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[Tertullian]

I do think traditional, Tolkien-inspired fantasy has very, very few actual great books in it. I'm struggling to think of any, actually. The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit...
I'd say Michael Moorcock, Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories, Jack Vance's Dying Earth - although these are most certainly pulp, they're also much, much better written than any Jordan or Sanderson, and certifiable classics. Also, Clark Ashton Smith's fantasy tales are super rad.
If you stretch the term "fantasy" a bit further, then there are obvious great works - Bradbury, Jeff VanderMeer's works, China Mieville, Neil Gaiman. If you include magical realism, then the door is blown wide open.
High fantasy, though...nah...best case, it's fun and doesn't melt your brain.

I do appreciate the suggestions. Even among those though. I read the first Jack Vance Dying Earth book, and while I thought it had a lot of interesting stuff in it, I didn't think it was all that great either. And I always assumed Howard and Leiber and the like were mostly just pulpy entertainment.

I dunno. I just want more fantasy novels that make me say "holy shit, this belongs on the shelf next to Dostoyevsky." I mean, that's a ridiculous standard. But I honestly don't think I've ever read a fantasy novel that even came close outside of Tolkien.

 

[Incandenza]

I do appreciate the suggestions. Even among those though. I read the first Jack Vance Dying Earth book, and while I thought it had a lot of interesting stuff in it, I didn't think it was all that great either. And I always assumed Howard and Leiber and the like were mostly just pulpy entertainment.

I dunno. I just want more fantasy novels that make me say "holy shit, this belongs on the shelf next to Dostoyevsky." I mean, that's a ridiculous standard. But I honestly don't think I've ever read a fantasy novel that even came close outside of Tolkien.

Book of the New Sun might be up your alley. Maaaybe Malazan.

 

[Tertullian]

Book of the New Sun might be up your alley. Maaaybe Malazan.

Yes, I actually keep forgetting to mention that Book of the New Sun is on my list as a possibility.

 

[MartyStu]

I quit. I really don't usually quit. I usually am perfectly happy to see a series through no matter how bad it is. But I just can't. Which is funny because I'm told that this isn't even the worst of it. I got up to 60-65% of the way through, but I'm not doing it anymore.

You were indeed warned. Based on what I have seen you post in the past, I am actually surprised you got this far.

Okay, if you wnat to know my thoughts on WoT 1-3, I wrote them out here. By and large, my thoughts remain the same, though they've gotten harsher.

There are a few parts that make this just pretty unbearable for me, so I'm just gonna try to put them down, but it's late, so if my thoughts are a mess, I apologize.

First off, this prophecy bullshit needs to stop. The prophecies here are never really explored beyond what they are stated to do, meaning we (and the characters) are given no reason to believe they are valid or who they came from, but atleast 2 characters follow them through because that's what they heard the prophecies are.

What this translates to is "Why are they doing X? Because that's what the plot says so". I have no reason to care as a reader because the characters have no reason to care for themselves. This is different from prophecies in, say, A Song of Ice and Fire. There, prophecies never bothered me, and I only realized reading this book why: The prophecies mostly served as warnings and heralds of darkness, but they were never, in and of themselves, the reason the characters fulfilled them. In The Shadow Rising, atleast 2 characters are going to where their going and doing what their doing just because some vague unexplained force told them and they basically can't think of anything better to do. This is even different from the first 3 books, where Rand was following the prophecies because he himself was having an identity crisis over being the dragon reborn. I didn't think those books were great, but I atleast cared a little. Here, it's...it's nothing. I have read over 600 pages of this shit, and the places where I see Rand as a character are few and far inbetween, because he seems to be just moving according to what the plot told him, like someone following an instruction manual. Mat is in the same boat, unsure what to do, so he uses a plot device to talk to prophetic spirits, who tell him to go with Rand and basically is just following along the same path just because someone else told him that's where he needs to go. Mat himself doesn't have a reason to go, but since he lacks a reason to go anywhere else, he just follows along.

Yup, Jordan uses the prophecies as a massive crutch. The Shadow Rising is the first time that it is flagrant enough to notice, but he repeats this pattern multiple times.

Meanwhile, Egwene and Elayne and Nyneave are STILL hunting the Black Ajah after like 2 whole books of this shit. I can't even remember if they made progress. I know they messed up their plans in book 3, but it's just frustrating to see them after hundreds of pages make such little progress on actually cornering them for so damn long. I decided to spoil myself, and apparently these black sisters stay on the run almost throughout the whole series. Like, jesus. The guys' PoV's have issues involving reader investment, but atleast they do in fact make progress in raising their abilities, however unearned. 80% of the girl's POV chapters seem spent on personal petty problems (especially Egwene, seriously, I know character development doesn't necessarily equate to improving as a person, but she somehow got less mature than how she started out as. She is given an offer with how she needs to earn her way in the Aiel, she agrees, then bitches about it in her head about how unfair it is because Rand doesn't have to do the same even though he's off being taught to do something else entirely.)

