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

I remember people discussing the plot of the first book -- when I was in college and Jesus Jones were on top of the charts.

(and yes, I'll be waiting for the next one.)

Your talking about those Wheels Of Winter books, right? Somewhat like LOTR?

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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http://matt.waggoner.com/images/wheel.jpg
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.

Yeah but it would be better if he did more of the "fucking people up" and less of the "think about anything except Berelain's legs" guilty repression trips.

i finally finished nine, which was fucking tedious and terrible.

read "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin instead. First book in the best fantasy series of the decade.

SHIT IS SO GOOD. READ IT ALL UP.

Yeah, i think I started in 1994! I have not read a fantasy book in yonks I think. And yet i am vaguely pondering the impending release date with anticipation...

"Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
A: It's hard to think of one since I am genetically incapable of lying to women and that takes out 52% of the population right there."

"Q: If you could have one superpower what would it be?
A: That depends. If I'm feeling altruistic, it would be the ability to heal anything with a touch, if that can be called a superpower. If I'm not feeling very altruistic, it would be the ability to read other people's minds, to finally be able to get to the bottom of what they really mean and what their motivations are. "

Also, worst cover yet!

No it was 1992! That is wrong.

I now won't start a fantasy series until all the books have been published. So I'm denying myself the GRR Martin and the Stephen Erikson books that are meant to be really good.

I delude myself into thinking that Jordan means it when he says that it'll all be finished in the next couple of books and that one day I can go back to it and read the whole thing from beginning to end.

I've been tempted, over the years, to write to Jordan informing him of these strange things called "editors". It's been 15 years and he still hasn't got anywhere near the bloody point, I know kids who are reading them who weren't born when the first one was published. And I'm also sick of his characters being trapped in permanent adolescence or (in the case of his female characters) permanent PMS.

omg wtf

Like finishing this lot isn't enough, he has to start on a prequel TRILOGY!!!!

First comment here so funny!

But am I the only one who cares?

Excuse me I must tug my braid and sniff now.

There is quite a bit of chip-cashing going on in this book, FINALLY. Quite a few little endings that feel like endings - i.e. "oh, this character probably isn't going to be seen again." I actually finished the book without being annoyed for once! And a lot of the foreshadowed plot developments that appeared to have gotten bogged down or fallen by the wayside either happen or are set up to happen early on in the next book.

Plus Egwene and especially Mat totally rock in this book. I think Mat gets more pages than anyone else.

Although on an odd note the lesbianism quotient has skyrocketed. As you'd expect it's rather prevalent among the Red Ajah!

"And I woke up, and it was all a dream."

Ha ha! And it gets better too! Come back when you finish it Dan so we can chat.

>Actually there's not so much Egwene, but she makes her two >appearances count. Nyneave only gets one chapter but does likewise.

so true, Nynaeve's final appearance with Lan and its followup was amazing, and Egwene's Tower sequences rocked and tons of Mat which made me happy

Tim, also I see what you menat about the crossing off of characters, a coupleof cases where i thought it was handled a little too fast but he really wrapped up a LOT of the dangling threads. I really could see 12 finishing this and always had figgered it would be at least 14 volumes.

finish the book Dan so we can all chat without spoiling it for you

H, the one that struck me as being kind of glaringly, annoyingly fast was what happened with A***, if only because the denouement had been foreshadowed for about six or seven books and then ended up being almost a trifling aside. I got the impression that Jordan just decided to cut whatever chilling plot development he'd had planned for ages.

The set-up for the impending Mat + Thom + ???? mission actually shook me up! Robert Jordan in surprising "fans" shocker.`

Tim Finney, do you mean Aviendha?

Characters I would enjoy an entire book dedicated to, leaving out all the random baddies and randomer "impressively bosom"ed Aes Sedai: Mat, Loial, Lan, Nynaeve, and more Mat again. And then, at the very end, Rand could go all Lews Therin and kill everyone except his hippie girlfriend with the visions.

So awesome.

Galina's denouement was surprisingly quick (insofar as I expected she would do more damage to Faile and co.) but much better handled - her trundling off to the Aiel Waste with Therava, answering to "Little Lina", was perfect. I suspect the next book will be filled with little endings like this.

and The Golden Crane flies again - i actually really liked nynaeve's trick on Lan coz you can see in the future Lan's ride being stuff of legend but also answers the question of why would someone choose to do that kind of long distabce ride - answer - sneaky wife

Egwene was excellent here, The Mother

incidentally, Time also read New Spring and high lesbian quotient in that too, pillow friends abound in the Accepted, Siuan and Moiraine being the slight shocker

Given the number of women there would appear to be in the White Tower and that for some of their training period girls are in the hormone-rush years, I would argue that sheer frustration (combined with a need for some measure of affection and emotional support) would lead many along that path.

Presumably Egwene and Elayne didn't have enough time to investigate this aspect of their White Tower novicehood. But then Elayne/Aviendha kinda veers dangerously close. And what about the repressed erotic content vis a vis Egwene/Arangar?

http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Features/03JordanLetter.html

So, what did you folks think when you heard he died before finishing the last book?

I thought, "I'm glad I stopped reading those books years ago or I might be really upset, having invested so much time and energy into keeping track of all these annoying characters."

glad this thread has popped back up to the top of the new answers page, because i was just thinking the other day how sad it would be if george r r martin died before finishing HIS epic fantasy series. all said though, RIP RJ, you kept me entertained for most of middle school.

I first read that as "What did you fools..."

i started rereading these 4 a job and got pretty into them again tbh

could right so much about how rad they are but fukk the h8rs

for a JOB?

theyre making some video games based on them due to the movie cummin out

that is pretty intense.
i had no idea abt a movie.
what did the people on rec.arts.sf.written.rober-jordan think of all this? they had this epic FAQ i would read whenever i got confused about plot points, back in the day.

I gotta say I actually got chills at the end of book 9, something I thought this series couldn't do to me any longer.

It's also much easier to keep track of the bazillions of characters when you read them one right after the other.

if i had the first book i would start a re-read. think they're all in a box at my mom's house. library IS around the corner tho.

http://steelypips.org/wotfaq/1_dark/1.1_forsaken1/1.1.6_asmo.html

i ended up buying some of the hardbacks i was missing for really cheap - like $6 at most. found a couple @ goodwill for $2

yah HI DERE otm book 9 is probably one of the best in the series and book 11 is pretty dope too. book 10 is a real travesty. and reading them all back to back changes your opinion for sure. i remember common wisdom is that series really fell off but i dont think thats true anymore it just that 3 years waiting kind of kills it

book 10 is a real travesty

this kind of can't be overstated; 10 is terrible water-treading where people get shuffled slowly into place in the most uninteresting ways possible and is only redeemed by the surging ball of awesome that is book 11

what about the mediocrity of books 7&8? Those kill the series for me usually. i've gotten to book 10 once or twice maybe but never finished it.

i liked book 8! seven is kind of a mess but at least its (relatively) short for me book 6 is the breaking point. in my one reread prior to this i stopped there just couldnt get through the fukken elyane and nynaeve zzzzz sections. actually all the sections get really tedious in the middle of that one

lol i now remember all the stupid fukken names of the 1.7 million characters

http://i16.ebayimg.com/08/i/001/0e/b0/9258_2.JPG

I can get through 7 & 8, although IIRC those are the ones where Jordan revels just a little too much in having his female characters breathlessly declare their innermost thoughts to each other while sharing baths. (Maybe that's in 6? I don't remember now.)

I gotta say, I love love love the Egwene subplot. She's just a total badass.

i never really liked her character until basically book 11 which i wont spoil for ian but basically proves that shes the sickest chick in the series

I dunno, the entire thing where the rebels try to use her and she's like, "um, let me think about that... NO" is also pretty bad-ass.

ian do u have the wot ccg???? i would love to play it

hi dere - yeah but all the rebels are kind of such saps imo that it doesnt seem that cool. also shes continually getting sonned by that reincarnated forsaken so it kind of lessens her radness

i bought a few starters & packs of the wot ccg when it first came out, and they might still be around my mom's place somewhere... but i remember it being really convoluted and weird.

also dudes, feel free to spoil away.

* Padan Fain becomes a Darkfriend forty years ago. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Because he covers the Two Rivers area, Fain is chosen to be the Dark One's hound to search for the Dragon Reborn. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Padan Fain arrives in Emond's Field. (TEotW,Ch2)
* He enters Emond's Field and tells everyone about the news of the world. The Village Council asks him to step inside the Winespring Inn. (TEotW,Ch3)
* In the Trolloc attack, Fain's wagon is burned and he disappears. (TEotW,Ch7)
* The Fade forces Fain to accompany him and the Trollocs after the boys. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Rand runs into Fain in Baerlon and tells him they are staying at the Stag and Lion. (TEotW,Ch15)
* Fain frees himself of the Fade but is still forced to follow the boys. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Fain enters Shadar Logoth and encounters Mordeth. They merge, forming something more evil and powerful than either. (TGH,Ch49)
* Fain heads to Caemlyn after the boys. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Fain sees Rand in Caemlyn and tries to chase him. (TEotW,Ch39)
* Fain follows the boys through the Ways. He encounters Machin Shin, but the Black Wind leaves him alone. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Fain is brought before Moiraine and Agelmar after being caught trying to sneak in to Fal Dara. (TEotW,Ch46)
* Fain tells most of his story to Moiraine. He is held in the dungeon. (TEotW,Ch47)
* Fain is still being held in the dungeon. (TEotW,Ch53)
* Rand and Egwene visit Fain. He says he can feel Rand and that Mordeth knows more than all of you. (TGH,Ch3)
* Fain waits in the dark when Mat and Egwene come to visit. Ingtar and a Fade release Fain and he takes the ruby dagger from Mat. He learns of Toman Head from the Fade and decides to go there via the Waygate at Cairhien. (TGH,Ch5, Tor Q&A)
* Fain fights for control with the Fade and finally kills it, nailing it to a door. (TGH,Ch11)
* Fain wakes to find the Horn and the ruby dagger gone and is furious. He cannot sense Rand. Later, he can sense Rand again. He still feels compelled to hunt him and hates him for it. (TGH,Ch19)
* Fain's Darkfriends steal the Horn and the ruby dagger and set the Defender of the Dragonwall on fire. (TGH,Ch30)
* Fain takes the Horn and his followers through the Waygate to Toman Head after leaving a message for Rand with Barthanes. (TGH,Ch33)
* Leaving the Darkfriends and Trollocs in a nearby camp, Fain takes the chest to High Lord Turak in Falme. Turak opens the chest and confiscates the Horn and the ruby dagger. (TGH,Ch34)
* Fain sets himself up in style in Falme with fine clothes and a servant. (TGH,Ch42)
* Fain kills Turak's aide, Huan, for striking him. (TGH,Ch45)
* Padan Fain now calls himself Ordeith, which means Wormwood. He makes his way to Amador and into the good graces of Pedron Niall where he convinces him that the Two Rivers is a nest of Darkfriends. (TDR,Prologue)
* Ordeith leads fifty Whitecloaks to the Two Rivers and meets Dain Bornhald there. He intends to scour the Two Rivers so Rand will come to him. (TSR,Ch1)
* When Perrin's parents laugh at him, Fain murders the entire family. (TSR,Ch31)
* Fain has his own camp with his close followers. He also has a Fade prisoner. He knows one of the boys is to the south and that it is not Rand. (TSR,Ch31)
* Fain orchestrates a Trolloc attack that wipes out Taren Ferry but allows many to escape across the river carrying word of what is going on in the Two Rivers. (TSR,Ch45)
* Fain watches the defense of Emond's Field. Angry at the result, he plans to take his motley crew to Caemlyn, then Tar Valon. (TSR,Ch56)
* Fain meets with Elaida and talks about Rand. He notices the tension between her and Alviarin and relishes it. He wants both the Horn of Valere and the ruby dagger. (TFoH,Prologue)
* Fain retrieves the ruby dagger. Alviarin confronts him, but he convinces her that he is a high level Darkfriend. He quickly leaves the White Tower. (TFoH,Ch19)
* In Caemlyn, Fain sends some of his Whitecloaks to attack Rand as a test of his defenses. (LoC,Ch26)
* Fain and his pet Fade are staying with a Darkfriend family in Caemlyn. The son, Perwyn Belman brings him news that Rand was attacked by a Gray Man. Fain is furious because he wants Rand for himself. (LoC,Ch28)
* Fain is advisor to Toram Riatin in the Cairhien rebel camp. He now calls himself Jeraal Mordeth. Rand spots him, but he disappears into the crowd. (ACoS,Ch35)
* Fain jumps out of the fog, slices Rand with the ruby dagger and runs off laughing. (ACoS,Ch36)
* Fain brings Toram Riatin with him to Far Madding. (WH,Ch33)
* Fain arrives in Far Madding. He kills Kisman with the ruby dagger because he wants Rand for himself. (WH,Ch22)
* Fain sends a note to Rand telling him that Gedwyn and Torval are staying in a house on Blue Carp Street. (WH,Ch32)
* Fain kills Gedwyn and Torval then attacks Rand. He uses new powers to create an Illusion, but Rand slashes him with his sword. Fain flees. (WH,Ch33)

yeah im looking at it online i guess its oop now. tbh all ccg seem retardedly elaborate tho

you have said this before i think but srsly MTG is the non-complicated ccg and a barrel of fun.

i totally believe u guyz it just doesnt look uncomplicated from the outside

can we get back to talking about who killed asmodean and is moridin the reinarnation of ishamael and has rand had a menage with all his girlies yet

who killed asmodean

graendal

is moridin the reinarnation of ishamael

yes

has rand had a menage with all his girlies

yes oh yes 1000 times yes - he also got elyane pregnant

1. Graendel
2. Yes
3. Not directly, but when he knocks boots with one the others can sense it.

xp: dammit too slow, and yes forgot about the lolpregnancy

I mean seriously, why is the wackest one pregnant?

what a pimp.

