Wheel Of Time?

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I hear a lot on the boards about the Wheel of Time series and about how great it is. I'm just wondering what is it all about as I've never been able to get my hands on any of the books in the series and is it really worth buying one off Amazon?

 

Oh boy...

Wheel of Time is very good and very bad at the same time. The first books are great, probably the best fantasy I've read before discovering G.R.R.Martin The later books however have hardly any plotmovement at all. Jordan will spend entire chapters on describing how stuff looks to death and apparently no man and woman can have a normal healthy understanding relationship between eachother.

And braidtugging. God!

In short, buy the first few books, read them, and as soon as you begin getting annoyed with the plot movement, or rather lack thereof, stop reading.

In my personal opinion, Jordan is milking his cashcow by delivering 700+ page books that contain little to no plotmovement, and when he does move the plot, it is another strange sideplot to throw on the mountain of sideplots already collected. (Which also make the story rather hard to follow, as there are simply too many important characters at this point.) He shows no intent at all to work to a conclusion. I bought the tenth book, and threw it in a corner after 300 pages of more of the same crap as I had read thousands of pages of before.

 

Sadly, Faragon is right. I am at present reading book 4, and AFAI am concerned, the series stays engaging until around book 7, at which point everything slows to a crawl. It's just a cash cow for Jordan now, and while he is unbelievable talented (as evidenced by his early books) he is not Tolkien -- his descriptions are not nearly as beautiful or engaging as The Master.

 

I mostly agree with the assessments of the people above but in my opinion the main reason you get annoyed by the lack of plot movement in the last three books is that you really really want to know what is going to happen and you have grown very attached to the characters even if some of them are very annoying. I think Jordan's problem is a simple writers block, but except for not writing anything at all he pushes all development forward and spends ages on nothing. I have not given up yet even if Crossroads of Twilight annoyed me to no end.

 

Sorry about another question, but is the world it is set in like?

 

The world is in my opinion absolutely amazing and fascinating. The level of detail is immense. It is somewhat similar on a society and technology level of Europe right before the renaissance, on its way into it.

One thing I really like about the WoT world is that there are reasons for the lack of technological and societal development, in all too many fantasy worlds there are stories about things happening tens of thousands of years ago and the society then doesnt seem much difference from the society the story is set in. The world of WoT is truly alive and fluctuating and development comes in waves and people are set back by various disasters kinda like the real world was with the black death.

 

The Swede is right -- it's not worth giving up on yet, no matter how slow it may move. The world itself is magnificent -- very well drawn and thought out, though focused too much on gender issues. I should clarify, I've read all the books, I'm presently re-reading the series.

There are plenty of websites that will help you if you get confused, but beware of spoilers!

 

I've never been much of a fan of the WOT world. It's TOO big! The main continent seems to stretch for several thousand miles and there are vast tracts of lands (hundreds of miles or more) without anything in them at all.

As far as fantasy worlds go, it's a long way from a realistic or believable one.

 

If you have read the entire series you will find out that there are entirely plausible reasons for those vast empty stretches of land. The WoT world is one of the most believable and best explained fantasy world out there, no doubt whatsoever about that. Compared to Tolkien's world it is a marvel of believability.

 

Finnished the 11th book last night and I must admit that the books are getting booring. But after having read this far it is kinda pointless to stop reading them.

Most of the characters in the book are well done, but some of them is really a pain in the ass *cough Nynaeve cough*

 

No Sh*t! It's been described for some 700 pages in 11 volumes by now! Unfortunately Jordan's quality and style of writing leaves a lot to be desired. The descriptions become too quickly very tiresome and boring if not downright annoying. Sure I did enjoy the first 3 or 4 books very much, but now I haven't touched one for about 5 years - gave up after reading volume 8, and I don't intend to read any furhter at least till I know it's done and dusted.

So probably not until about 2020 then.

