who in this bitch reads robert jordan? -- The Wheel of Time thread

I'd honestly advise you to quit after book 6

ive been travelling a lot for work so i decided to start rereading these, enjoyed the hell out of the first book but a big part of that was spotting all the easter eggs for whats still to come. but i thought it was fairly briskly paced with the exception of the nyaneve chapters during the middle third of the book. i remember that whole section being really boring but the stuff with perrin and egwene is genuinely tense and involving, particularly the part where they are being hunted by the ravens. i like how it emphasized the diminishing of the human race too which ends up being a reasonably important part of the series all those vast open spaces and abandoned places. the second book in contrast is a lot worse that i remember, rand doesnt so much progress as snap into place, which is maybe sort of true to life - you fight against the inevitable and then give in all at once but it makes for tedious reading. still lots of good parts and the lines of if sequence is so great, and theres lots of small moments that reverberate throughout the series but i wish it was better. one thing i do like is that these books still used the scatter everyone at the beginning and then draw them together for a big, climatic showdown structure to great effect

Nynaeve is just such a horrible character. By far the worst of the POVs

i've still been working away at my reread of the series when i got to book 8 - its been harder going than i expected it to be but book 8 is really not very good. however it was also the first book in the series that i read as it came out and when i opened the book again i was overcome with such a specific, powerful memory of the first time i read the book that it gave me a kind of vertigo. like, i can remember taking the bus into town after school to buy it the week it came out, with my own money, and sitting in the cafe attached to bookstore drinking sweet coffee drinks and just devouring the prologue. and obviously on the page for chapter one (something like 40 pages in) is a splatter of coffee stains left there by a much younger me. and i keep thinking about how deeply integrated these books are into the fabric of my life, how powerfully and certainly i can remember specific places i first read most of the books and the incredible distance btw the ideas i had about 'the wheel of time' and life and the mundanity and solidity of my life now, sitting in an airport lounge and working on powerpoint slides and fighting with my boyfriend about takeout and so ive decided to stop reading these, because theyre just kind of breaking my heart

haven't read it

Wow lamp

But tbrr that isnt an unfair reaction to book 8 neither

Gave up at 7. Might come back to it in a few months once I've had some time off, I did the first six books back to back.

About right, yeah.

sanderson to pen new twelve part WOT epilogue

Dunno what folks were talking about, books 8 and 9 of this were entirely acceptable imo, final chapter of the ninth is up there with Dumais Wells as a series high point thus far, even if it is a little bit disappointing to see these supposedly supremo-badass bad guys get bitched out by a bunch of non-characters like the putties in Power Rangers.

Bit where these dudes have got Rand imprisoned and are like, "Nah fuck you Cadsuane we're sending him to Tar Valon" and Cadsuane is like "Oh ok that's cool btw did I mention that these three dead-eyed murder-fops standing behind me dressed head-to-toe in black are actually FUCKING ASHA'MAN BITCHESSSSS WUT WUT" is p. thrilling stuff too, like any time the Asha'man are let off the leash you know that things are
gonna get heavy.

Apparently book 10 is where things get really shitty? But idk, people hated the 5th ASOIAF book and I pretty much didn't mind it, so maybe this won't be that bad? Knowing how many books there are in the series and that I can start the next one whenever I like and everything I think I can deal with the absence of major characters from this one without too much grizzling.

ive detailed my re-read in one of these threads but once you dont have to wait three years between them and you're prepared for the plots to slow and widen after book 6 there's none of them as bad as we moaned about at the time

book 10 is universally felt to be the weakest in the series. however, while i can remember nothing about it, i remember thinking book 11 (the last one jordan wrote) was really good.

Lamp's post above is great and this was exactly how i felt reading A Memory of Light last week:

and i keep thinking about how deeply integrated these books are into the fabric of my life, how powerfully and certainly i can remember specific places i first read most of the books and the incredible distance btw the ideas i had about 'the wheel of time' and life and the mundanity and solidity of my life now, sitting in an airport lounge and working on powerpoint slides and fighting with my boyfriend about takeout and so ive decided to stop reading these, because theyre just kind of breaking my heart

It's very true that the story flows better once you don't have to wait years between each installment of the story.

yeah re-reading that lamp post was a treat this morning

I wonder how the decades will treat the series. I've an idea we readers are more likely to end up an of-their-time collection of enthusiasts like fans of eg gene wolfe stuff as opposed to the lucky first generation of LOTR readers, if you get me.

i think that's probably right--jordan's work, with its clearly drawn moral lines and absence (mostly) of sexual violence and grimdark grimdarkery, feels outdated after the game of thrones tits-and-ambiguity arms race. i prefer the jordan style because i like my fantasy to be fantastical so i can spend some time in an exciting world without all the awful shit that would come along with a "realistic" medieval europe analogue.

only branderson sanderson is still carrying the family-friendly epic fantasy doorstop torch but he kinda sucks. still the ratio of GRRM readers to sanderson readers on the subway is at least 20:1 in my scientific observation.

xp

I'm inclined to agree--though I'm not well read enough in fantasy literature to compare it to anything other than ASOIAF, which for me is a lesser work. what is a better fantasy series of the last, let's say 30 years?

and yes i know that i am basically making a stupid starry eyed argument in favor of the gentle nature of a series of books that at one point features an army of half-insane wizards magically chewing another army of surely underpaid family-having working class men into a pulp. xp

i agree with you! my favorite aspect of martin's series is the King Arthur-esque backstory rather than the grim "realism."

