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

def agree that its going to depend on a number of factors

for instance im v likely influenced by my own reading style of skipping paragraphs if nothing looks like happening

now this does mean i spend a lot of time later on presuming i should remember more names and events than i do bit this is v normal for me irl also so it helps me immersenif anything

Had to take a break after Winter's Heart, might pick back up again later this year when my "new to read" pile dwindles a little more.

While we all wait for whatever's next, a just-started thread on the costumes. (Natania's a good sort, she does these things for a variety of shows and movies and things.)

1 - Wheel, you know what time it is: it's #threadtalk. And, judging by my pun, you might have guessed we're talking #TheWheelOfTime series costuming.

What could be more appropriate than a world where magic *is* quite literally, thread. 🧵🪄

Let us go forth & adventure! pic.twitter.com/HYimEvXKSM

— Natania Barron (@NataniaBarron) March 15, 2022

Finished book 4 last week. First half was a real slog but picked up a bit in the second. Would echo all the eye rolling at Men! Women! though.

Just finished book 3 of The Witcher which was a breeze in comparison.

A little update

https://gizmodo.com/wheel-of-time-ayoola-smart-amazon-season-2-1848833256

During the show’s virtual JordanCon panel, the yearly celebration of Jordan’s many books, showrunner Rafe Judkins announced that Ayoola Smart would be joining the cast in a recurring role. She’ll be playing Aviendha, a character that Judkins called his personal favorite from the many in Jordan’s novels. Introduced in the third book, 1991's The Dragon Reborn, Aviendha is a Wise One, one of the three matriarchal leaders of the Aiel. Throughout the novels, she eventually becomes a main love interest of Rand al’Thor, played in the show by Joshua Stradowski. Judkins made the video in Morocco near where a fight scene involving Smart was being filmed, and he had nothing but praise for her portrayal of the character. “Start Googling her now!” Judkins teased. “This woman is gonna make you excited to see more of the world of the Aiel.”

Annnnd first peak of season two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua4SU8oKjx8

Anyone know if we're likely to see season 2 this year?

No, next.

started in on s1

i have no idea what to expect

lotta bathing iirc

gosh

anyone considering starting the tv series or awaiting season 2 for any reason other than rubbernecking the disaster should really be turning their attention to shadow and bone instead

streets ahead ito production quality, cast are all better than competent (and are imo the most attractive ensemble ever put on screen) and suprisingly little of the plot or individual lines jar (which shouldnt be such a high bar but this is a fantasy adaptation we are talking about here)

seriously though watch it just for the cast being so hot its actually outrageous

I liked shadow and bone a lot.

Shadow and Boning

Returns Sep 1st

'The Wheel of Time' season 2 is almost here! Check in with Moiraine and meet some new faces in these first-look photos. https://t.co/tat4YDhYtR

— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) May 24, 2023

ok i’m two hours into shadow and bone and i like it and cannot dispute deems’s statements but

a) she and him should live in a yurt and have two kids by now, not wonder if holding hands was for realsies at age 10. b) cannot tell what the magyars are saying or if i’m even supposed to understand what theyre saying. c) don’t care about the criminals or their storylines or whether they live or die, honestly. d) the really badass criminal dude is so cool i’m almost rooting for him, but inevitably he’s gonna catch cheekbones criminal and torture him before the latter breaks free and slaughters everyone

And we got first full trailer for the new season

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-1OT1jxuQo

And we're back tomorrow!

jeez there's a whole bunch of them

I tried to read Lord of Chaos this summer, wound up deliberately spoiling myself on the ending to free myself of the need to finish it.

These books are not for me.

and that’s one of the better ones!

This is a series that most readers agree is not very good, but it remains very popular. It's kind of baffling.

most reader are, i think, frustrated but may not agree that it is not very good tbh

It's not very good.

Had no idea they'd recast Mat.

Reading about it seems to explain some of the changes in the later episodes of season one

not complaining, but didn't padan fain pretty explicitly kill loial/uno/etc. whilst stealing the horn at the end of last season? like staring at perrin and speechifying while twisting the knife?

anyway, having watched the first two new ones, it's decent. rand looks like less of a dork, at least. liandrin having a secret soft side is good stuff, and it's pretty much a race to see if her face can get wider faster than christopher pike's hair gets taller.

as for the series, i think the first several books are actually pretty good? like yes, dude was a grating writer with grating tics that he made no attempt to rein in, but the story was solid before he disappeared up his own ass and started writing 700pp books that covered 48 hours.

as to why it's popular (and i have no idea whether it is or not, having been out of bookstores for 20 years), i figure it's the logical result of the series-ization of fantasy. you can be patricia mckillip and periodically write small new things that get no attention, or you can extend your existing properties forever like brandon sanderson. there's probably a limit somewhere, as with the marvel universe, but i think fantasy fans would be the very last people to turn down More. and the wheel of time is Endlessly More

I thought the first three books were good, they're a decent B/B+.

