was where I became one of the many bitter fans – Not only did I have to wait longer between books, they were shorter and less happened. The worst combination. I remember cracking open Path of Daggers for the first time and seeing the font size and thinking now I know how my 7th grade teachers felt when we’d inevitably use double spacing at 16 pt. font to desperately pad my stupid essays to the minimum 3 pages or whatever.

Knife of Dreams won a lot of people back, but it’s kind of frantic and anti-climactic in a lot of ways. It’s kind of morbid to speculate, but you kind of have to wonder how much writing was on the wall for RJ’s health situation at that point, especially after his insistence that the then-book-12 would abso-posi-lutely be the last book. (Based on what Sanderson’s covered, that statement was insane.)

As for Sanderson, I think he’s done a pretty admirable job with the series. I was pretty adamantly against another author taking over the series, because that basically never ever turns out well, but he proved me wrong. He hit it out of the park with The Gathering Storm. Towers of Midnight is kind of a muddled mess of a book, but it’s a muddled mess in the way I expected this whole last trilogy to be. I think Sanderson’s actual writing is pretty flat and forgettable. I gave his new non-WoT series a try; I liked it to some extent, but a year later I can’t tell you anything about it except that there was a dude carrying a bridge for most of it. But I learned a long time ago that, when it comes to hyperbole and vitriol on the internet, there are very few topics worse than arguing whose favourite fantasy author could beat up whose. And I’m writing that on a video game forum!

47

Yeah, wanting to finish the series in book 12 was insane. Or even more: impossible. It was three books more, not one, and even then I think there will be always a important part that was never properly touched and resolved: the Black Tower plot. For books and books, it was left lingering and now in the last book I suppose it will be resolved in a hurried way. Imo, it should have been the proper focus of one of the last books, 10, 11, or 12, and the proper last book, A Memory of Light, should been all of it about the Last Battle, the previous moments of it (meetings old friends, for example, I want a scene of Rand, Perrin and Mat telling what they were doing), and the latter moments (epilogue).

48

Goodreads.com Interview

49

If you want a longer summary of the 1st 10 books, with some commentary, there is also this:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/02/wheel-of-time-re-read-index

About 3 years ago I restarted the series from the first book because I heard that the series was going to be finished, and I made it to the start of Book 10, but gave up there. Some of the books were downright painful to read. Perhaps I’ll pick up Book 10 again (after re-reading the summary above) so I can read Sanderson’s books.

50

Looking at that release schedule makes me realize I read the first couple of books a year or so after they came out. Wow, that was a long time ago! I recall purchasing the first three volumes as paperbacks and then getting the next 6 or so from the Science Fiction Book club in club edition hardcovers - man was it a traumatic day when I threw all those out (the day I decided I was through with reading 1000 page novels in order to get 50 pages of good stuff out of them).

I also just found out they’re delaying the release of the ebook version for 3 months… is there any actual reason for that or is it to “protect” sales of the hardcover?

51

That and Jordan’s widow is against change and the digital era. If it was up to her there would be no ebooks. At all.

52

Yep, I’m pretty steamed about that too. I will be reading it on my kindle on release day regardless. When the ebook comes out, I’ll pay for it then.

53

Heh, I’ll do the same, but I hesitate mentioning that out loud. I am simply refusing to buy another deadtree to gather up dust and shelf space while it’s astronomically more convenient on my Kindle.

54

Why isn’t it up to her? Other than the money left on the table. I assume she has all of the legal rights to the works. As I recall, Bradbury also refused to allow e-versions of his books.

55

I just don’t buy physical books any more, full stop. Nothing more to it.

It is of course completely up to her. She chose to delay, so I’ll pay once it comes out. If she decided not to release an ebook at all, I would simply shrug and not pay at all. Either way, I read the book in my preferred format. All she actually controls is when and if she gets paid.

56

I’ve never made it past 7 or 8 on a series read through. I should really try to plug away at it at some point

57

It was made clear to her by the publisher, Sanderson and the fans on how such a decision is detrimental to her moneyflow. Not clearly enough, though. As now people who’d have bought the ebook on release will wait a couple of days for a scanned pirated version and never bother buying it four months later.

58

The funny thing here is that, if I could buy the book in ebook version tomorrow, I would do it, and after that I would buy it a second time in paper form when it’s released in my country, a year later.

But, chances are the digital version that will be out sooner will be the pirate one, so I won’t buy the digital level version, and only will buy the physical one. At least with me, they are losing money.

59

It seems the last book is well received. Probably because Sanderson knows much better what the fans expect and how to meet those demands. I actually doubt that an ending written by Jordan would have received as much consensus.

I’m reading this series for the first time these years and book 1 was too derivative to be interesting (though it works as a opening for a certain audience). Book 2 instead was much, much better and it was fun to read. It’s a good adventure overall and has all the signs of a series that wants to become a classic. Book 3 instead made less of an impression on me. The party was split and not much was going on that was interesting. But at least it was good to see that the characters were pushed on, instead of perma-stalling into an endless quest. It showed that Jordan had a story planned with some significant changes.

Now I’m about 150 pages into book 4 (while reading Dune, Erikson and Dick), which is reputed the best and where things open up more complexly. It’s still very readable but beside some ominous visions not much happened. Just a few oddballs encounters that nowadays are the most cliche ever: card figures that come alive, poltergeist effects and mirror images trying to kill the owner… Not exactly imaginative stuff, and all rather lamely explained as weird things bubbling up at random as consequence of the Bad Guy waking up.

It all feels a bit juvenile, but in that category it’s actually quite good, and I can understand the appeal and why it became so popular.

I think we are going to see that again with Martin. Whenever the 6th book will be out people will realize it’s so much padded that it’s simply impossible that he’ll be able to finish in just one more.

And the problem again is not that the story outruns the space available, but that middle books wasted precious time and space.

60

Except for the fact that Jordan actually wrote the ending and Sanderson and Harriet left it largely untouched except for some minor changes.