Jordan is notoriously bad at writing women. Min is among the very few bearable ones he has. But even if they were better written, the plots Jordan gives them would still essentially be plot/character/intelligence black holes. I think they run around being effectively useless until book 7 or 8.

Perrin's plotline is probably the most well written and compelling of this book. It's got emotional investment by having Perrin coming back to save his home and how he views it as his fault and him finding out his parents were dead was one of the few actually, legitimately well written segments of the book I've read. Unfortunately, when asked the question of whether it's enough to make it worth my while, the answer is no. Perrin's is the least flawed of the 3 ongoing general narratives, but it's not good enough. I hate Faile, I don't like Loial, I don't really care about the Two Rivers folk, and I kind of hate Perrin too. The entire initiation segment between him leaving tear and arriving at the Two rivers is filled with his stupidity, passive aggressiveism and bitchiness.

If you find Perrin and Faile unlikable now, it is great that you decided to stop. Perrin's storyline is easily the slowest, most pointless slog I have ever endured. And he moves from inoffensive to be being the least likeable of the main three.

I don't like ANY of these people. And normally that wouldn't be a problem if they were interesting, but their really not. I tried to figure out why, and I think I finally stumbled on the systemic problem with how all these characters are written: Their all unempathetic manipulative assholes. That doesn't mean that the characters don't care for one another, exactly. But it does mean every relationship every character has is a power struggle for dominance rather than understanding. It's easiest to exemplify this with the gender binary going on. Male characters are repeatedly baffled by the actions of women while making basically no real effort as to understand WHY they might do what they do any feel as they feel. And more than that, all the younger male characters are encouraged by the older ones to not even try. Women are just mysterious creatures that do random, incomprehensible things. Meanwhile, women also don't bother to make efforts to understand men, but they don't even admit their ignorance, they just assign every negative or confusing thing they do to their having a penis. If a man wants to do something and a woman disagrees, he's being stupid because he's a MAN, regardless of the reasons he gives. It feels outright misandrous at times, with how dismissive and contemptuous some of these female characters are. There's less of that when two characters are of the same genders, but this series has a notorious problem of the characters not communicating with each other, and I've seen that as early as book 1.

So the result of this is that all the characters are belligerent as all fuck. One character advised Perrin on how to deal with Faile as a wife (and wives in general) is to do what they say on minor things so they can stalk up in their resistance points and take control when it matters. Putting aside that taht sounds like a fundamentally unhealthy relationship, what does this mean for the characters? Their not trying to develop or work together in unity, there's no mutual understanding of another person happening here. This seems like people just pick their partners based on masochistic tendencies, or atleast how they are willing to suffer for the pleasures of company. The thing is, when EVERY relationship is like that, it just starts being predictable. Every character is just in a constant state of bitching out another. It just makes me dread any interactions that can happen, especially on the romantic side. But other relationships are affected too. Mat spends most of his time with Rand at a distance, either annoyed or suspicious that Rand is going to go insane at any moment. In no way does he try to actually help fix the problem of his supposed sanity. If I'm supposed to buy that Mat is a genuine friend to Rand, I didn't get much of a feeling of that in how he interacts with him on a day to day basis. We get him trying to save Rand while in the temple, and that's great and all, but there's little actual communication between them as characters.

Jordan has very little idea about how any relationships work. This failing is at the core of what makes his books so poor. Part of why I like Min so much. Not only is she written closer to what a human female should be like, but her relationship to Rand feels more...natural....sorta. Less filled with barely restrained spite and 'good-natured' misandry/misogyny at least.

The writing reflects that as well. I've already gone over that in my other post, and again, I haven't changed my position about how it draaaaaaaaaags on (did Jordan murder his editor or something), but one thing I noticed with this new read is how disconnected the descriptions are. I started noticing that "He/She gave a (emotive) look." comes up so much. The body language isn't used often or the emotion itself rarely described, it's just captured in a look of some kind, and we're meant to imagine it from there.

He wifed up his editor. Take that as you will.

So yeah. The characters just fucking blow. And the villains aren't better. Look, in the first 3 books, Baalzamon was a shitty villain. Like, he wasn't threatening after the first book, he sure as hell wasn't threatening by the third, but the antagonistic opposition felt nature in this sort of story. Now, Rand has nothing and I went over why "because the plot told me to" isn't really a big center of tension, nor are the girl's unending hunt for the Black Ajah. Perrin does have a villain, but they suck because their too simple. Padan Fain is like every evil crazy person stereotype rolled into a character. He feels like a parody being played straight. He goes beyond what even cartoon villainy is. The whitecloaks aren't that great either, since Perrin only killed one or a few of them, and that's apparently all it takes for THE ENTIRE FUCKING ARMY to travel all the way to your home to burn everything down. I know that their being manipulated, but I argue that them being able to be manipulated into something this obsessively dumb is evidence of how poorly run they are.

