A Memory of Light To Be Released January 8, 2013

First time accepted submitter Hotawa Hawk-eye writes "Tor Books has announced that the release date for the final volume in the Wheel of Time series of books, A Memory Of Light, will be January 8, 2013. [Barring a Mayan apocalypse, of course.] The fantasy series, started by Robert Jordan and continued by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death, will span 15 books and over 10,000 pages."

Comments

Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

the Mayan apocalypse..

Re:Praying for

[ColdWetDog]

the Mayan apocalypse..

Hey, come on. The last book was pretty good. Sanderson kicked up the pace, didn't devote three entire pages to a description of the trim on a dress (and then two more pages on the fabric).

I'm actually happily anticipating the book. Of course, it's good that this particular adventure will end. Enough IS enough.

Re:Praying for

[geekoid]

yeah.. I don't care if Sanderson wrote the epic to end all epic; getting through the other books is an exercise in stupidity.

they are all great 350page novels stretched to 1200 page.
He needs an editor that learned their chops under Ben Bova.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the page & a half every time a female character tugged her braid while feeling irrationally superior to a male character.

Re:Praying for

[Digital Vomit]

I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.

I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.

Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.

Re:Praying for

[Beardo the Bearded]

I will put this here so I remember to look up The Death Gate Cycle later.

I agree, this series has been dragging on forever.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

I enjoyed a lot of the detail and scattered events, it made Jordan's world alive. I like nearly every book in the series, but books 9 and 10 were pretty bad about page after page of nothing happening. Nine ends well, but 10 is just horrible, and its one of the shortest books in the series. I do think Sanderson has done a pretty good job of finishing the series out.

I never really liked Weiss and Hickman, their independent stuff or their Dragonlance stuff. They are too whimsical (sentient laser crossbows anyone?). They do have a lot of fans so maybe its just me.

Re:Praying for

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Huh. I share the same opinion on Sanderson, books 9 & 10 of WoT, Weiss, Hickman, and Dragonlance. Wait. Did I write this post?

Re:Praying for

[Cinder6]

Pretty much mirrors my thoughts, too. I'll add that book 8 is also largely pointless. Book 11 felt like Jordan's attempt to regain control of the sprawling narrative--he ended at least three long, ongoing story lines. It wasn't up to the quality of, say, The Great Hunt, but it was loads better than Crossroads of Twilight.

Looking forward to the last book.

Re:Praying for

[Randle_Revar]

The Death Gate Cycle is great and all, but it is trivial compared to WoT.

Re:Praying for

[Randle_Revar]

Nine and Ten begin to pick up after the low point at Eight...
Third time through Eight I breezed right through it, though.

Re:Praying for

[VanGarrett]

Books 9 and 10 have a great deal to do with Elayne taking the throne of Andor, and especially book 10. If those two books put people off of the series, it's a fair bet that Elayne is the reason why. The exciting bits of that sub-plot bear all of the engaging qualities of a World Knitting Championship event. It did not take unduly long for me to groan, "Either just give her the throne or somebody kill her. I don't care anymore." Indeed, when her claim to the throne finally bore fruit, it was not the release of narrative tension that made it a relief, but far from it, a praising thankfulness that this horrible drudgery was over.

Re:Praying for

[masmullin]

Death Gate Cycle is my favourite.

Re:Praying for

[LihTox]

Practically every Robert Jordan fan I've ever encountered online thinks this; they just continued reading in spite of the pace of the later books, because they were hooked and wanted to know how the bloody thing ends. :)

Re:Praying for

[euroq]

Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.

Is it better than the Dragonlance series by the same authors? Because those were fucking awesome.

Re:Praying for

[spiralx]

I like all the books; the pace is different during that period, but that's what you get when you're writing such a huge, sprawling epic.

Re:Praying for

[Dracophile]

Not to mention the braid-pulling...

Re:Praying for

[Rosy At Random]

I'm not saying Dragonlance is for 13 year olds, but I read it when I was 13. Yes, I really enjoyed it, and as one of my first real experiences of fantasy it was pretty amazing, but... I can't shake the feeling that if I were to revisit it now it would feel like Young Adult Extruded Fantasy Product.

If I was to throw some high-class fantasy series in to the ring, I think I would start with Zelazny's Amber books. After that, well, I love Joe Abercrombie's work, and Bujold's Chalion series should definitely be mentioned.

Re:Praying for

[mverwijs]

Don't forget the knife-finger-rolling.

Re:Praying for

[Lando]

Hmmm, I haven't found the books slow, perhaps that's me. So I guess put me in the other category. I've enjoyed the books and appreciating reading when they came out. The last few Harry Potters though...

Re:Praying for

[SteeldrivingJon]

" but it was loads better than Crossroads of Twilight." Heh, imagine if Jordan had written the Twilight series. When he died, the twihards would have drowned out the cries of Alderaan.

Re:Praying for

[gtvr]

And the arms crossed under breasts.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

Putting in another vote for Death Gate.

Weis/Hickman also wrote all the Dragonlance goodies; but death gate is my favourite. It's very indepth as far as worldbuilding, but never too verbose.

The way it's done (a recap of travel journals, essentially ) is very unique. All the footnotes, maps and diagrams, it's just...it's a whole experience.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

I vote that it is.

I was introduced to Weis/Hickman via Dragonlance, and Raistlin is probably my favourite mage of all time. But Haplo from Death Gate is a close second.

The way magic works in the books is actually very in depth, and as you read through the books you discover more about their worlds, history, magic etc than you could ever hope.

Each book has maps/diagrams/appendices, and as they are a retelling of collected travel journals, are loaded with footnotes and other goodness. I think each of the books introducing a new world has music (actual sheet music) if every song mentioned.

It's the most in depth worldbuilding I've seen.

I was always interested in Haplo and what was going on for him; but more than that I was excited to learn about the world(s) that had been created.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

The last book was pretty good.

I would agree wholeheartedly if someone could force them to fix the (sooo many) typos in it.

Re:Praying for

[Specter]

The skirt smoothing! How could you forget the skirt smoothing!

Re:Praying for

[Des Herriott]

Not me. I enjoyed the first three books, slogged through the next five in the hope the pace would pick up, and gave up halfway through Winter's Heart. At that point, I gave up caring about how the bloody things ends :)

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.

I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.

Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.

All these posts are redeeming my faith in science fiction and my own sanity. I stopped at book 6 (or maybe 5), the part about the Black Tower kept me going a little longer than I wanted to, when I realized that it was obviously a head fake as well, I was done. The last good book was The Dragon Reborn and he should have been able to wrap the whole damned story up by book 4 (or 5 at the latest).

Give me Roger Zelazny style writing any day, too bad he died before he wrote his third story arc about Amber, but the dude was a master and I wish more writers would read and attempt to understand what makes his work so great.

Re:Praying for

[zlives]

+1 also can George RR borrow said editor...

Re:Praying for

[zlives]

try Malazan book of the fallen, best thing its already complete :)

Re:Praying for

[CrashNBrn]

I've often wondered if it was the fault of the publisher. Given that when an author is new, they likely don't have much choice in the fact that their book will be edited. Whereas after Jordan was a bestseller of 3-4+ books, it would seem to me that TOR stepped back and gave him the green light for whatever it was he wanted to do --- as it would sell.

The whole series is deserving of a quality editor.

Book a minute SF/F are pretty humorous, even for series that I have completely read, like Robin Hobb's Assassin Apprentice+. Jordan's books up to book 11 are 'summarized'. The Jordan Book-a-Minute summaries are combined in this slashdot post.

Re:Praying for

[Tarlus]

I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting.

This was my experience with the very first book. I never even got halfway through before shelving it.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

Death Gate was fantastic, and after reading up on Sanderson (yes, I had trudged through Jordan's later things praying for a conclusion to ANYTHING) in advance of Gathering Storm, I read Sanderson's Mistborn series and some of his other commentaries on magic in games and books. Very satisfying to find a solid story.

I'm looking forward to more from him beyond Wheel and will be starting his Stormlight series next.

Re:Praying for

[Americano]

Second this recommendation for Malazan Book of the Fallen. The first book, "Gardens of the Moon" was really hard for me to get into - very much a "what the fuck is going on here?" feeling, because you really end up plopped down right in the middle of an ongoing story with all kinds of characters and references that just don't make any sense until you really start getting farther along into the books. It was a bit overwhelming - I read the first one with a feeling of, "there's something going on here, but I can't fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense," pretty much throughout.

The SECOND book, "Deadhouse Gates," however... holy hell, what an amazing read. First book almost turned me off, second one thoroughly hooked me in, I'm glad I stuck with it - I'm about 3/4 through volume 7 ("Reaper's Gale") right now. The rest of the series has continued to be a good read, and the scope of the story is really breathtaking, when you start seeing how all of the pieces fit together.

