I just finished book #10 of Robert Jordan's stupid series.

Do these books have any redeeming features? no one who reads them seems to have a good word for them.

The weird thing for me personally is that I will tolerate Jordan's meandering and excruciating detail but I had no patience for Tollkien's meandering. Mebbe I should try Tollkien again.

I actually am rereading the series at the moment and I'm on #7. It's a nice comfort read...just chip away a couple of chapters before bed every night.

Oh, and to answer Juan's question, it's the Wheel of Time series. First book is called The Eye Of The World, if you'd like to get hooked. They're all about 700+ pages and there'll be at least a dozen.

I think the reason people refer to these books with frustration or angst is that there is a growing unresolvedness in the series, which seems to be building us up for one massive climactic final book.

And I had the same plan as Ned when my friends first got into the series, but I gave in when book 4 came out, 'cause my foolish self thought it was close to the end of the series. HA!

I felt the same way about Tolkien when I first read Fellowship several years ago. But I picked that series up again just before the movies came out and I liked them a lot more, so perhaps I'll try the Wheel of Time books again in a few years.

http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg
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MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!

Make the dream REAL, Dan.

haha sorry.

But the thing is, this is both annoying and also kind of impressively audacious. I don't think that Jordan is intentionally stalling so much as just suffering from a bad case of being fascinated with the cataloguing of all of his characters' inner worlds to an obsessive-compulsive degree.

It's like, the series started off as Lost and somewhere along the way became The O.C.

But I mean.... fuck! I started reading them when I was still going to little kids' summer camp and here I am entering the adult world.

I love the recurring plot trinkets as well, the plot intricacy is the best thing about the series I reckon. What I'm referring to are situations like seventy pages of Perrin worrying about nothing in particular or Aviendha and Elayne envying eachother's hairsytles.

Did the sorceress woman who vanished through the magic doorway ever come back?

Gene Wolfe's forst set of books abt Severian the Torturer pwn these books in just about everyway, mind.

Moiraine? Maybe. Maybe not.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial_s&hl=en&q=%22wheel+of+time%22+%22slash%22&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

Anyway, this is tempting me to "catch up", except I'd have to read them all from the top, and that's a mighty slab of pulp.

It's just a very weird thing to say regarding Pevara, since she was introduced eons ago and always put into a situation where you would expect her to become a very important force for transformation within the Red Ajah; in fact, I'd say she was introduced by Jordan specifically to signpost to the readers how the Red Ajah could pull itself out of the tailspin the Black Ajah had cooked up for it.

Androl didn't become important until after Jordan died but he was also clearly (to me, anyway) someone introduced late in the game by Jordan as an example of how the channellers were going to have to get past the idea of raw power determining leadership in order to be successful.

I have no opinion on their relationship stuff, that probably felt Sandersony because there was very little sniffing, braid-pulling, or walking in on each other in various states of undress.

Lol oh shit was pevara one of the reds involved in investigating the black ajah? Ah well i mean fair enough, id say my bad but rly its tough enough to keep track of the top twenty characters let alone the ones that go from hardnosed white tower detectives to smoochy leather fetishists overnight tbrr

lol Pevara was the ringleader of the Reds investigating the Black Ajah!

Fuck off, i'm NOT reading it again

The funniest thing about that whole plot was how Seaine or whatever the fuck her name was started things off and then Jordan sidelined her when he realised Pevara was more interesting/useful.

It's easy to assume that Jordan had this compulsion to follow plot lines and characters regardless of whether there was an ultimate point, but there's heaps of examples of this e.g. Sorilea effectively replacing Bair (only for Sanderson to bring the latter back in the final book).

Which reminds me, the lack of a Sorilea is a darkfriend big reveal was half missed opportunity and half relief bc I like her a lot.

I'm trying to think of who the top 20 characters in this actually are

I mean obv: Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Min, Aviendha, but who comes next? Spouses (Tuon, Faile)? White/Black Tower folk (Siuan, Logain, etc)? Forsaken (Llanfer, Demandred, Moridin, Moghedien, Graendel, etc)? The great generals? Aiel (Rhuarc, Amys, etc)? Does Min actually rank in the top 20 or does she get extra weight due to being one of Rand's Furies? etc etc etc

Min totally ranks. She's been having pretty crucial POVs since book 4.

I mean, I think she ranks, but I wasn't sure if that was just me rooting for the plucky precog

here, what was all that Perrin Lanfear business about?

