The next book in the Wheel of Time has been out for a bit… and it’s getting horrendous reviews from Amazon and even major fans for being the ultimate in Jordan’s refusal to advance his plot. Despite being one of the biggest fantasy series in recent history, even hardcore fans seem to be pulling their hair out over this (characters yanking on their braids endlessly for chapters at a time and not doing much else besides seems to have become Jordan’s signature style). What is going on here?
I stopped reading the series over this. The real kicker was when I read one of these books, and made it 200 pages in before realizing that I had read it before! The idea that I couldn’t tell that the plot was in the wrong place shows just how little plot there is.
But isn’t it fun to talk with friends about plot lines and characters for hours and hours because you have forgotten half of them and they have forgotten the other half?
“Who the heck was the man who called himself Bors?” - “I have no idea.”
Sometimes I wonder if RJ spends his time between books reading and re-reading fan reviews and theories, and then spends the last 3 months before the next installment is due trying to make sure that he is 2 steps ahead of said fan base.
“Ohh-ho-ho, so you think you know who Cyndane really is, do you? You think Cyndane is Lanfear reincarnated - well, have I got a surprise for you! She’s really 2 Forsaken that have been coalesced into one being that is both male and female who demonstrates deadly evil whilst having a curiously snazzy dress sense - but wait, there’s more! (Or at least there will be more after you all start posting theories and then I will change my plot yet again for no good reason just so I can get one over on all you little smarty-pantses know-it-alls who think you know my series better than I do).”
So yet another book is turned out, with yet more characters introduced, and without any resolution given to at least some of the past mysteries. (So why exactly was that old librarian in Cairhien knocked off by a Gholam - what did he discover?) It just seems that each book gets more and more convoluted, without any real resolution of plot lines, and each sub-story is getting more and more complicated so that RJ is safe in the knowledge that he is the only person on this planet that can half-way figure out what’s likely to happen next.
It’s like he’s created a monster and now he has no clue what to do with the thing.
It’s just a shame that the monster has turned out to be a braid-tugging old goat called Fluffy that isn’t so intriguing anymore.
Yeah, Crossroads of Twilight was fucking horrible - and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean, I’ve defended RJ before, here and elsewhere, because I like his earlier books. Once I read this one, however, I had nothing good to say about it, because it had no content to talk about. It’s only redeeming feature is that at least everything happens around the same time, which hasn’t been true for awhile in the WOT - but spending 680 pages just to synchronize all your plotlines, without advancing anything, is pure bullshit, especially when you’re asking people to pay $30 for the privelege of watching you do it. I bought a copy the day it came out, read it, and reurned it, because I didn’t want my purchase reflected in the 90-day sales of the book. I may or may not pick it up in paperback, depending on whether I can muster enough interest to give a fuck about the series still.
It’s too bad. Books 1 - 3 were good, book 4 was brilliant, but apparently books 6 - N (N>100) are all going to suck hard. Unfortunately, all of the later books have been bestsellers, while the early ones weren’t, at least when they were initally released. We can expect to see more of the same whenever he writes the next one, and I’m not sure I have any interest in that.
I’m plowing thru the damned thing now, more as a chore than a pleasure, and already I’m pissed. The prologue is 94 pages, for god’s sake! Mostly about extremely minor characters we haven’t seen in the past several books, or introducing new ones. I am getting very fed up with RJ.
I agree with most everything that has been said in this thread. I felt like I was reading the first (rather long) half of a book. I mean… that’s it??? I won’t spoil it, but that was the climax? Convoluting the one plot thread that I was sure was going to wrap up, like, two books ago. Fuck.
And I know it’s almost a cliche to say, but Faile needs to die, post haste. Actually, change that – if she dies, Perrin is going to be the most boring, one-dimensional character in a book ever, breaking the record he already owns. I don’t know what I want to happen there. Give him Faile back, he’s insipid again. Kill Faile, he’s moping and yawnsville. Maybe it’s time for Perrin to die.
Feh. April is when the next George R. R. Martin comes out, yeah?
Man, even J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t need this much wordage to tell a frickin’ story, and he was going through the entire fraggin’ history of Middle Earth, for potato’s sake!!!
I quit after the fourth book when it became apparent he had no intention of finishing the series anytime soon and I realized I was losing track of characters…by the fourth book, I was simply NOT READING any passage that didn’t deal with Rand, Matt and the other guy from the town (been too long, can’t remember his name).
Not worth my money and time. Jordan badly badly badly needs an editor. But it’s probably too late.
It is kind of encouraging, though, to think that there’s such a demand for fantasy fiction that this guy can pay his bills and put his children through school or whatever without ever actually having to finish a story…
I honestly liked book one. It was the most grand and far-reaching book I’d seen since Tolkein. (not the best, but the biggest in scope) by the time I got to book 5, I realized he’d run out of plot. How can one man write so much on so little? Why must he drag all the cool parts out to the point at which they are no longer interesting, and then drag out all the dull parts even longer?
Well, don’t discount a purely obsessive nature; one concerned with getting every detail and nuance in. If it were money alone he wanted, he’d write faster, more to the point, conclude the series, and then write tons of “backfill” involving the WOTworld. That he could string out to 25 volumes, with one or two coming out every few months like clockwork.
I think at the beginning RJ had a rather short plot all mapped out, but when he discovered he could make loads of money from it he decided to drag things out.
And now he’s caught in his own net - Too many details to take care of, too many Forsaken to kill off (and revive), too many loose ends…it will never end. NEVER, I SAY!!
He has an editor - his wife, Harriet - which may be part of the problem.
As a side note, I sometimes wonder how modern day writers deal with this relatively new form of criticism - where people read the book and then lambast/praise it on every forum/review/journal/website available. I was reading an article in a magazine a few months ago that discussed this development, where a number of authors admitted to spending quite a lot of time perusing reader reviews - particular on the bookstore websites such as Amazon. Every author interviewed then mentioned how negative reviews often lead them to change forth-coming works - even if ever so slightly - from their original plans. Even 10 years ago authors pretty much just had to deal with professional criticism, whereas now, every reader is a potential (publishable) critic.
For authors of popular series such as Jordan and Rowling, there’s also the double edged sword of their popularity. With 1-3 year gaps between books, fans fill in the time by dissecting every little detail - and particularly look for anomalies in character development or plot lines. There is no room for mistakes anymore.
I guess my question is: have we, the now vocal fans, become our own worst enemies by loving popular series’ so much that authors are feeling the pressure of creating a perfect installment, and in doing so, spend years rather than months churning out their next work in the hope that the formerly voiceless fans will finally be made happy?
What are the odds that he dies before finishing off this series? I haven’t read the lastest book (though I likely will, eventually), but I am already annoyed at previous ones, so this doesn’t sound promising at all! Which one was it…book 8 I think…where Rand spends the entire bloody time riding his horse through the forest of Illian, moping because people are dying in his name? Fuck man, deal with it and MOVE ON!!! And I agree that Perrin is terribly boring…his character had potential, but his 10-book long refusal to accept the wolves just makes him really whiny and pathetic. Mats character, now that he’s finally back into the story (:rolleyes"), has the best plotline going, but quixotic’s comment about not wrapping up a plot makes me think nothing’s gonna happen with whatshername (Tuon?). Sigh.