Re:Praying for

[Americano]

Yes, this, a million times this. I started reading the WoT series when I was still in frigging high school. I graduated high school in 1993... Eye of the World was published in 1990.

When I was a high school junior, the books were like, "wow, this is great!" Now, they're a little... well... flat. Fairly predictable, overly detailed, and I sort of get to the point where I'm like, "JUST TELL ME HOW IT ENDS." On the whole, they're not awful books, but they have tended to drag. The ones Sanderson had a hand in have moved at a much brisker pace, and I think he did an admirable job of tying up a lot of loose ends. I'll read the last book, because I want to see how the story ends. But as a series, 36 year old me finds them far less engaging than the 16 year old me who started reading them.

Re:Praying for

[Reapy]

I like them a lot. I think I have 2 or 3 left counting the last one. This has been a slow and rewarding series for me. I find some frustration with the scope, you become invested in characters and events, only to start the next book in a completely different location with new characters. When they did the swap in I think book 5, I put it down for a year before I picked it up, and got invested in those new characters.

Honestly the thing is a love/hate for me. I hate them the first 100 pages, then am flipping the pages like a madman at the end. It is a deep investment for these books, but really, really worth it. The greatest part is that the entire book cycle was plotted out from the start, so it is written from day 1 with a plan. I guess I need to pick up those last few books and find out what that plan was now.

Also as a general feel for what the books are, I believe they are originating in stories and characters created from the author's long standing grups campaign, and some of the character names reflect that ;)

Re:Praying for

[Americano]

Yeah, book 5 was Midnight Tides, where suddenly you shifted to the Edur conquest of Letheras, after spending a few books on the Seven Cities (Apocalypse/Chain of Dogs) and Genebackis (Pannion Domin) stories. Reaper's Gale is doing an admirable job of tying together those three forks in the story - the end of the Pannion Domin, the reassertion of Malazan power in Seven Cities after the Apocalypse & Chain of Dogs, and the Edur conquest of Letheras.

Re:Praying for

[Nothing2Chere]

I'm listening to the audiobooks with my girl (Her first time with the story), and we're up to Winter's Heart. When the pontification starts I crank the play speed up to as fast as we can take it without feeling like we're listening to a rendition by the chipmunk's.

It seems to be working.

Re:Praying for

[Tubal-Cain]

I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.

I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.

I was just introduced to the series last month. I am ~75% of the way through Crossroads, and can hardly stand to pick it up because of how bad it drags. That and the absurd lack of communication (WHY DO THEY NOT MEET WITH RAND IN TEL'ARAN'RHIOD) have me on the verge of dropping it completely. Pretty much the only thing that keeps me going is that I've read Sanderson's work.

Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.

I was actually pretty unsatisfied with that one. I felt like things meandered about in 5 & 6, and 7 went off the deep end.

Re:Praying for

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying Dragonlance is for 13 year olds, but I read it when I was 13. Yes, I really enjoyed it, and as one of my first real experiences of fantasy it was pretty amazing, but... I can't shake the feeling that if I were to revisit it now it would feel like Young Adult Extruded Fantasy Product.

If I was to throw some high-class fantasy series in to the ring, I think I would start with Zelazny's Amber books.

I'd add the caveat that Amber turns into extruded product rather quickly, by third or fourth book IIRC. But that's not to say that I recommend against reading the series. In the first place, the first few books are just so fucking cool it's absolutely worth it to read them even if you end up disliking the later ones. In the second place, Zelazny extruded product is vastly superior to ordinary EFP.

But really, the later Amber books were the only extruded product he ever did. Zelazny almost exclusively wrote standalone novels, every one quite unique. He had an excuse with Amber: he was sick with the disease which he knew would eventually kill him, had a hit on his hands, and a family which he needed to provide some financial security for, so he started churning out lots of Amber.

If you like Amber at all, it's absolutely worth it to try random Zelazny stuff. None of it is a series, so you're not wasting your time if you don't like one or two of the books. Which is rather unlikely IMO because Zelazny was so good he rarely (if ever?) wrote a true clunker. Make sure to include Lord of Light, generally thought to be his best novel.

And for a living author who's probably the closest thing we've got to a spiritual heir to Zelazny, read some Steven Brust. Unlike Zelazny, Brust mostly writes in a single series, set on the fictional planet Dragaera, but he does lots of different things in it -- none of it is extruded in any way, shape or form. There is an overarching story that's slowly being revealed, but it's unlike most extremely long fantasy series in that each book has a strong and engaging plot of its own, which is wrapped up by the end of that book. (You should read them in publication order anyways, it works better that way. Especially the later books, which if read first would spoil the early ones.)

The first book in the series is Jhereg. It's currently sold in an omnibus edition as the "Book of Jhereg", which also contains #2 and #3, Yendi and Teckla. You might dislike Teckla, but don't let that stop you from reading on -- no other book in the series is like it. Don't skip it either, it's a crucial turning point and it doesn't take long to get through (most of Brust's books are short by fantasy standards).

After that, well, I love Joe Abercrombie's work, and Bujold's Chalion series should definitely be mentioned.

And if you like space opera SF, Bujold's Vorkosigan series is a must.

I'll have to check out Abercrombie, I literally haven't heard of him before.

Re:Praying for

[Meski]

The kind of series where you wonder if you're going to die (reading, I realise you can say that about writing) before finishing the series. I've sort of liked reading it, but there's been too many times I've re-read the story up to now just to read the last couple. The Dark Tower was another such.

Re:Praying for

[VanGarrett]

A commendable solution to a nuisance problem, indeed. By my figuring, Robert Jordan may have been able to finish the series himself, if he'd kept the bits about Elayne's quest for the Sun Throne down to the essential details.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Thought it had something to do with RAM.

Can't wait!

[TimmyRt]

I was having a google just last night to find out when it was coming. I can't wait!

Re:Can't wait!

[nitehawk214]

I was having a google just last night to find out when it was coming. I can't wait!

You should probably have a doctor look at that.

Re:Can't wait!

[sakdoctor]

At your service.

Re:Can't wait!

[errandum]

Don't get excited, I'm sure they'll conclude that there is too much to tell in one book and separate it into two volumes, making sure the cash co... the books keep going.

Re:Can't wait!

[Kongming]

This being an article about a Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel, a Suk Doctor would have been more appropriate than a Sak Doctor, but close!

Looking forward to it

[gweihir]

After Sanderson took over the books have tremendously improved, almost back to the initial volumes.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Dyinobal]

Sanderson is one of those terrible authors who can't seem to not write a best seller. I'd be jealous if I wasn't enjoying his books so much.

Re:Looking forward to it

[demonbug]

After Sanderson took over the books have tremendously improved, almost back to the initial volumes.

I both agree and disagree. Sanderson certainly brought back the pacing from the early books, which is nice (since that means the series will finish). And he has a great respect for the series and is a good writer in his own right, so I really don't think there is anyone better they could have picked to finish it up.

On the other hand, Sanderson is not as good technically, lacks most of the subtlety, and tends to use lots of neologisms that just don't fit. It will be nice to finally get it finished (hell, I've been reading the series since circa 1993 or 1994), but it is a pity that Jordan didn't manage to finish off the series in his lifetime.

Oh, if anyone wants the Cliff-notes version rather than going back to read all 10,000 pages before the final book comes out, here is a fairly voluminous re-read that might actually have a chance to be completed before Memory comes out now that it has been pushed back.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Rostin]

I know what you mean. I remember that after reading the preface of the first of the WOT books he wrote, I didn't know whether I was going to be able to continue. I held my nose until the literary equivalent of olfactory fatigue set in, and now I'm actually looking forward to the final installment.

Re:Looking forward to it

[geekoid]

"almost back to the initial volumes."

that's a pretty low bar.

Re:Looking forward to it

[gweihir]

You may disagree, but I don't think so.

Re:Looking forward to it

[errandum]

Yes, since you don't like it then it is a bad book. Everyone knows that (:

Re:Looking forward to it

[tnk1]

It is almost a testament to how the books started to drag that he literally died before he could finish it. While admittedly he died younger than he should have, if a series takes almost two decades to finish, without stopping, it's probably been going a little too long.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Auroch]

it is a pity that Jordan didn't manage to finish off the series in his lifetime.

Assuming he would have chosen to finish it. Considering the poor choices he made in books, oh ... 5 to 9 (or whatever ... half the series!), I'm glad someone like sanderson (who knows how to write a solid story with good twists and pacing) is wrapping it up.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Auroch]

Tracy Hickman and Brandon Sanderson. Two well known, well received, MORMON, writers. Of course, there's orson scott card, who only ever wrote one (two?) decent books ... and mitt romney, who has probably written a book, denied he ever wrote the book, and then wrote a separate book that completely contradicts the first.

Re: Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

On an earth note: I hope Tor or their parent companie(s?) get it together by thinking about employing the use of ebook readers or try the beta google service. Jordan and company use a lot of paper. The hardcover editions especially have a lot of cut they resemble the New Testament--if Memory was pushed back they have time to test electronic.

