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

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

lol at how he insisted on naming all the horses

as katie holmes says in wonder boys, at times it's very detailed

whatever else happens, rosamund pike is perfect as moiraine

not looking forward to egwene's debasement but totally looking forward to her revenge

is mat even in this series

have to nix the malazan

i like the flow i like the anbition but once you realize hes stonedly writing it based on a tabletop card game it dies

yerman grimdark with the relentless misery that was good but

judge me or not i dont care

his not numbering the books made me get lost

started the malazan once but bailed when it seemed like i needed to know the names and/or numbers of certain military groups

yeah lads i cant sing the twelve days of christmas pls have mercy

Incidentally, the whole Malazan on ebook is pay what you want right now

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/steven-eriksons-malazan-book-fallen-tor-publishing-group-books

I could not finish book 1 last time I tried, and now I don't think I'll ever have time.

i worked up through maybe five or seven last winter and enjoyed myself grwatly but one night i got halfway through a third miraculous ascension or avoidance of certain universe ending disaster in ten mins and put it down for the night and well that was that for this pass

basically for all the justifiable criticisms of jordan, apart from tolkien nobody has offered me a satisfying scale of similar fantasy that doesnt fail at one hurdle or the other and none of them would hold me for the 13 books this one did nor have me go back to them for a lazy afternoons random hour

I dunno, I got as far as Winter's Heart, which I tried twice at and (figuratively) threw against the wall both times. So it's not as though I didn't give it a go, but I mean, I understand the man was ill, but fuck it, I don't have that many years left on this earth, you know?

Well we're halfway through the second season now and I appreciated how this episode ended with Lanfear living her best rich-goth-at-Burning-Man fantasy.

how many lights do you see, egwene?

Very much the comparison I was thinking!

it's been a billion years sine I read the books, but I appreciate the way this season has condensed and rearranged things - you can see they're trying to keep the plot coherent. I think it's been better than the first season for sure.

Yeah this season was much better. Finale has some great moments and Moghedien was perfect. Definitely bringing the creepy Bjork energy. Looking forward to seeing more Forsaken next season

wow mat must have tied the dagger to that staff *really* tight

oh fuc

Roffle. That DID cross my mind.

Big ol' interview with Judkins, spoilers obv

https://www.tor.com/2023/10/06/the-wheel-of-time-showrunner-rafe-judkins-talks-season-2-finale-among-other-things/

Plus a pre-SAG strike chat with Pike and Henney looking a bit ahead to Season 3

https://www.thewrap.com/wheel-of-time-season-3-filming-rosamund-pike-daniel-henney-interview/

i'm not bothered either way, but have we completely jettisoned thom merrilin? i mean there are *so* many characters, so it makes sense to dump any they lack the time to do justice to

this is not something i feel like i normally notice, but the outfits this season were *amazing*. although that one headpiece lanfear was wearing in the dream world was a bit much

i'm apparently the last person in the world to notice this, but the books' maps of tar valon are . . . suggestive

kinda feel like it's a really bad joek but dude obviously deserves no leeway whatsoever

80% of men cannot locate Northarbor

Not the last lol