* NS,Ch21 - Lan nearly loses his temper when Moiraine finds a patch of blisterleaf and uses it on him.
* TEotW,Ch5 - Tam and Rand keep small bags of medicines including willowbark.
* TEotW,Ch18 - Nynaeve tells Moiraine that flatwort tea and andilay root are best for fatigue. They clear the head and dim the burn in tired muscles.
* TEotW,Ch19 - Nynaeve gives Moiraine a weak tea of foxtail and marisin. It will help her sleep for an hour and not be groggy.
* TEotW,Ch38 - Nynaeve rubs Perrin's bruises with ground ivy, five-finger and sunburst root, a greasy ointment that relieves pain and heals bruises.
* TGH,Ch8 - In a dither, Nynaeve thinks she should dose herself with rannel and sheepstongue root. She uses them on people who are moping or acting like a fool. They perk one up a bit, but mainly they leave a horrible taste that lasts all day.
* TGH,Ch14 - When Perrin contacts the wolves, Mat thinks he looks ill and offers to make him some willowbark tea. He keeps willowbark in his saddlebags.
* TGH,Ch18 - Raw sheepstongue root is the worst tasting thing Nynaeve knows of.
* TGH,Ch23 - During her Accepted test, Nynaeve hears that that the new Wisdom gave Bran al'Vere gray fennel before he died. It is poison.
* TDR,Ch10 - As Mat's fever grows worse, Nynaeve wishes she had some worrynot root or feverbane.
* TDR,Ch38 - Nynaeve doses Dailin with corenroot to help make blood, dogwort for knitting flesh, and healall.
* TDR,Ch39 - Adden and his men dope Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve with sleepwell root. The men think it will keep them asleep, but it actually clears headaches so one can sleep. It only makes one a little drowsy.
* TDR,Ch48 - Nynaeve and Mother Guenna test each others knowledge of herbs. Chainleaf tea and bluewort tea settle a queasy stomach. So does a brew of marshwhite leaves, but that has a bite to the taste. Flatwort tea or andilay root is good for fatigue. Whitefennel helps with a difficult childbirth. Powdered gheandin blossom on the tongue helps a heart attack. For a broken limb, give boneknit then wrap the limb in toweling soaked with boiled blue goatflowers. Sheepstongue root is good for eye pain.
* TSR,Ch7 - Nynaeve dosed Egwene with dogwood tea for moping. It tasted so bad Egwene hit her with a bowl.
* TSR,Ch34 - The Wise Ones give Mat tea made from timsin root and silverleaf for his headache.
* TSR,Ch52 - Nynaeve wants some willowbark or acem to make something for the lump on Thom's head.
* TFoH,Ch5 - Bair threatens to dose Egwene with bluespine tea, an incredibly bitter brew that serves no purpose except to "cure" sullenness or sulkiness.
* TFoH,Ch10 - Ronde Macura accidentally discovers the effects of forkroot tea. She uses it to drug Elayne and Nynaeve. It puts them to sleep and inhibits them from channeling.
* TFoH,Ch10 - Nynaeve finds white henpepper in Ronde Macura's kitchen. It will soothe a toothache but it will also turn one's hair black as night. They will use it to disguise Elayne.
* TFoH,Ch13 - Angry at having to play a servant, Nynaeve offers to make Elayne a tea of sheepstongue root and red daisy.
* TFoH,Ch15 - Egwene almost forces a brew of boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf on Nynaeve for lying.
* TFoH,Ch16 - Nynaeve uses some healall ointment on the scratches she received in Tel'aran'rhiod.
* TFoH,Ch26 - When she was a novice, Siuan washed a disliked Accepted's shifts with itchweed.
* TFoH,Ch36 - Nynaeve uses white henpepper to darken Birgitte's hair.
* TFoH,Ch48 - Nynaeve packs up the remedies she took from Ronde Macura from the healall to the dreadful forkroot.
* TFoH,Ch49 - Nynaeve rubs stinging mardroot-oil liniment into Uno's bruised shoulder and dabs some healall ointment on the gash on his face.
* TFoH,Ch49 - Elayne and Birgitte remove the dark coloring from their hair with pokeleaf. It is normally used for sore gums and toothaches. Nynaeve uses red fennel to settle her stomach.
* TFoH,Ch54 - Nynaeve adds some unnecessary sheepstongue root to Siuan's sleeping brew when they prepare to visit Tel'aran'rhiod.
* TFoH,Ch54 - Fearing Moghedien, Nynaeve wishes she had some goosemint for her heartburn.
* TFoH,Ch54 - With the a'dam, Nynaeve uses blackwasp nettles on Moghedien.
* TFoH,Ch55 - In Tel'aran'rhiod, Nynaeve gives Moghedien a cup of forkroot tea to drug her for real in Salidar.
* LoC,Ch7 - Nynaeve chews goosemint frequently to settle her stomach.
* LoC,Ch12 - Nynaeve chews goosemint to soothe her burning stomach.
* LoC,Ch15 - Egwene takes sleepwell root to make herself drowsy and clear her headache.
* LoC,Ch29 - Nynaeve still tastes boiled catfern and powdered mavinsleaf when she even thinks of lying.
* ACoS,Prologue - Ronde Macura reports to the White Tower the effects of forkroot. Elaida orders Joline and Teslyn to use it to capture Elayne and Nynaeve.
* ACoS,Ch32 - When they were novices, Seaine and Pevara put powdered itchoak on Serancha's shift.
* TPoD,Ch1 - Teslyn uses the forkroot on Joline to prevent her from interfering in Elayne and Nynaeve's escape from Ebou Dar.
* TPoD,Ch25 - Elaida is annoyed that everyone in the White Tower now seems to know about forkroot.
* TPoD,Ch28 - Someone poisons Adeleas and Ispan with crimsonthorn root. It is sweet. A little kills pain. More paralyzes and slowly kills.
* WH,Ch9 - Daved Hanlon stages an attack on Elayne, spiking her tea with forkroot.
* WH,Ch10 - Nynaeve doses Elayne with herbs to overcome the effects of forkroot. Greenwort and goatstongue might may one sleep, but they are sovereign for the stomach cramps caused by forkroot.
* WH,Ch10 - The assassins who attacked Elayne had daggers poisoned with gray fennel and powdered peach pit.
* WH,Ch12 - Women use heartleaf tea for effective birth control.
* WH,Ch14 - After her damane is caned, Tuon orders her welts painted with tincture of sorfa. She is also to be given lionheart for the pain.
* WH,Ch19 - Teslyn admits to Mat that she drugged Joline with forkroot to foil Elaida's plan to capture Elayne and Nynaeve.
* CoT,Ch30 � When Egwene is captured at Northharbor someone drugs her with forkroot.
* KoD,Prologue � Silviana intends to keep Egwene drugged with forkroot. Forkroot affects channelers much more strongly than those who cannot channel.
* KoD,Ch4 � Perrin learns that the Seanchan are using forkroot to detect and capture men and women who can channel.
* KoD,Ch11 � Mat learns that the Seanchan army at the Murandy border is using forkroot to detect and capture men and women who can channel.
* KoD,Ch12 � Perrin and Tylee go to Almizar to procure thousands of pounds of forkroot.
* KoD,Ch15 � When her pregnancy bothers her Elayne sometimes regrets not drinking heartleaf tea before lying with Rand.
* KoD,Ch20 - Nynaeve takes willowbark when she gets a headache from too much channeling.
* KoD,Ch24 � The Aes Sedai keep Egwene lightly dosed with forkroot so she can barely channel.
* KoD,Ch26 � Perrin and his followers dump thousands of pounds of forkroot into the aqueduct that leads to the cistern in Malden.
* KoD,Ch29 � Maighdin collapses after drinking water laced with forkroot.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL

^ Blog post by the guy completing the THREE VOLUME final novel.

That blog post is longer than most books.

yah his trilogy is really pretty good. he (used to?) post to a forum i post to and he seems like a decent guy - hes definitely into the series which i guess could be good or bad but at least its not some total hack

holy shit, i totally forgot about mazrim taim. was he a forsake in disguise or just a nutter?

nerd answers is:

a) jordan has unequivocally said that he is NOT demandred
b) its almost impossible for him 2 be any other forsaken
c) he is definitely a darkfriend

so cw is that he is some kind of modern chosen probably found and taught by ishmael

i read brandon sanderson's book elantris, it was pretty good. solid and unpredictable.

Wasn't nynaeve completely, totally annoying? Or was that some other character, I can't remember, it's been a few years since I read these daft books? I think I got as far as #7.

she was one of the annoying ones, yes.

lol "one of"

i walked over to the used bookstore in hopes they had a copy of the eye of the world ;_;

hoping sanderson has good enough sense to keep nynaeve's braid-tugging to a once-per-chapter max, otherwise she is one of my favs. she is at the very least one of the most important characters to the overall plot (between cleansing saidin and learning to heal stilled/gentled people also battling forsaken and shit).

really thinking sanderson is a great choice to finish the series, hoping he unlike jordan is capable of making it through an entire book without referencing the heavingness of every aes sedai's bosoms.

hey guys POO ta'veren: rand, perrin, mat

There's some point around book... 5? I think where the series really falls into "I am wsnking as I write this" territory that really made me roll my eyes (while wsnking).

Anyone else pissed that Jordan took time to write Siuan/Moiraine slash instead of finishing his series?

xp: Perrin without hesitation.

I mean, look at the evidence:

1. Awesome feral beast powers
2. Best wife of anyone in the series
3. Not crazy
4. Not a gigantic whiny pussy
5. duh his name

I tried to read the first book when it came out, but after fifty or a hundred pages of nothing happening I never gave it a second thought. However, on some perverse whim I decided to check out the audiobook of it from the library and now find myself on book 5. Book 1 was a bit of a rough slog, but 2-4 were pretty gripping. So far, 5 is dull and the padding is getting a bit absurd.

Perrin is by far the most "realized" character at this point, and thus my pick as well.

Mat sort of doesn't turn into a person until... book 7 I think? Whatever point it is when he actively starts leading soldiers.

Mat seems a shorthand sketch at this point - trying to get laid, trying to get money, and trying to get away from those who use the power, in that order. He and Nynaeve (had to copy that from upthread - I don't know any of the spelling!) have the worst internal monologues. I swear they are just cut and pasted from book to book.

Yeah, later on he turns into a human being but he is so obviously a placeholder at the beginning of the series it's kind of comical.