The first Jordan book is the best. I was a fan back in 1994, too. The publisher should put everything except portions of Fires of Heaven in a single, syndicated volume, yet we all know this won't happen because the paper mills here and in Canada still run everything that is publishing. Similarly, there's tons of corrugated cardboard boxes out there and not common use of plastic wrap, plastic containers for holding food and plasticized mountable trays to ship it on.

Re:Looking forward to it

[masmullin]

Eye of the World was stunningly slow. But books 2-8 were absolutely brilliant in pacing.

Re:Looking forward to it

[ThePeices]

And him being MORMON affects the story or writing how?

Re:Looking forward to it

[Chaos Incarnate]

The problem isn't that a series went on that long, it's that the story went on that long. Other series like Pern and Discworld happily went on for 20-plus years, but no one story arc within them took so long to be resolved.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Almost" two decades? I started reading the series as a junior in high school. My twenty year reunion is this year. The series isn't even over yet. Of course it's also worth mentioning I gave up on it in the late 90's. It was just too goddamn painful to read.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of Orson Scott Card, it affects it by making the Alvin Maker series exist.

Which although i find it pretty meh storywise i gotta admit it has a rather unique setting, you can definitely see the mormon influence in the entire storyline.

Re:Looking forward to it

[cmattdetzel]

After Sanderson took over the books have tremendously improved, almost back to the initial volumes.

For the most part, I'd agree with this assessment. While I feel Sanderson has done a decent job with Perrin and Rand, and a fantastic job with Egwene, I found Sanderson's treatment of Mat Cauthon in Towers of Midnight extremely disappointing. Many fans apparently complained that Sanderson's rendering of Mat in The Gathering Storm was inaccurate. So he over-corrected in ToM, styling Mat as more of a caricature of the brash, irreverent youth who was so excited to let loose a badger on the village green in the opening portion of The Eye of the World. To me, Jordan did a fantastic job evolving and maturing Mat's character over the course of the story, and I wasn't at all unhappy with Sanderson's initial effort with the character in TGS. I certainly never had the impression that Mat was the illiterate simpleton Sanderson made him out to be in ToM. Seeing Mat's character regress to the point of playing puerile practical jokes really soured me on Towers of Midnight and certainly dampens anticipation for the final volume.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Aryden]

A Song of Fire and Ice... George R.R. Martin... Started in 1991, first book published in 1996... It's been 2 decades.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Aryden]

if you mean your junior high reunion is 20 years, sure, otherwise your time frames are off seeing as how Eye of the World was published in 1990.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Aryden]

Yet, I do not see Mat's development this way. He is fighting all of the crap that keeps being pushed on him as has been his M.O. since day 1.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

No way, the last book was littered with so many grammatical errors it almost became unreadable in places. I liked the verbosity of Jordan's writing (I know, not everyones cup of tea), but Sanderson needs an editor to just correct the garbage the he wrote to make it at least parsable...

Re:Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

2012 - 1990 = 22 years. Junior in high school is correct. He's right, you can't do math.

Re:Looking forward to it

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, Sanderson is not as good technically, lacks most of the subtlety, and tends to use lots of neologisms that just don't fit.

Jordan could not possibly be described as 'subtle' in any way -- he bludgeons you in the head with everything, using canned phrases which never change, much like his characters (how many times has that braid been tugged? Those skirts smoothed?). He's a terrible prose stylist, both technically and artistically. If Sanderson comes off second best in these areas, you must think he's absolute utter shit as a writer, then?

WoT is badly written, poorly plotted dreck. Easily 90% of the words in the series are useless filler, because even in the books where things were actually happening Jordan always padded out the page count with endless flowery description of absolutely everything in every scene, regardless of how unimportant. He was the kind of author who, as one of the reviewers linked to from this /. discussion noted, felt compelled to turn "He tripped, and almost fell" into two or three paragraphs of useless detail about the rock the character tripped over, how he steadied himself, what he saw as he recovered from his near-mishap, and so forth. Jordan's characters are purest cardboard, two-dimensional assemblies of clumsy characterization tics. The only superlative you can apply to WoT is that through its author's sheer bloodymindedness in churning out thicker and thicker books in which less and less happened, and its fans' persistence in buying same, WoT has become the canonical example of Extruded Fantasy Product.

Sadface

[Anonymous Coward]

Next year makes me sad. I liked Q2 2012 much better. Oh well.

Re:Sadface

[19thNervousBreakdown]

After the editing job on the last two books, I'm personally glad for this extra time. It's been 23 years. I can wait another 6 months.

Re:Sadface

[masmullin]

Unless, that brain cancer you dont know about does you in.

You should probably go see a doctor.

Finally

[cforciea]

We can finally get an official count on the number of times somebody tugs on a braid or smooths a skirt in the series.

Re:Finally

[mattie_p]

Or sniffs, or Mat Cauthon says "Blood and Bloody Ashes." Or we hear about the wind blowing.

Re:Finally

[Kjella]

In all fairness, there's been a helluva lot less of that since Brandon Sanderson took over. In fact, I think the series has much improved overall since he took all those loose threads and have been tying them down, it may have taken him 3 books and almost a million words - 25% of the total length of the series - but he's done it. I was more than suspecting that Robert Jordan would never get around to doing it or would do so poorly, since the only thing he seems to know is to start new subplots and side arcs while milking the fans and if he hadn't fallen ill and died I suspect it would have continued. Sucks for him of course, but I suspect the series didn't get any worse for wear - in fact possibly quite a lot better.

Re:Finally

[wbr1]

I agree completely. The series started with so much promise, but Jordan continued to open plot-line after plot-line while rarely resolving anything. By the time I realized that I was so invested in the series I had to continue ans there were elements of excellence, and I wanted to know how things ended.

All told though it should be a huge improvement over Goodkind. That series started well, and had a couple of amazing books. However the last several books got so repetitive as to be annoying. It seemed like a contest to see how many characters could say the same thing in 100 different ways in each chapter.

One can also hope that the ending is better as Goodkind copped out with the oh, I am an all powerful war wizard I can do anything ending. TIt was so lame I wanted to punch Goodkind in the face after reading good knows how many pages, the last third at least was weak as hell to have shuch an anti-climactic ending. Please, please, please Sanderson, don't do the same.

Re:Finally

[Zelucifer]

Minor nitpick, the wind blowing is one of the most important themes in the series. It has an extremely strong connection with the wheel turning.

Re:Finally

[tnk1]

Yes. Things like the braid or Mat's favorite curse phrase are mannerisms that certainly should have continued throughout the series, as that is part of their personality, but we probably only need to be reminded of them maybe once or twice a book.

Still, I will say this much, I'm never going to forget what stories the irascible, braid pulling Aes Sedai is in.

Re:Finally

[shurikt]

Or crosses their arms beneath their breasts.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one of the things that makes the series great, I think. Every character has such a well developed personality, right down to habitual mannerisms, that they seem like people you actually know. It always made the mysterious characters stand out, too - he didn't describe them as thoroughly.

Re:Finally

[Talderas]

Or Mat complains about how he doesn't understand women and wishes Rand or Perrin was there because they knew women.
Or Rand complains about how he doesn't understand women and wishes Mat or Perrin was there because they knew women.
Or Perrin complains about how he doesn't understand women and wishes Rand or Mat was there because they knew women.

Re:Finally

[Aryden]

Jordan wanted to finish the series in 13 books. A couple of years before he died, he was at Dragon*Con and in the WoT panel, he said that it would end with the 13th book, even if you had to wheel it out of the store in a wheel barrow.

Re:Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's one of the things that makes the series *stupid*: Each character has a rote behavior, that is invoked without hesitation at every turn.

"This character will *always* behave in *exactly* this way. They will *always* persist in their characteristic misunderstandings, and *always* make the same characteristic mistakes. No matter how many times they are shown to be wrong by new information or the outcome of events, they will *never* learn from their mistakes. They will *never* internalize new information or grow as a person."

That's probably okay if you're only writing 300 pages or so, and you don't need a lot of character development between prologue and epilogue. Maybe your goal is simply to explore the consequences of those characteristic flaws.

But if you're writing a 10-volume saga, at some point your characters really should think about the consequences of their flaws, and start making some important life choices. That's one of the notable things about Martin's saga: his characters are actually changed by what happens to them (and those that don't change get punished severely for it).

Re:Finally

[LurkerXXX]

When Tor began publicising it, giving out free first chapters of the book, they advertised it as being the first of a *9* part series.

Re:Finally

[Aryden]

That was years before. Tor also demanded that some of the books be split into separate volumes. They continued doing this when the series became very popular. They have split several of the first books into 2 books each. Jordan, on the other hand, did not want this nor did Harriett.

Year of the Dragon

[ShakaUVM]

As the Tor announcement stated, it will take place at the end of the Year of the Dragon. Cool beans.