No good villains. No moral complexity.

And it all really stems from the Dark One. The most generic of all possible antagonists, evil itself. You know, I find this world really wierd. All 1 religion, all sharing the same basic belief system, under 1 language. Despite having difficult cultural norms with the Seanchan and the Aiel, somehow everyone knows that the Dark One is pure evil. This wouldn't happen, realistically. Beliefs would disperse and everyone would come up with their own idea of who the Dark One was and what it meant and blah blah blah.

While I think the execution is rather poor, I will defend Jordan on this particular point. At one point, the Dark One, and his impact on the world was very, very real and tangible. That combined with what naming him does actually make a good case for why there is such consistency with his representation across cultures (whom were all united at one point).

Religion being absent from pretty much all cultures is much more egregious though.

But it's not the lack of realism per se that bothers me about this set up, but the way it eliminates motivational and moral ambiguity. If you're a dark follower, you don't have good reasons, you don't have your own moral center, or just different beliefs. You're evil. This has been basically universally true and it doesn't change from what I can tell. The most variety you can get is that you can be evil in different ways, but the actual morality or lackthereof is never even in question. I....well, I don't really see how you make an interesting dynamic out of that. Lord of the Rings is a clear inspiration to this, and it definitely has a clear good vs evil thing going on...but honestly, the more I looked into it, the more I found reasons to sympathize with even the most abject of evil creatures here. Morgoth wanted to sing his own song. Sauron wanted to improve the world. Gollum...well, we know Gollum's tale.

Jordan's world is pretty black and white. As are his characters. I would say he and his contemporaries are the direct cause of the rise of 'grimdark' and the more moral ambiguity in modern fantasy.

With respect to WoT fans on here, I really don't see the appeal of this series. It has the feel of an epic in some ways, I can give you that. Big world destroying prophecies, an ultimate evil, magic, awesome weapons, different cultures, different races, the big chosen one, big romances....but it fails to pull any of that off in my opinion and is one of the least engaging fantasies I've ever read. The prose is some of the worst I've ever come across at times, I struggle to give a shit about any of the characters, and....I just quit. This is just really unusual for me, because I am usually willing to slog through even the worst things, but I can't take this anymore and I have no idea why I would subject myself to this any further. I might try Sanderson's Way of Kings book again. I had a few similar problems with him as I do with these books, which makes sense since he apparently loves WoT, but I remember Sanderson being better than this.

They are only similar on the surface. Sanderson's issues as a writer are much more complex than Jordan's.

As a whole, Sanderson's is a significantly better writer though.

I'll say this positive though: I really hope that one day, a decent adaptation of this is made. Because the general structure of the plot isn't bad. But virtually....everything about the writing makes this a journey I can't go on. An adaptation will have the advantage of not just cutting all the filler in the text, but may even rewrite the characters in order to make them better. Maybe some people will disagree with me, but I do not believe it is the job of adaptations to merely recreate a work, but to improve upon it. Kubrick himself said he liked to pick mediocre books to adapt because there he had more freedom to turn whats decent into something great. Well, for anyone who believes in that, Wheel of Time is a golden opportunity that should not be passed up.

An adaptation could work. A solid 60% of the content would need to be dropped pretty much from the jump though.

 

[Regiruler]

They're also heroes of the age. Matt is quite literally just out of his deathbed when he does this.

"Ta'veren"
'But...'
"TA VEREN"

But for real I think mat does grossly outclass them. There's nothing indicating that either would ever get remotely close to beating him (Perrin, sure, but Mat has the greatest martial prowess in the entire series).

 

[Mumei]

Veelk:

Even more problematic, Jordan possessed an understanding of women so bankrupt it would make a seventh-grade boy weep. It was admirable that he tried: Jordan’s heroes were as liable to be female as male—more so, even—and most of the societies he depicted were either matriarchal or, at worst, equal opportunity.

But Jordan’s women do a lot of “sniffing,” usually loudly. They cross their arms under their breasts. Men to them are “wool-headed lummoxes” or “wool-brained mules.” (A disproportionately high number of women in the Wheel of Time are also lesbians—make of that what you will.) Jordan was not above describing rivals for the same man as “two strange cats who had just discovered they were shut up in the same small room.” That is, when he wasn’t making Borscht Belt jokes about their bad cooking, or spending pages describing their dresses. (In this respect, Jordan put romance novels to shame: the Wheel of Time without a doubt holds the record for inexplicably extended rhapsodies over brocaded silk, embroidery, hemlines, and necklines.) Mostly, what Jordan’s women are is the same: some combination of cold, willful, quick to take offense, and—around the right man—weak in the knees.

