Anyone read it? (It’s a prequel to his increasingly-slowmoving Wheel of Time series).
Is it worth it?
It’s all right. Not amazing, but not like Crossroads of Twilight either…
It’s ok. Jordan wrote it before his writing really declined.
The man desperately needs an editor.
I haven’t read it. I refuse to read it until the man finishes the damn series, because the very idea that this man had put the project that people are growing old waiting for him to finish on hold until he finished a full novelization of a PREQUEL infuriates me.
I’ve slogged through four thousand descriptions of braid tugging, ten thousand listings of the details of embroidery on gowns, two thousand timeline backtracks over ten books, and at least five hundred misunderstandings of motive between the characters. It’s like the literary converse of Einstein’s theory of relativity…the closer we get to the end, the slower we’re going.
And then he just halts everything and decides to expand a short story prequel of the series. WHAT!?
They need to put an editor that Jordan is NOT married to on the project. They really, really, really need to do this. Please!
I wrote a very long reply with the pros and cons of reading New Spring, and then I closed the window instead of minimizing. sigh
I’m one of those people who ran out and bought the book the day it came out, because I am Robert Jordan’s bitch. And instead of the long, lovely review I wrote, I’ll just trim it down for you:
If you are no-holds-barred in love with the world and all things WoT, go get it. It’s nothing earth-shattering that changes entire theories or brings anything new to light, but it’s a lot of interesting insight into the workings of the White Tower. There is considerably less sniffing and braid-tugging, though still a lot about dresses. I enjoyed it, but it’s not necessary for the enjoyment of the series as a whole. I recommend reading it at some point, but if you’re not all-fired-up about it, don’t run out for it right away.
Draelin, I intend to read it. But not until he finishes the series. I’m protesting his taking this “break” to do a prequel novel that’s unrelated to the storyline of the series.
I don’t normally ride authors for having relatively long breaks between books in a series, but then I don’t usually read series that have this many books in them, either. The length of time between them is becoming a problem for me because I’m losing the thread of what’s going on and who the second-tier and below characters are, and I don’t want to have to gather and read 11 books again so I’m ready to read the 12th. It’s not so bad when I have to re-read 3 books so I know what’s going on for the fourth one. But having to read more than 10 very long books to prepare for the next one is just too much…
And yet I, as well, am Mr. Jordan’s bitch, because I’ll keep reading them as they come out, just praying that we’ll eventually get to the Bore and have an actual climax to the series.
I read the original New Spring that Jordon wrote for Robert Silverburg’s Legend Anthology. I bought that book for George Martin’s The Hedge Knight (and that was a great story), but New Spring was probably my second favorite contribution. Having said that, from what I’ve heard, the new version has basically the same plot and has just been “fleshed out”, with more early scenes in the White Tower and so on. I can’t see buying it just for that, especially since one of the things I liked about New Spring is that the time and length constraints required Jordon to focus on telling a story without dozens of subplots and unnecessary point-of-views, and I’m afraid that without those contraints the new New Spring will be more of the same from him.
Plus, I’m somewhat of the same mind as jayjay on his taking a break from WOT when its fan have been waiting so long for him to start tieing things up. I didn’t mind him writing the original novella for Legends, since it was relatively short, and it was even a bit presitigious for him to be picked. But to take another break to lengthen the story for novelization so that he can either make more money off of it or increase it to his usual bloated standards (pick one), well, I have trouble with that.
What break? His publishing schedule for the main series remains unaltered. All he’s doing is fleshing out and publishing some of the backstory that he already has plotted, probably to get around a mild case of writers’ block.
Wouldn’t a person have to be a writer to have writer’s block?
-Gorsnak, who quit reading several books ago and will not ever read anything with Jordan’s name on it again
Had no idea that was even out.
Great, now I can experience the joy of watching things not happen in a fully realized fantasy world…several years in the past. Thank you, Robert Jordan.
Oh geez, you mean he novelized it?
Argh.
Yep. It’s remarkably short for a Jordan novel, though. Only 384 pages.