I got to get dinner with Sanderson and Harriet Jordan on the Gathering Storm book tour. They're both very good people, and are the right people to be finishing this series.

I have no idea how Sanderson could possibly wrap up all the loose threads in just one more book, but if anyone can do it, he can.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Bradmont]

Wrapping up loose ends at the end of a series? I thought that fad was euthenized by Lost.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[steelfood]

I have no idea how Sanderson could possibly wrap up all the loose threads in just one more book

Easy: Bring them all together.

It has already started to happen in the previous book. Everyone and everything is coming together. And once that happens, he only needs to write one final scene.

The problem towards the middle was that everybody was going off on their own. And for whatever reason, Jordan had to keep track of everybody and describe every step of everybody's journey. He couldn't just focus on just the one, two, or three main characters. Instead, the middle books were juggling something like seven or eight characters. It's impossible to make significant advances in a story with so many lines, which is why the middle books were so slow and sucked so badly compared to the first few books (when they were all together) and now the last few (when they're coming back together).

I wonder who edited these books. Much of this is just poor editing. A good editor will not only do the usual grammar check, but also cut out the unnecessary parts that do not advance the story or develop the character. In Jordan's case, entire character lines needed to be cut. The main character (or arguably three) were the only ones relevant, and the things that happened to everybody else should've been left to inner stories after the fact.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Randle_Revar]

> And for whatever reason, Jordan had to keep track of everybody and describe every step of everybody's journey.

That is what make the series so awesome! Cutting character lines would harm it greatly, though it could use some trimming in repetitive description, and recapping stuff we already knew.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Idarubicin]

Instead, the middle books were juggling something like seven or eight characters. It's impossible to make significant advances in a story with so many lines...

While it could certainly be argued that sometimes Jordan did this...less well than might have been desirable, it's not impossible. The most familiar counterexample from the world of epic fantasy is probably George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. A Game of Thrones) has eight viewpoint characters, and GRRM is up to sixteen viewpoint characters in the series' most recent instalment (not counting two additional minor characters in the prologue and epilogue). The difficulty is in making all of the independent storylines sufficiently engaging and relevant (and interlinked) that the reader doesn't get bored or annoyed waiting for the most 'interesting' plot threads to return. GRRM generally has (so far) done quite well at this; Jordan had some issues.

In my opinion, Jordan was handicapped by his weaknesses in developing and presenting realistic and compelling female characters. (The problem was particularly crippling because Jordan didn't take the usual fantasy-genre out of having a male-dominated world.) There has been ample parody of his sniffing, braid-tugging, dress-smoothing women that I need not further belabor the point. Jordan also had issues with writing believable romance, which was problematic given that all of his main characters end up coupled (or in larger multiples). His interactions between men and women shaded too far towards the relationship caricatures espoused by stand-up comics (If he doesn't know why I'm upset, I'm not going to tell him! sniff!); while occasionally he played it for a successful laugh, the result usually fell flat.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[spiralx]

This would be GRRM who didn't write a book in over five years, then admitted he'd screwed up the plotting and had been trying to rescue the story?

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder who edited these books. Much of this is just poor editing.

Jordan's wife edited them. True story.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Idarubicin]

This would be GRRM who didn't write a book in over five years, then admitted he'd screwed up the plotting and had been trying to rescue the story?

Oh, probably. But with book in hand it's not apparent to the reader that GRRM may or may not have lost the plot, and we aren't getting bored waiting for more interesting threads to return. (And at least we know that the author won't be afraid to kill off a character who isn't going anywhere.)

And don't make fun of GRRM for how long it's taking to finish the series--every time someone does that, he kills another Stark!

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Anonymous Coward]

His editor was his wife, Harriet. Yeah.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[zlives]

hmmm, so thats how he kept her from nagging him... look hun I have this 3000 page book for you to edit... again

Re:Year of the Dragon

[durrr]

There do seem to be some rather serious plot line inflation in a song of ice and fire as of late. At least a few lines have had the good grace of terminating(in a rather fruitless manner) in the latest book, but there's still a good number left to go around(not to mention the characters that weren't even mentioned in the last book!) Now obviously the realism card would be that a "random patrol returns with the head of x y and z" in a fairly realistic manner, it would however be rather unsatisfactory storytelling.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Aryden]

Actually, I find quite the opposite. I think he wrote many of his female characters quite well. I can point at many women that I have known throughout my life that would be shining examples of the Jordan female characteristics. Even my ex was an example, given she was more like Elaida than any of the others...

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Hillgiant]

Before writing each book, GRRM flips a coin. Heads, he kills a character you like. Tails, he makes a character you hate likable.

Re:Year of the Dragon

[Idarubicin]

Before writing each book, GRRM flips a coin. Heads, he kills a character you like. Tails, he makes a character you hate likable.

I can't help but feel he does that every few chapters, actually...

Let me tell you how it ends

[Anonymous Coward]

A bunch of sniffing. About 50 pages of clothing description. Oh and a bunch of moronic idiots blathering about instead of talking with each other.

Re:Let me tell you how it ends

[dasunt]

Let me tell you how it ends

A bunch of sniffing. About 50 pages of clothing description. Oh and a bunch of moronic idiots blathering about instead of talking with each other.

But does it have neeps?

Re:Let me tell you how it ends

[squidflakes]

No. Nor does it have onions or mashed turnips.

Re:Let me tell you how it ends

[dasunt]

Well, it must have boiled leather then, right?

Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[JoshuaZ]

This is great. Now we can get Sanderson back on his own stuff. More Mistborn! And maybe the sequel to Way of Kings. Sanderson is one of the best fantasy writers alive today. It will be good for him to go back to his own, very original stuff. His own works are much more groundbreaking than Jordan's. So for example, in the Mistborn books he's been far more willing to play around with the tech level of "fantasy" universes. His most recent book in that universe, "Allow of Law" is excellent and essentially amounts to a demonstration that contrary to common belief, fantasy worlds can have guns and not suck.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[Brucelet]

More Mistborn! And maybe the sequel to Way of Kings.

Actually, the order is going to be a sequel to Way of Kings, and then maybe more Mistborn.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Last I heard he was planning on hitting book 5 of Stormlight before starting the "real" second Mistborn trilogy. There might be other novellas though.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[billtom]

Don't count on it. George R. R. Martin is going to die before he finishes Song of Fire and Ice. So Sanderson has job security there.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[Brucelet]

This is true, but I suspect he'll do something akin to Alloy of Law before then.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Mistborn was awesome. Then I read Elantris.

I highly recommend Elantris. It is really incredible.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[onefriedrice]

Don't count on it. George R. R. Martin is going to die before he finishes Song of Fire and Ice. So Sanderson has job security there.

Sanderson doesn't seem like a good fit to finish A Song of Ice And Fire. I haven't read all of Sanderson's books, but my impression is that GRRM's series is far too risque for Sanderson to handle well. I haven't read any Wheel of Time either, though, so my impression could be way off base.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[euroq]

His most recent book in that universe, "Allow of Law" is excellent and essentially amounts to a demonstration that contrary to common belief, fantasy worlds can have guns and not suck.

The Gunslinger series didn't suck. (Even if the ending did...)

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that Robert Jordan started writing The Eye of the World (the first book in the series) in 1984. It might not be groundbreaking now (though 10,000 pages of coherent story is pretty damned impressive), but it's also practically a 30 year old story.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[Cardcaptor_RLH85]

You know, I've always wondered why there's not more fantasy where you see technological advancement as well. I'd have to imagine that there would have to be some smart individuals that are incapable of using magic in these worlds and therefore try to find other ways of doing things. I'd still understand that the developments may take longer since magic would be 'easier' and is already there, (for example, the fact that clean energy is taking so long to develop in reality since coal and oil are still quite abundant) but, most fantasy worlds where magic is abundant and generally known about, are stuck quite firmly in the feudal period.

Re:Yay, now we get Sanderson back!

[billtom]

Ah, I wasn't making a serious suggestion. Just a little joke about authors of meandering, never-ending fantasy epics dying before the epic finishes; and how that might open up a new professional niche for some writers.

Summary please

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the wiki summary was too freaking long. Someone sum this series up in one sentence please.

Re:Summary please

[CanHasDIY]

Fucking Epic.

Re:Summary please

[berashith]

kid finds out he is magic && author discovers he can milk 4 books into 9 && author gets a divorce and hates women && author discovers he can write even more books without moving the plot along && author dies without finishing the story.

Re:Summary please

[aevan]

A bunch of man-haters try to kill male magic users because they go crasy. One reincarnated guy get magic, picks up a harem and adds pool cleaner to the magic well. Meanwhile sniffing in disdain, clothing derumpled and beards being stroked fill the books while female chauvinism abounds.

Think I made it to book..six? seven? before failing to care.

