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

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.

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

so i guess they ended up making this

Wait, what?

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

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

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

From a separate io9 comment on that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was also happy the main three survived.

and Lan is a badass.

and i was pretty pissed that Sanderson killed off Bela

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

Skipping everything but Perrin and mat pays serious dividends fyi

Tell you what

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could start in on the Bible

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

i already know the ending

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

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

dirty stuff too

PKD

Could start in on the Bible

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

have to imagine hes ready to leave jordan for a while

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

so

you're saying

that you prefer

literally three books of perrin doing nothing but stewing

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

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

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

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

By the way, who killed Asmodean?

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