In regards to LOTR’s “Gollum” versus Jordan’s “gholams,” they’re both taken from Jewish(?) mythology and the creature therein, called the “gholem,” I think.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
I’ve just finished A Game of Thrones and in the middle of A Clash of Kings now. They’re really good that I find myself rooting for the anti-hero at times. It’s just one climax after another, like the orgasm everybody wants and heard about and never had.
(G.R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire)
Good Lord! Exactly opposite. The Thomas Covenant trilogy were some of the worst books I’ve ever read.
Mordant’s Need, OTOH, are some of my Favourite Books of All Time.
thx
For anyone who is interested, Wheel of Time #10, Crossroads of Twilight is due to come out in November.
Yep, the last several in the series have driven me nuts, but I’m still hooked enough to be excited …
I’m in the same predicament, Winkie. RJ is frustrating as hell, and needs a good editor, but I’m hooked. But not so badly as I was before I discovered George Martin.
Anybody notice that Martin’s books have at least one plot-advancing event every chapter?
RJ, take notice!
…actually, I gave up on RJ around book 7 or so, when I got tired of everybody (except the Aes Sedai, natch) sweating all the time. Hey, I live in Phoenix…it’s hot enough here! I thought Winterfell was pretty refreshing, temperaturewise.
Just for the record, I loved the first trilogy of Thomas Covenant, got through the second (although I bet somebody I could open the second book of the series at random and find the word “despair”, and won the bet) and couldn’t manage the first book of Mordant’s Need. Ugh. (Sorry, Alessan.) I also had Dragonbone Chair recommended, but haven’t managed to get through the first book yet.
I loved Tigana but had nightmares about the Deathwheels. (Was that the one with the Deathwheels? Think so.)
I thought Pit threads were supposed to piss you off, or allow you to commiserate with the terminally pissed-off…this one is great!
-T
Yes, Jordan’s characters suck and are as annoying as they could possilby be. I think it all has a purpose, though.
One of the things that the Dragon Reborn is going to do is the Kinslaying, where he will kill all of his friends. That’s going to be so amazingly great . . .
If he writes it, which he probably won’t.
And assuming that I’ve read the books correctly, which is a pretty big assumption.
But man, that Kinslaying would be so great.
Whack
Take that, Nynaeve!
This is the series that made me swear never to start a series unless the final book was already written or the author was dead. Something which has saved months of my life for other pursuits rather then rereading the series each time a new one came out.
Well, at least for Epic series.
Sigh, where is your outline of the story arc Jordan?
Enh.
I like it.
I like how the series has drawn out into such a sprawling epic. I like the detailed descriptions of every character. (Some of these characters irritate me personally, but that’s an indication that these are well-drawn characters.) I enjoy the descriptive narrative. (Sometimes even the tiniest details have signifance.) I like how the plot was developed into such myriad of threads. I love the recurring symmetries in the world RJ creates.
I hope he goes on for at least a dozen books. 
It’s not a sprawling epic in my book, WOT is an enourmous, sprawling catalog of minutiae and disfunction.
IMO, of course. 
Sounds good to me!
I kind of faded out on Jordan, I read the first five in a short amount of time, after that it was always too much work trying to remember all the characters whenever a book came out.
Goodkind on the other hand managed to surprise me. I happily devoured the first five books, then the change in style and the political messages just hit me in the face. When I began the sixth book I actually shouted out loud, “What the fuck is this, commies versus Ayn Rand?!”, and that was the end of that series for me.
Unfortunately it turned me off fantasy to such an extent that I haven’t been able to even continue Martin’s excellent Song of Ice and Fire.
Trying to keep up with all the characters, plots, and places after 9 books averaging about 800 pages a piece is difficult at best. I’m reading Path of Daggers and I’m trying to figure out when Rand starting reaching out for the True Power instead of the One Power. Is the True Power the same as the True Source? When did Liandrin end up being collared and made into a damane?
Of course Path of Daggers is only one of two fantasy books that made any mention of homoseuxality however veiled and the first one to my knowledge with black people.
Marc
<True RJ fan>
What evidence do you have to back that up?
</TRJF>
Great Scott - I just realized that I’ve been reading this series for 15 years!!! :eek:
I quit in the middle of a paragraph in Lord of Chaos for about 4 months. I thought Crown of Swords was pretty good, and then Path of Daggers sucked. I liked parts of Winter’s heart, and it shows that Bobby may be getting ready to finish in the next few books. I think the last 2 could have been combined into one book about 1000 pages long and been much better. He could have cut out all of the filler and such. The ending to Winter’s Heart is pretty cool.
There are at least two other fantasy authors who have written homosexual characters. Several of Goodkind’s Mord-Sith are lesbians, and don’t bother to hide it, and Mercedes Lackey’s Vanyel is a gay young man, the protagonist of one of the Valdemar trilogies, and a legendary figure in all the later ones.
Wow. I’m just fascinated, I tell you. I’m just wondering about how a writer who just blathers on and on with minutiae can manage to capture his audience and keep them reading. Part of me is morbidly curious to see what Jordan does and wondering if I should just take the plunge and try to wade through Eye of the World, but part of me is saying: Get rid of that book and run! Run as fast as you can and don’t look back! [giggle]
Check out www.wotmania.com or amazon.com . It’s announced already.;j
Lackey writes gays and lesbians into a number of her stories, and I recall seeing an increasing number of other SF/Fantasy books with homosexual protagonists and or black protagonists. IIRC, in Heilein’s Podykane of Mars, Podykane’s uncle is black, or so deeply tanned as to be essentially black. Also, look to Street Lethal and Gorgon Child by Steven Barnes to find another strongly written black protagonist.
Does Mary Gentle’s Ash count? Oh, and IIRC her doctor was gay.