Re:Summary please

[squidflakes]

The first three volumes were Lord of the Rings without hobbits. The volumes after that were a meandering sequence of events punctuated with braid-tugging, skirt-smoothing, sniffing, and the most voluminous descriptions of regional fashion.

And I liked the books.

Re:Summary please

[aevan]

Crap. Didn't see the one sentence part! Just replace all periods with semicolons or something :P

Re:Summary please

[Kjella]

Even the wiki summary was too freaking long. Someone sum this series up in one sentence please.

This is not the book series you're looking for, move along now.

Re:Summary please

[EdIII]

It's okay. I got the part about how he discovers magic and gets a harem.

That's all I need. I'll give the first book a shot :)

Re:Summary please

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll be disappointed. None of that happens in the first book.

Re:Summary please

[EdIII]

Reminds me of the original The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern. At least how that book is described :)

Re:Summary please

[squidflakes]

Here I will unashamedly admit, that's exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote the comment.

Re:Summary please

[sakdoctor]

Is that all your want?
Save time and watch Maburaho. The nerd kid has magic and gets a harem.

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

Re:Summary please

[McKing]

I wish I could "Like" this post. Summed it up perfectly. I stopped after book ten and I have have no intention of ever giving these books another thought.

Re:Summary please

[geekoid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWI8w9kLAks&feature=related

Re:Summary please

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with you. I also stopped around six or seven when it became obvious that the series was stagnant and wasn't going to end for at least another six or seven books, but that was over a decade ago. After seeing this article, I just Wiki'd the plot summaries for the ones I missed and was amazed at how little action he could get out of a thousand pages and a decade (or more?). It's unfortunate, as I've heard that the Sanderson books are a lot better than the later Jordan books, but at this point I have better things to do than slog through thousands of pages of bad writing to get to a few good books. I'll either wait for the "Abridged Wheel of Time" or the movie deal, and lacking that just settle for reading a plot summary on Wikipedia plus the last chapter of the last book in the library.

Re:Summary please

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I have to disagree, I specifically liked the series because it's as different from LotR as you can get while still being an epic fantasy.

Count the number of times the words "wizard" or "magic" appear in the books. Then go hunt down the amount of terrible, terrible, terrible songs and poetry. Jordan purposefully avoided the hyper-nerd stuff, and actually gave us a story with interesting, capable main characters, instead of a story where the "heroes" essentially stumble their way to victory because they're so utterly useless.

I know the "ordinary people extraordinary things" is appealing to some people, and art is always a subjective thing, so please don't take it as if I'm literally saying the books are awful--I know they're probably great (except for the poetry, that stuff was flat-out terrible and the subjective rule of art be damned), I just use hyperbole to make my points and personally didn't like them.

And if you didn't like LotR the same as me, you might like WoT.

Re:Summary please

[tnk1]

Well there is a little Facebook icon here for you to publish the link. Then you can like it on your own FB page.

You can thank me later.

Re:Summary please

[tnk1]

So there is hope to get a reasonably decent movie out of WoT then? I imagine you could easily use actual editing to turn all 10,000 pages into a 90 minute movie. The braid pulling and skirt smoothing could be done at the same time lines are actually delivered. It's like parallel processing for literature. Genius!

Re:Summary please

[squidflakes]

I read WoT all the way up to book 8, but just couldn't get past it. Not for lack of quality, just lack of pace.

Did you miss the part where I said I liked it? I thought they were really great books at the time, and I still do, I just hit my personal limit.

As for my LotR comment, I read LotR again right after I finished book 3 of WoT, and damn if the opening bits weren't exactly the same.

Re:Summary please

[bzipitidoo]

I rather liked the magic system. Magic power comes in 3 varieties: The One Power divided into male and female parts, and "True" Power from the evil side which is so dangerous it's not used much and doesn't play much of a role. Each magic user has some mysterious upper limit on the amount of power they can wield, and it varies greatly by individual. Most people are of course unable to use any magic at all.

There's not much to say of the general plot. Very stock fantasy in many ways, which becomes very tiresome thanks to the length. At the start of the series, the past is a lost golden age of much greater power and knowledge than the present, the male part of the One Power is tainted since the end of that Age of Wonders, male mages are rare and not trusted, and are cut off from the power if the women catch them. 3 boys (really, just 1 boy, the Dragon Reborn who can wield more of the One Power than anyone else), and 2 girls from a completely ordinary village rise to become the great heroes who will save the world, spending the rest of the series running all over the world fighting evil and treachery sometimes by bluffing but usually by applying superior force, and collecting power, followers, knowledge, advice, scars, and honors, and trying to get the dozens of kingdoms to pull together and cooperate to fight evil with the favored method for accomplishing that last being to have the monarchs swear obedience or in the case of queens, love to the Dragon Reborn.

Re:Summary please

[Anonymous Coward]

Count the number of times the words "wizard" or "magic" appear in the books.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that LotR is isn't as good because it mentions those things a lot or because it doesn't? 'Cause AFAIK, WoT may not use those words a lot, but it's chock full of magic-wielding characters compared to LotR, which is generally considered low-powered fantasy. Personally, I don't really see either alternative as inherently superior, but I'm mostly a SF reader and dislike most fantasy series for their interminable length and pacing issues (including LotR and WoT).

Re:Summary please

[sa1lnr]

"Count the number of times the words "wizard" or "magic" appear in the books."

Replace wizard with Aes Sedai and magic with The One Power/Channeling.

Re:Summary please

[Talderas]

Most of the time I'm leery of movie adaptations. However, the WoT series is quite appropriate for movie making. While Jordan may have been quite loquacious (an understatement) that means that a huge portion of the books are given over the physical descriptions. That means that significant pages aren't important to the duration of a film and that Jordan painted a rather lush environment for set designers, costumers, and makeup artists to refer to when creating content for the films. All that descriptive narrative, in essence, becomes wrapped up in props, scenery, and costumes.

The problem that exists is the overall focus on inter-character relationships.

Re:Summary please

[Talderas]

The "magic" system was very developed. It's magic in the sense that it is supernatural to what we know of the real world. The system itself was highly researched prior to bore. What could and could not be done. What was necessary for some things to be done. So on and so forth.

For examples, linked circles cannot exceed 13 without men. You cannot have more men in a circle than women. A circle was most effective the closer you were to a 1:1 ratio of men and women in it.

Re:Summary please

[maestroX]

Think I made it to book..six? seven? before failing to care.

Pretty stupid.. seven's the part in which Voldemort finally gets his ass kicked.

Re:Summary please

[Aryden]

In a 2000 chat on CNN.com, Robert Jordan mentioned that NBC had purchased an option to do a miniseries of The Eye of the World.[35] But he expressed doubts that the series would be made stating "key people involved in getting that contract together have left NBC."[36] On 12 August 2008, Variety reported that Universal Pictures had optioned the rights to produce feature film adaptations of The Wheel of Time books. They plan to adapt The Eye of the World as the first film.[37]

~~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

Re:Summary please

[Aryden]

• Once severed from the one power, you could not be reunited with it (this is found to be incorrect)
• Each magic user has different affinities for types of magic (earth based, healing based etc)
• Magic was used for the creation of everyday objects used by the populace
• Male users find that it is a fight over control when trying to use the power
• Female users find a serenity in the use and surrender to the power

Doorstops

[ZahrGnosis]

Robert Jordan's books redefined the level of crazy that I will accept from an author. They're fantastic writing, a wonderful, deep, involved storyline, but come ON, the length is way too self-indulgent and unnecessary. The story is nowhere near as complicated (or worthy) as, say, FOUR Lord of the Rings trilogies, but it's substantially longer. The sadness is that it is comparably well written -- length notwithstanding.

I'm currently using four of the books as monitor stands (I actually won't go so far as to use them as doorstops).

More importantly, though, this has changed the way I'll read connected books or watch TV shows. I fear the abandoned story line too much now, and I blame Robert Jordan. "Heroes", the TV show, was a similar letdown... I waited until "Lost" was finished, for fear of it falling into the same pit as "Heroes", and nearly did the same thing with "Battlestar Galactica".

Is there a name for this? Can we call it the "Robert Jordan" effect? -- the situation where you get too involved with an author or storyline and they just go on forever or (no disrespect) die?

And the expanding-storyline theme is amazing. Eight Harry Potter Movies? Really? Five Twilight movies? I love a good trilogy, and (other than the quality of the prequels) appreciate that the Star Wars trilogies are built so that you can watch the original without needing the rest to complete the story. Many authors have interwoven stories and worlds... How many books did Terry Pratchett write? Many of which made reference to one another, but at least they each had an individual story arc. The Ender's Game series is similar... Terry Brooks' series can be read in myriad configurations of trilogies and tetralogies.

ugh... the Jordan series is fantastic in many ways and I'm very glad to see it completed -- I hope the finale lives up to the series -- but please noone ever do this again, or at least give good warning so that we can avoid going down the path until it's complete.