(At least Nynaeve had Lan to humanize her somewhat early on.)

The Lan thing is good so far, but her "pull braid, I don't snore, in the dreamworld I can't control myself" shtick is poor characterization. Of course, I'm listening to them because I like the world, the way the power works, and the plot, not for the mostly wooden protagonists.

A slight peeve: by book 5, is anyone reading it that hasn't read the first 4? Do you need to continue to recap each characters quirks and foibles? You could cut hundreds of pages from this series just by doing that little bit of editing.

mat is great, his development as a character wasn't entirely out of nowhere (it is hinted at early on - his visit with the aelfin was in book 1, wasn't it? also his struggle with the cursed dagger [although at the time it seemed a really blatant frodo/the one ring ripoff]), but especially in the last half of the series he has become one of the more interesting characters, and at least one of the most fun to read being the only character besides maybe thom merillin to have a sense of humor whatsoever.

rand losing his hand is exactly the WOT equivalent of fonzi jumping the shark though imo

I'm not disputing that the seeds for Mat's characterization aren't sown early on; I'm saying Jordan put them there and then said "now let me spend 7000 pages writing about everyone else before going back and making Mat tolerable".

absolutely...one of the reasons perrin has been such an interesting character is that his story has developed at a fair pace (except book 6 or 7? which left him out entirely), unlike pretty much anyone else in the series; the wolfbrother stuff earlier in the series, his return to the two rivers (highlight of wot for me), his marriage to faile, also didn't he make some kind of deal with the seanchan in 11?

matt didnt fuck w/ the door ter'angreal until book 4 ~~~ first two books dude is just a plot contrivance just a way to get rand doing shit. matt didnt even get a pov until book 3 and hes not really interesting until he starts sleepen with that queen in like book 7

Rand is pretty great but I like Lews Therin more. I see this as a big flaw with Rand.

no way, the turnaround in the mat storyline was definitely when he came out of the eelfin ter'angreal with all those old dead dude's memories

xpost i was sort of under the impression that rand's 'relationship' with lews therin would change when he cleansed saidin but i guess that didn't happen did it

rand is the inverse of matt he starts out reasonably interesting and slowly become more and more of a total joke and non-entity

nick yah i guess the battle where he 1st shows off his skillz as a general is a big turning point he has to face being tied to rand and the pattern no matter what he does but that not until the end of book 5 and hes not really in book 6 much

They're hinting that the Rand/Lews Therin thing is more related to whatever the deep ancient power that saidir and saidin are pale reflections of.

Mat didn't start getting interesting until after he met Tuon; there were all of these things that should have been interesting about him but the character was too busy going "LOOK AT ME, I AM A MASSIVE TOOL" to capitalize on them.

mat will always be more compelling than rand imho.

rand is the inverse of matt he starts out reasonably interesting and slowly become more and more of a total joke and non-entity

This is pretty OTM.

Perrin got pretty annoying in the last few books i thought, the storyline with him chasing the Shaido seemed to go on forever

tell me you guys are talking about dennis perrin

while its true that dennis perrin is a werewolf no we r not

best ta'veren is probably egwene as mentioned upthread

oh shit forgot she's also ta'veren...is nynaeve also?

OH big question here: can't remember for sure but isn't thom merilin actually elayne's father??

implied but not confirmed iirc

i dont think its verified but thats the cw xp

egwene isnt really ta'veren shes just my favorite EF character. of the three mat's probably my pick

do u guys have a favorite angreal in the story i am partial to the weird doorway (obvs) and the balefire rod but i am curious as to your more invested opinions.

not really angreal but the whole portal stone thing was a++++ and one of my favorite things in the series

the protective get-ups the nynaeve and the other powerful AS has are pretty cool

protective get ups? maybe i didn't read that far or have forgotten. i liked the rings that make them go to the dreamworld too cuz dream worlds are A++

foxhead medallion pretty punk too.

cadsuane! thats the other one. have u got the cleansing yet? i think thats really the first time they're mentioned

nynaeves is a set of rings connected to a bracelet and a belt i think that has a well and can null the power like mat's foxhead and detect channeling and is also an angreal. might do other things.

cadsuanes is a set of charms connected to like a headband and each of the charms does something similar to nynaeve's jewelery

bowl of the winds!

dreamworld rings
the Seanchan collars
the bowl(?) they used to change the weather

ha i could c+p that to the taco hot dog thread and it would be relavent.

xp

holy shit i forgot all about the collars!!!!!

seanchan collars are fuuuccccked. like when the darkfriends have them on people and they just fuckin em up. bowl of the winds was awesome yes.

i did get to the cleansing but srsly haven't picked up these books for years and years so i'm forgetting things.

i keep poking around for a copy of the eye of the world. i always see it at thrift stores around here. must.. begin.. re-read..

those collars made the largest impression on me of all of them tbh

bowl of winds was ~shrug~ but when elayne unravels a gateway and basically napalms the seanchan was sick

Who (besides Rand) has killed the most people?

Padan Fain likes the odd massacre doesn't he?

Yeah, but a whole bunch of them (heroes and villains) are pretty bloodthirsty.

didn't mat blowing the horn result in like thousands of dead seanchan?

elayne killed a few thousand seanchan + all those soliders died @ caemlyn on her behalf (dont know if that counts)

Shaido forces

* 100,000 Shaido led by Sevanna of the Jumai sept.
* 400+ Wise Ones capable of channelling, led by Thevara.
* 25-30,000 other Aiel forces (presumed to be Shaido) to the west of Malden.
* 40,000 other Aiel forces (presumed to be Shaido) to the east of Malden.

[edit] Allied forces

* 15,000 Seanchan led by Banner-General Tylee Khirgan and Captain Bakayar Mishima.
* 12 Seanchan damane.
* 20,000 Dragonsworn under Masema Dagar.
* 900 Winged Guards of Mayene under Lord-Captain Bertain Gallenne.
* 1,000 Legion of the Wall of Ghealdan under First Captain Gerard Arganda.
* 3,000-4,000 Two Rivers bowmen under First Captain Tam al'Thor.
* 20+ Cha Faile, mostly Cairhienin, under Selande Darengil.
* 20 Aiel Maidens of the Spear under Sulin.
* 6 Wise Ones under Edarra of the Shiande Aiel.
* 3 Aes Sedai.
* 2 Asha'man.

[edit] Casualties

* 400 Shaido Wise Ones taken as damane.
* Other Shaido casualties unknown but likely tens of thousands killed or captured.
* Approximately 19,800 Dragonsworn killed.
* Total casualties among the other Allies: approximately 100 killed.

wot.wikia.com is my new timekiller.

Why did I type Nynaeve into GIS

^^^ lol @ u

http://linuxmafia.com/~garrett/jordan/pics/jordan/art/be_nynaeve.jpg

I can't wait to create all of these characters in the Sims, though

2009
exterior, smoking area, northern virginia office park (somebody has mentioned robert jordan)
el tomboto:
magic is bad for you unless you have tits!!
coworker who put "sweat equity" into his wife's WoW main for an anniversary present:
not anymore, they fixed it in like, book seven

wot fan art is our dark century's brightest beacon of hope imo

that and the fact that govt tech nerds are keeping the plot on track

easily in my top five coworkers of all time btw

list thread?

more like cheetos equity rite???

its good 2 have some1 in yr life you can talk about star ocean w/

fwiw el tomboto i cannot see you making it through even half of one of these but the idea of u trying is just lol

If I am ever again tempted to do NaNoWriMo I may write Magic Is Bad For You Unless You Have Tits!

fan art, tho

i tried, once

xp to read once of these, i mean

one of these

i guess i need to read these again before launching into the next one, which means buying them all again.

As counter-intuitive as it seems, it really is easier to read these in one giant lump than it is to read them as they come out with the giant gaps between books.

problem is, that was a possibility when i was 15 and didn't have to do anything except eat, sleep and have hair. nowadays, not so much time for reading.

i never read number 11, and i didnt even finish 10.

i may just pick up 11 and see how it goes. i havent read a word of this series since 2003 but i read the first 6 or so several time each.

dilemma:

do i got a bookstore to buy a paperback of the eye of the world, OR do i order it from amazon, even though with shipping it's only a few bucks cheaper? I worry that if I wait for it to arrive in the mail my enthusiasm for nostalgia will have faded.

btw this is some secret shame shit, but the first time i picked one of these books up i was in 7th grade and i did it cuz i saw a (cute) girl reading one of them and thought maybe it would make me more likable/"cool."

I'd buy it at a store, but that's me.

other option is to ask my mom to look in the closet of my old bedroom for my old copy, but that might just make her confused and a little sad.

I am pretty sure I picked up the first book because I saw it on the shelf in the library and thought "oh hey, a huge fantasy book; I need something to read for the next two weeks".

that is how i began reading the fantastical works of Mr. Raymond E. Feist.

same as that. didn't fancy much else on the limited fantasy shelf of our local book store, which is always a factor.

there was one (short) aisle of sf/fantasy in the local library, and i swear i must have spent dozens of hours in my adolescence staring at those books. it's a shame i wasn't taller, i must have missed out on so much ;_;

Oh man, we had an entire section! Looking back, I can't believe how lucky I was re: the libraries my mom worked in.

We had a pretty big section in ours as well. It's how I ended up reading Avram Davidson, which I'll be forever grateful for.

to be fair there was a lot more stuff at the library a town over, but i couldn't ride my bike there.

even as a pre-teen i knew to avoid L Ron Hubbard though. I don't know how I managed that. I think I looked at those warlord of space books or whatever and just kind of knew they were crappy?

but they ere big, and there were a lot of them.

read the first one aged about 13, and it was just embarrassing

Unfortunately I read 8 of the Mission Earth L. Ron books. Thanks limited small town library! But this thread has made me decided to re-read RJ again after finishing Ulysses.

holy shit the audiobook eye of the world is 25 CDs long??!?

I think I read 1 L. Ron book...? I ended up being more of a Heinlein whore anyway; I don't think I ever even read 2001: A Space Odyssey

i read not one but THREE books by mercedes lackey. can't believe it.

i think my parents lost faith in my manliness when i stopped reading books with spaceships on 'em and switched to elves & fanciful beasts.

i read not one but THREE books by mercedes lackey. can't believe it.

hahahahaha you are not alone

CURSE YOU, SWORD AND SORCERESS ANTHOLOGIES

I mean, we could give you a pass for Diana Paxson, Mercedes Lackey or Jennifer Robeson, but ALL THREE?

(altho looking those back up makes me realize I have actually read Charles DeLint! hmm)

holy shit the audiobook eye of the world is 25 CDs long??!?

― ian,

It's like 27 hours or something. Took nearly two weeks of gym time and chores to make it through.

okay, i bought a paperback of the eye of the world.
if i have as much fun with this as i hope, i might have to begin a blog. or else you will all have to see this thread on new arrivals everyday.

happy coincidence: guy on the street selling records outside the bookstore, got a clean copy of Joy Division's "Closer" and also Fleetwood Macs "Pious Bird of Good Omen" so flipping those will pay for the cost of the book & then some.

the paperback editions of these are so flimsy ime

this crazy chick on another forum with like a talmudic knowledge of the series used many quotes and examples to convince she had worked how the series would end and now i am bummed a little.

You wouldn't be on the Steven Erikson forum, would you?

don't trust anything u read on the innerne what are you 12?

ha yah stone monkey i post there sometimes when i am not banned :/

nah man 4 real this chick knows the wheel of time liked she lived it like she blogged it like she died and was reborn tied to it

LOL She is a little... Full on...

the wheel turns and ages come and sad nerds write fanfic..

Most of the fanfic writing nerds seem happy enough in their little worlds of slash. I do wonder what the slashers amke of RJ; he pretty much does their work for them.

Did any of you read that prequel book? I've refused to so far.

new spring is pretty good but i am like non-fanfic world's biggest moiraine stan so

A lot of it seems to be along the lines of: And then they did lez up. At that point, I think, RJ's other fantasies kicked in.