Jordan was never anything but unapologetic. “I’ve seen a lot of comment, apparently from men, that my female characters are unrealistic,” he once wrote. “That’s because women are, for the most part, consummate actresses who allow men to see exactly what they intend men to see. Get behind the veil sometimes, boys, and your hair will turn white. I’ve been there, and mine went white and didn’t stop there; a great deal of it actually turned dark again, the shock to my system was so great. Believe me, I mild it down so as not to scare any males into mental breakdowns.” This is as indicative as any other passage Jordan penned regarding women: he seemed to regard a healthy mix of fear and condescension as a decent proxy for respect, and left it at that.

And let's not forget the leashes and spanking! No subtext here, no sir.

 

[Speely]

I gave up while waiting for book 10 (read them as they were released.) I LOVE the setting and everything about the world-building so much, but Jordan's style just got more Jordan-y with every book and I became frustrated with his handling of the characters and his obsession with useless detail.

Now that Sanderson finished it, I keep telling myself that I am gonna go back and re-read the whole thing just because I love the setting that much, but I have not yet done so.

I feel like the IP itself is due for a really good adaptation in some form, though. Hell, my favorite MUD I ever played was a WoT MUD, and it worked well simply because of the richness of the setting.

 

[Mighty Chin]

Jesus Christ people the female characters are some of the strongest characters in the series. I think men get really bent out of shape they way they are written yet the fail to grasp that it's essentially a Female dominated society due to the Breaking. Men were feared for centuries as the world slowly rebuilt. Women basically took control and it filtered down from the largest cities to the smallest villages. The women are very well written imo and for the most part my favorite aspects of the books.

 

[bionic77]

Jesus Christ people the female characters are some of the strongest characters in the series. I think men get really bent out of shape they way they are written yet the fail to grasp that it's essentially a Female dominated society due to the Breaking. Men were feared for centuries as the world slowly rebuilt. Women basically took control and it filtered down from the largest cities to the smallest villages. The women are very well written imo and for the most part my favorite aspects of the books.

I hated Egwenes character.

Most of the other women were pretty good (not so much for Elayne). Nyaeve went from annoying to being one of my favorite characters in the book. The scene where she sets it up for Lan to have a chance at the end was amazing.

 

[Veelk]

You were indeed warned. Based on what I have seen you post in the past, I am actually surprised you got this far.

Like I told you, I can usually blunt force my way through anything, but the badness of this is just goddamn oppressive. It's really ridiculous.

Jordan is notoriously bad at writing women. Min is among the very few bearable ones he has. But even if they were better written, the plots Jordan gives them would still essentially be plot/character/intelligence black holes. I think they run around being effectively useless until book 7 or 8.

Really? They are stuck on this one plot conflict for 5 books when Rand has killed Baalzamon 3 times over by book 3? Jesus.

If you find Perrin and Faile unlikable now, it is great that you decided to stop. Perrin's storyline is easily the slowest, most pointless slog I have ever endured. And he moves from inoffensive to be being the least likeable of the main three.

I just liked him because he seemed like the most sensible of the Two Rivers characters and his wolf motif was cool. You warned be before he got bad, but christ.

Jordan has very little idea about how any relationships work. This failing is at the core of what makes his books so poor. Part of why I like Min so much. Not only is she written closer to what a human female should be like, but her relationship to Rand feels more...natural....sorta. Less filled with barely restrained spite and 'good-natured' misandry/misogyny at least.

I think Elayne was written as a non-crazy person too, but that didn't necessarily make her interesting. Especially when her plotline this and last book seemed to be "Isn't it crazy and unrealistic how it is that I fell in love with Rand after meeting him for 5 minutes?"

While I think the execution is rather poor, I will defend Jordan on this particular point. At one point, the Dark One, and his impact on the world was very, very real and tangible. That combined with what naming him does actually make a good case for why there is such consistency with his representation across cultures (whom were all united at one point).

Religion being absent from pretty much all cultures is much more egregious though.

I'll take your word on it, I guess, though as far as I recall, the Dark One hasn't affected the world directly for thousands of years. How good is the record keeping that literally EVERYONE, from scholars to random pig farmers in the outback fuckwater of nowhere, know for sure it's him? I'm not denying that some people might be in the know, but I just question how this universal consensus happened when their only source is history books from hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. How do they know for certain that saying his name, for example, isn't some sort of left over curse from the Age of Legends, or maybe even the Aes Sedai doing to keep their claim to power in the name of their mission legitimate? I'm not saying most people would believe that, but you'd think some people would atleast entertain the possibility. Yet everyone just takes this and several other more trivial and definitely less provable things as axiomic (for example, everyone seems to agree that the Creator (who has explicitly never directly interacted with the world) is male. How would anyone know that?)