Re:Doorstops

[Dripdry]

I hate to say this, but George R R Martin is a fat, old, unhealthy man with 8-12 years of writing still to finish his particular series.

Re:Doorstops

[themightythor]

I haven't started the "Song of Ice and Fire" series yet as a result of this and the Jordan Effect (as coined by grandparent poster). Which is too bad because I hear it's phenomenal.

Re:Doorstops

[Hey_bob]

While GRRM isn't my bitch.. I certainly hope Sanderson picks up where GRRM left off. If for no other reason than to finish the series in a timely manner.

Perhaps we need to kickstart a "Lets make Sanderson our bitch, to finish up GRRMs work" thinger?

Re:Doorstops

[yodleboy]

this was what turned me off to the series, and I'm an avid sci-fi/fantasy reader. It just was tooooo much. It was like one of those people that takes 20 minutes to tell a story that could be told well in 5 min. Tangent must have been his favorite word, or maybe he was payed by the letter? Kick backs from paper companies? I don't know the answer, but he makes a Stephen King novel seem like a magazine short story. Anyway, it's a shame because they seem well regarded, but the more books he released the more of a beating it seemed to get up to speed.

Was just thinking the Cliff's Notes version of Wheel of Time would be as thick as the first book : ).

Re:Doorstops

[ColdWetDog]

Not to worry, with a 5 digit UID it's unlikely you'd live long enough to have another author Jordan a series like that.

Re:Doorstops

[PCM2]

And the expanding-storyline theme is amazing. Eight Harry Potter Movies? Really?

I know, right? There were only seven books!

Re:Doorstops

[geekoid]

It is. You should get started.

The Jordan effect is the result of his estate.

Re:Doorstops

[MikeMacK]

...but please noone ever do this again, or at least give good warning so that we can avoid going down the path until it's complete.

Someone did do it, the right way. Steven Erikson and the Malazan Book of Fallen. Epic, big (10 very large books) and very well written, and yes, even complete. It can be done. You just need the right writer.

Re:Doorstops

[geekoid]

"They're fantastic writing, "
no, it isn't

"a wonderful, deep, involved storyline,"
not, it isn't .. unless you mean predictable and dry.

"but it's substantially longer. "
no, the story isn't. Is poor writing and needles detail means more words, but the whole story could have been done in 5 400 page novels.

I'm glad you enjoy the book. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but just because someone enjoys something, doesn't mean it's good.
Fro Example: I like Escape from New York. I watch it every couple of years. It's is not a good movie. Fun, and an interesting perspective on gritty for the movie era.

" this has changed the way I'll read connected books or watch TV shows."
it broke you. With TV, you kind of have to live in the now, because even the best show can get cancelled.

Re:Doorstops

[Kjella]

You make it sound like getting to the end is a chore and the end is the reward. Perhaps you should enjoy the journey more and obsess less about the destination? I didn't exactly need a crystal ball to know Lord Voldemort was going to be defeated knowing the age bracket they aimed for, whether it's in three movies or in eight. The kind of movies where the bad guys more or less win is reserved for movies like "Man on Fire" or "Sin City". If you were sitting there waiting for the final epic battle of good vs evil and drumming your fingers "get on with it" you missed.... well, everything. The only stories that get me down are those that put the main plot on hold and go off doing everything else, and there Robert Jordan sinned a lot.

There were at times *at least* five primary plot threads for Rand, Matrim, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve and it's just too many. Even worse he'd continue to spin into subplots of minor characters like Thom, Aviendha, Tuon and so on until there was ten stories running and you could barely remember the last one by the time it came back into rotation. If you look at LotR - which can also get fairly long-winded at times - it never split up into more than two story threads, Frodo's party and the war efforts. In Jordan's style the whole fellowship would have been split up and he'd tell Frodo and Sam's story, Merry and Pippin's story, Gandalf's story, Aragon's story, Legolas' story, Gimli's story and Boromir's story as separate plot lines with side arcs for Elrond, Arwen, Eowyn and then some.

Re:Doorstops

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Huh. I enjoyed the splitting up. I felt it gave characters who normally wouldn't be investigated their own chance to shine in a way that they just can't when they're always playing second fiddle to the godlike protagonist.

Having read the thing cover-to-cover at least three times, I'm probably not the most objective judge about how hard the plotlines are to follow, but I don't remember ever having a problem except when I took a year or two break between books. It's definitely not something you can pick up again when a new book comes out without a refresher.

Re:Doorstops

[Karth]

Dude. I'm 32. I could make it through TWO jordans.

Re:Doorstops

[Mark J Tilford]

TvTropes refers to this as the ChrisCarterEffect.

Re:Doorstops

[PCM2]

If you look at LotR ... In Jordan's style the whole fellowship would have been split up and he'd tell Frodo and Sam's story, Merry and Pippin's story, Gandalf's story, Aragon's story...

I think you might wanna go back and read those books again.

Re:Doorstops

[pluther]

In Jordan's style the whole fellowship would have been split up and he'd tell Frodo and Sam's story, Merry and Pippin's story, Gandalf's story, Aragon's story, Legolas' story, Gimli's story and Boromir's story as separate plot lines with side arcs for Elrond, Arwen, Eowyn and then some.

That actually sounds like it would be pretty awesome.

Maybe I'll have to check this series out...

Re:Doorstops

[tnk1]

Yes. And since he has now become involved in a TV series... which is now quite faithfully rehashing the first few books... he may well redefine the effect as the Martin Effect.

That said, it is a damn good series, if you can handle what is essentially a fantasy soap opera, with gigantic cast of characters, multiple parallel storylines, and everything.

Re:Doorstops

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the post. I truly enjoy reading criticisms from someone that usually can't write coherently, and sometimes can't manage a single sentence post without error.

Re:Doorstops

[SteveFoerster]

I fear the abandoned story line too much now, and I blame Robert Jordan. "Heroes", the TV show, was a similar letdown... I waited until "Lost" was finished, for fear of it falling into the same pit as "Heroes", and nearly did the same thing with "Battlestar Galactica".

BSG... so an ending is required, but it can be a stupid ending? (I loved, loved, loved the series, but the ending really blew.)

ugh... the Jordan series is fantastic in many ways and I'm very glad to see it completed -- I hope the finale lives up to the series -- but please noone ever do this again, or at least give good warning so that we can avoid going down the path until it's complete.

I know what you mean. I do wish that authors in mid-series would make it a point to put notes about the ending in a safe deposit box to ensure fans aren't left hanging should they die prematurely. I'm glad Frank Herbert left "Dune 7" notes behind, for example.

Re:Doorstops

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but now they're making a TV show out of it (they're covering more-or-less 1 book per season), and he swears he's gonna keep up/ahead of them.

And I almost believe it. Again. Fool me twice, won't get fooled again, and all that.

Re:Doorstops

[Anonymous Coward]

Terry Goodkind did it as well. The Sword of Truth is 10 books long, each book is about 700-900 pgs., and its complete. Damn good series too.

Re:Doorstops

[bastia]

"They're fantastic writing, "

no, it isn't

Maybe I missed it, but I was surprised that no one mentioned this WoT review.

Re:Doorstops

[greg1104]

I started reading David Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr series in 1985. The last published volume, the 4th in what is now expected to be a series of 7, was published in 1993. It ends with a cliffhanger where all of the main characters are seemingly doomed. The Wheel of Time has whizzed by in comparison.

Re:Doorstops

[Randle_Revar]

And the stories of the each one of the 13 dwarves, and Tom, and Beorn, and at least 3 of the eagles, and Smeagol, and Bard, and...

Which is why WoT is so good.

Re:Doorstops

[spiralx]

A huge recommendation for Stephen Erikson from me as well, but unless you like Objectivism, fifty-page monologues about Objectivism, mysogyny, rape and noble goats then avoid Goodkind - it's a horribly badly-written rip-off of the Wheel of Time crossed with Atlas Shrugged, with gratuitously lavish scenes of sexual abuse.

Re:Doorstops

[jahudabudy]

I can second the annoyingly blatant proselytizing philosophy in this series. Goodkind also fell victim to the Jordan problem - the middle of his series just kind of wanders around, looking for a conclusion to the plot. Let's hope Sanderson does a better job than Goodkind's inane deus ex machina.

Re:Doorstops

[jahudabudy]

I enjoyed that series, but it could use some serious restructuring. There are really 3 or 4 stories that only tangentially relate to one another, all being told at the same time. Breaking them apart and telling them separately would cut down on the confusion in the first half of the series (wait, who is this and where are we?), as well as allow him to spend some time on the scenes that are only alluded to. Although, I understand that Esslemont's work fills in some of those gaps. I haven't read him, yet.

Re:Doorstops

[loneDreamer]

+1, I suffered exactly the same effect you describe. (reinforced by Frank Herbert never finishing Dune)

Re:Doorstops

[MikeMacK]

No, you missed part of my comment, I said someone did it "the right way".