Hah yeah for some reason one of the only things I remember about the WoT is this one throwaway scene where a dark Aes Sedai or darkfriend or whatever is torturing a Warder by making him feel uncountable pleasure. I guess this is what happens when you read these books at the age of 12. Maybe I should just read slash to tide myself over until all three final volumes come out.

so im halfway through book 11, after abandoning the series right after 10 came out. and im really enjoying it, and fully invested in the absurdity of it all. and actually feeling kinda sad jordan died and didnt get to finish it.

and a part of me fantasizes about a college gender studies course on these books and their incredibly fucked up yet kinda fascinating gender politics.

I just finished book 5 and I have to take a break from this series. Book 5 was really, really, extra bad. Lots of pointless traveling - oh look, Cirque de Nynaeve! - messy, poorly organized fight sequence at the end (switching viewpoints and covering the same thing from multiple sides is a bad idea). Easily the worst book thus far.

I found it really discouraging - do I really want to slog through more mediocrity to get to the last couple of good books? Can the payoff be worth it? I'm on the fence; might just pick up the Steven Erikson books instead.

I did buy myself a new copy of the eye of the world, and i am reading it, and it's worse than i remember it being, in terms of the writing anyway. also rand is such a pussy wtf i hate myself for ever thinking he was cool.

The Erikson ones have a pretty hard learning curve. He deliberately makes no effort to explain anything at all in the first book and you either sink or swim. The second one is a work of genius, though.

The Erikson's sound right up my alley. I like books that throw me in the deep end.

Jordan assumes that each book is a new wading pool and you never get more than waist high.

the wikipedia article on erikson suggests that the first novel in his series was orig written as a stand-alone; does this mean i can read it with some level of satisfaction without feeling obligated to read more? i don't know why i'm asking if i've committed myself to this robert jordan re-read for the next few months butttttt

You can, but the second one is much better. The quality becomes... quite variable after that.His prose gets a bit purple from time to time too. And I say that as a long time member of his fan forum...

I couldn't get through the first Erikson. There was a surfeit of crazy ideas, but nothing compelling to hold them together. Read Mieville instead.

I've read all the Mieville stuff. Need something new.

I quite enjoyed Alan Campbell's Scar Night. Haven't read the sequel yet though.

the wikipedia article on erikson suggests that the first novel in his series was orig written as a stand-alone; does this mean i can read it with some level of satisfaction without feeling obligated to read more?

yeah first 5 books are independent after that it loses the pick em up in any order aspect - also the last couple were terrible on a lvl jordan couldnt even have contemplated

with jordan idk - i mean the writings pretty clumsy altho book 2 in particular was kind of clever and ~deep~ in a way i wasnt expecting but the world and its mysteries get really engaging its pretty much the sole reason that i think the series holds up its v. livable

been going full on nerd lately and skimming some of the older books and trying to remember some stuff with the help of the internet. lots of minor yet really cool stuff i had forgotten. (like Slayer, especially.)

I kinda wonder what the final word on this series will be. it's been mentioned a lot already but there is something pretty cool about the overall structure, starting out with basically a handful of characters and following their every move and then gradually pulling out to a very, very long shot that almost literally contains the entire fictional world, every moving part--it's sorta breathtaking and i wonder if once the entire thing is finished it will seems more satisfying. part of the fun of tolkien was always the sense that despite the main action there was an almost infinite depth of detail going on behind it, in other places or historically. Jordan seems to have been actually WRITING that out rather than suggest it. and that rather than being about a world in decline as in LOTR, Jordan seems to be writing the reverse of that, suggesting that the world was withering before the events of the first novel and that now it's experiencing a kind of rebirth.

the level of detail was especially brought home to me when i read that from the Eye of the World to Knife of Dreams the story takes place over about 2-3 years. i could have sworn it was at least 10!

and as i said above, the meta-gender theorizing that could be done about these novels would be really interesting, in that the "Fall" in the case of this universe seems to be the very creation or "break" between the genders. (admittedly this would be way more cool if every man and and every woman didnt act pretty much exactly the same according to their gender, tho there does seem to be some glimmers in the latest that maybe there's more to this, that it's a symptom of a larger problem/rift between the genders. that's prob way too generous a reading tho.)

I'm kind of struggling through my re-read here. It's past page 250, and Rand is still all "It was just like in the stories omgwtfllol!!!*" and it is kind of bizarre and cringe-worthy. i also find myself skipping whole pages/scenes--thom telling some story in a tavern, moiraine explaining something about the history of the white tower. otoh, there are cool things i'm noticing, but special attention paid to mat being hooked with a trolloc's noose. there also seem to have been mentions of the seanchan already (via some tale abt artur hawkwing[lol]), but who's to say how much of that was planned or simply riffed upon.

btw, for anyone who is interested in catching up before the next book this site is pretty comprehensive: http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/

I was pretty thrilled to discover after returning home that my hodgepodge collection sourced from used bookshops all over does include The Eye of the World.

After first getting into this series, I remember holding every small figurine I ever came across in antique and curio shops and wondering if it was secretly an angreal. Remembering this fills me with shame and self-loathing.

if it makes u feel any better i used to pretend flashlights were lightsabers.

there are cool things i'm noticing, but special attention paid to mat being hooked with a trolloc's noose. there also seem to have been mentions of the seanchan already (via some tale abt artur hawkwing[lol]), but who's to say how much of that was planned or simply riffed upon.

this was my favorite part about rereading it all these little uncertain moments that seemed preplanned & so real like true world intricate and deep such an unexpected and vicarious pleasure like meeting someone u havent seen in a long time and finding out they read a book u recommended to them and enjoyed it thoroughly. im sad u arent really into it although i can see y jordan's sentences are broad and aimlessly filled with the same extraneous detail like fiber optic cables made of fashion updates/'/

eye of the world is kind of boring all those split and meet up play for your supper scenes they arent that interesting except for the seeds of rand's eating disorder and the fact that everyone of those darkfriends makes an appearance later in the series like ghosts or disliked cousins but there are a lot of cool things too like the man with the face of flames sidling down the hallways of our heroes dreams killing rats and twining them with thorns...

http://www.dragonmount.com/News/?p=585

holy fucking shit NOVEMBER!!!

also holy fucking shit...

i found out this girl i like is into wheel of time. she has the emblem tattooed on her wrist. she has a fucking CAT named NYNAEVE. should i be terrified or turned on?

woah dude, hit that shit.

WWRD

we have a wot drinking game date this week!

bring two other hot chicks with u

pull her pigtail, if you know what I mean

actually if she has a pigtail she wants you to pull, be careful, all may not be as it seems

hey ian how far did u get w/ the reread?

How many Robert Jordan readers have read all the Robert E Howard and Fritz Leiber stuff first?

every single one of them

oh ok should i read this i found a copy in a box somewhere

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3516/3715979605_a804af68e3.jpg

better cover

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n0/n793.jpg

I would stick with the Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stuff. You know... Swords Against Wizardry, Swords Against Deviltry, etc....

never really liked them that much tbh

i'm not sure it's a valid objection to robert jordan fans, though: i mean, the aesthetic goals of a fafhrd/mouser story and of the wheel of time are pretty distinct. (clue: one is on average about 30 pages long; the other is like 17,000 pages long.)

authoritarian exceptionalism

for ages i was misreading yr username as "yes! no! rabies!" like they were three distinct options. i think i like that more.

yes no rabies is all i wanna hear from u ~~

maybe it will turn out okay in the next age or the age after that

Yeah, the Borders I went into this weekend had HUEG posters announcing the new book in November.

got about halfway through the first book but got sidetracked. maybe i should just pick it up with the great hunt?

also, nick, how did your date with wot tattoo girl go? did you grasp the source????

whatever you do, don't go past like book five

too late.. when i was in high school i think i read up to the 6th, maybe 7th e_e

haha grasp the source...it went well, we went out again another time and i loaned her GOOD OMENS, which she apparently loves...it turns out that d'oh she has a boyfriend but yay he is a douchebag and her roommate is trying to undermine him in my favor.

ladies & gentlemen... Myrddraal.

http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=1090

Lyrical theme(s)
Wheel of Time series

new 1 is out next week iirc

new robert jordan or new myrddral record

wot - sadly not sure were going to see a new myrddral record @ this point

New book is REALLY good. Surprisingly so given the need to hand over to a new writer.

I thought he would be handed a bit of a shit sandwich - how to keep weaving the tangled web? - but he's actually taken over at an opportune moment, when all these sub-plots which dude (RJ) has been pushing for ages and ages and ages start to get resolved shockingly fast.

There's a couple of slightly off-key bits - the Mat scenes (of which there are only a few) come across slightly David Eddings-ish - and it's kinda jarring after all this time to see characters being honest to each other (Faile and Perrin) or with themselves (Nynaeve, Siuan, fucking Rand) but this is all outweighed by how much feels pretty spot-on and how much the plot advances. So many money shots here.

Hahah I completely love this from the other main Robert Jordan thread on here, posted just after he died:

---

RIP big guy, I will treasure our moment together*. Also no matter what I posted on this thread about Mat + the dice he is still one of my favorite characters of any fantasy series ever. Well done.

*once I met him at a book signing and asked him what the initial spark of inspiration for the series was and he said something about imagining what it's like to be some random kid and get tapped on the shoulder and told 'guess what you are going to save the world, but you have to go crazy and die in the process'. I was surprised at the full minute+ he spent giving me this description.

― nickalicious, Monday, September 17, 2007 3:38 PM (2 years ago)

"'guess what you are going to save the world, but you have to go crazy and die in the process'"

Who just randomly imagines this??

― Tim F, Monday, September 17, 2007 3:43 PM (2 years ago)

um

― HI DERE, Monday, September 17, 2007 3:47 PM (2 years ago)

lovin this book. about 200 pages from the end and it is building up steam like WOAH. especially love that disparate plots/characters are coming together so fluidly. also love how sanderson is playing with the corniest of jordanisms like nynaeve tugging at her braid and the whole aes sedai bosoms thing.

mat's chapters are definitely told in a different style, talmanes as a comic foil is kind of annoying but also kind of fun, doesn't feel like they'll get to tower of ghenjei moiraine rescue this book but that's okay with me with everything else happening.

where is morgase - gawyn/elayne's mother? i thought she was still alive?

cover art is the worst of the series though ha

oh shit I need to get this

There's a couple of slightly off-key bits - the Mat scenes (of which there are only a few) come across slightly David Eddings-ish - and it's kinda jarring after all this time to see characters being honest to each other (Faile and Perrin) or with themselves (Nynaeve, Siuan, fucking Rand) but this is all outweighed by how much feels pretty spot-on and how much the plot advances. So many money shots here.

yah - the matt and aviendha povs felt the most discordant but the biggest change i think was in the pacing in structure. it felt like sanderson really narrowed his focus - i think this book had the fewest different povs since book 3 or 4? - and the chapters were structured in a kind of airport thriller-ish fashion lots of quick ins and outs. there were fewer consecutive storyline chapters too until the very end

as u mention its hard to say how much of this sanderson and how much is just the natural momentum of the story reaching its climax but its def the quickest read in the series imo

nick morgase gets a brief mention in one of the last few chapters but she (and perrin et al) will be one of the two central stories in the next book

such a rad fukken book tho no joke i even really like the comedy/horror matt chapters

finished it! fantastic ending, probably my favorite of the series. very focused as well as genuinely touching in places. guessing the next book will lean heavily on black tower stuff (which i think was only mentioned near the end via the news of the aes sedai envoy that hadn't come back from there yet) whereas this was definitely a white tower-centered story, in a bunch of ways.

in fact, love the way the next book was set up, a series of actual cliffhangers (the missing envoy, mat's instructions from verin, the borderlanders in far madding, etc) instead of dangling threads. can't wait!!!!

kind of forgot what happened to brigitte?

she's with elayne maybe?

so is this series over now or

heh this in now on my xmas list. glad to hear it's decent.

so is this series over now or

I believe the "final book" has now been split into a three book sequence.

u have correct beliefs

nick yah shes still chillin with elayne and her children

so so so good

after all the buildup some of the resolutions felt a tad rushed but also just felt like the momentum of the last battle coming and everyone is RACING to get sorted

mat, one of my fave characters, did feel off but think he is one of the harder ones to write, fully expect taht this will be sorted by the next book, Towers of Midnindght so ghenji (sp?) and black, no

egwene, who became one of my faves after she tricked the rebel hall into giving her war powers and then sat down romanda & lelaine, moves in this one into new territories of goddamm

verin even more sneaky and awesome than could be expected

it was strange to finally see people explaining themselves to others, wonder how much of that was due to all the fan complaints and how much is meant to convey the sense of urgency as ppl wake up and realize, oh shit, something bad is coming

i cannot wait for the next two, oh god, i will have been reading this series for over 20 years by the time its done

Yeah Verin came back with a massive bang in this one and pretty much definitively showed why she was far and away the most awesome Aes Sedai in the book IMO.

