I’m reading the Wheel of Time series, on the fourth book now, and I’ve come to realization. These people are idiots. Stubborn idiots. When they’re not being egotistical bullies (Nynaeve and Faile, alternately), they display all the interpersonal skills of a rabid badger with a firmly lodged, spiked buttplug. They create problems new problems with every sentence! They can’t speak to each other without creating a new and more troublesome issue, all this while facing a massive external threat that would be enough to force Skinheads and Black Panthers to kiss each other. To boot, any relationship between men and women in the book is nothing but a glorified wrestling match, with two supposedly in love seeking nothing but power over each other. And trust! There exists no such thing among these people! I’m still reading, Jordan can keep my attention for now, but these people are becoming steadily more irritating. Am I the only one to think this? Does it get any better?
It gets worse before it gets better.
actually, i enjoy the constant bickering, the little power struggles between characters, etc. granted, sometimes the characters can be painfully and unrealistically ignorant about their situation and the people around them, but that can be good comic relief sometimes.
but if you hate those aspects of the series (and your post strongly suggests you do), then you might as well stop now. it doesn’t get any better.
just a little aside, matt’s complete lack of personal responsibility is starting to irk me… if i have to hear his “i’m no bloody hero” rants one more time, i’m gonna flip out.
sorry, sorry, that was off topic. it wont happen again.
Do a search on Wheel of Time - there’s some hysterically funny threads about it all. Magdalene had a wonderful thread in the pit not too long ago 
I’m not sure why I am still wading through the morass that is this series. I guess I hope some shining day Jordan will resolve it all.
OTOH I’m getting increasingly irritated by his slapping fetish.
The women are always parading around naked and spanking each other and trying to dominate each other. Which should be interesting and sexy, yet it provokes nothing but eye-rolling and yawns.
One of the problems with the series is after the first few books the main characters are spread out all over the place. This works in a trilogy - the first book establishes the relationships and the quest, in the second book the characters go off and find themselves and develop their skills, and the third book they come back together for some kind of resolution. Lloyd Alexander stretched this arc over about 5 books and still kept it wonderful. But we’re on what, book 9? I’ve lost count.
In each book he invents something like 70,000 new characters, describes what they are wearing and what makes them the sort of prickly and annoying characters that they inevitably turn out to be. Then you never hear from these characters again, until 3 books later, when you are trying to puzzle out who the fuck they are.
Characters we should care about at this point:
Rand
Egwene
Mat
Perrin
Moraine (isn’t she dead now? I lost track of her)
The Forsaken, who need to be 1,000 times less bumbling and 10,000 times more scary.
With maybe a shout out to Thom Merrilin, Gareth Byrne, and Davram Bashere for being cool.
That’s it. Let’s get the main characters in one place and bring it on home.
I just know Rand is going to live through the whole thing without going crazy and killing all his friends. Grrrr…
P.S. MikeG you’d better have returned Winter’s Heart to the library, or I will hunt you down like a dog.
Well, Perrin Aybara strikes me as a reasonably well-balanced, solid man of integrity. The only thing I see about him that is markedly psychologically unhealthy is that he is in love with that harpy Faile.
Min wasn’t a dysfunctional character for the first five books or so; unfortunately, she found Rand again and whenever any woman comes into the presence of Rand, Jordan thinks she must automatically become spitefully manipulative. Min, alas, turned out to be no different.
But most of them, yes, are a pretty depressing lot of dysfunctional characters.
no shout out to Lan?
what is that all about?
Sorry, a shout out to Lan, before he married Nynaeve and became the series’ most boring character.
It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who despises these characters. Frankly, the only way I’d pick up the series again (dropped it after book 4) is if someone told that Rand had gone off his rocker and started a killing spree involving the detailed and horrific deaths of virtually every other character in the series. It would take another four books, given a single page for each death scene, but it would be worth it.
On of the things I initially loved about the series was the complexity of the story. But now it’s just way our of hand. The plot threads are way out of control.
But I keep going back for more.
I’ll second that. The series really really drags for books 5,6 and 7. You’ll want to take an ice-pick to your skull.
Robert Jordan has never heard the phrase ‘tying loose ends’. I seriously doubt his ability to finish this epic satisfactorily. But, none-the-less, I’ll get every book when it comes out and read it because I’ve got the word ‘sucker’ printed across my forehead and I’m hooked on his world.
The real drag is, that you cease sympathisizing(sp) with everyone because you realize that they are all selfish jerks.
When does it get better? As near as I can tell, each main character is dominated by a single trait. I don’t know that anyone has learned anything. But, as long as I can find copies at the used book store, I suppose I’ll keep reading. I figure some time in the next few decades we’ll get to the end of the series.
I absolutely despise The Wheel of Time. I read the first four books in their entirety and about 1/2 of the fifth book. I threw it down in disgust. Jordan can’t write female characters and does only marginally better with the male characters plus it seems that his editor allows way too much to get through. Really? What were you thinking in your assinine descriptions of women’s clothing? I don’t care, get on with the story and end it. It isn’t as much of an epic as it is a farce of an epic that will never ever end now. Blah. I would be harsher but this isn’t the pit.
HUGS!
Sqrl
So what you’re saying is that these characters behave a lot like real people?
Yes, because I always strip my female friends naked and whip them with tree branches when they fail to acknowledge my superiority. And I’m perfectly happy to enter a three-way marriage with a crazy man. Uh-huh, yeah.
If I hear another word about a dress being slashed with ANYTHING other than a sword… So why am I still reading? I’m already two-thirds through the fourth book. I read the first eight years ago, then forgot the series. When I found the second one, I thought to myself, “Oh, perhaps this will tie up all those nasty loose ends!” No. Book nine, and them ends is still a-danglin’. Still, I have some perverse need for epic drudgery that keeps me reading, no matter how furious I get. Seriously, sometimes I’ll throw the book down, and go off to do something phsyically violent before I can start up again. I think I’m going to read Lord of the Rings again, just to settle my nerves.
I was refering to the egotistical bullies, stubborn idiots, horrid interpersonal skills, and men vs. women bits.
I’d like to think that not all people are like that. Maybe most are, but those aren’t the sort of people us fantasy fans want to read books about.
Besides, it’s not just that the characters are incompetant, narrow-minded idiots - it’s that they’re so fucking shallow. If there’s one unforgivable literary character flaw, it’s lack of depth.
This is so true. They’re slways sniffing & folding their hands beneath their breasts (of which RJ ssems to be obsessed by). Things have gotten a bit better in the latest book (and the plot actually inched forward!).
And everything else. I don’t need every single little thing described down to the tiniest detail. He needs a better editor.