Top good guy characters:

Rand
Mat
Perrin
Egwene
Nynaeve
Elayne
Min
Aviendha
Moiraine
Lan
Thom
Siuan
Verin
Gawyn
Galad
Faile
Cadsuane
Sorilea
Tuon

What's interesting about the above list is that, with the exception of the final three, all of them had made an appearance by the third book. That in itself is not surprising of course - you'd expect the basic contours of the story (and hence its main characters) to be set up in the early books - but what is surprising is that Cadsuane and Sorilea are the only two "good" characters who feel like they were crucial to later plot devlopments but were not necessary (i.e. RJ post book 3 could have never introduced them) whereas even Tuon had been foreshadowed pretty heavily. Then, of course, Cadsuane and Sorilea were basically mirroring characters with mirroring roles (and a direct working relationship with one another).

here, what was all that Perrin Lanfear business about?

― Number None, Tuesday, 12 February 2013 10:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That segment of the fanbase that is invested in tracing the mythological reference points in the story have long claimed that from a mythic perspective Lanfear was tied more closely to Perrin than to Rand.

Shoving it all into the final book made it seem both shoehorned and opportunist, in several senses: opportunist for Lanfear in finding someone to play with while Rand was otherwise occupied and seemingly indifferent; opportunist for the authors for effectively the same reasons and also as a way of giving Perrin a role to play in the final "real" last battle plus score a Forsaken kill.

See also Matt dealing with Padan Fain.

As with most of the big plot developments in the final book, in the abstract there's a great symmetry to this, I think, being that while Rand (who lives with LTT's memories) has to deal with the question of whether a world of imperfection, injustice, evil, pain, etc. is worth saving, Perrin (the archetypal humble leader) deals with the character who represents the evil of untrammelled ambition, while Mat (the military genius who retains the capacity to laugh) deals with the evil born of a desire for revenge shorn of ethics. Basically Lanfear and Fain are the two main embodiments of forms of "evil" that are not simply a derivation of the big bad.

So the idea becomes Rand needs them at the last battle not just because he needs their help in a prosaic sense to avoid getting killed, but because "evil" as such takes multiple forms and hence needs to be resisted in multiple ways.

Plus similarly Perrin/Lanfear have Tel'aran'rhiod skillz and Mat has the knife connection to Mashadar (but the whole immunisation metaphor was so tritely executed it was laughable).

So I expect that all of the above had been planned from the very beginning. But the execution was so clumsy because it was done so hurriedly and was so pat.

If the Lanfear/Perrin plot had been set up in Towers of Midnight - i.e. Lanfear had been stalking Perrin while he trained with Hopper - it wouldn't have seemed nearly so arbitrary. I'm guessing Brandon decided that to do that would interfere with the "is Lanfear really evil" fake-cliffhanger in that book.

i think one of the more interesting things about the wot is how willing jordan was to sideline important characters if he thought it helped further the story or made things more interesting. like removing almost all the rand pov chapters from 'the dragon reborn' ends up making the book more effective - keeping rand's goals and mental state opaque even to the reader makes the book more exciting, 'raises the stakes' &c.

but what is surprising is that Cadsuane and Sorilea are the only two "good" characters who feel like they were crucial to later plot devlopments but were not necessary

haha i think part of the development of the plot/placement of characters w/in the narrative was structured to show how necessity was the driving force - you were where the pattern/rand needed you to be &c &c

idk i think theres really just rand - everyone else. elan morin has a claim to be the next most 'important' character if only because of jordans love of mirroring/balancing but i think its hard to make a defined hierarchy, philosophically events dictated to characters rather than the opposite? i also loved how jordan would repeatedly bring back incredibly minor characters both as grace notes but also to show the sort of chain of cause and effect that undergirded the idea of the pattern

i think one of the more interesting things about the wot is how willing jordan was to sideline important characters if he thought it helped further the story or made things more interesting. like removing almost all the rand pov chapters from 'the dragon reborn' ends up making the book more effective - keeping rand's goals and mental state opaque even to the reader makes the book more exciting, 'raises the stakes' &c.

Absolutely.

Similar in the treatment (though more specific in purpose), what made Verin and Sorilea such interesting characters the whole way through was how carefully calibrated their POVs were such that you never really knew what their ultimate intentions were.

This was realised brilliantly with Verin of course. With Sorilea I think BS just ran out of time to do anything with it.

I'm not sure what would have been more satisfying: her being a darkfriend (perhaps she could have been crucial to Graendal having a bigger impact at Shayol Ghul than she actually did), or her turning out to have a much more complex/involved endgame in mind (presumably centered around the future of the Aiel) than we ever guessed.

You ppl are memory wizards

For real tho i'm srsly pissed we didnt get a demandred book he was awes

so i guess they ended up making this

Wait, what?

http://observationdeck.io9.com/the-wheel-of-time-secret-pilot-1684685865/1684735881/+bricken#_ga=1.202562897.1991406438.1421943870

http://io9.com/the-real-story-about-that-wheel-of-time-pilot-that-aire-1684773094

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYIEN1vIg

From a separate io9 comment on that:

Fuck Selvage. Seriously, fuck him. He's squatting on rights that he has not the balls, brains, or money to develop. How dare he put out such an utterly defunct piece of work like that? That 24 minutes was the worst thing I've ever seen on television - AND I WATCHED ALL OF CHARMED.

