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

or maybe it was someone who looked like him.

1/ the whole premise of the story - the cataclysm that had happened in the very distant past, and all the repercussions at the time the story was set in was very convincing, and strange as well.

2/ the way that the way the people from the distant past lived and the nature of their society is revealed in this piecemeal manner was really very well done I thought. There was this bit where the protagonist gets a brief flash from the memories of all his ancestors, one after the other, going back to before the cataclysm. That was amazing!

3/er....other stuff as well. My memory has just stopped working properly.

However, someone I know saw what I was reading, and lent me this set of 4 books that he said was much better. er...(googles) "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe. That was really outstanding, I thought. Has anyone read that one?

Like books 5 - 9, it also is frustratingly slow until about the 2/3 mark, and just when you're about to give up and say "screw it, I gotta get out!" it starts getting good, building momentum, and you read the last third in 1 or 2 nights.

I'd really like to discuss some of the things in this one, but I'm afraid of spoilin' it for y'all.

i have been reading these books since junior high and i am now 24 - that is really depressing to realize.

I'm now 30 (going on 31). Eek.

i still have faith that the ending will (almost) redeem the series.

That said, the last two books have been the best since the first three or four, for my money -- but I didn't start reading until just before Path of Daggers came out, so I don't have the years of "what the fuck, when will you END IT, CONANBOY!" that a lot of folks have, so I might cut him more slack than I would otherwise.

(Peanut Gallery chimes in with plot outline of books 4-8.)

Yeah, but how much actually happens? He kept adding more and more subplots instead of resolving -- and sometimes instead of even addressing -- old ones.

LOOK OUT, SHOES!

if there is another book in the series where the main character BARELY FIGURES AT ALL then i may give up

SO TRUE.

I loyally read this series cos I started 13 years ago, but it's beginning to try my patience.

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

I caved in and started re-reading a few days ago. Already halfway through The Great Hunt. There's so much shit that I didn't even remember happening. It's better than TV at least.

(P.S. his Conan books suck in comparison to the Howard originals.)

does it bother anyone else when the characters speak without contractions? fuck, dude... his dialogue is v. unrealistic/wooden at times.

I NEVER GIVE UP ON BOOKS

Very true actually. I remember at the time this seemed really bold to me, (this was before I had read much at all admittedly), but it was also really emotionally affecting and vaguely tragic as well - kinda like a literal embodiment of post-colonial emphasis on lived experience, a "history" that is particular to the viewpoint of a certain group of people passed down through generations and cannot be translated. the slow abandonment of certain values being revealed in reverse was also super-effective, the dramatic irony of hearing Aiel say "we'll never give up the true way" (or whatever it was) when you've already read the scene where they give it up. The whole thing was immensely thoughtful.

There was lots of interesting alternate reality stuff like this in the earlier novels (like any time anyone stepped through a door/ring/touched a stone etc.) that is missing in the later stuff, and everything has increasingly been flattened out into an endless present tense that is almost suffocating.

I am almost done with book nine. :(

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

done

i regret nothing

hell yeah

Congrats Mookieproof

tyvm!

final thoughts: books 9-10 are the nadir. 'crossroads of twilight' and 'knife of dreams' are the worst book titles, with 'towers of midnight' only slightly behind

there's apparently some story about sanderson hinting elsewhere that lanfear is still alive(??) but i ain't got time for that

feel like it might be time for . . . perhaps . . . NEWSUN!

New sun!!!!!!!

New sun!!!!!!!

no do Abercrombie imo

SUUUUUUUN

I'm reading Book of the Short Sun right now, in fact. Going pretty slowly because Wolfe is practically my fave author at this point and I'm enjoying savouring it.

The series I'm really curious about is Viriconium, but I haven't found a copy of the omnibus yet.

The stylistic shift between long sun and short sun is kind of insane. Even bigger than the gap between new sun and long sun, I think. Short Sun was ultimately the most challenging for me and I’m still not 100% sure how everything played out. Due to re-read I guess.

imo re-reading the wheel of time is nowhere near as insane as re-reading the dark tower

i'll probably do that eventually tho

Huh.

https://deadline.com/2023/11/the-wheel-of-time-immersive-amazon-iwot-productions-1235640237/

I have always wanted to be surrounded by angry women tugging on their braids

Sitting on birthday cakes

Adam Roberts is not a fan:

https://sibilantfricative.blogspot.com/2023/12/robert-jordan-and-brandon-sanderson.html?fbclid=IwAR3OB7moly4vulj1Fe-aqsq1YhTWENmP31FHG9MdoGD72ZpWKIU7ZuKUIGc

Heh, I have that titular tome he mentions.

OMG, I didn't know he had written some Conan stories. Who let that happen?

(He being Jordan, of course.)

Yeah that's how I first heard his name in the early eighties -- didn't read them but I recall the book covers.

at the risk of seeming to defend jordan, many genre authors got their start in conan/wars/trek/dr who/whatever to pay the bills. and then they learned that you needed to write a trilogy (at least) to really catch on

i tend to think that the later WoT jordan books were an example of him disappearing up his own ass rather than simply extending the series for relevance and profit, but certainly there's an argument otherwise

as roberts said, tho, the whole thing with powerful sorceresses being endlessly spanked is . . . quite something

apparently jordan's wife was an editor at tor? which may explain several things

I suppose one could disappear up one's own ass for relevance and profit.

There is no shame in writing Conan books. There is shame in writing them that badly.

one could disappear up one's own ass for relevance and profit

truth bomb/board description

I've read a couple of his Conan books and they're not that bad. A bit straightforward compared to the magical atmosphere of the Howard stories, but still decent adventure fare. I sometimes wish he'd kept some of that fast pulp pacing in Wheel of Time.

I'm taking my time but just finished book 6 - lots of things happened! Probably the best book so far.

otm

we are here for support for the next five

My 12-year-old kid turns to me at this point and says, “This is a good show.”

https://defector.com/how-the-wheel-of-time-made-great-art-out-of-great-pain ($)

watching season 2 on prime now

ive been able to quite divorce it from the books now in my head, but can still lament how rushed it is to shorthand characters, intros, situations

but so it must be i guess

rewriting it with a focus on lazy kink is not something id have thought was required

but they are all very sexy so

The Wheel of Sex

watching season 2 on prime now

ive been able to quite divorce it from the books now in my head, but can still lament how rushed it is to shorthand characters, intros, situations

but so it must be i guess

― close encounters of the third knid (darraghmac), Thursday, January 11, 2024 bookmarkflaglink

I just binged both seasons last week. I've never read any of the books but I still could sense quite clearly that all of these characters & places were likely much richer in the books. The narrowing of scale is palpable, even as I enjoyed most of the final product.

tbh ive been recommended shadow and bone and never having read that first i think i recognise that sense

From hazy memory there's a whole raft of characters in that show that aren't in the books at all, or at least have only minor roles in the books.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/1efc76d916c5e80225690a7831b0a54f/d5c35c9a38beb922-2e/s540x810/3394d29c4212f5cc2c5c93768fe5a8f2f616388f.gif

Indeed

Lanfear?