I counted exactly one instance of arms being crossed under breasts.

Really liked this. The Verin thing legitimately surprised me. Looking forward to seeing what Rand's character will be like in next book, what's the deal with Callandor, what the reunion with Moraine will be like, etc. Been reading this almost 20 years myself!

;_; i can't remember who the fuck verin is

She's the Brown Aja Aes Sedai who sort of stumbles/weasels into Moraine's and Siuan's plotting and starts helping them out near the beginning of the series. She's pretty fascinating, particularly if you read the entire series back to back, and this book explains why and it's completely fucking awesome.

ah yeah, the one who resembles a mole in my head.

I don't know if we're allowed to drop spoilers so I'll just say I was WAY off in my theory about her. (seems stupid now but kinda thought she was a gandalf like character...)

I was half-right and was incredibly super-psyched about the part where I was wrong (ie, the motivation).

i'll kill you guys if you don't shut up

or y'know, i could just get the book but nonetheless

haha get the book, it's awesome and a superfast read

kind of psyched to read other Sanderson stuff now, he was never on my radar before

Only thing about sanderson's writing that bugged me was overusing italics. (only noticed because I have the same problem.)

haha i remember that from mistborn his characters have a really terrible habit of thinking in italics

hi dere i think you'd really vibe sanderson's mistborn series it may have been discussed on the fantasy thread but he came up with a really ingenious magic system and there's a neat story with-in a story format to it: each chapter starts with an excerpt from a historical (to the novel's world - what's the word for that?) text that becomes increasingly important to the main story

also all three books are already out

between this, erikson and the black company boks (as well as what lamp just said, maybe) i'm pretty chuffed with my reading options going into 2010

and can we just get an ooh child for egwene!!

i've already arranged for my only friend here who reads this series to farm her kids off to her ex so she can have the weekend to read and catch up so i can talk abt the book with someone (and yes, i am that addicted)

Egwene rocks serious balls in this, yes. Total force of nature, the exact polar opposite of Rand in many ways.

also lol Elaida

oh lord, just went and read the other robert jordan thread and found this forgotten post by me

too much sniffing, toomuch snorting, too much angst by Rand over his harem, too many refernces to sheepfarming, dice rolling, not enuf action and too many years in between each book. that said, i will continue reading tho i will probably be 40 by the time it ends.

i need to muster up the energy to order the last one actually.

― H (Heruy), Sunday, October 26, 2003 3:53 PM (6 years ago)

6 bloody years ago and yes, i will be 40 by the time its done

ah elaida, is it bad that i start humming elaida to miriam makeba's malaika?

I'm 40 next year and I'm hoping I don't turn 50 before GRRM finishes his damn thang.

I just turned 40 last week and I've been reading these damned things since I was in my teens...

Wait was the first WoT book written in the 80s? That can't be--

First book was published in 1990.

xpost

A quick check shows the first 2 were in 1990... so I was only just out of my teens...

Yo peeps also how awesome was the verin plot reveal.

That kind of shit is where RJ is pretty unique - he laid the groundwork for that back in book 2, and the moneyshot had to wait almost two decades.

Read up to the end of Winter's Heart back in 8th grade, and by the time the most recent two came out, didn't bother refreshing my memory because Crossroads of Twilight was such a slog, and the series seemed to be perpetually treading water, despite the cleansing of Said'in, etc. Is the new one good enough/resolves enough that it's worth rededicating myself to the effort?

lol well i mean...

Crosswords was probably the most diffuse in the entire series. Knife of Dreams was the most focused since about book 5 and the new one is probably the most focused in the entire series. Basically from Knife of Dreams onwards it became structurally necessary to reverse the trend of setting up two new sub-plots for every one resolved.

crossroads (lol) is the worst book in the series by a long way - nothing happens to the lamest characters for like 700 pages - but they all seem a little less of a trial if u read the series from book 1 on steadily. thats how i recommend reading b4 jumping into the newest couple

convergence and revelation sing more sweetly if u can remember who tf every1 is imo

Yeah, the main problem with that stretch of the series IMHO is that getting the books every couple of years meant you're sitting there going, "wait, I'm supposed to even remember toveine or yukiri or etc, let alone care about them?"

If nothing else the way in which the new one in particular starts to stitch things up (e.g. for the White Tower tangle of plots alone you get unification of Egwene-in-tower, elaida, black-ajah-hunters, what's-verin-up-to, what's-sheriam-up-to, lelaine-or-romanda-who-will-win, oh-noes-a'rangar, siuan-and-gareth, why-is-gawyn-a-psycho-tool, mesaana, foretold-seanchan-attack-oh-noes, probably a couple more I'm forgetting right now... into a single, neatly tied up plot) starts to cut down on the number of things the narrative will need to keep checking in on.

"That's what really sucks about all this too is that there're so many loose ends that I'm madly curious about, like what ever happened between Mat and the Daughter of the Nine Moons, and was there ever any more about the people on the other side of the desert all the way off the map to the east that ritualistically kill their kings all the time or something like that. And what about the lizard people through that one doorway, huh? Ooh! and what about that bad guy that only appeared in one scene in one book who could apparently channel the True Source and had a blue line crossing his eyeballs and scared the shit out of the other bad guys!?
But I'll be damned if I'm going to read the books to find out.
I don't know if I'm still super-nerdy for even wanting to know about this stuff, or if I'm redeemed by refusing to knuckle under and read 5 more books about bickering Aes Sedais.
― Dan I. (Dan I.), 03 May 2005 02:31 (4 years ago)"

next book plot summary?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apJJ0NzOXEg

lol but still... HYPE

11.02.10

lol but yeah but lol

last one was so good

lol dan i is so otm. i know i'm nerdy enough to at least read some spoiler summaries of everything i missed, once the series is finally finished. definitely don't think i have what it takes to reread everything in order to get back into it. seriously tho, what was up with those lizard dudes?

i cant remember the lizard dudes ;_;

last one might be the best book. Sanderson is able to work in Jordan's style without succumbing to Jordan's penchant for excessive repetition. Felt less padded than the any of the six or seven prior books.

last one is without much doubt the best of the last 6 or 7, yeah, but books 1-3 are similarly nonstop widening of scope while driving the story and 4-6 are still pretty kickass for the most part.

just glad it got back to anywhere near that level tbph

Kind of keep being dumbfounded by how much of this there is. I have read the first two books.

i'm not recommending to go fwd with anymore just yet, but if it finishes as well as the last book suggests then i'd say the purgatory of the middle 4000 pages is worth it

I'll repeat again that, while it bogs down somewhat, it's actually easier and more engaging to read the entire thing at once, largely because you don't have time to forget who characters are.

the juggalos in book 9 are definitely the highlight btw chap

Rand Al'J

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_good_juggalo_names

and to think the only thing ever stopping me penning the great fantasy work of our time was not being able to come up with character names. smh.

theres a piece by zach baron in the believer about the series: http://www.believermag.com/issues/201010/?read=article_baron. its p good as on overview but it spends a lot of time talking around the stuff that makes the books special. one of the things that he touches on - the layering and foreshadowing that jordan does - is kinda interesting to think about. theres never really been a time when the series wasnt in progress & i wonder if the books will suffer by ending? certainly a lot of what seems to occupy ppl online is the working out of various mysteries & theories - parsing the clues or w/e.

still p hype for the next book tho - only a couple of weeks!

did anyone up in this bitch used to read or pos to rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan? those folks were the ultimate nerds but it ruled.

I never got around to reading that; I was so into the music groups that I never had time to branch over into the book groups.

read over these again and book 9 is definitely the best

robert jordan fan 'humour' ^

i had a classic 90s geocities site with animated wheels where i wrote insanely detailed theories about the daughter of the 9 moons and why some random throwaway character was 'proven' black ajah instead of doing my homework.

i also had cool drawings of battles and the great cities

that is awesome.
sigh.
that believer article is pretty good. it almost makes me want to read the books i never did. but that would mean having to start at like book three or four or something, just to remember who everyone is.

i disagree with baron that the entire 7-10 run is plodding - book 9 has a crazy exciting set piece ending and some really good character moments as well as a load of intricate foreshadowing/fanbait. but that stretch is still interminable at times & i mostly skimmed book 10 on my reread.

I think the awesomeness of Lord Of Chaos set a precedent which Jordan struggled to live up to in the next few books. Nothing can excuse Crossroads of Twilight though.

the sharp contrast in how irritating Jordan's "and here's the same story told FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE" trick was compared to Glen Cook's similar trick in the Black Company books is startling

although the payoff to both is great

love that believer article.

this part actually gets at one of the things i actually find interesting about the books as an adult:

Even more problematic, Jordan possessed an understanding of women so bankrupt it would make a seventh-grade boy weep. It was admirable that he tried: Jordan’s heroes were as liable to be female as male—more so, even—and most of the societies he depicted were either matriarchal or, at worst, equal opportunity.

But Jordan’s women do a lot of “sniffing,” usually loudly. They cross their arms under their breasts. Men to them are “wool-headed lummoxes” or “wool-brained mules.” (A disproportionately high number of women in the Wheel of Time are also lesbians—make of that what you will.) Jordan was not above describing rivals for the same man as “two strange cats who had just discovered they were shut up in the same small room.” That is, when he wasn’t making Borscht Belt jokes about their bad cooking, or spending pages describing their dresses. (In this respect, Jordan put romance novels to shame: the Wheel of Time without a doubt holds the record for inexplicably extended rhapsodies over brocaded silk, embroidery, hemlines, and necklines.) Mostly, what Jordan’s women are is the same: some combination of cold, willful, quick to take offense, and—around the right man—weak in the knees.

Basically, that intentionally or not, Jordan has kinda of created a weird not-quite inversion of our own patriarchy, gender imbalance, etc. that the (very obnoxious) coded ways men and women act in the novels could possibly be read as deriving from that.

ha, the thing is that his women are annoying in such a specific way that it's actually pretty easy to overlook that his men are also broad-brush caricatures who often act like nonsensical buffoons

I think he spent some time in the earlier books fucking around with character perspective in a way that makes a lot of the gender stereotyping into something that shouldn't be taken at face-value; specifically, the internal monologues of Rand, Mat and Perrin where they all are doubting their ability to talk to and connect with girls while envying the ease with which the other two do it. The facts were all consistent but their interpretations by each character were so wildly divergent that I stopped taking his descriptions of other people's behavior as being driven by the omniscient narrator and more filtered through the perceptions of the character that was the focus of the scene; through that filter, the sniffiness of some of the women makes a LOT more sesne, as does the sheer stupidity of some of the men.

Granted, it doesn't handwave entirely the roteness of some of his characters' traits but it does make them more... interesting, in that you can use them to flesh out the preconceptions/prejudices of the scene's focal character.

all the lead male characters are idiots tbf? wool headed fools etc

yeah exactly, (to both posts above), i think it's possible to see the characters as restrained by and reacting to a heavily gendered society (like our own). i mean, i think the the event that set the whole thing in motion (tainting the male half of the source) resulted from the men going off and acting without the women.

ha yeah i suppose dudes being 100% responsible for the apocalypse might give the women an edge when it comes to arguments

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

MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!
MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!

MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!

aw, stupid img limit ruining my quote

taint on the img src

^^^^ name of Weezer's next album, iirc

i think it's possible to see the characters as restrained by and reacting to a heavily gendered society (like our own). i mean, i think the the event that set the whole thing in motion (tainting the male half of the source) resulted from the men going off and acting without the women.

yah - one of the things that baron talks about in his article is the way jordan used repetition to 'harden' certain ideas (like women's fundamental disapproval of men) into something more foundational and encompassing than just cliche. as frustratingly as seeing 'wool-brained' come up on a once per 6 pages average is it does help in giving a real sense of the basic, fundamental prejudices at work in his world

I think its about time for another attempted reading of this series.

please liveblog your efforts here.