Re:Doorstops

[Lulfas]

There's a line after Richard gets free of the old world where I finally had to put the book down. It's something like "It isn't charity to fix something you might use only once, even if other people use it. That's just enlightened self-interest!"

Re:Doorstops

[Aryden]

Goodkind can blow it out his ass. I started with the series, ran through it right up through Chainfire and I ended up wanting to shoot myself. Seriously, not only does Richard Rahl parallel Rand al'Thor, but the storylines are comparable in so many ways. The thing that annoyed the shit out of me the most was the incessant whining about Gookind's political beliefs.

Re:Doorstops

[gmhowell]

And since you've been reading slashdot since such a young age, it is unlikely that you have distractions like a girlfriend or IRL friends to distract you from your waiting.

Re:Doorstops

[gmhowell]

I didn't exactly need a crystal ball to know Lord Voldemort was going to be defeated

Goddamnit! Spoiler warning next time. Anyway, I'm at this spot, where I think Snape might actually kill Dumbledore!

Re:Doorstops

[Karth]

I think it's great that another member of the 5 digit club chimes in with this. For the record, I'm married and hang out with friends frequently. :)

Re:Doorstops

[themightythor]

No, the Jordan Effect is the result of him dying w/o finishing the series. Unless we're talking about two different things. But what I'm talking about is not starting a series until it's finished for fear that it might remain unfinished.

So....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost as long as the Baroque Cycle then?

Goddamn you, Tor

[CanHasDIY]

First it was supposed to be one book; then Tor realized they could go the Harry Pothead/Twitlight direction and 'enhance their revenue' by splitting it into three. OK, whatever.

Then, they push the publish date of the second book back to coincide with the Christmas holiday (because, you know, the people who haven't read the other 11 books at this point are TOTALLY going to buy this one for Christmas anyway!), even though Sanderson had the book finished and edited by the end of July. Oh yea, and no eBook; 'fuck you, Jordan fans!' Well, shit. Whatever.

Finally, they tell us the final book, which some people (my wife) have been waiting over a decade for, will come out in Summer 2011... no, Fall 2011... wait, make that Holiday 2011... just kidding, really it will be spring 2012... OK, Fall 2012... now Spring 20-fucking-13??? Fuck you to, Tor. Fuck you right up your greedy goatse asses.

I swear, if Tor published anything else actually worth reading, I'd be seriously considering a boycott at this point.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[geekoid]

And yet you will buy the book.

So exactly WHY should they change?

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[ColdWetDog]

No e-book?

huh?

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[wbr1]

First it was supposed to be one book; then Tor realized they could go the Harry Pothead/Twitlight direction and 'enhance their revenue' by splitting it into three. OK, whatever. Then, they push the publish date of the second book back to coincide with the Christmas holiday (because, you know, the people who haven't read the other 11 books at this point are TOTALLY going to buy this one for Christmas anyway!), even though Sanderson had the book finished and edited by the end of July. Oh yea, and no eBook; 'fuck you, Jordan fans!' Well, shit. Whatever. Finally, they tell us the final book, which some people (my wife) have been waiting over a decade for, will come out in Summer 2011... no, Fall 2011... wait, make that Holiday 2011... just kidding, really it will be spring 2012... OK, Fall 2012... now Spring 20-fucking-13??? Fuck you to, Tor. Fuck you right up your greedy goatse asses. I swear, if Tor published anything else actually worth reading, I'd be seriously considering a boycott at this point.

Eh, I have to disagree. I do not care who the author is, to close a series off as convoluted and with as many sub-plots and arcs as the Wheel of Time in a satisfactory way would take more than one book. That is the fault of the previous author, not Sanderson. Sanderson is actually doing an excellent job of finishing the series. I started reading it with the wonder and suspension of disbelief I had early in the series, rather than the tedium of the latter half.
Besides, if you really want to wait ages for books in a series, pick up the George R. R. Martin books. Excellent books, but what was it, a 5 year wait between Feast for Crows and Dance With Dragons? Really? When half or more of 'Dance' was cut out of 'Feast' for length reasons?

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[19thNervousBreakdown]

GRRM is great if you love reading about all the various forms rape. Underage rape, gang rape, sibling rape, it's all there.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Mashiki]

First it was supposed to be one book; then Tor realized they could go the Harry Pothead/Twitlight direction and 'enhance their revenue' by splitting it into three. OK, whatever.

Well kinda. The problem is one book doesn't cover all the lose material. Unless you want to have another book to cover that, in which case you're still left with another book. The problem is, Jordan was a verbose writer. Even the publisher knew that. I believe during his initial writing contract he asked for two books. And they put in six, might have been four. But regardless, there's not much you can do when you're up to your asshole in material, unless you want to cut something out.

Then all you're left with is angry fans, pissed off people, and all the rest. Then again, you could always deal with the "mass effect, effect" you know the last book which is so bad that it makes a big ol' bag of snot look good.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

Although not necessarily obvious from the quite well developed young actress playing the part of Danerys in the TV show, GRRM is quite clear on the fact that Loli does in fact like it in the books.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I read that part, where she's 13 years old and being raped in front of an entire army, and it was pretty clearly a rape and not just vanilla underage doggy-style exhibitionist sex. The fact that she comes to enjoy it later really only makes it worse.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he's referring to was Tor's decision to not release an ebook version of the last book until a few months after the hardcover came out. It was a pretty shitty thing to do, I assume their aim was to get people to buy both versions. I wanted the ebook, but also wanted to read the book ASAP. This time I'm waiting for the ebook.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[BasharTeg]

or aliens or robots from the future... whatever, fuck you! You'll watch it anyway.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously have no f'in idea what you are talking about. While I can't comment on Tor's usual business practices, this is not a case of stretching out the series in order to make more money. See http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/Splitting-AMOL for an explanation of why AMOL was split into 3 books.

As a huge fan of the series that has now spanned this long I want it finished right, not right away. Brandon Sanderson took on this project because he grew up reading these books and they were a huge source of inspiration for him as a writer. He and Robert Jordans wife, the editor are much more concerned with making the story live up to the ideals that the Late Mr Jordan had for the entire series.

And the even bigger indicator to this is that they have delayed the release until after Christmas. If it was about sales you would want this to be available on Black Friday not 2 weeks after everyone is broke and no longer buying gifts.

I have som much respect for the job that Brandon and Harriet have done to make the best of the passing of a great writer, husband and man. For you to suggest that it is financially motivated is insulting and does nothing but show your own ignorance.

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[spiralx]

Try Terry Goodkind! It's all those forms of rape, plus added mysogyny, abuse and Objectivism!

Re:Goddamn you, Tor

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a delay(~6 months?) of the ebook vs the print edition. Predictably there was a pirate edition a few day after the print one despite of tor being stupid.

But I thought...

[Mercano]

But I thought there were no beginnings or endings to the Wheel of Time?

Sanderson's been doing a wonderful job; his stuff has probalby been the best we've seen since book five or six. (Yes, there were cool bits here in there in 7-12, but they're diamonds in a whole lot of rough.) I'm sort of sad we don't get a few more Sanderson books.

Re:But I thought...

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Read The Way of Kings. I love me some WoT, but I think The Stormlight Archives (TWoK series name) has the potential to be even better. And judging from his latest novel, Brandon Sanderson's writing made a huge jump in quality since he started on WoT.

hmmm

[geekoid]

" will span 15 books and over 10,000 pages."
awesome..to bad it's only about 3000 pages worth of material...

Malazan

[Anonymous Coward]

Read The Malazan Book of the Fallen, two authors writing their own miniseries with the primary author (Steven Erikson) having already finished writing the 10 novel main series and planning to write 2 more 3 novel miniseries! Plus it's awesome.

Re:Malazan

[jahudabudy]

I don't know about awesome. If you just read the "prime" series, the ones by Erikson, there are so many plot gaps filled in by the "secondary" series that it quickly becomes confusing. He also keeps introducing completely new people/places/plots and spending 600 pages on them before giving you any idea whatsoever how they relate to what you've read already. There are really 3 or 4 separate stories that have some slight overlap where the protagonists of each story briefly interact with the other protagonists. Each story in itself is engaging, but the structure could use quite a bit of overhauling.

Re:Malazan

[zlives]

"Each story in itself is engaging"

Re:Malazan

[Americano]

but the structure could use quite a bit of overhauling

The farther along I get in the Malazan series (working through vol. 7 now), the taller an order I think this is, really. You really are getting dropped into a world (and story) whose history stretches across thousands of years, numerous continents, and a host of species and civilizations. If Erikson held your hand through building that whole world up & explaining it to the reader, he could easily write dozens of books set in that world without exhausting the details... each book covers a fairly complete (and engaging) story as you noted yourself - filling in the details and making the connections is something that could take another 10 books if he had to do it explicitly.

But...

