Wheel of Time series

I started reading WoT when I was super young, so that was probably why I stuck with it. It's worth it if you can get past the first few books; Jordan is very Tolkien-esque in his descriptions. Like, I don't need a whole page to describe someone's doublet or their riding harness.

But it is a super unique world, and the lives, races, countries etc of everyone are just so fully fleshed out that it's almost impossible not to visualize them correctly.

I'm sort of meh about AMOL. There were some things that happened that felt contrived, and then later I read something to the note of Jordan's widow specifically wanting things to happen so they did, but blah.

As for Malazan, as someone above said, it's super dense. There are so many god damn characters that very rarely intersect, until he starts tying off all the plots. The first book I found difficult, because it seemed to me he drew conclusions that weren't readily apparent to me. Like, this dude died, and everyone knows that dude died, but NO ONE WILL SAY HIS NAME AND THEY DON'T USE ANY DESCRIPTORS SO SOMEHOW I'M SUPPOSED TO KNOW IT WAS THIS DUDE??

It gets better after the first though, but he still won't really make it easy.

The only other gripe I have with that series is that he goes to all the trouble of making someone a badass and then they just up and vanish. There are a couple of characters you'll be like, OMFG amazing, and then they are either gone and you can only ASSUME what happened to them, or they'd not really talked about again, or if they are it's in a "by the by" from a current character.

But I mean, I guess it says something when an author manages to have so many god damn characters and it's fucking painful when you don't know what happened to one. And the fact that you are constantly kept guessing about 3/4 of the characters moral compass, motivations, etc is pretty neat.

I'd recommend both if you like high fantasy novels.

I started reading the Dragonlance chronicles and legends. Sorta stuck wth the DL and forgotten realms. Is WoT worth getting into as an adult with limited time?

Not with limited time.

Definitely not with limited time, but whatever faults it has it's lightyears ahead of Dragonlance in terms of quality.

God, I wish I could like this series. Just not my thing.

Azrayne_sl said:

Nope - actually I've never seen a hardcover copy of any of the WOT books, which is odd, since usually new releases by an author with this much popularity are done hardcover at first to jack up the price.

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I've got them all in hardcover (and signed).

I still love this series in some sense, but it's a lot like looking back to your favorite band from middle school. I love the memories because of the space it occupied in my history and what it meant at the time, but looking back as an adult it is seriously, objectively, and unarguably flawed.

I still love this series in some sense, but it's a lot like looking back to your favorite band from middle school. I love the memories because of the space it occupied in my history and what it meant at the time, but looking back as an adult it is seriously, objectively, and unarguably flawed.

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Absolutely - but I think it also has a lot going for it, especially if you look at it in the context of the time period within which it emerged. The worldbuilding (and the historical backstory - some of my favorite parts of WOT are those that touch on the Age of Legends), the magic system and the metaphysics of the setting, the integration of Eastern philosophy, atmosphere and symbolism into what could otherwise have been very traditional Western high fantasy, the battle scenes, etc etc. RJ's flaws when it comes to characters and narrative (among other things) were considerable, but he did a lot of things very well too. It wasn't by chance that the series became so popular, and it undoubtedly had a huge influence on future generations of fantasy writers (the current guys like Sanderson, Rothfuss, etc. but also going back further in the late 90's and 00's - there's a little known Australian author named Kate Forsyth who was obviously massively influenced by WOT and who I loved as a teenager, and I'd argue there are traces of RJ's influence going back even further to writers like Robin Hobb and GRRM).

In that respect, he's rather like Tolkien - I personally have to admit that I find trying to re-read LOTR a nightmare (I love Fellowship, but always get bogged down in TT and have only finished ROTK once), although I get a kick out of reading The Hobbit every year or two. But if it wasn't for his work, so much of the writing that I've enjoyed over the years simply wouldn't exist, or at least not in anything approaching it's current form. They both left stamps on the genre larger than just their respective works.

Yeah the whole sub-plot with Perrin chasing his wife for several books almost bored me to tears. Not only was she an awful character, but the fact that he let her treat him so awfully and became so whipped turned him into an awful character (down from just being the least interesting of the main trio stuck in the least interesting storyline).

Although wasn't Winter's Heart where Rand cleansed Saidin? I thought that was pretty cool.

I started skimming through the wondergirl POV's with Fires of Heaven (with the exception of my pre-AMOL reread, where I forced myself through the whole series). Literally 1/3 of the book is basically Nynaeve and Elayne travelling the countryside in a carriage, tugging braids and crossing arms under bosoms and being really, really cunty towards eachother and everyone around them.

Winters Heart is better on a re-read. I read it the month it was released around '00 I think, and it wasn't good. Then Crossroads came out... now that was a bad one. I don't think I'll ever open CoT again. Chapter summaries FTW. After doing a re-read, Winters Heart is one of the better later Jordan books.

Just reread the series again, makes it the third and final time. While annoyed with some of the weak characterization, spotty narrative choices, and clich?d descriptions I have to say that, for some reason, the ending was actually more emotionally satisfying this time around even though I found I disliked AMOL with this last read through. Leading up to it I finally just treated the series as just Rand's story with filler added, maybe that's why I think I'll look back on it fondly instead of focusing on the negatives and the failures within the series. It is a Hero's Journey where 12 books has the hero slowly broken physically, spiritually, and emotionally and the last two books you see the hero get redeemed. Cut out the rest and WOT is excellent!

Azrayne said:

Yeah the whole sub-plot with Perrin chasing his wife for several books almost bored me to tears. Not only was she an awful character, but the fact that he let her treat him so awfully and became so whipped turned him into an awful character (down from just being the least interesting of the main trio stuck in the least interesting storyline).

Although wasn't Winter's Heart where Rand cleansed Saidin? I thought that was pretty cool.

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You can skip every chapter about Perrin and Faile and it shortens the reading time by about two books. The Gawyn/Egwene subplot in the lost two books is retarded but otherwise I liked the ending. The major problem I have with the WoT series is Sex disappears as you progress. Perrin would have fucked Berelain and Faile would have fucked the Shaido guy that was helping her when she was captive in a fully realized novel (to give an example); similiarly Nynaeve would have fucked the Circus guy - that's what girls do to survive and get some sort of security when they're off primrosing. It's a problem with a lot of high fantasy is that the sex is mostly left off the table. Don't get me started on Lord of the fucking Rings - the Narnia series has the excuse that its aimed at kids so we can ignore the lack of sex in The Horse and is Boy even though you know Susan was rabbit-fucking Rabadash back in Cair Paravel. But apparently there is no Sex in Middle-Earth until marriage - ow the fuck Aragorn and Arwen endured that I'll never understand. Back on top WoT - Rand would never have thrown Berelain out of his bedroom back at the Stone of Tear and Mat would fuck his way through every city he wandered through.