I want to say farseer trilogy tbh and there's other series I like a lot but grrm and Jordan are the heavyweights and I hardly think that eg eddings compares

i'm not really interested in the game of thrones tv show but i appreciate how it exposes GRRM's "realism" and political machinations and stuff as just trashy cinemax thriller rehash.

and yeah the farseer trilogy is very good

i'm not really interested in the game of thrones tv show but i appreciate how it exposes GRRM's "realism" and political machinations and stuff as just trashy cinemax thriller rehash.

otm. although, i think there's something essentially "conservative" about a lot of the fantasy im familiar with in that it often posits a medieval society that doesn't seem all that bad. couldnt help but notice that in A Memory of Light how often something like benign leadership of monarchs, etc, is invoked. but somehow i dont think Martin's books are gonna amount to a defense of modernity...

Ned's always good for a rec or two in that other thread there's a few lighter trilogies or series in train at the moment that I'd put above the Sanderson ive read, patrick rothfuss certainly and the Locke lamora stuff but this isnt to say it goes toe-to-toe with Jordan for scope or anything

it's funny you mention gene wolfe. what happened to his reputation? i was gonna read that to scratch a post-WOT itch...

yeah tons of this stuff is at least in part super reactionary, especially from american writers, a lot of imagined harkening back to an albion ruled by benevolent kings and chaste maids etc, but i personally find some value in being presented a world with an inherent moral order to which its actors generally adhere. that the actors in service of good are generally the rich and well born (or the secretly well born with a heroes journey raising him to his proper station) is problematic but i only have so much energy.

sorry for "problematic"

ah no i was driving

i mentioned gene wolfe as a good example of idk you'll find people that are crazy enthusiastic for his stuff, happy to put it up against anything in the genre (pashmina and the late great of this parish for instance iirc). a pocket of very very strong enthusiasm kind of thing which i feel that, despite bestseller numbers in the past decade or two, the WOT is heading for- call it a disposability or lack of connection to the zeitgeist or w/e- it may simply be that there was other stuff that crossed over to tv better or that may even be fitting the events to the theory overmuch, that maybe every five or ten years has it's big fantasy series and only a very rare few break beyond the genre market, with tolkien the obvious example for fantasy.

i mean something's got to be top of the fantasy bestseller lists at any given time i guess

ive tried wolfe btw, didnt find it compelling but i might do now that im finished evening classes and can read guilt-free again

https://plus.google.com/103674399065634804648/posts/1aeEKJiqdeF

The following is a press statement that has been approved by the studio involved in contract negotiations:

Update: Wanted to share with you exciting news about The Wheel of Time. Legal issues have been resolved. The Wheel of Time will become a cutting edge TV series! I couldn’t be more pleased. Look for the official announcement coming soon from a major studio —Harriet 

this cannot be good

Google+, for a start.

So...Amazon's doing this *and* Tolkien?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-long-awaited-wheel-of-time-tv-series-is-heading-to-1829463189

Hm hm hm.

Please welcome Rosamund Pike to the Wheel of Time family. Say hello to Moiraine. #WoTWednesday pic.twitter.com/577Hffwy6Y

— Wheel of Time Writers' Room (@WoTWritersRoom) June 19, 2019

hope she likes wearing skirts divided for riding

That is some excellent casting.

is there going to be bathing in this

I'm wondering now who they're going to cast as Nynaeve

Actually, before she blew up in the Avengers movies I might have suggested Karen Gillan

good start that

nynaeve

and look i know the age aint right now, and maybe not even back in 96 or whenever

marcia gay harden

This is going to be stupid and terrible and I will watch all of it

Generally it’s best to cast one person people have heard about and a bunch of nobodies- if we get many more casting announcements like this with well known actors then it’s going to be really dumb and awful and I’ll still watch it

dont ask me why but never really saw any of em clearly while reading except for asmodean, who was macho man randy savage

that is a very goodlooking cast

obv they were all white kids in my head

lan was like Azerbaijani obv tho

The dude playing Rand looks a little too much like a generic movie Marine

Nynaeve otoh 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

I hope dude playing Perrin is tall

idnr if perrin was like, tall tall like rand

dude has to be heavy in the shoulders obv

I have this mental image of Perrin towering over Rand and Mat but that may have been my mind translating "broad shoulders" into "is built like Kingpin in Into the Spiderverse"

I mean Moraine is supposed to be like three-foot tall or something

but yeah, Perrin is definitely more broad than tall

just as long as lan moves like animated batman its ok

good posts itt

adams description of GRRM as tits-and-ambiguity killed me again