They are only similar on the surface. Sanderson's issues as a writer are much more complex than Jordan's.

As a whole, Sanderson's is a significantly better writer though.

Can you elaborate? I think I read about 40% of Way of Kings before dropping it. Not as a decision, more because I got distracted with other stuff. I didn't think it was that great, but I can't remember my problems with it.

Veelk:

And let's not forget the leashes and spanking! No subtext here, no sir.

I too appreciate that Jordan did legitimately seem to try to make sure women in his universe got representation and power, but the number of times that they got arbitrarily naked in Shadow Rising alone makes it clear he's atleast partially just getting off on it.

 

[NintendosBooger]

You were warned in the other thread that the series was shit. Far, far better fantasy out there. I hated it from book 1, yet I gave it 3 books to improve, and nothing ever did. People keep saying to push on, it gets better. I'm not the type to eat a mountain of shit just to get to the cream center.

 

[Lunar15]

I quit in the same place, Vleek. The characters were insufferable and it got to the point where Jordan was taking a chapter to describe clothes.

 

[MartyStu]

You were warned in the other thread that the series was shit. Far, far better fantasy out there. I hated it from book 1, yet I gave it 3 books to improve, and nothing ever did. People keep saying to push on, it gets better. I'm not the type to eat a mountain of shit just to get to the cream center.

People said it got better? Hmm.

In my mind, The Wheel of Time is pretty much the classic example of a series deteriorating over time.

After book 3, the books have like a 3:2 bloat to plot ratio.

 

[Veelk]

I quit in the same place, Vleek. The characters were insufferable and it got to the point where Jordan was taking a chapter to describe clothes.

Honestly, I'm still shocked I stopped at all. You know me from the OP thread, you know that merely not enjoying a series doesn't stop me from engaging in it.

But this...I just couldn't take this.

People said it got better? Hmm.

In my mind, The Wheel of Time is pretty much the classic example of a series deteriorating over time.

After book 3, the books have like a 3:2 bloat to plot ratio.

That's a common thing. "By book 11 or whatever, it all comes together like something I've never seen before! Just make it through another 7000 pages of bullshit, and you'll be there!"

The thing is....look, when you go on a roller coaster, the slow climb up is part of the ride. You see yourself rising and your anticipation grows and you get excited. The big drops are what everyone goes to see, but the truth is, the climb has to be enjoyable as well, because it's what makes the big pay off that much better.

I just find it hard to believe people when they say that the latter parts of the series are worth it when the build up is so bad. Even if their relatively better at it, writers don't just magically get super good and talented when writing climaxes if they weren't that great at the other stuff.

 

[Draxal]

Honestly, I'm still shocked I stopped at all. You know me from the OP thread, you know that merely not enjoying a series doesn't stop me from engaging in it.

But this...I just couldn't take this.



That's a common thing. "By book 11 or whatever, it all comes together like something I've never seen before! Just make it through another 7000 pages of bullshit, and you'll be there!"

The thing is....look, when you go on a roller coaster, the slow climb up is part of the ride. You see yourself rising and your anticipation grows and you get excited. The big drops are what everyone goes to see, but the truth is, the climb has to be enjoyable as well, because it's what makes the big pay off that much better.

I just find it hard to believe people when they say that the latter parts of the series are worth it when the build up is so bad. Even if their relatively better at it, writers don't just magically get super good and talented when writing climaxes if they weren't that great at the other stuff.

Nah, its more like if you like book 4-5-6, books 7-8-9-10 are worth powering through as 11 to the ends makes it worthwhile.

If you don't like book 4, the series is not for you.

 

[rpg_fan]

It gets to be a hell of a mess in the middle books. I don't remember which one, but I read half the book and realized it was the same day or something. It just dragged on and on, and the guy had some serious issues with women.

But Sanderson wrapped it up nicely, and if you can glaze through the worst books, it's a good series.

The funny thing is they took The Hobbit and made 3 movies from it. WoT is however many books it would up being, and would probably make 4 movies.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

OP, you should go read the Malazan series. That is what you want.

This is my close friend's favorite series. But I couldn't get halfway through book 1. It was well-written and piqued my curiosity, but it's downfall was the bloated amount of characters. It would have been fine if there weren't so many characters who I found completely uninteresting. I wish someone could convince me back into it, but my friend seemed to think it wouldn't get better for me.

 

[truly101]

I'm actually re-reading the series now, almost done with a Winters Heart. I never got up to the Sanderson books so I aim to finish it this go around.