It starts to lose me with the fourth book, which is weird because lots of people say that it's the best (source: /r/Fantasy). Lord of Chaos is the first one that I couldn't even finish - I got so tired of the repetitive scenes, shapeless plot, the constant introduction of new named characters with indistinguishable personalities. He must have doubled the length of the character list just in this book alone.

Sniff, tug on braid.
The books were great when I was 13; I tried to re-read them in the last few years and I think I got halfway through #4. They're a good example of how far world-building and likeable/hateable characters can get you when your ability to pace and plot a story is a complete fucking mess.

I'm still gonna watch this show.

Re Loial, yeah that definitely happened as I rewatched the season one finale before the first new one xps

Thought they might address it along the lines of "it takes more than a knife thrust to kill a sturdy ogre" but no, not mentioned at all.

i liked The Great Hunt a lot. tho it was frustrating because i wanted Rand to get it on with that hot evil chick.
― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 1 June 2004 05:38 (nineteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

all things come to those who wait

for reasons I don't fully understand I picked up the books at book 3 and will see how far I get (currently finishing book 4) - last time (a long time ago) I got to 6 or 7 before I stopped caring

Who killed Asmodean?

mickey spillane knows

Maybe he should have finished the series.

i am enjoying this season, although egwene is approaching michael burnham levels of weepiness

the music is still awful, of course

i like jimbeaux's consistency I just finished book #10 of Robert Jordan's stupid series.

Pretty sure Graendal killed Asmodean but it was so ambiguously written as to be an unintentional mystery for years

no spoilers!

Oh brother

*tugs braid*

I wish it were consistency and not just inattention lol

Seriously, that's just the most prominent example of Jordan's careless storytelling.

I had an interesting conversation yesterday with my daughter about this series. She finished the whole thing. She thinks it's more a meta-fantasy or a sort of bricolage of various ideas and tropes than it is anything resembling a consistent narrative. Which is . . . giving it too much credit, I think. She is a pretty demanding reader, too; she called A Song of Ice and Fire "a hot mess."

pashmina i think in one of the threads put in a good argument for the first two books- possible mainly the second book - throwing in a lot of tropes but doing them very well

after book six is runs into "im due to finish but this is actually getting bigger" in real time writing to eagerly anticipated deadline but id say theres still amazing payoff sequences in each book after bar maybe one

definitely he writes too much to be able to control or tie off past that point, i mean theres an entire sea folk brought in that arent worth shite once he realised ah fuck these are just a wet aiel arent they

these are just a wet aiel

lol

I thought The Malazan Book of the Fallen was a good example of doing a huge, sprawling fantasy series right, although as I said upthread the final book even in that series was something of a misfire.

theres an entire sea folk brought in

Which supports my daughter's reading, I think. It's as though he thought to himself, "Oh, shit, every grand fantasy series needs a sea folk!"

Malazan had interesting characters and a sense of humour. WoT has probably a thousand pages of Rand/Perrin/Mat wishing they understood women like Perrin/Mat/Rand does xp

jimbeaux's daughter otm

i haven't touched these in a while but from my unposted (because it was supposed to say good things too) ilx posts dir:

he is just bewilderingly hit-or-miss with names. everybody knows the defining feature of the ur-text is how rooted it is in its invented languages, how the whole world is built up from them. this series is rooted in other things (geography, historical vertigo) so fair enough imo that it doesn't try, that all of its character names and all of its italicized inventions are the obvious result of jordan sitting back for thirty seconds like, hmmmmm. and fair enough that everyone in the world, including the nomadic desert people, and the people who migrated west two thousand years ago, all speak english, sprinkled with a dozen special nouns per continental plate. but my god do you have to be creating sindarin to be able to make a pass and put "mountain of dhoom" and "galadedrid damodred" aside while holding onto "bayle domon" and (my girlfriend) "siuan sanche" (pronounced like swan)? i'll accept "trollocs" because it's funny. but fuck forever the dark triad of egwene/elayne/elaida. took me three books to get used to that. here's a paragraph from the aftermath of a battle that had me genuinely gasping for breath-- the way it builds:

TSR876

People were streaming out of Emond's Field, Bran limping and using his spear for a staff, Marin smiling with an arm around him, Daise being hugged by her husband, Wit, and Gaul and Chiad hand in hand with their veils down. Loial's ears drooped wearily, and Tam had blood on his face, and Flann Lewin was standing only with the help of his wife, Adine; there was blood on nearly everyone, and hasty bandages. But they came out in a widening throng, Elam and Dav, Ewin and Aram, Eward Candwin and Buel Dowtry, Hu and Tad the stablemen from the Winespring Inn, Ban and Tell and the Companions riding with that banner still.

elam, ewin, and eward in one sentence! and all of them extras! imagined a whole parallel 15-book series where these boys (+ poss hu and tad the stablemen) all train as wizards and have late-night dorm conversations where you are constantly having to go back a page to confirm confused suspicions that it was ewin talking this whole time, not eward.

i like em tho

lol at how he insisted on naming all the horses

ah fuck these are just a wet aiel arent they

wet aiel is actually an indie band from the isle of wight