Good grief this is getting even more bizarre -- so this blogpost has more background:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015/02/wheel-of-time-gets-tv-pilot-out-of.html?m=1

And in an update there there's condolences given to one Seda James, who directed the pilot and passed away a couple of days ago. Now I thought the blog author was making some sort of jokey reference to an Alan Smithee style pseudonym but there really wa a Seda James and he really did just die!

https://m.facebook.com/events/1537650793180826/#!/events/1537650793180826/

I just finished this, finally. no idea why I waited so long. I had forgotten quite a bit but it all came back. I think I read the first 6 books or so about 3-4 times each so it's not surprising I had a lot of buried memories. more later, perhaps, but I think Sanderson did a nice job. the final book is quite a protracted action packed climax. it's practically exhausting and not without flaws but it does walk a nice line between fan service type stuff and really keeping the stakes high. also, I counted one instance of arms crossed under breasts (lanfear!) and one meta-joke about a "very long two years." i will deal with my book mourning now by consuming the wiki--would have killed for that 20-something years ago when this all started for me!

oh, and I fear any live action screen adaptation of this will be a disaster and miss everything fun about it.

we need a spoiler thread for this so i can call out that ending

some great posts in this thread now that I can read it. agree with many of the criticisms but I do think the middle portion of this book--where it slowly becomes clear the generals are being controlled--was really tense and awesome. I was like "oh nooo they got the generals!" to my girlfriend and she just sniffed at me.

feeling sad Jordan couldn't finish this. despite all his faults and the frustrating aspects of reading the later books I really really enjoyed his world building and ability to sharply define characters (and then drive that characterization into the ground a million times). but still glad Sanderson made some closure possible and not sure anyone else could have done much better.

oh yes and one thing that improved with Sanderson was the treatment of sex/sexuality. Jordan's book are, I think, sort of drenched in a juvenile sense of sexuality, which is perhaps fitting, but Sanderson's (relatively) more frank and mature approach is also a very satisfying way for the series to evolve.

I was also happy the main three survived.

and Lan is a badass.

and i was pretty pissed that Sanderson killed off Bela

Long haul flight last week with only book three on my Kindle app

Skipping everything but Perrin and mat pays serious dividends fyi

Tell you what

If tomorrow is as lazy as today around here im going to start polling books and characters

im down. is the tv show still happening? (or was it ever happening? i cant remember).

spent the last two months reading this start (not the prequel) to finish — think i quit after book six back in the day

pretty good imo, but yeah the middle books were just grindingly slow. i mean faile got kidnapped late in one book, perrin spent the entire next one chasing and crying after her, then didn’t retrieve her until halfway through the one after that — none of which really mattered to the overall plot.

that said, i still pretty much tore through it. still couldn’t keep track of which minor aes sedai were in which faction though

sanderson did a nice job — at the very least there was less flaming repetition, and the dialogue was more interesting.

his dialogue was wrong imo but he did a good job overall

further rereading will see the draggy parts recede in importance btw ime

having now completed those four million words i’m not sure what to do with myself

Could start in on the Bible

read the talmud instead it's a lot cooler, and also long

i already know the ending

How about the Mahābhārata? You could also try learning sanskrit first if brevity is an issue.

There's also L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. All top-shelf material I'm sure.

dirty stuff too

PKD

Could start in on the Bible

― I have measured out my life in coffee shop loyalty cards (silby), Thursday, 27 December 2018 02:41 (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

have to imagine hes ready to leave jordan for a while

just got to the sanderson books... woof! this is such bad fan fiction!

so

you're saying

that you prefer

literally three books of perrin doing nothing but stewing

perrin's definitely the weakest of the 3. i think there's a whole book in the golden middle of the series where he doesn't even appear? after the 'return to the shire' bit and before faile gets captured.

it's funny that rj developed this 'am i going to go bestial and insane - how did elyas stop it' plotline for him early on and then it vanished completely. elyas even came back and they just smell each other for a few chapters.

ohhhh lord darragh ned please talk to this sucker cause they killing rand al'thor they taking the pain and struggle of life of the dragon reborn the only thing we coulda express our minds and pain. and these suckers took it and made it look like garbage thats why we get judge so much cause these shit dont be making sence

The best example I can think of of a fantasy author completely losing control of the narrative. I suppose his health problems contributed, but I don't think he had any idea how to end it.

By the way, who killed Asmodean?

~25 years after i first started... done!