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

I am almost done with book nine. :(

moral: never read a series that isn't finished!

oooh new book knife of dreams is out late 2005

...and I will wait quite a while it seems.

he's dead:

http://www.dragonmount.com/RobertJordan/?p=90

WTF

so wait, did he never outright finish the series? the first book came out in 1990 and now it's going to go unresolved? that. sucks.

I didn't dare write RIP or anything, I haven't read any of the books and people seemed to be so cheerfully talking about his death here :-/

i mean, obviously, RIP and all that. seemed like a nice guy, but WTF

rip

wtf

Indeed. :-/

A quick check at Wikipedia brings this up:

Final volume

On October 18, 2005, at a book signing in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Jordan gave the working title of the 12th book as A Memory of Light. As one of the attendees told Dragonmount.com, Jordan also warned that the final volume of the saga "could be a 1500-page monster" because he has so many dangling plot threads to wrap up in a single volume. He maintained that A Memory of Light would remain one volume "whether it is 1500 pages long, Tor has to invent a new binding system, or it comes with its own library cart". Due to his health problems, Jordan did not work at full force on the final installment, but blog entries confirmed that he continued work on it until his death, and he shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died. [13]

So presumably there'll be an ending of some sort.

xpost

wtf is up with all yo's wtf's?

http://i18.tinypic.com/6apgw1w.gif

xpost
He had been ill for some time with some obscure form of cancer and received some treatment for it last year. He had been rushing through the final book as he knew his time was limited and his wife is apparently due to finish it off from his outline.

Some of us have read all 11 books and were awaiting the 12th with bated breath. Even thought others will finish off his plots for him, they won't have been written by him, hence "wtf".

oh! ok, thanks.

haha ned that's almost worse!

anyway, i'm not being very helpful here, i know. rip to the dude and sorry for his fans. but still... shit.

It's kinda interesting that when I started reading his books in my early 20s (and I'm nearly 40 now) I said to my friends "I hope he doesn't die before he finishes..."

wtf is right.

I only ever made it through the first four books, but RIP.

:-(

It really does seem like this very very sad cosmic punchline, I think as much for him as a writer as for his readers.

Wow. I was rooting for the guy to make it. I wonder how much of book 12 he did actually get written.

This is all going to be very Mystery of Edwin Drood. (More so than The Salmon of Doubt.)

It's interesting -- two hugely popular 'high church' American Anglican fantasy writers have passed within a couple of weeks of each other, L'Engle and now Jordan. This feels like a huge generational shift to me, due in part to my upbringing.

hey guys I know how it all ends

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oh man 3-img limit melted my art

this is sad, but not as tragic as it would have been if he'd wrapped it up after book six. he lost my interest (and any plot impetus) after that, basically starting a new story with different characters.

oh, and all the bits with female characters were just poor.

Some mutterings from my direction.

RIP. I couldn't make it past the first chapter of the first book, but was rooting for him to eventually finish it anyway. Quite saddening, actually, to think of him rushing to finish and failing.

(BTW Pash, did you ever end up reading those Gene Wolfe New Sun books your friend loaned you? They're my favorite post-LOTR fantasy novels.)

xpost

Ned, I can highly recommend the Prince of Nothing books as the most satisfyingly complete S&S work I've read in at leasta decade.

The fact that Steve Erikson praised them was a good sign. Will definitely be taking the plunge in the not-too-distant future.

Yeah I read those Gene Wolve books, I thought they were excellent, very vivid.

Anyway the longer the series gets and the longer the books get the whole shebang becomes more of a sick joke played on the nerds of the world--Jordan's gonna die and spawn a whole frightening genre of finish-WOT fanfic.

-- adam (adam), Friday, October 24, 2003 7:22 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link
My theory is that he's already written the last book and that he's just drawing the series out until he dies, and then when they mysteriously unearth the final book posthumously BINGO he's a legend.

-- nickalicious (nickalicious), Friday, October 24, 2003 7:26 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

Finally got through the official blog site -- a peaceful passing with his family by his side, according to family member Wilson.

Meantime, the previous post to that, also from Wilson, said this a couple of weeks back regarding the final book:

Epilog: Yes he is continuing to work through all of this medical calamity. MOL is going into the word processor and onto audio tapes almost daily. Not every day mind you, because the medical fight takes first priority. But, he told you he’d finish and he will. Fact is that it has been finished in his head for years. During a recent family sit around, he became the Gleeman and told the bones of it ALL to Harriet and me. You read that right, I did say ALL. Don’t ask, ain’t telling. Two and a half hours of story telling by the Creator himself went by in the twinkling of an eye. Truly magical. All I can say is WOW! Best stuff he’s ever done. MOL is going to knock your socks off! That’s a promise.

There ya go.

It would kind of be perverse if 'A Memory of Light' ended up being the best WOT book in ages simply because there was no time to think up all of the internecine sub-plots about Aes Sedai tea ceremonies.

That said I did think the last one was his best in ages and ages.

Oh man I am a fucking asshole.

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.

"'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??

um

HAHAHA

How I Ruled The World and KILLED EVERYTHING, Pt. 4312431 -- The Dan P. Years

"'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??

guys who went to the citadel?

I once outlined a five-year arc for a superhero team comic book where, by year two, the character who was a stand-in for me had his powers severely maimed and, by the end of year five, he was killed saving the world from his best friend.

were any of the hastings crew in the superhero team?

The "evil" best friend was an amalgamation of one person who posts here and one person who doesn't. There was also a thinly-disguised version of a girl I had a massive crush on (who later went on to basically kick ass all over the place after my character's death). Everyone else was an original character.

i would buy ILX the comic book if u write it dan

I'm sad he's passed away, despite giving up on this series after CROWN OF SWORDS.

Re-reading from book one after finishing the latest.

Damn, these are good.

So Ms. Davies just got me a load of these in audiobook format for Xmas, something for the commute. Based on the fact that I like both Tolkien and Ice & Fire.

This is just crappy Tolkien rip-off, right? A couple of hours into the first audiobook and damned if this story of three young douchebags from the outback being hunted across country by shadowy shadow monsters and "Trollocs" on the advice of a magician doesn't seem familiar.

Self-centred request I know, but pls pls pls could someone who gets this stuff convince me that these are good and worth the time I'm inevitably going to have to pour into them? Would definitely be a good thing if I could convince the lady that I'm enjoying these wholeheartedly and not at all in a placating way. Shouldn't be too hard a sell, as noted above I'm a fan of certain key fantasy touchstones, but this seems like a bridge too far

It's better than ASOIAF

The magic system is really cool, and some of the mythology is decent. It does get much better than the opening - the first 50 pages kept me from reading the series for years and years - and the audiobook readers are solid. I realized the best way to listen (And I made it through all 400+ hours of the audiobooks) is not to worry about zoning out now and again; there is a lot of repetition and minutiae that is irrelevant. The main character is always a douche, but the supporting cast is decent and if you imagine it's the crew from That 70s Show it's much more enjoyable.

I think you had to be there