Wheel of Time

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Jean_a_Normandie

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The Wheel of Time

I just started this wonderful series of books, and I absolutely love them. The setting, the characters, the writing style, and even the names. I'm only on the first book, The Eye of the World, and I already know I'll read as much as I can of it. I was wondering what other people thought of the series, and if many others have read it.



New Spring (prequel)
1. Eye of the World
2. The Great Hunt
3. The Dragon Reborn
4. The Shadow Rising
5. The Fires of Heaven
6. Lords of Chaos
7. A Crown of Swords
8. The Path of Daggers
9. Winter's Heart
10. Crossroads of Twilight
11. Knife of Dreams
12. The Gathering Storm
13. Towers of Midnight



So, comments, questions, speculations, and discussions welcome!​
 
Easily my favorite series of all time. I'll be re-reading it for the 5th time this fall, while waiting for the final book.

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It was alright up until the fourth or fifth book, when things got sooooo slooooow, half the main characters spent their time looking for some bloody ter'angreal in some bloody city, the rest of the characters spent their time chasing aiel around for the next six books, Aes sedai royally screwed up about a billion times and proved they don't really know anything at all, and the only interesting character to date remains Mat Cauthon. Other than that, the entire series is a long, slow decline into women sniffing and hitching their shawls up every five minutes, Tolkien-esque rambling descriptions of what every woman in the world is wearing, women complaining about men, men complaining about women, and the killing off of the only character in the entire series who didn't spend her time complaining about men. Though book 11 or whatever, the one written after Jordan kicked the bucket, was more interesting and picked up the pace quite well.

Oh yeah... spoilers.
 
Love the series, started reading them when I was 13 and became very attached to the characters.
Used to be my favourite fantasy series until I discovered A Song of Ice and Fire.

I also think Brandon Sanderson is doing a great job.
 
Pharaoh Llandy said:
It was alright up until the fourth or fifth book, when things got sooooo slooooow, half the main characters spent their time looking for some bloody ter'angreal in some bloody city, the rest of the characters spent their time chasing aiel around for the next six books, Aes sedai royally screwed up about a billion times and proved they don't really know anything at all, and the only interesting character to date remains Mat Cauthon. Other than that, the entire series is a long, slow decline into women sniffing and hitching their shawls up every five minutes, Tolkien-esque rambling descriptions of what every woman in the world is wearing, women complaining about men, men complaining about women, and the killing off of the only character in the entire series who didn't spend her time complaining about men. Though book 11 or whatever, the one written after Jordan kicked the bucket, was more interesting and picked up the pace quite well.

Oh yeah... spoilers.

I generally agree, though I still enjoyed a fair amount of the slow paced books, despite the main storyline getting stuck in the background. There are some amazing set pieces, such as Dumai Wells and at the end of Winter's Heart.

Still looking forward to book 14, and hopefully I'll finish reading them for a second time beforehand.

Kazzan said:
Only read Towers of Midnight.  :lol:
I've heard it's horribly slow paced.

Well, it's not horribly slow paced. It's just generally not paced very well, or consistently. The first three are generally of a faster pace, though they suffer a little (not that I don't enjoy them, I still they they are very fecking good) from being a kind of "generic fantasy farmboy has to save the world" story, but it all just explodes once you get to the 4th book.
 
Vieira said:
Pharaoh Llandy said:
It was alright up until the fourth or fifth book, when things got sooooo slooooow, half the main characters spent their time looking for some bloody ter'angreal in some bloody city, the rest of the characters spent their time chasing aiel around for the next six books, Aes sedai royally screwed up about a billion times and proved they don't really know anything at all, and the only interesting character to date remains Mat Cauthon. Other than that, the entire series is a long, slow decline into women sniffing and hitching their shawls up every five minutes, Tolkien-esque rambling descriptions of what every woman in the world is wearing, women complaining about men, men complaining about women, and the killing off of the only character in the entire series who didn't spend her time complaining about men. Though book 11 or whatever, the one written after Jordan kicked the bucket, was more interesting and picked up the pace quite well.

Oh yeah... spoilers.

I generally agree, though I still enjoyed a fair amount of the slow paced books, despite the main storyline getting stuck in the background. There are some amazing set pieces, such as Dumai Wells and at the end of Winter's Heart.

Still looking forward to book 14, and hopefully I'll finish reading them for a second time beforehand.