I like WOT but it has way too much bloat, Some events take forever to get going, there are waaaay too many peripheral characters that I guess are supposed to be ancillary to the various subplots but there are just so many of them. And if Martin is too willing to off main characters, Jordan is too reluctant. And I'm not touch the love triangle....thing...I guess it more of a square really

 

[RareFantasy64]

I've been curious about this series for a while. Read most of this thread. I think as soon as I finish The Dark Tower series I am going to give this series a chance. I love when build up pays off. It sounds like this series has that

 

[MartyStu]

This is my close friend's favorite series. But I couldn't get halfway through book 1. It was well-written and piqued my curiosity, but it's downfall was the bloated amount of characters. It would have been fine if there weren't so many characters who I found completely uninteresting. I wish someone could convince me back into it, but my friend seemed to think it wouldn't get better for me.

Malazan is a very interesting series.

While Erickson does very strong character work, the series is not character driven. This tends to turn people off quite a bit.

I would recommend you read the fifth book: Midnight Tides. Probably one of the tightest works of modern fantasy I have seen in some time. Completely standalone, and follows much fewer characters than any of his other books.

Or if you just want to skip the first book--agreed by everyone to be the weakest of the series--read a summary and jump to the second or third book (Book 2 and 3 take place concurrently, with the cast of the first book being split between them).

 

[Piecake]

Yea, I got about to book 6 or so before I finally gave up.

The plot and world building kept me interested for a while, but I just couldn't deal with the increasingly bad pacing, the terrible characters and the juvenile conception of how men and women interact. I don't know if I would even call it juvenile since when I think of juvenile I think of like middle to high schoolers. His characters act like elementary school kids.

 

[JoeyJungle]

I haven't been able to get past the first half of book 1 in Malazan. People say book 1 is the weakest, but I can't make it past that.

It's so confusingly written that I could probably just skip book 1 and be fine with starting book 2, I guess, but I refuse to do that.

What really confused me in Book 1 is that it takes a while to figure out how the magic system works, because it's never explicitly explained. Basically, warrens are both the thing that mages draw on for their magic, and places with their own unique plants and animals, kinda like alternate dimensions. Different mages are able to wield to different warrens, with most mages being attuned to one warren (and having some skills with closely related warrens). The place-form of warrens are mainly only used as emergency shortcuts, especially the Imperial Warren, which is the only one relatively safe to travel in because it has no life in it.

They get more complex, and the how/why they exist is explained later in the series, but basically that's the gist of it. Warrens being both the well for magic + a separate place really confused me for the first ~100 pages of the book.

This is my close friend's favorite series. But I couldn't get halfway through book 1. It was well-written and piqued my curiosity, but it's downfall was the bloated amount of characters. It would have been fine if there weren't so many characters who I found completely uninteresting. I wish someone could convince me back into it, but my friend seemed to think it wouldn't get better for me.

Yeah, I forgot how many characters are at the beginning of Book 1. After the first 100 or so pages, it starts to focus on just a few characters.

 

[HK-47]

If you are looking for great works of fantasy, try single books or at most trilogies. Very few of the long series are worth the time and lack consistency. Saying only Tolkien or Martin are great tells me you pretty much think fantasy is epic style multibook things, which is missing a ton of stuff.

 

[MartyStu]

If you are looking for great works of fantasy, try single books or at most trilogies. Very few of the long series are worth the time and lack consistency. Saying only Tolkien or Martin are great tells me you pretty much think fantasy is epic style multibook things, which is missing a ton of stuff.

This...this is mostly true.

 

[capslock]

I gave up around 9/10 I think. Never went back.

 

[Hopeford]

I like Wheel of Time because it has a weird charm to it. I completely understand why people wouldn't like it, but personally I love it to death.

There is just some weird quality to it that feels like a weird, overly long story that I'd hear before going to bed as a kid. Something about the way the narration hammers on insignificant things like the shape of fire or the way everyone in every village looked at people...it's entirely pointless, but it created an atmosphere I was really fond of. I remember staying up late reading Fires of Heaven(think that's book 5?) which had an amazing moment.

(Spoilers for Fires of Heaven)

Spoiler

Mat's entire thing where he tries to run away and ends up accidentally leading an army. Then his arc for the book concludes with the 'Jak o'the Shadows' song being updated to include him in it.

That part was written in such a weird, whimsical way and I totally fell in love with the series at that point.

Thaaaat said, between the weird spanking stuff and the fact that the series admittedly spends a lot of time accomplishing very little other than keep up its atmosphere, I reeeeeaaaally don't think it's for everyone. But I'm very fond of it, in spite(or perhaps because) of its flaws.

 

[Veelk]

If you are looking for great works of fantasy, try single books or at most trilogies. Very few of the long series are worth the time and lack consistency. Saying only Tolkien or Martin are great tells me you pretty much think fantasy is epic style multibook things, which is missing a ton of stuff.