 

Maybe when RJ finally gets around to finishing the series, some kind soul will go through the last five thousand pages and take out all the rambling and time wasting and filler and repackage them all into one two hundred page volume. When he makes an effort, he's not a bad writer but he's ruining his series for everyone who reads it for the sake of dragging it out on for longer than necessary just to make himself more money.

 

Actually, it isnt the world that get most of the description, if it only were that good. It is instead the fall of lace of one characters costume that can get two full pages of describtion or a certain ear piece one lady wear or the bathing customs of the queen on one of the courts...

The parts where you get to know about the world are actually some of the really good ones!

 

11 Books??? WTF???
I only know about 10 of them plus "The World Of..." so where is the 11th one?????

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 9 but was a little disappointed by Crossroads Of Twilight as there was ver little story development.

As for the world it's set in, I think it's fantastic that it's not more populated as it shows the lasting scars of previous ages and particularly The Breaking. I love it more so for being different to other fantasy worlds.

Definitely not as good descriptively as Tolkien, but still more than adequate when he is actually moving the plot along a bit and not bogging it down.

 

Different in what way exactly?

It's amazingly big - as are most fantasy worlds.

It's got your stereotypical Big Bad Evil Guy - who is basically Sauron under another name.

It's got the servants of the Big Bad Evil Guy - or the Black Riders really.

It's got every standard cliche you get in every fantasy world and nothing in all the books I've read suggests it's anything more than a run-of-the-mill fantasy world.

 

The setup of the world has a different feel to it than that of Tolkien, and the Forsaken are fleshed out much more fully and interestingly than the black riders in Tolkien -- they retain their humanity. The introduction of very strong female characters (while clumsy at times) and the continuing clash of the genders is something not seen as often in fantasy.

The sense of a time abyss is very strong in this storyline, and one gets the idea (which has been discussed ad nauseum on some WOT boards) that this story is set in the far future, though Jordan never does more than hint at that.

Jordan draws on many elements of history and literature in this series, and I'll list some of the sources that I've noticed: Norse myth, Japanese myth, Zulu, Native American, Oriental and European military and social tradition, Dune, werewolves, vampires, Jungian psychology, Gloria Steinam(sic), the Marquis de Sade, Oceanic tribal customs and European storytelling traditions.

His mixing and matching of these and other elements is astounding. Flawed he may be, but the heights he can reach are truly stunning -- I see him as a Robin Williams figure -- when he hits (as in Dead Poet's Society, Good Morning Vietnam and a few others ) he really hits, but when he misses (Bicentennial man, Jakob the Liar) he REALLY misses.

 

Morningstar, just in case the others have not given you any real idea of what the world is about:
There is a source of 'magic' which allows men and women to do things that the rest of us can't. This source is entirely different between the sexes. The male source is tainted and causes anyone who uses it to go insane.
The 'Bad Guys' include humans and some evil, humanoid things (called trollocs).

 

I wouldnt say that The Dark One is Sauron under another name. Sauron was/is really just a minor god figure walking the earth, much more human than the Shai'Tan of WoT. The WoT bad guy is if anything a clean rip off of the bible. There are only two divine entitities in the WoT world, the creator and the destroyer(the Dark One) and that has alot more in common with the religions we have on this earth than what is in Tolkien's work. As for the forsaken I can well think that Jordan got inspiration for them from the Naz'guls but all authors get inspiration from all over the place. The Forsaken are one of my favourite part of the WoT world, they are real people, not face less evil villain. They had quite good reasons to join the darkside, which they did willingly. They werent duped like the Naz'guls.

I was very happy when I saw that you listed Dune among what inspired Jordan and I think he has got alot of ideas from that one. What I think have been Jordans biggest source of inspiration is actually the Tomas Covenant books. There are many things that are the same in those series.

 

Thanks LKD, you explained better than I could the different feel to the WoT world.
It seems to have a different geography and population spread than other fantasy worlds I've encountered. A lot more isolated in general.