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

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!

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

MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!! http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:HnYRljQTgTe5xM:http://www.wotmania.com/legacy/WoTSerpentB2SmCmpr.jpgMAGIC 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://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:HnYRljQTgTe5xM:http://www.wotmania.com/legacy/WoTSerpentB2SmCmpr.jpg MAGIC IS BAD FOR YOU UNLESS YOU HAVE TITS!!! http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:HnYRljQTgTe5xM:http://www.wotmania.com/legacy/WoTSerpentB2SmCmpr.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!!! 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!!!

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.

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?