I've probably read the first five books three or four times each, but have yet to make it past that point. Each time I want to do this, I start over, but then get distracted by other books before I catch up.

hmm, make it to six at least. theres kind of ...a lull after that for a decade or so

I would never have read them if it weren't for audiobooks.

only read 1-7 or something, but i was all up in them for a time

Went to the bookstore today but the new one wasn't there ;_;

People overstate how plodding these books got. 1 mildly and 1 substantially plodding book out of 12 in total (not incl. the new one) is really not bad!

Yeah, I will say that the pace crawl in this series has nothing on Steven Erikson (although part of Erikson's issue is his prose style)

Anyway the last two have been on a fucking roll and I'm hyped for the new one.

btw thank you for reminding me to actually take lunch today so I can grab this

eagerly awaiting my copy, sadly wont have it till next week

50 pages in!

gah. Getting this at the weekend

spoilers pls

SPOILER: It has Perrin in it!

dennis perrin?

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2008/08/26/reggie460.jpg?

damn was there ever anyone called perrin that wasnt awesome

This is very good so far (about 100 pages in) though the fact that things happen so quickly now is a bit jarring. One chapter is spent on plot developments that would have stretched over a book or two previously.

Perrin is more interesting in this book than he's been since about book 4.

Mat is typically awesome, and Brandon Sanderson has gotten the tone of the character better than in the last book I think - and it's important to have the best character in the series actually be the best character in the series.

you say all the right things you dog you

Also touching (I don't think this is too spoilerish) is the Rand/Nynaeve relationship (not in that way), which I guess was foreseeable from the previous book but not from anything prior.

first book laid foundations for that tbf, tho i dont know what it is yet

feelin p fukken smug about being proven right abt a # of things

also [character x] is a true fukken ~*~*~*~pimp~*~*~*~ 4 all time

as a stand alone novel this wld be terrible - pacing and structural issues abound ~ but as a culmination it works okay. still weird to have the door slam closed on so many mysteries/plot threads/character arcs. it begins to feel like an entirely different series... still wish the chapters had more discrete sections w/ only one or two character povs it began to feel like i was reading one of those airport thrillers abt ravishing fbi pyschic detectives that clearly began life as tv pilot spec script

Just finished. The middle does sag a little (could have done without all the Whitecloaks stuff) but the ending was pretty awesome. Thought most the revelations were pretty obvious really. It's funny every time the characters go somewhere new i still expect them to doss around setting up camp, having petty arguments etc. but no, they actually get shit done now.

I'm waiting on the audiobook from my library. No reason to change up and try to read these now!

brandon sanderson should be hired to re-edit the entire series y/n

driving into work has drastically impacted my ability to read this

like, I don't think I noticed exactly how much of my commute time was taken up by reading until this week when I couldn't do it

brandon sanderson should be hired to re-edit the entire series y/n

YES! Well, based on the last book, which was easily the best written in the whole series.

This book was like BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM.

Perrin's stock rises so far so fast!

perrin should have been runnin things from bk 4 onwards imo

He's been the most skippable character from book 8 to now though, I think (and it wasn't like he was a big character in 5-7). I guess the siege of Malden in 'Knife of Dreams' was good.

If you meant his character could have jumped from book 4 straight to this book then, yeah, I agree.

Til now it's been easy to forget that in books 3 and 4 he was on a level with Mat awesomeness-wise.

you know what really is the worst about this thread, is that now i really want to read all these books. but i will have to read a bunch of the really boring ones to catch up. before getting to all this awesome resolution. sigh.

I'm waiting for the final one to come out before I start a re-read (I gave up at book 9), but my understanding is that the boring books don't seem quite so bad when you don't have to wait the 2-3 years between each book like people did when they first came out.

you know what really is the worst about this thread, is that now i really want to read all these books. but i will have to read a bunch of the really boring ones to catch up. before getting to all this awesome resolution. sigh.

― not everything is a campfire (ian), Saturday, 6 November 2010 17:49 (1 hour ago)

this is pretty much how I'm feeling. I got as far as....er... the one before "Lord of Chaos" I think, A pretty big undertaking, ploughing through that lot.

i finished Crown of Swords, the one just past Lord of Chaos IIRC. remember trying to read uh, whatever the next one was, path of daggers? never made it

thats the real slog imo ian, if you can get through that you're on the downslope i think

Til now it's been easy to forget that in books 3 and 4 he was on a level with Mat awesomeness-wise

yah - through the first four books perrin seemed like a much more interesting and substantial character - then he stagnated for another eight books...

part of it was that the book felt rushed and part of it was the characters that got a lot of 'screen time' but i feel kinda unfulfilled by this book. it was fun to read & its exciting to have so much happen after so long but most of the things that i cared about went unaddressed or barely rated more than a couple of pages.

also what did everyone think of the aviendha chapters???

wont get my mitts on this until friday.

Loved the Aviendha time travel thing but it felt like something it's gonna be really hard to actually do anything with in the next book.

it felt a little shoehorned in almost? from what i understand (ummmm) a lot of the qns those chapters raise were intended to be 'dealt with' in his outrigger series/sequel but placed as they are its kinda like 'oh, okay... anyways'. i thought they were the most interesting and jordan-eaque parts of the book tho

I think what I liked most about this book was the revisiting of themes from The Shadow Rising (which is probably my favourite of all the books) - trips into the past/future, experiments in T'A'R/the "wolf dream", Slayer, Eelfinn/Aelfinn, Lanfear! Perrin being a bad-ass. Mat ramping up his dickishness after toning it down for the last couple of books.

But yeah, a big difference is that back then the story basically had 3 or 4 main plot lines and was still at the world-building stage, whereas now there's about 20 plotlines converging very quickly, so the introduction of anything totally new and out of nowhere (as Aviendha's plotline certainly is) feels awkward.

But the theme of that chapter, the questions it raises, are top-notch jordan. It makes me wonder if he actually has a sneaking sympathy for Ishamael/Elan philosophically, for all that that character comes across as a kind of parody of post-structuralism.

Maybe it'll make more sense in the next book if Aviendha has a big role to play in determining whatever ceasefire between everyone is brokered.

It makes me wonder if he actually has a sneaking sympathy for Ishamael/Elan philosophically, for all that that character comes across as a kind of parody of post-structuralism

ive never read him this way! perhaps because its indicated somewhere in the supplemental stuff that he was a logician. he is a really interesting character partic his ease in shifting persaons & ive always gotten a sense that theres a kernel of his 'philosophy of inevitability' thats right. i also always think its interesting that the majority of the forsaken were academics before the war & that (at least prior to this book) the two most successful forsaken were a philosopher & a pyschotherapist.

hmmmm my favorite of the books is the great hunt & maybe thats why i liked the pervious book so much - it deals w/ the qns of identity & free will & purpose that 1st start to really develop in that book. e.g. how the journey through the portal stones gets mirrored in the 'veins of gold' chapter.

the most jordan-esque thing about the new book actually may be the obscure character from the eye of the world that he brings back for a pov in chapter 1 - i continue to be impressed by richly detailed and plotted the series is.

Seemed like the Aviendha stuff was basically just put in there to give her something to do, as she was fast becoming the most pointless member of Rand's harem. Oh yeah and i like the new keepin it positive Rand, he was turning into a bore,

ive never read him this way! perhaps because its indicated somewhere in the supplemental stuff that he was a logician. he is a really interesting character partic his ease in shifting persaons & ive always gotten a sense that theres a kernel of his 'philosophy of inevitability' thats right. i also always think its interesting that the majority of the forsaken were academics before the war & that (at least prior to this book) the two most successful forsaken were a philosopher & a pyschotherapist.

Graendal was actually the second forsaken after Lanfear right? I wonder why she turned. I wonder if she ultimately concluded that human nature was evil or at least not particularly noble and decided that aligning with the big bad would be more fun.

i can double check this but for sure lanfear, although responsible for actually drilling the bore, was among the last of the forsaken to take the oaths - the first is either ishamael or semirhage both of whom went to shayol ghul only a few years after the bore was created.

its so sad that i know this but bathameal, aginor & mogh are the other surviving forsaken that took the oaths during the collapse and before the war started.

its so sad that i know this but

should prefix every post in this thread tbh.

Love a bit of WOT geekery

according to this persons timeline semirhage is likely the first of the forsaken to swear the oaths since her sadism is discovered not long after the bore is drilled & she is forced to flee to shayol ghul. then ishamael deduces that the existence of the dark one is causing the collapse but i guess he takes the oaths after graendal does.

its never really made clear why or how graendal was among the first to understand what the bore meant although ive always assumed that her role in researching/working with the mentally ill made her more attuned to the spread of the shadow cf. lovecraft. shes my favorite forsaken but of all them has the most opaque reasons for swearing to the shadow - basically she thought humanity was doomed so enjoy the ride?

Can I just say that the whole thing with Mesaana was BADASS

no

mods delete thread pls, it's all spoilers

What's stopping you from buying the book dude?

slavery has been illegal for over a century

seanchan chains

my younger brother bought me the book and can't get it to me until next week, the little shit

It's the thought that counts

i'm thinking of slapping him

Maybe just sniff at him Nynaeve style

so I probably shouldn't talk about the argument Rand and Elayne have over the ter'angreal and how it puts their babies in jeopardy

thinking of slapping a lot of ppl tbh *sniff, crosses arms

now all you need to do is grow your hair out into a braid and all your cosplay dreams will come true

tbh i'm trying to get rid of my bosoms so no

Anyway, think this should be a spoiler thread now. Wanna talk about some of the crazy epilogue shit.

^^^^^

By the way, according to Saunderson the final book won't be out til March 2012 at the earliest and could be pushed back as far as Christmas.

which in all fairness is p reasonable deadline. esp considering hes working on his own multivolume epic.

the epilogue had THE MOST frustrating moment in the book for me. gawd, so annoying.

i want to get to spoilers

and goddamn that is a heavy book
and once again forced ppl to get me my volume

so
- aviendha chapters, dark and great (and i hate her)
call lots into question, open up de future

Perrin came back into greatness, always loved him, the last books were off so happy that emo Perrin is mebbbe, hopefully, in-shallah dead
and Perrin gave me one of de best sections in the book and i think one of the best all around scences

egwne rocked in last book, felt wrong here
found bunches of ppl feeling off but not sure if that is writing or feeling much speedier shutdown of plotlines

I am still back and forth on this volume but cannot wait for next one,

Yeah, you'll be waiting a while though. I know it's not fair to expect Saunderson to cast his aside all his own work to concentrate on this but godammit he should!

hq; already read the first installment of hie new ten book series ) that was also a big book; impressed he was able to get this out while writing that
man seems to have serious work ethic

ok on my table now. paid twice the price locally than i would have on amazon but feckit didn't fancy waitin

guys this fkn book.

Srsly, retroactive rewrite from this guy could turn books 7-11 into one awesome hardback, do future generations a massive favour

haha

i might re-read these when final book's done, just skipping every single scene focusing on internal politics, aes sedai or 'feelings'. If i have a sharpie on hand i could pretty much provide a working 6 bk WOT out of that exercise alone

i mean, imagine a wheel of time with no internal dialogue?

I've always been aware of this series but have never read it. Is it worth reading as I've heard lots of bad things about it (overlong, lots of filler, etc etc)?

yes. Now that there's an end in sight it's much easier to recommend

Didn't want to get in another Song of Ice and Fire situation is all.

lyfe is a journey towards trust, we've all been hurt before. I read 6 thomas covenant books ffs.

In truth the painfulness of the filler is overstated - like Crossroads of Twilight doesn't really advance the plot at all but otherwise it's not a bad read! In the context of people waiting years for each book though it's that crushing realisation that you've just spent 2 years waiting, $30 buying and two sleepless nights devouring only to get... not very far along toward the end of the story.

