The tragedy is it started so well!! In the first books things happened! It was exciting! I was genuinely interested in what would happen to the characters. Now I read on because I want/need to know the ending. Unfortunately I am not enjoying the journey half as much. It is particularly distressing to wait TWO YEARS for a book that disappoints you.
Maybe TOR will release a collection of Special Edition WOT pamphlets detailing the parts where something happens after the series ends? Hmm…or maybe I could just rip the 3 or 4 pages out of each novel and make my own WOT book from them…
It’s good to know that I haven’t missed anything by stopping at book 8. Someone let me know the ending if he ever finishes the series, okay?
The incredibly frustrating thing about WoT is that there is an incredible story and a fascinating world underneath the mountains of minutiae. It just takes an inordinate amount of slogging through detailed descriptions of the embroidery on the hem of a throwaway character-mannequin’s dress to get to it.
Yeah, I agree that the WoT series had a lot of really good world-building and storytelling that Jordan just ruined with his bad writing. The concept of the Aes Sedai and the different divisions amoung them would have been so interesting to explore. Instead, we get nothing but a slew of chapters full of braid-tugging, skirt-adjusting, sniffing, and folding-arms-beneath-the-breasts.
The Forsaken were an interesting concept, I thought, because they offered a fascinating glimpse into the world of Lews Therin’s time. I also liked the part in book 4, I think it was, where the history of Aiel was explained. But even these parts were not enough to save the book for me, so after book 8 I simply stopped wasting money on the series and stopped caring about what happened to the main characters.
Almost all authors have close family and friends read their stuff first. That’s par for the course. Having your wife be your editor is apparently not such a good idea.
Or maybe it is. Jordan has a great scam going. He pumps out books with no content and people buy them.
Jordan actually reminds me of Victor Hugo in a way. Les Miserables is an epic masterpiece, but you have to dig your way through entire chapters of the irrelevant history of the Bishopric of ___ _____ and the biography of Monsigneur _____ and the specifics of the manufacture of jet jewelry and the sordid past of the Convent of Ste. ______ in the slums of Paris to get to it. My eyes glazed over so many times reading that novel I thought I was a doughnut…
I tried to be patient with the series, I really did, hoping that sooner or later something, anything would happen, but I gave up at book eight. I second Lissla’s comment; let me know when it’s over.
Recovering WoTist here. James Oliver Rigney needs to be chastised severely. With or by a semi-frozen haddock.