**irishgirl]/b], his male characters aren’t so hot either.
Even so, I want to read that puppy to the end. And I had really written him and his series off after those dreadful books 7-10.
but #11 had some traction.
Oh, I know, but they generally saved the poor ickle females in some daring way at the end, thus proving their superiority.
Plus, the men tended not to be naked, spanked or tied up quite so often.
My conclusion re his female characters is that he didn’t date enough in high school. Does anyone else recall the Bloom County cartoon with a busty superhero woman saying, “Here’s you pencil, Stan.”? It reminds me of that. I second every bad thing anyone said about his female characters. They suck.
The funny thing is that I like detail, and little bits of day-to-day trivia about homes and food and clothing. I like the Recluce books because of the blacksmithing and woodworking and castle designs. I like Robin McKinley’s depictions of horse-leeching and the boat stuff in the Earthsea books. WoT bores me to tears because it doesn’t feel right. The descriptions run “In this village they eat peas and wear wool. Two villages over the villagers eat turnips and wear linen. Sometimes they wear high collars.”
It doesn’t create any frigging atmosphere, it just feels like he’s throwing out bad descriptions as part of an enormous badly-plotted game of D&D. It’s like he sat down and thought, “How much more can I write if I include terrible descriptions of everything?”.
Aargh.
Well, Mat does spend an entire book being kept naked, spanked, tied up and covered in pink ribbons. And he’s the “cool” one. At least none of the women are actually kept as sex slaves at any point.
I agree with Lissla about the dating thing, as further evidenced by the fact that every male character feels the need to constantly agonise about how bad they are with girls, and how they wish <insert other male character here> were around, because they’re so much more knowledgeable.
I think basically what it comes down to is that every character is an irritating, monomaniacal, contemptible, whiny sack of shit with no redeeming features whatsoever. Gender issues are almost incidental… 
Reading has always been something I do for enjoyment. It is supposed to be a release from work and stress, not a SOURCE of it. The last few books (before the most recent) were literally an exercise in willpower… a real “I-will-get-through-this-or-die-in-the-attempt” effort.
The problems have already been outlined by the posters previous to me but I can’t help but rehash them.
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Long dragging descriptions of buttons and dresses and hair and God help you if someone is wearing shoes.
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The introduction of more and more characters, most with only bit parts to play, but who come back unexpectedly leaving you to rumage through the old books trying to figure out who the hell that was and if you are supposed to care about them or not.
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Waaaaay to much of characters taking a bath, getting into their shifts, getting out of their shifts, having breakfast, finishing breakfast, discussing breakfast, having more breakfast, etc…
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The women characters have turned into paraodies of themselves, each dutifully performing the quirks asigned to them, without any real growth (at least not in several books). The Men, at this point are not much better off.
But, this is not why we hate RJ.
We hate him because of what he has done to us. We hate him because, in spite of all these things, he has still made us care. We HAVE to know how it ends. We HAVE to. And so we trudge through the series like people digging ditches, one backbreaking shovelful at a time.
It’s hopeless. Get out while you still can. It’s far to late to save most of us, but perhaps there are others who can be saved through our self sacrifice.
I’m just hoping that someone will tell me that Rand has died an agonising death. That would be good.
I did read the first eight books. Rand deserves to die. Maybe the planet will explode.
Did anyone else find the “We’re gonna eeeeaaattt ya!” behaviour from the Trollocs more funny than scary>
At least Jordan’s continually writing and trying to get to the end (however slowly). One of my favorite authors started up a series in the mid-80s, got done 3 out of the intended 9 books, then dropped it and spent more than a decade writing a different 7 book series. When she finally announced the last one was going to press, I rejoiced.
Then she announced she was starting on another new series. And I cried inside. 
As long as we’re talking about authors who don’t seem to be getting close to finishing their series, we’ve been waiting for Melanie Rawn to write the last Exiles novel for ages now…
According to her messageboard, she’s actually writing it.
Of course, that was about a year ago, and who knows how long it will ake her to finish it.
[hijack]Be aware if you buy Weber’s new book In Fury Born that the second half is the entire (lightly revised) Path of the Fury which he apparently wrote in 1992. I like it. Hopefully he gets ten books out of these characters over the next ten years [/hijack]