I read plenty. Gaiman, Valente, Butcher, Rothfuss, Cole, Abercrombie, Pratchett, Lynch, Gladstone, Tahir, just to name some recent ones. Most of them aren't standalone, but some are just trilogies. I just reference those because they're the most famous.

 

[blummer102]

I felt the same way as you, OP, and I gave up at around the same place back in high school. But after recently hearing that the series finally finished, I decided to go back and experience The Wheel of Time again...via the audiobooks.

I figured that Jordan's tendency to use 1,000 words to describe something when 100 would suffice would be more tolerable to LISTEN to than actually read, and it is.

 

[LordOfChaos]

Veelk:



And let's not forget the leashes and spanking! No subtext here, no sir.

'Disproportionately high' amount of lesbians? In a massive cast of characters, it seems like the only normal representation of lesbians out there in terms of quantity. There's how many dozens and dozens of characters in these books, easily over 100 at least I would assume, and a handful of lesbians? In the real world it's about 2-3% of women. It actually...Seems about right.

Edit: Holy shit, "over 100" was, err, technically right lol. 2200 fricking characters. Statistically even up to ~20 lesbians wouldn't be out of bounds assuming it's about even between male and female characters.

http://encyclopaedia-wot.org/characters/index.html?PHPSESSID=89a69388d6f067b06700989a20970595

It also added to how awesome Lan was, how casually he noted that a male soldier was gay and he didn't think anyone else was observant enough to know. I think that was Sanderson though.

 

[Mighty Chin]

I quit in the same place, Vleek. The characters were insufferable and it got to the point where Jordan was taking a chapter to describe clothes.

Hyperbole Much?

 

[Purkake4]

There's a crazy reread and a half up in blog form if anyone wants to nostalgia out.

 

[Dreavus]

I stopped around the same time actually, somewhere in Book 4.

Not necessarily as consciously as your decision, but boy is it tough to go back in.

 

[i_am_ben]

I personally always liked the way that politics in WoT tend to be overly bureaucratic and slow. All too often in fantasy books, massive political changes are just hand-waived away. In WoT there's a lot more push back and inertia in the narrative.

 

[LordOfChaos]

You know what was *really* bad, Terry Goodkinds Sword of Truth. The first one started ok, then he got high on himself and got all Richard Shrugged, in later books characters monologued and repeated the same thing so much you could pinch a centimetre of pages and skip them and be nowhere forward in the dialogue. There was also the whole copying the Wheel of Time itself halfway through (sisters of the light/dark, magic all of a sudden has weaving of different 'types', so on so on). And the last book before the new reboot was half spent playing football in a Longest Yard remake. Then everything was solved with magical convenience which Goodkind professed to be against. And in the new reboot, one book features a character reading words off a wall for half the book, another features a 12 year old going into a narrative recap spiel for a third of the book. Yeesh. The man can't write for crap.

I was never bored in the Wheel of Time, not to that degree.Guess I liked the world building and politics, and the exciting bits were exciting enough for them to be worth it at any rate.

 

[Incandenza]

What really confused me in Book 1 is that it takes a while to figure out how the magic system works, because it's never explicitly explained. Basically, warrens are both the thing that mages draw on for their magic, and places with their own unique plants and animals, kinda like alternate dimensions. Different mages are able to wield to different warrens, with most mages being attuned to one warren (and having some skills with closely related warrens). The place-form of warrens are mainly only used as emergency shortcuts, especially the Imperial Warren, which is the only one relatively safe to travel in because it has no life in it.

They get more complex, and the how/why they exist is explained later in the series, but basically that's the gist of it. Warrens being both the well for magic + a separate place really confused me for the first ~100 pages of the book.



Yeah, I forgot how many characters are at the beginning of Book 1. After the first 100 or so pages, it starts to focus on just a few characters.

I've read the entire series and that single paragraph is already a more detailed explanation of warrens than I could muster if you put a gun to my head.

 

[Kingbrave]

If you read the series and your favorite character is anyone but Mat then you're reading it wrong!

The third book is my favorite and the series drags during the middle books but the last four are really good. I understand not being able to slog through them all though.

I read the series as it came out and I'm currently rereading and it's mainly nostalgia for me now. But I love this series. Started a long, long, long time ago and I still love them.

I also started the Sword of Truth books at the same time and what a shitty books those are.

 

[ladyluthien]

I made it to the middle of book 10 and it's been years since I've picked it back up, lost interest but have been wanting to read it through again and finish the story. Might try the audiobook instead, I've forgotten nearly everything I read

 

[Lunar15]

Hyperbole Much?

Boy, I don't know. There was one chapter where Rand was meeting with some nobles and, I swear to god, the entire chapter was spent describing how every single person's clothes looked.

You could say the characters were realistically struggling with the burdens placed on them, but most times it felt like they were all just terrible people. It's like Jordan went out of his way to make them unlikable. It's one thing to struggle with circumstances beyond your control, it's another thing to be entirely unrelateable.

