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The Gathering Storm Discussion
Just over two years ago, fans of the Wheel of Time fantasy book series mourned the death of writer James Oliver Rigney Jr. — a.k.a. Robert Jordan. After much deliberation by Jordan's wife (who also edits the series), author Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series. Sanderson familiarized himself with Jordan's notes and said that they would require three more books, which he hopes to release with about a year between them. On October 27th, the first new Wheel of Time book since Jordan's death was released, titled The Gathering Storm. Early reviews for the book seem quite positive, so here's a place to discuss it. Be warned: comments may contain spoilers.
I've been reading the reviews from readers on Barnes and Noble and Amazon and it's been uniformly positive. That's quite an achievement to pass it on to another author and still be able to capture the flavor of the series.
I first started reading the books when I was a senior in high school, I thought the series was amazing at first, especially after the first book, and then the next two or three. Then after that it started to drag. Alot. Nothing significant was happening. Or seemingly random significant things were happening to stir up the plot. I gave up halfway through book 6 or 7 out of boredom and a sense of futility.
High school was a long time ago, and since then I've broadened my reading interests, read more genres, literature, poetry, more diverse offerings in the "Fantasy" genre, and I took a stab at reading the Wheel of Time again. Read the first book.
It sucked. Hard. All the way through.
Just my opinion, I'm not right or wrong but thats how I feel about it. If you enjoy these books thats great, different strokes for different folks, but this is a big non-story to me, except about milking a cow thats been on life support for dehydration for years and years.
That's awfully presumptuous. Unless you can objectively compare a Vonnegut story to a Niven story, it's all just a matter of (somewhat) informed opinion. I like Lucifer's Hammer more than Moby Dick. Is it better or even as good? Hard to say.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
Right. Because reading a book for enjoyment is nothing. You should read them for 'culture' or some other highfalutin crap.
If someone enjoys Bradbury more than Vonnegut, then they do. It's that simple. They are free to say so, even.
I actually like Vonnegut, but that isn't the point. I read different books for different reasons.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
To get ready for the release, I reread the series last month. Like most people who were fans of the series I had been disappointed with the slowing pace and complexity of the story in the later books. What I realized last month was that a lot of that slowness was because of the time between the releases of the books. As the series got longer and longer, I was less likely to reread the entire series before a new book came out. But reading it all at once definitely helps everything work much better. It's not that "nothing" happens in those later books, it's that so much smaller stuff happens, that it's nearly impossible to keep it all in your mind. After rereading the series, I was incredibly excited about TGS.
So I went out and bought it Tuesday after work. I finished it on Wednesday. Sanderson does a great job of channeling the early Jordan. I don't know how much of the text was directly written by Jordan, but in the book several storylines are moved forward and a few of them are actually resolved. (Yes! Really!) The book does primarily focus on Rand, over Mat and Perrin, which was a complaint about several of the later books, but I think anyone who had gotten tired of Rand's attitude and behavior will like how the book ends. Egwene and the split of the White Tower is the other primary storyline that is dealt with, and I think that part of the story is perhaps some of the best since the first 3-4 books. There is still a ridiculous amount of stuff going on that isn't explained (yet), but it all feels like it's building in a way that will resolve itself that will be very exciting to read. With Knife of Dreams, you could definitely tell that Jordan was trying to pick up speed with his story, which makes sense, as he had already been diagnosed with amyloidosis and was trying to get as much finished as he could. And that increasing pace definitely is continued in TGS. There are still points where it slows down, but it's mostly done in short scenes with the other characters, which gives the appearance of that same tension and plot speed.
And there are a couple of very, very big shockers. I definitely can't wait for the next two books.
When Brandon Sanderson was tapped as the man to finish this series of books, I picked up Mistborn to see what I could expect from his writing style. After I read Mistborn, I was hooked on his writing style and have since read the rest of his Mistborn series, as well as Elantris, and Warbreaker. I haven't read his young adult fiction, but it's apparently been well received. The thing that I like about Sanderson as opposed to Jordan are that a) he isn't afraid to kill a main character, especially if they're likable, b) his pacing of the book makes reading a challenge so that you don't read it too fast, as opposed to dragging through 15 pages of braid pulling and disapproving looks. However, their similarities are that Mr. Sanderson does as good of a job of character development as Robert Jordan, and Sanderson's development of political and interpersonal intrigue is usually a little better and more to the point than Jordan's.
I think that Harriet did an excellent job choosing Brandon Sanderson to finish her husband's work. It's true that Mr. Jordan became a victim of his success earlier in the series, trying to keep so many threads going at the same time, never daring to kill more than the occasional character, and perhaps trying too hard to develop additional character stories at the expense of the initial handful of major characters. However I look forward to reading this book, and hopefully the final two books. I think that if what I've read of Brandon Sanderson's other work is indicative of how he'll treat the remainder of Robert Jordan's storyline, then it will be a great read.
The folks who ordered the book and have written reviews in the 48 odd hours since they would have released are predisposed to like it.
I disagree. After vesting in eleven fairly long books released over nearly twenty years, many people are skeptical of a new author stepping in and messing things up. Excited about a new book in the series? Yes. Predisposed to like it? I'm not so sure.
I'm only a few chapters into it myself, but one of the things that seems to make the book a good fit is that it appears to follow (to my eyes at least) Jordan's writing style closely despite the author's claims that imitation was not one of his goals. This could due to the fact that entire sections of the final three books were actually written by Jordan himself and effort was likely made to ensure Sanderson's work transitioned into and out of these well, but I also expect that having the same book editor, Jordan's wife, had a great deal of influence as well.