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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."
the Mayan apocalypse..
I was having a google just last night to find out when it was coming. I can't wait!
After Sanderson took over the books have tremendously improved, almost back to the initial volumes.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We can finally get an official count on the number of times somebody tugs on a braid or smooths a skirt in the series.
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.
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.
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.
Fucking Epic.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crap. Didn't see the one sentence part! Just replace all periods with semicolons or something :P
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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 :)
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.
#include <signature.h>
You'll be disappointed. None of that happens in the first book.
Reminds me of the original The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern. At least how that book is described :)
Here I will unashamedly admit, that's exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote the comment.
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
" will span 15 books and over 10,000 pages."
awesome..to bad it's only about 3000 pages worth of material...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWI8w9kLAks&feature=related
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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...will there be arms folded under breasts, tugging of braids, and rampant male/female miscommunications?
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.
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.
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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.
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!
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...
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
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.
am i the only one who's first thought was about the amonimity proxy network tor rather than the publisher
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
It should be noted that Tor didn't actually consult the author about the release date
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.
Unless, that brain cancer you dont know about does you in.
You should probably go see a doctor.
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.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
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?
"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.
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.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Pretty stupid.. seven's the part in which Voldemort finally gets his ass kicked.
"Each story in itself is engaging"
equally an editor that worked on Heinlein.
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
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.