I guess the other thing that's frustrating is how certain sub-plots get a lot of time spent on them when you know ultimately they're not going to add much to the main plot. Like, on the one hand i was pleased to see that whole plot about the Aes Sedai using the oath rod to test potential black ajah sisters in the tower get wrapped up in The Gathering Storm, but in retrospect... was it even necessary? The only thing it really added to the main plot AFAICT was to give Egwene the idea to use the oath rod in that way, which she would have been able to work out for herself (or Verin could have suggested it).

egwene is so inconsistent from ythis book to the last. Jordan/sanderson cant seem to decide if she's an asshole or maybe the best character in the entire thing.

Halfway through this one, she's an asshole.

Yeah, not wanting to derail the thread but the same sort of thing happened with George R R Martin. I mean, the last book was split in two, Part 1 came out in 2005 and we're still waiting for Part 2 (Sep 2011 at the moment but it's been delayed so many times who knows whether that date will stick or not).

well the big difference is that Robert Jordan got sick which impacted his ability to write, whereas George R R Martin appears to be spending all of his time getting photographed with female fans way out of his league

I love reading precis of plot points of fantasy/sf books I haven't read. Can't think of anything more intriguingly baffling. I'm lurking on this thread quite a lot because I'm interested in these books but will never, ever be bothered to tackle them beyond book 2.

egwene is so inconsistent from ythis book to the last. Jordan/sanderson cant seem to decide if she's an asshole or maybe the best character in the entire thing.

Halfway through this one, she's an asshole.

Yeah but I think one of the reasons she seems like an asshole is that we know stuff she doesn't about Rand.

^^^ exactly; in her position and with the facts she has at hand, most people would draw the same conclusions/behave the same way

It's amazing how much obsessive egwene hate there is on the interwebs though. Even before this book, but especially now. "RAND HAS SAVED THE WORLD SO MANY TIMES, ALL THAT STUPID BITCH CARES ABOUT IS HER INCOMPETENT WHITE TOWER!!"

part of the reason she doesnt know is that she's been smugly assuming stuff since book #2 or w/e.

He's all 'it's cool bro' now tho.

xp think the criticism of the aes sedai on that point was only acknowledged in this book tbh- the whitecloaks have been 'bad guys' since first appearing, and there's diffs btwn them but maybe not all that much sometimed.

Cf: testing of nyneave. Some sadistic shit

part of the reason she doesnt know is that she's been smugly assuming stuff since book #2 or w/e.

I meant what happened at the end of the last book.

If Rand had turned up at The White Tower like, one chapter before, and said the same thing, we'd all be like "NO BRO DON'T DO IT!"

na i'da been 'yeah man squash them, totes'

Cf: testing of nyneave. Some sadistic shit

Oh yeah, that was beyond brutal

Like, I generally think of the Aes Sedai is a sometimes misguided force of good, but that was just WOW

Between that and Galad taking over the Whitecloaks, it seems that Sanderson is merrily shuffling the factional status quo (kind of can't wait to see how Aviendha's visions are dealt with)

aes sedai = us imo, under elaida = bush admin, under egwene = hils clinton forsure.

Blowin ur minds

lol, Egwene as Obama analogue is kind of hilarious (and... a little scary)

elaida is gwb cmon we all know it

with Alviarin as Cheney...

eek

w....s?

DUDE NO

tbrr, i cant remember which aes sedai are good, bad, dead or just somewhere else at this stage.

But i dont think that sprawling complexity is a bad thing, in itself, as long as we keep trundling towards a kickass setpiece every couple hundred pages

pillowmate don cheney killed thread rip

haaaaaaaa

thats what you get for dallying with GOP ajah

I can't believe Rand's going to break the seals and let Ronald Reagan return to the world.

ayn rand al'thor

It's amazing how much obsessive egwene hate there is on the interwebs though. Even before this book, but especially now.

yah the dudes that are really ~furious~ w/egwene for not idk staring dewy eyed @ rand and apologizing for ever doubting him or w/e are p creepy. not sure where it comes from but shes been consistently one of the best characters in the books so f them

i dunno, i mean aes sedai man, y'know? need to read again, but not convinced that most of them don't do more harm than good in terms of getting to the end goal throughout this whole series. not sure it's all *crepey*, if you had a gang of dude-only professional obstructors stopping rand getting shit done, they'd have ben balefired off the face of the earth in prob book 4.

also, internal aes sedai political stuff is almost as bad as emo perrin, and a lot more common. should let the wise women in there for smackdown.

egwene and nynaeve easily the best of em, but the former is srsly reverting to annoying, counterproductive type so far in this book.

but yeah i guess there's prob a fair % of hate because she should obviously have married rand in bk 3 or w/e too, cos that's what women are for in fantasy. and egwene is more kickass than anyone else every now and then.

lol Rand has already gotten 3 of the main female characters of the series, I don't think he needs any more

yeah but one of them is elayne, tbf. PITA #1, if you could shift her over to the dark then they'd all quit within a week.

I don't think it's necessarily a sexist thing (may be giving your average fantasy fan too much credit) i just think the whole Aes Sedai know best thing rankles with people. He's The Dragon Reborn ffs. How exactly is Egwene more qualified on what to do Last Battle wise?

lol, no one can beat the Trakand children in the PITA stakes

poor Morgase

also yes, you are giving your average fantasy fan too much credit

eh i've been tryin to avoid the 'sexist' word cos i'm ilx's no 1 example, tbh. but yeah, exactly that- dude's got to get his dark one contest on, maybe you should be tryin to lend a hand?

tho tbf 3000 years of mad sorceror males maybe contextualise it a bit.

wait, morgase is actually #1 PITA, gawain kinda rules

galad is aight, i guess

i just think the whole Aes Sedai know best thing rankles with people. He's The Dragon Reborn ffs. How exactly is Egwene more qualified on what to do Last Battle wise?

until like two weeks ago in book time rand was clearly mentally unstable & kinda terrible at everything, ever. i mean its sorta a moot qn in some respects bcuz the pattern basically runs things anyways but its hard to argue that egwene isnt p much better at being a leader/making decisions/motivating ppl than rand imo

^^^ OTM

Basically, if this had been Perrin rather than Rand, the conversation would have been markedly different; Perrin would have explained WHY he wants to undo the seals to Egwene for starters rather than just going "hey I'm going to open the Dark One's prison, are you in?"

HE IS THE DRAGON REBORN. Nah, you're right though. Can i help it if i empathize with Rand's fast-track attitude after all these books? Dude just wants to get shit done.

nah, i disagree

rand is unstable, but dude's got a lot on his plate. he's not been responsible for anything like the number of major fuckups the aes sedai have been throughout the series. not sure he owes them anything, if it comes down to explanations or co-operation.

perrin's main problem is that he doesn't want to do anything, ever. couldn't really afford that attitude in rand's place

number none OTM, i think most of it is just 'well at least rand's as impatient as i am fo this bullshit 3 book negotiation to be fucking OVER'

He has major trust issues also. Locked in a box and all that.

he had to learn to think outside the box, what what

its hard to argue that egwene isnt p much better at being a leader/making decisions/motivating ppl than rand imo

i cant believe this, but yes i would argue this with you on the internet.

Egwene != the rest of the Aes Sedai, as evidenced by their inability to steamroll her

rand is unstable, but dude's got a lot on his plate. he's not been responsible for anything like the number of major fuckups the aes sedai have been throughout the series.

Did you not read the same series I read, where Rand not only started going batshit insane but almost killed his father and left multiple countries in anarchy and chaos out of a misguided attempt to "stay strong"?

Basically every major character has had triumphs and failures; Egwene nad (surprisingly) Mat come out as the most reliably successful of the Two Rivers cru

eh he nearly did that to his father in one paragraph, yeah sure. those countries are in anarchy and chaos cos the lords/aes sedai keep working at cross-purposes whenever he goes somewhere else for two days. and cos of end times etc.

egwene is kick ass, no doubt. but i think as a reader i get p frustrated by all the characters who're prioritising shit like their magic cults or kingdoms other than defeating the final boss.

mat's had it a bit soft, every time he gets in a scrape some dice roll and a dinosaur eats his enemies or w/e

eh he nearly did that to his father in one paragraph, yeah sure. those countries are in anarchy and chaos cos the lords/aes sedai keep working at cross-purposes whenever he goes somewhere else for two days. and cos of end times etc.

Well also because he kept marching across the countryside going "I am the Dragon Reborn, join me or be crushed", plus his grim crazy megalomania repelled Tuon and prolonged the fight with the Seanchan; you really can't frame all of these reactions completely divorced from the personality who instigated them.

The last two books could have been retitled Rand Finally Stops Fucking Up

WINTER'S BONE sounds liek a WOT book and i keep wanting to click that thread instead

i think he's tried to minimise fighting by offering the 'join me or be crushed', particularly since being locked in a box and the torture and etc, not sure how receptive the seanchan, for one instance, would have been to any other offer?

He's gone all chill bro now. Which is refreshing

tbh, 'join me or be crushed' is a solid POV to take when you've got the 'it's up to you to prevent the end of the world' mantle. as i said, rand's had to deal with a lot of people that aren't really treating that as a priority, and those that do are always trying to wheedle in other concerns as part of their package. don't think he was as ruthless early on, but y'know a couple of years of that + unlimited power + certain death + not too many people sympathising hugely with that as a burden, i usually find myself on rand's side side of any face-off

^ brings me back to the line someone quoted from jordan above at a book signing - 'what would you do if you were told only you could save the world, but would have to die to do it?'. i guess i'd want to be allowed to milk it a little in the interim myself, tbh, rather than listen to yerwan cadsuane going on about my table manners

Actually for several books I was way more on Cadsuane's side because Rand seemed to be doing everything possible to guarantee he wouldn't even make it to the final battle.

xp: lol

i would be a hugely self pitying messiah, i think

its easy to be sympathetic to all the difficulties that rand has faced but he also gets a p tremendous helping hand by being ta'veren. i mean depsite being a self-obsessed d-bag most of the time ppl are still falling all over themselves to do what he needs, even if he doesnt know he needs it. hes made some great tactical decisions and The Cleansing is a real triumph but a lot of the marginal success hes had can be put done to the fact the fate itself is basically guiding things~~

whereas egwene had to run all that shit herself, w/o any supernatural force making ppl do what she wants or give in to her demands or protecting her from harm

nah egwene's coasting on being the popular boy's gf waay back when, know so many girls like that you know she should try to be her ownself maybe then she could be someone i could give my RESPECT to word

anyway egwene is the most powerful aes sedai, or near it, since whenever and her best mate's a queen and she's been dragged up through the tower by the previous but one amyrlin, and there aren't whole armies tryin to kill her ALL the time and she doesnt have to take on ba'alzamon 1-2-1 nor unify the world to do it.

think she has it pretty easy, tbph, tho she's not doing a bad job.

Dunno, Egwene's been physically beaten and even tortured more than probably any main character:

- Seanchan
- Black ajah in Tear
- Wise Ones when she admitted to dreamwalking on the sly
- White Tower when she was a prisoner

I'm not saying she's had it as bad as Rand but she's probably second on the list when it comes to putting up with shit. She's very different in that regard to Elayne who pretty much blithely walks into danger at all times in reliance on her aura of invincibility.

Also I think that people overstate the extent to which the Aes Sedai are unusual for being wrapped up in their own affairs. All of the leaders or would-be leaders of all the countries do this.

e.g. I think readers tend to compare the White Tower unfavourably to the Aiel and especially the Wise Ones. But the Aiel have very self-interested reasons for following Rand, and also their prophecy is much more explicit w/r/t their direct dependence on him for personal survival. Moreover Aiel culture generally just has less intrigue. And it's not like the Wise Ones don't spend a great deal of time scheming how to control Rand.

Aside from the Aiel, everyone else's prophecy relationship with Rand is that he has to turn up at Shayol Ghul eventually, and maybe win or maybe lose, that's all. This leaves them free to strategise w/r/t everything else, including The Last Battle. The attitudes of Elaida and Tuon towards Rand (both effectively being that they need to control the world in order to restrain him and then unleash him at the right moment) are only the most extreme versions of this.

Rand's assumption that he has to unite the world, forge peace, beat the DO at his own game strategically etc. is pretty much his own version of (or gloss on) the prophecy which has very little to do with how the rest of the world sees things.

