The Wheel of Time

[ArcticFox]

I just finished reading Robert Jordan's/Brian Sanderson's Wheel of Time the other day. I've been working on this series for literally years. I had read books 1 - 10 a few years ago and started over the year before last and went all the way through to book 14 to complete the series.

Man...

Spoiler:

It was no surprise at all that Rand survived the Last Battle. It seemed like the only one to truly expect him to sacrifice his life was Rand himself. I would have liked more of an epilogue to talk about the surviving characters and what ultimately happened with them, since the rest of the series was so incredibly heavy on detail it just felt like once evil was defeated at the end of the last book, the author just said "meh" and left it at that. We sort of get a glimpse of some of the characters and we're left to assume they lived happily ever after, but again... jarring considering how much detail had come before.

Overall I liked it a lot, and would recommend only for those who have a lot of patience for a story that builds slowly.

[Deepfreeze32]

I've heard good things, but the sheer size of the books is daunting.

I went ahead and got the first one in ebook format for a trip I'll be taking. I must admit, I have heard some...troubling things about books 8 and 10 being as long as the rest and having none of the good storytelling the others have. One of my friends said "8 and 10 are interludes. And pretty much nothing substantial happens in them"


That said, I know basically nothing about the series going in, so it should be interesting.

[ArcticFox]

I don't recall any of the specifics about what happened in which books because in my mind, it's just one long, continuous story.

I can say that Robert Jordan's style is very tasteful. You won't have the racy scenes one would expect in a series like Game of Thrones. In the rare cases where characters hook up, it's usually much more implied than directly stated. Many of the characters in the series have a very strong sense of morality.

[Deepfreeze32]

That's also been used as a critique by friends (Who still loved it, mind you). They said that the good characters are almost always good, and the bad characters are almost always bad. There's very little blurring of the good-evil line.

I like stories that have ambiguity. It makes for an interesting exploration of ethics.

That said, I'm grateful for less racy scenes. I felt like they were always overdone in Martin's work and especially on TV. Still great stories, but come on, that's fan service at this point.

[ArcticFox]

Yeah there's not a lot of gray in WoT in the main characters, but I'm okay with that. I think lately we've had a little too much gray and not enough actual heroes. Its' one of the reason my love of Battlestar Galactica cooled. Not enough truly moral, upright characters. Everything was about expediency and compromise. Ever take a step back to see just how ruthless Roslyn really was? It's kinda frightening.

[Deepfreeze32]

Yeah there's not a lot of gray in WoT in the main characters, but I'm okay with that. I think lately we've had a little too much gray and not enough actual heroes. Its' one of the reason my love of Battlestar Galactica cooled. Not enough truly moral, upright characters. Everything was about expediency and compromise. Ever take a step back to see just how ruthless Roslyn really was? It's kinda frightening.

I hear ya. I mean, I liked the realistic and ambiguous nature of BSG, but like real life, it could get tiring. I needed to pace myself with seasons 3 and 4 because of how depressing it was getting.

I was always kind of skeptical of Roslyn TBH, but this isn't a BSG topic so I'll leave it at that.

So how "easy reading" is Wheel of Time? For instance, I love Dune, but it's very dense and requires multiple re-readings to understand it.

[ArcticFox]

It's more accessible than Dune, but it has a LOT of characters and it gets hard to keep track of them all after the first few books. Jordan also loves to describe peoples' clothing in extreme detail, which gets old after a while.