As I understand, the Wheel of Time books started out as, well, readable. About four or five books in, a whole lot of nothing starts happening. As internet wit mightygodking put it, the plot becomes “Characters show up.” (Rinkworks.com’s Book-A-Minute sums up the umpteenth book as “We’re waiting for the next book to wait for the next book.”
So I was thinking, I could read the good books, have everything worthwhile from the rest summed up (it should be short, right?), then go on to Brandon Sanderson’s book.
Good plan, there is just one problem. Even the first book has the basic flaw that there are too many characters, too many subplots and sideshows. And then every book after that adds more characters, splits them up over more territory, adds more subplots, and maybe just maybe resolves perhaps a single subplot.
They were still readable through book six (Lord of Chaos) but book seven (A Crown of Swords) broke me. So I would stop between those. But you may have a different level of tolerance than I do. I would kind of suggest just going till you wear out. But by all accounts book 9 (Winter’s Heart) is the worst of the lot. So I would skip that in any case.
The whole thing is too bad as there is some great writing buried in their amongst the detailed descriptions of dresses and Nynaeve’s constant (and constantly referred to) braid pulling. But yeah I’ve never seen a series more in need of a Reader’s Digest version.
Oh, book 10 (Crossroads of Twilight) was definitely the worst of the lot. Really 7-10 were where most of the problems were, but 10 was the nadir. 11 and especially 12 (Sanderson) get back to being really good again, though.