[Thuktun]

...will there be arms folded under breasts, tugging of braids, and rampant male/female miscommunications?

Re:But...

[lgw]

Nah, there will be clear and well-understood male/female communications, which so violates the rules of the universe that the universe itself will be destroyed and remade. Bet on it.

Re:But...

[ultranova]

Nah, there will be clear and well-understood male/female communications, which so violates the rules of the universe that the universe itself will be destroyed and remade. Bet on it.

Isn't that basically the whole plot? Metaphysics of WoT are divided into male and female halfs, and the attempt to find an unisex power found one that's trying to destroy the fabric of reality.

So Rand's quest is to ensure that men and women can never understand one another, and he's engaged to three women. No wonder the poor guy has issues.

Synopsis

[F34nor]

1st book great, 2nd book OK, 3rd book readable, 4th on... wait who the fuck is this character I forgot about 3 books ago, shit I really don't care anymore.

Re:Synopsis

[tnk1]

I made it to book nine before I flamed out, but I have a *very* good memory and it was still touch and go for a long time before that.

The REAL reason for the books ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert Jordan was working out his personal demons and own life philosophy by creating an entire sequence of interactions.

The writing is inconsistent, often boring in the later books save for action sequences, somehow masterfully compelling ... in contrast to the commentary on the give and take between the sexes.

No big surprise given the authors background, really. .. and the fact that his wife was editing.

He no where near touched on creating the universe Tolkien did. He dominates nothing in that regard and i hate seeing that quote on his books.

Mayan Apocalypse

[neoshroom]

There will be a Mayan Apocalypse. The Mayan Apocalypse is not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning...

Re:Mayan Apocalypse

[Anonymous Coward]

Now just pad that out to twelve pages with a pointless side quest ...

Re:Mayan Apocalypse

[Lewis Daggart]

There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning...

It's like he was warning us from the first book..

FINISH HIM

[Anonymous Coward]

Sanderson, please release me from this story. I made the mistake of getting addicted to the first book and I've been waiting for something to be resolved ever since. The end of the 12th book was really good and for me and Rand a cloud had been lifted. I am intrigued by the "flash forward" that Avendha experienced at the end of the 13th book.

BUT IT'S TAKEN ME 10,000+ PAGES TO GET HERE!

tor books

[lister king of smeg]

am i the only one who's first thought was about the amonimity proxy network tor rather than the publisher

Re:tor books

[ThePeices]

Im happy to inform you that yes, you are in fact the only one who thought of that.

Here's a cookie.

Author

[Old Wolf]

It should be noted that Tor didn't actually consult the author about the release date

eBook release

[plazman30]

The eBook release had better come out the same day as the hardback release, and not delayed 6 months like the last time. In reality it takes about a month to OCR and proofread.

Re:eBook release

[ThePeices]

OCR what? Its the 21st century, authors don't write books using typewriters anymore.

They haven't for many decades.

That was Sanderson's decision

[Namarrgon]

And if you want to know why he split them, sit down and he'll tell you. It wasn't about the money - it was just too big.

Re:That was Sanderson's decision

[CanHasDIY]

Actually, I already knew that.


This rant was namely proxy rage on behalf of my wife, who has been awaiting the conclusion of this series for a decade now.

I'm only on book 10 myself, and it will probably take me a year to get through 11 and 12, so the timeline actually works out well for me (sorry, sweetie).

I am glad to see at least a couple of people got that the rant was supposed to be comical.

WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[TiggertheMad]

I have had the same experience, and I can't work that out. People who like WoT don't defend attacks on the series with, 'No way, you are totally wrong, it is the best series ever!". They respond with, "Yeah it gets pretty awful in places, I sure hope this new guy can pick up the story". I feel kind of bad for the fans that they seem to be resigned to such a second rate story.

I read the first book, and it was the most horrible piece of shit that I have had the misfortune to read in years. The pacing was bad, the characters were forgettable, and the plot was meandering. On top of that, it read like Jordan just finished LoTR and really wanted to write something "just as awesome". The only reason I finished the first book was out of morbid curiosity: mainly, am I missing something? Why are fans reading 8 or 10 books of this stuff, when it is this awful?

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, come on. As it goes on, yes, it's not great. But I enjoyed the first three books the most out of the whole series. Maybe it's just you?

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are fans reading 8 or 10 books of this stuff, when it is this awful?

Because your opinion is that it is awful. Other disagree.

Here's a life tip for you: different people enjoy different things. When you grow up, you will come to realize this.

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[TiggertheMad]

Oh, come on. As it goes on, yes, it's not great. But I enjoyed the first three books the most out of the whole series. Maybe it's just you?

Possibly. I wanted to like the book, I had heard some interesting things about the series. I read an occasional sci-fi and fantasy book, and I really enjoy the good ones. I have to be honest though, the book was just really poorly written.

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[Vlaix]

Trite argument is trite. There are things awful, even though there are also people to enjoy them. Yes, crap is enjoyable and nothing changes the fact that it's objectively crap.

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[Random BedHead Ed]

I read the first book, and it was the most horrible piece of shit that I have had the misfortune to read in years. The pacing was bad, the characters were forgettable, and the plot was meandering. ... am I missing something? Why are fans reading 8 or 10 books of this stuff, when it is this awful?

You were indeed missing something: specifically, the next six books, which are extremely good. I definitely felt the same as you did about book one, The Eye of the World. I hated the dream sequences, found the characters uninteresting, thought they argued too much, found the enemy somewhat lame, and so on.

But I was encouraged to keep reading by friends who loved the Wheel of Time, and who seemed like addicts trying to get me hooked on their drug of choice. So I read The Great Hunt (book two) and by the end I was an addict as well, and not out of mere habit, because the more Jordan builds his world in the early books, the better it gets, and the more you realize that he has a very thorough vision of how the world is put together. You start to trust that he knows the ending, knows every plot twist from now until the ending, and when it ends, it's going to be a bombshell. One of my favorite things to do after I got several books into the series was was to go back to read the prologue to Eye of the World, a sequence that made little sense when I first read it, but upon revisiting it, it fits right in. It reads like Jordan had already written the next seven books in his head when he started the first one.

Sadly, around book eight he becomes obsessed with forgettable minor characters, the interminable siege of Tar Valon, and other trivialities. When Jordan, amidst the most boring sequels ever, penned a prequel, I dropped out. So sad. It could have been wonderful if he'd stuck to the main story and ended it around book ten.

I am told by a few people who have more tenacity than me that the last Jordan book was a return to form, and the Sanderson sequels have been quite good.

Re:WoT - An ego booster for bad writers...

[LihTox]

Books do not have to be perfect to be good. Fans generally like Robert Jordan's world-building, plot, and characters (though everyone has a character or two they hate). If his pacing and prose are not always stellar, that does not to take away from the parts he does do well.

Having waited so long for the series' conclusion, I know I have been reluctant to recommend the series simply because I don't want them to deal with the frustration of waiting that I've put up with (and mind you, I started reading the book in 1994, after the 6th book was already published). Once the series is complete next year, I imagine you'll see more fans talking up the series as a whole.

But it'll never be everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine.

Why you didn't like it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wot The best series I have ever read is awesome. But i can understand the issue people had with pace in books 7,8,9.

Robert Jordan originally signed a one book deal. ANd after reading book 1 it is very complete as a story. No cliffhanger It seems to end but leaves you wanting a more complete storyline. But it is a complete book as we ( normally) judge books.

After that Tor told Jordan he could write a series based on book 1.

Jordan;s approach however was different than even most epic writers use. He envisions that the WoT was just one BIG book. Book 1 is more like how authors divide books internally much like LotR.. which has 4-5 books internally I believe. Now if you go back and rethink the series there are 3-4 slow books in the series. But there are always slow points in a story. His genius was making cities stand out. Understanding that each culture was different, and you understood why they were different. Because that impacted the storyline.

All too often we fall into the sitcom paradigm where characters don;t grow -- don;t mature -- or they always react the same no matter where they are. Unfortunately that is not a good show to watch after a while and it makes for horrible reading. Understanding what a character is seeing and how that is different from where you know that they have been allows you to understand their actions.

Sanderson is a GREAT author -- i have made a point to read everything he has written. But these characters are fully fleshed out now. There is no need for character development anymore this is the endgame and there can only be action. His development style uses flashbacks a lot and Jordon uses the surrouding environment. Different styles that are both effective.

Think of this as one really long book. And you are complaining about 4 chapters out of 15. Granted that about 2000 pages -- but out of close to 12000 pages.-- just a little perspective.

Oh, mother's milk in a cup!

[SeaFox]

I was wondering why I hadn't seen a pre-order link on Amazon yet. I gotta wait almost another year to find out how it ends now?

Not just Bova

[Done Scotus]

equally an editor that worked on Heinlein.

Get your new Mayan calenders...

[Anonymous Coward]

...before the current one expires and the next cycle begins.