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New Wheel of Time Author Chosen
kdean06 writes "Brandon Sanderson has been chosen by Tor Books to finish the best-selling Wheel of Time fantasy series by the late Robert Jordan. Harriet, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading his Mistborn series. An interview is also available via Dragonmount.com."
As a reader of Sanderson's other novels, I can say that endings are his specialty. His fans refer to the endings of his books as the "Brandon Avalanche" because once he starts to build it up, it just snowballs to reach a level of excitement that leaves you blown away.
I can't think of a better author to finish this series.
I consider myself a Brandon Sanderson super fan. So my opinion might be biased, but I have read his novels.
His books are amazing. For me, they have just the right balance of description, action, philosophy, etc. I'm sure your millage may vary, but he is someone who likes to write books that people enjoy. That is his motive. He doesn't want to show off his prose, convince you of his philosophies, or show you how he's not like everyone else. He just wants to write books that people will enjoy reading. IMO, he is very talented at doing that.
And the "epic" is precisely why I stopped reading at book 4. Up to that point, you had the very good story of a bunch of small-town kids caught up in something bigger than they were. It was gritty and it was real. When Rand defeats a swordmaster with a blue heron blade in book four, then takes out one of the lesser deities in the same book, I instantly thought ... gee, kinda tough to go UP from there, isn't it? He's only 20 or so.
I'm a fan of low fantasy, so the minute it spiraled up into "killing Gods" territory, which is what I call it, I instantly lost interest.
I'll tolerate anything
Well the real problem was that around the ending of Book 4, Tor came to Jordan and asked him to extend the series and stretch it out. I am most certain this is documented somewhere and came directly from RJ himself.
:)
Of course, RJ started out writing just one book, then during the process came up with more story and wanted a trilogy. If you read carefully, you can actually see how Book 3 really is a good ending to the saga, and it's evident how Book 4 does start on a new thread entirely. It's a very different series starting at Book 4 (similar to how Book 2 started).
But this is about when Tor came in and asked for more. So, he drew up some extended storyline of course for books 4-6 or so. Book 4 was stunning. just great!. Books 5-7 were *definitely* filler with mild forward-moving story. But then he got his act back together with Book 8 and THAT's when he did another 'reboot' of sorts and started putting story elements back together. The second half of Book 8, the whole of Book 9, and the interesting storytelling of Book 10 are all very tightly woven and they work very well.
Book 11 certainly was the house-cleaning book (heh, some "decisive action" taking place rather early made me smile) and sets the stage very smoothly for Book 12.
So yes, I agree it got slow and lazy in the middle. If we could have those books plus first half of Book 8 condensed and re-written to a 200 page novel, that'd be great
Anyway, I just wanted to toss that bit of insight up. I hope it helps 'cope' in some way with the whole thing. Once I found out about it, I felt better about it.
Seeya!
If you go to Brandon Sanderson's website, www.brandonsanderson.com you can read sample chapters from each of his novels. He also has a book Warbreaker, that he has released free under the Creative Commons License. It's a full book, that will be published by Tor and sold in 2009, but you can also download it, print it, send it to friends, etc free of charge.
If RJ didn't reveal who killed Asmodean somewhere in those volumes of notes and dictations, I might go postal.
Are you kidding? Without spoiling everything, the significant death in book three comes out of thin air because it violates what you know about the characters up to this point and happens far too flawlessly considering the large potential number of problems in pulling it off. (None of which Martin addresses.)
George R.R. Martin is hard to predict because his plots are determined by dice-rolls or attempts to seem "edgy" and "realistic." He is largely exciting and fun, but he does violate story structure for shock-value.
It's the ridiculously stupid characters that killed my interest in the series. How many times does someone have to do something without the slightest thought to the consequences before they get a sense of responsibility? Don't they realize that they're in the middle of an important battle between good and evil?
Woops, I re-joined this guy's severed powers, and I have no idea if he's the dragon or not.
Woops, I shot that unknown target with balefire.
Woops, I gave away an important secret by babbling stupidly (dozens of times).
Every single one of the main characters, and most of the secondary characters, were total idiots. I spent most of the time wondering if it could get worse, then marveling at how much worse it could get, then wishing they would all die.
Please, finish it, so that it goes away forever.
LoTR produced 12 hours of feature movie, and from only a few hundred pages (about the total length of a single book from Jordan)
"a few hundred pages" ? Seriously?
The various reprints are typeset the same, and Amazon lists the 50th anniversary edition as 1184 pages. That includes about 80 pages of appendices and maps, but you're well over a thousand pages of text.
Where did you get "a few hundred pages" from? The Hobbit?
but of course, this is your opinion. I enjoy books with depth, complexity, and longevity. I avoid books and series that are simple or episodic.
You mean you enjoy books that you think have depth, complexity and longevity, and avoid books that you judge to be simple or episodic. I find some of the authors you list tedious, dull, uninspired and repetitive in the extreme. You find their books full of depth and complexity. That's all down to personal taste, or lack thereof. You mention personal opinion and then go on to ignore it in the very next sentence.
If it can be made into a 3 hour or less movie, it's not worth my time.
When you say that the book has to equate to at least a three hour movie, how do you judge that before you read the book? Heavy books make longer movies? Do you imagine a particular director's or screenwriter's version? After all, one director would make Lord of the Rings into a two hour movie, another made it into a nine hour movie. I reckon it's possible to successfully tell the entire story in two hours (the movies had a few hours of battle scenes that weren't described in the books for more than a few pages).
How can you look at a book in the store, read a few pages and say "Well, this'd be a 2 hour film so it's not for me!" or "Ooh, looks like a five hour movie's in here! Where's my wallet?" I ask because I find this behaviour astonishing.
(and it's "enthralled" not "enthrawled")
While I would not QUITE so harshly condemn the WoT as you have... The first 3 books were really quite amazing, and I was very prepared for a really great finale in book 4... which never happened. I had always previously presumed that Jordan had planned a 3,4 or 5 book series and then his publishers saw the prospect of buckets of money and convinced him to continue.
Now, I'm not so sure... I think his illness may have played into the picture in a couple different ways.
Note: this is COMPLETE SPECULATION
1. The Heinlein Effect - As Heinlein grew more and more ill, he began to pump out books at a crazy rate both as sort of a way to postpone his passing (notice EVERYBODY is alive in the last books), and
2. to provide for his wife. When contemplating ones mortality you want to take care of you loved ones - providing more books provides more financial stability for your loved ones.
One other comment you made stuck out- your comment that "it is obvious that a much firmer editorial hand was required."
In reading the announcement it appears that his wife was his primary editor. That might work in some cases, but I don't think this was one of them. I think it would be really hard for a person to be firmly critical of beloved spouse's artistic work - especially when they are ill as well.
I'm glad the series will reach a conclusion. I hope the final work redeems the wandering that occured from about book 5 on - perhaps it will really benefit from a new voice working on it... And maybe an abridged edition will eventually be put out that, like say Stranger in a Strange land, is better than the unabridged version.