Pretty much the only people who agree with him on this are Moiraine (who of course implanted these ideas in the first place) and people who are Dragonsworn either literally or effectively (i.e. within Rand's immediate sphere of influence - such as Nynaeve at the moment).

This is one reason why Moiraine's reemergence is so crucial: she synthesises the AS mission with an understanding of Rand's essential purpose, and in a manner much more pro-active and nuanced than Cadsuane or Nynaeve.

At any rate I expect the entire Rand/Egwene scene was effectively Rand manipulating Egwene into arranging for everyone important in the world to be in the one place so he can throw the book at them w/r/t world peace. "It's all cool bro" Rand would have actually conversed with Egwene on the whys and wherefores of breaking the seals if that was the genuine reason for the courtesy visit.

The attitudes of Elaida and Tuon towards Rand (both effectively being that they need to control the world in order to restrain him and then unleash him at the right moment)

aes sedai in general, rather than elaida? tho she took it to the guantanamax, obv

agree that rand is on a wind-up with his visit to tar valon, it's cool bro dragon would definitely have chatted it out

as for the rest, yeah egwene got her ass slapped a lot while accepted/novice, pfft

the latter half of this seemed pretty rushed, dont think sanderson got the balance right between synopsis and narrative.

Also, matt used the word 'gonna'. That jarred me for about two chapters.

Not as hopeful for final book as i was after finishing the first sanderson reworking.

this was just getting interesting cmon ppl

re-reading, am maybe third into bk2 atm- man this series was all-time for the first few books, it dropped off so hard ;_;

Aviendha's visions of the future are surprisingly grim. I especially liked how they kept up with the them, present even from the earliest books, of an encroaching technological modernity...but this was almost the depiction of a genocide.

I've always felt that somehow Jordan would find a way to pull a happy ending out of all this, despite what all the "prophecies" say...but now i dont know, especially since I can't really see how what is supposed to happen can work with "happily ever after." Especially regarding the Seanchean.

it's a great credit to the series that i have zero idea what is gonna happen in the last book.

Sanderson on the sexism topic discussed above:

Warning: Long update on this topic. As a nod to those who truly know feminist literary theory, I'll make a less "Twitter friendly" argument. Robert Jordan, by creating a world where the women and men are very aware of gender roles, spent a lot of time delving into these topics. I'm convinced he was aware of male privilege, and though biased--as all of us are--sought very hard to overcome his own biases by creating evocative female characters with plot lines that do not center around the obtaining of favor or romantic interest from male characters. He also sought to create a world where women were not defined by how they were viewed by men, but were instead defined by their intelligence, determination, and accomplishments. In this way, though he exposes some small masculine biases in various areas, he was extremely progressive as a dominant male writer of his era, and should be regarded as anything other than "sexist" for his efforts. /Scholarly Brandon

also, let's not forget, MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!!

haha tim's long post upthread is p otm but:

Pretty much the only people who agree with him on this are Moiraine (who of course implanted these ideas in the first place)

shoulda gone w/ 'incepted'

just refinished book five

Jesus, it's hard to imagine how he gets another 6 books out of this with only 2 or 3 actual events worth noting until bk 11

Is there a particular reason you're rereading them?

anticipation for last book next year.

You're a braver man than I. I have done a couple of rereads, but that was when i was a lot less jaded and the series was lot shorter. Don't think i could face tackling some of the later ones now.

dont overcongratulate just yet i'm really not looking fwd to 7-11

halfway through ten.

I was wrong about egwene, she's fairly awesome alright. Nynaeve and elayne quite a bit more grating this time around tho. All maguffin.

It's a lot easier to take books 7-10 when you don't have to wait 18 months between them, tho i still can't remember wtf anyone is (especially non-prominent aes sedai)

Aes sedai still rubbish fwiw.

perrin and faile quite annoying too tbh.

They improve drastically IMO once they get back together.

jesus really? They just fight and dont talk over the most nonsensical shit

Lol i'm typing this in the other room cos my gf exploded over my bitchin about how shit 'the big c' is. Maybe that jordan dude's onto something

someday me and you will have to swap our versions of WOT dan :)

Perrin and Faile do not improve after they get back together. Their relationship sums up everything bad about Robert Jordan's writing.

Boo I love Perrin and Faile YOU'RE everything wrong with Jordan's writing style

that's a sanderson level comeback at best

bump

literally just finished #10 of this stupid series.

That last three book slog, and oh boy especially book ten, really was the backbreaker.

All plain sailing from here, looking fwd to it

Wouldn't have been better to time this to coincide with the release of the last book?

it's been a quicker task than i figured tbh. Kindle has helped.

Sure you can always fit another re-read in between now and then. I guess i'll have a skim through the Saunderson books before the last one but i long ago lost the stomach for extended revisits.

Just checked his website and Saunderson is only at 33% on his WOT time re-read and 21% on his first draft for AMOL and yet he's still blathering on about writing his own books. The gall of the man!

It's also pretty weird that he measures those things in percentages

opta goin too far imo

wait i thought he finuished this already what's going on

yeah thought this was a done ting tbh

theres still one book to come titled 'a memory of light' its tentatively scheduled for fall 2012

i know there's one more, i just thought it was more finished than that tbh.

Motherfucker better not die

I heard George RR Martin is the Sanderson back-up plan.

i heard david eddings has his pens sharpened

took me til now to finish 11 but i been busy tbf

too much elayne, everything else p quick to get things done

Knife of Dreams? IIRC Elayne isn't even in the one after that.

Ending of Knife was pretty rockin from memory.

well, of necessity from 10 onwards there's a good bit of resolution in each book (particularly in comparison to #7-9 where they find a bowl and introduce the sea folk to use the bowl, and eh that's it) so yeah. Was surprised how much rand/mat there was compared to what i remember, actually

yeah of the three perrin is really the one gets the least page time during that middle stretch

elayne is probably at her absolute worst in 'knife of dreams' tho

elayne's plenty bad throughout, but the huge focus on andor's succession when, tbph, it's a fairly minor event (imo) at this stage of affairs is a misstep by jordan.

throw in an entire book of faile/perrin kidnapping emo (again) and yeah there's a lot could have been lost in 11- but it does all go on at a good pace and at least wraps up quite a lot re: whitecloaks, seanchan

egwene has a small part in this one, but it's obviously significant

knocked through twelve pretty quickly. It's good!

twelve is the most recent?

scratch that then, i'm a few chapters into towers of midnight atm

i am impressed with your perseverence, darragh.

Eager to hear Darragh's thoughts on the end of Towers of Midnight

tbh, reading them through isn't comparable to doing it with a delay btwn books as a test of stamina- but the lines btwn what happened in which book do become blurred.

Outlook on characters has changed a lot on this re-read. Right now i think perrin's parts are plodding, most of it the dreaded interior monologue, elayne's even worse than i remember, nynaeve is v up and down.

Mat's still a good mix of 'getting shit done' while keeping linked to the wider events (and history)

Fuck the haters, i *still* think rand puts up with too much petty shit from just about everyone for most of this series :)

Egwene is p much the best character upon rereading.

The likes of thom, lan etc are in it much less than i seem to recall?

Gawyn is a knobend, in fact the trakands are all painful

Kinda want to see a forsaken spinoff, there's some good characters there tbh

finished this last week. I think, at this stage, i could recommend it to ppl again.

last book completed but won't be released til prob nov, for anyone who missed sandbox thread

so thanks to wot i've discovered brandon sanderson, my new favorite mormon. and fantasy author.

not read his stuff yet, tho it's on my to-kindle list

he has 2 standalone books: ELANTRIS and WARBREAKER which are both great, fast, and ONLY ONE BOOK, which is apparently unheard of in fantasy fiction.

Yeah I have greatly enjoyed Sandy's other stuff

the only thing of his i haven't read is the way of kings, which i am putting off until wot ends. a man can only have so many 10 installment or more fantasy epics in his life at once.

Life (1st Draft)
98%

nza if you havent already try sanderson's mistborn trilogy its probably his best stuff and its already completed

Release date for final book announced - January 8, 2013.

that bastard

The press release is cheesetastic:

A Memory of Light will release on January 8, 2013, in the final month of the Year of the Dragon.

mixed feelings but lol @ over 20 years

I'm so full of rage right now. At least it gives me time to plan my assisted suicide though

d/l'd elantris while i'm waiting

Seemed better than another re-read tbh

oh srsly, read all of Sanderson's shit

he's kind of great

well it's on the strength of ilx opinion so i know who to blame

if you don't come back in 2 days drawing symbols in the air with your fingers we'll know we have failed you

sounds fair, sounds fair

i read the 1st 20 pages of the "way of kings" or whatever, the huge one, and the magic assassin was doing like matrix flip gravity stuff and it was like... too nerdy which for me is really pretty fucking nerdy. i was embarrassed to be reading it even though i was by myself. does that make sense?

anyway i'm pretty sure i can swallow my shame if there's an ilx endorsement of that one. it is attractively huge and has ridiculous michael whelan (i think?) cover art.

oh dude I LOOOOOOOOOVED Way of Kings

i dont really know what i thought of the way of kings. i dont think the world is particularly interesting yet but some of the characters are p good, and large sections of the novel move quickly and maintained my interest. when he tries to move quickly btw povs i think the novel really foundered and theres a lot of questionable stuff in there

honestly i feel like its the sort of the thing thats worth holding off on until more books are out. its certainly not a highly satisfying read on its own esp compared to his mistborn novels

Rereading Path of Daggers - this is much snappier than I remembered!

i found a copy of 'lord of chaos' signed (hardcover) at the thrift this weekend. does an ILXor want it? interesting trades considered first.

i don't have anything interesting to trade, and tbh re-reading this on kindle w/out lugging around 700 pages of maguffin is one of the main reasons i'm now inseperable from the damned thing.

i'm re-reading again, i think it's cos once i finish each re-read i need to remind myself of details from book 2 or w/e almost immediately. at no stage have i ever felt like i've got a handle on it all. i may need help.

burrowing on wikipedia has opened up a lot of v cool stuff that may or may not have been obvious to others- rand has always had thor-ish vibes, if only for the name (signposted much) and the lightning (and the supreme power, earth-defining struggle final battle too i guess), but i'd never heard of this guy before. mat is, apparently, to be considered a loki-ish character type.

cool story bro

a buddy of mine concatenated all of them into a single searchable pdf so that whenever someone popped up that he didn't remember very well he could zip thru and brush up without having to work too hard at it.

the big battle at the end of lord of chaos is maybe the finest moment in all of american literature.

now there's a claim

other mythology/religion etc crossover hints i'm a sucker for- mentions of ancient battles at paaren disen, hevan, all that jazz. M'hael as 'battle leader'. Someone has been reading his milton.

paaren disen, hevan

*smacks forehead*

eh for me, you or jordan?

me. Who knows what other obvious references i've overlooked

REREAD

#10

FUCK'S SAKE NOT ELAYNE AGAIN PLS

otherwise, it's been a doddle up til now tbh

Chapter 1 of the last book is posted at the Tor site:

Eastward The Wind Blew

this makes me incredibly sad tbh

i hope the Dark One wins

Those flash forwards in the last book seemed to imply a more interesting ending than I'd anticipated.

there are neither beginnings nor endings

i just reread book #13 of this stupid series yesterday. All of it, like. Sanderson has a tin ear for jordan's dialogue imo.

i almost bought a 2nd hand copy of a mistborn novel the other day and then i saw it was marked at like £5.50 and laughed and put it down

might d/l those in the meantime i spose.

Sanderson has a tin ear for jordan's dialogue imo.

so you are saying this guy's dialogue is worse than jordan's wau

i think i am, if the choice is btwn stilted but consistent or flowery and scattershot.

Jesus but the trakands are just awful btw

so the ending to this is rand, injured, on a boat, with three women (pick from nynaeve, elayne, aviendha, min, alivia)

go on then, predict from there.

everything points to him ending his days happily with min, leavin the others to raise his p. brattish spawn imo

forgot moiraine d'oh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GrsG44cn9c

I always said I'd do a re-read when the series was finally finished (I gave up after half of book 9). I don't know that I want to any more.