 

[Mighty Chin]

If you read the series and your favorite character is anyone but Mat then you're reading it wrong!

The third book is my favorite and the series drags during the middle books but the last four are really good. I understand not being able to slog through them all though.

I read the series as it came out and I'm currently rereading and it's mainly nostalgia for me now. But I love this series. Started a long, long, long time ago and I still love them.

I also started the Sword of Truth books at the same time and what a shitty books those are.

I think people like us who read it from the beginning and had to wait years for those middle books to be realeased have a different understanding of the books. Each release was like water to a dehydrated man in a desert. I think we can forgive the pace of 7-9.

But seriously if you are dropped by it by book 4-6 because it doesn't grab you, I say good riddance. Those first 6 books are fantastic.

 

[VyechnayaSlava]

It's a slog, but none of them are nearly as bad as book 10. Seriously, other than showing Mat's budding romance it serves zero purpose. I outright recommend against reading it at all. Trust me, you won't miss it.

All said, Sanderson's strong finish is enough to finish the series if you're already invested. Just push your way through

 

[New002]

I think people like us who read it from the beginning and had to wait years for those middle books to be realeased have a different understanding of the books. Each release was like water to a dehydrated man in a desert. I think we can forgive the pace of 7-9.

But seriously if you are dropped by it by book 4-6 because it doesn't grab you, I say good riddance. Those first 6 books are fantastic.

When I read the series I wanna say there were only one or two books yet to be released, so I read all the rest back to back with no breaks. Clearly, I enjoyed them! I started a re-read and made it several books in before life got in the way and I stopped, but even then I was enjoying them all over again.

 

[bionic77]

I think people like us who read it from the beginning and had to wait years for those middle books to be realeased have a different understanding of the books. Each release was like water to a dehydrated man in a desert. I think we can forgive the pace of 7-9.

But seriously if you are dropped by it by book 4-6 because it doesn't grab you, I say good riddance. Those first 6 books are fantastic.

Yeah I didn't have any complaints with the first 6 books. A ton of shit was happening pretty quickly.

It definitely slowed down after 6 though, with book 10 being the low point. That Perrin/Faile storyline was the worst during that point and some other characters were annoying too, but other then book 10 there was enough good things to keep me interested.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

I do appreciate the suggestions. Even among those though. I read the first Jack Vance Dying Earth book, and while I thought it had a lot of interesting stuff in it, I didn't think it was all that great either. And I always assumed Howard and Leiber and the like were mostly just pulpy entertainment.

I dunno. I just want more fantasy novels that make me say "holy shit, this belongs on the shelf next to Dostoyevsky." I mean, that's a ridiculous standard. But I honestly don't think I've ever read a fantasy novel that even came close outside of Tolkien.

I'd give The Book of the New Sun a try, and I highly recommend China Mieville's works. I loved The City and the City. Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen, followed by his Shriek: an Afterword, and Finch - they're all connected, wonderful, and wonderfully weird. Shriek is a kind of Nabokovian experiment about twins - one of them, Duncan, a writer, disappears and leaves behind a manuscript which you're reading, and Janice, a literary critic, who makes notes on the manuscript and explains things; whether she's being truthful, or the interpretations are accurate are up to the reader.

If you're going down the weird fiction route, then check out M. John Harrisson's Viriconium, and Michael Cisco's inimitable works http://lithub.com/american-kafka/

There's plenty of literary richness in modern weird fiction. Jeff VanderMeer's massive collection, The Weird, is a wonderful starting place for the history of the weird, and from there, maybe the recent The Year's Best Weird Fiction volumes 1 to 3?

 

[Kingbrave]

Yeah I didn't have any complaints with the first 6 books. A ton of shit was happening pretty quickly.

It definitely slowed down after 6 though, with book 10 being the low point. That Perrin/Faile storyline was the worst during that point and some other characters were annoying too, but other then book 10 there was enough good things to keep me interested.

There are some redeeming qualities about Crossroads of Twilight: It eventually fucking ends.

 

[draetenth]

You were warned in the other thread that the series was shit. Far, far better fantasy out there. I hated it from book 1, yet I gave it 3 books to improve, and nothing ever did. People keep saying to push on, it gets better. I'm not the type to eat a mountain of shit just to get to the cream center.

People typically are saying this to those who've enjoyed the books until book 6 or so and start complaining about the quality going down (and plummeting in book 10 or so).

If you are enjoying the books up until that point, yes, push through as it does get better.

However, if you don't like the series before many fans actually agree the quality drops... well, the notion of pushing onwards isn't meant for you because if you don't like it when most people still consider it quality, why tell you to push through when it's only going to get (much) worse before the payoff in the final books?