The only problem was, sometimes it was so long between flicking from scene to scene, that you forgot who the women with incredibly similar sounding names actually were, and had to go back and look them up again.
 
True. I liked reading some descriptions, but after about 6 books I decided I could skip a little bit of the page when I realised that there was a description of the dress/hair/outfit coming up.  :lol:

Also, I didn't seem to have much of a problem remembering which woman was who, but I guess coming from Scotland that I'm used to everyone being called the same thing.
 
Amontadillo said:
Pharaoh Llandy said:
and the only interesting character to date remains Mat Cauthon.
I've only read the first book, but I thought that there at least Perrin was at least as interesting.
Don't know what happens later though, of course.

He goes emo.  :sad:

For a while at least.

 
Just reread the first one. Some cool things, some uncool things. A lot of ideas were repeated too often for me - like the endless trudging, and the characters being hung up about the same things over and over.

And the number of LotR crossovers was scary. Farmboys chased away by black riders; grim ranger who's secretly a king; pseudogiants who tak to trees, call people hasty and have really long meetings; "Mountains of Mist" in the west and "Dragonmount" alone in the east. It's pretty ridiculous.

And I swear those names were not made for human tongues.

Vieira said:
He goes emo.  :sad:
For a while at least.
How long is "a while" when there's 14 books! He was already emo for like 300 pages.
 
Amontadillo said:
Pharaoh Llandy said:
and the only interesting character to date remains Mat Cauthon.
I've only read the first book, but I thought that there at least Perrin was at least as interesting.
Don't know what happens later though, of course.

The premise behind Perrin is interesting, and the whole talking to wolves things in Tel'aranrhiod, but then he goes all mopey and boring for like 4 or 5 books. It's really dire.
 
Admittedly I never finished (but I got very far in), but IMO the Rand al'Thor character is only interesting when he's being Rand ****ing al'Thor, instead of Mopey McMoperson. I like when he just goes "**** all y'all, I'm doing my own thing" and generally screws up everyone's plans. Aes Sedai are like Gandalf if he came back from the dead with brain damage. They are just awful and have the worst plans ever.
 
Papa Lazarou said:
And the number of LotR crossovers was scary. Farmboys chased away by black riders; grim ranger who's secretly a king; pseudogiants who tak to trees, call people hasty and have really long meetings; "Mountains of Mist" in the west and "Dragonmount" alone in the east. It's pretty ridiculous.

That is only really the first one, to be honest. I noticed it immediately as well, on my first read, but I always just considered it a sort of homage to Tolkien. I think the first one was also planned to be fairly generic, I guess in an attempt to be accessible because after the first it generally diverts away from the Tolkien crossovers. And it just balloons into hugeness with the 4th book, though because of this the pace slows down drastically.

Mage246 said:
Admittedly I never finished (but I got very far in), but IMO the Rand al'Thor character is only interesting when he's being Rand ****ing al'Thor, instead of Mopey McMoperson. I like when he just goes "**** all y'all, I'm doing my own thing" and generally screws up everyone's plans. Aes Sedai are like Gandalf if he came back from the dead with brain damage. They are just awful and have the worst plans ever.

I quite like his
descent into madness. It was kind of annoying to see one of the main characters go insane and nearly **** everything up for everyone, but it made it much more interesting to read, in my opinion. He has been pretty awesome in the last few books as well, since his little incident on Dragonmount.

Also, does anyone else like Ishamael? He, to me, is the best villain of the lot despite his failures/arrogance early on. Though to be fair,  all the villains are fecking useless.  :lol:
 
Oh yeah, I forget about Asmodean.

I was annoyed when he was balefired. I wish we had been able to see more of him.

As for Semirhage: She was indeed quite chilling and you did get the scene she was really quite evil. She was really close to succeeding where others had failed too. I thought her as quite a good character, besides a certain scene with Cadsuane...

Now, I hope to god that Demandred lives up to the hype in the final book. Otherwise he will turn out to be a complete waste of time.
 
Yeah, it's a shame that Asmodean
was killed
but I guess it had to be that way to keep the Dragon Reborn stumbling around in the dark a little longer. Can't go giving your saviour an easy route and an effective teacher, can you?

Well, I suppose you can if you're not Robert Jordan.
 
I think someone recommended I read this (probably in jest) since I called game of thrones slow to progress (in the 4th book which was a pain in the ass to finish). I'm only on the second chapter of the first book but probably won't even finish this since I got other books to read.
 
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