Wheel of Time discussion thread

As I said: Any-monster-who-is-not-predator vs predator .

pibbur who isn't sure who would wind in a fight between the musketeer and the predator. (You may take this as a compliment)

I'd be naked, wearing only socks to muffle my footsteps, covered in mud to shield me from infravision - and then I'd aim for its private parts with a large handgun :)

I declare myself the victor!
 
Pfft. That doesn't work. The educational threads in OT on handguns teaches us that handguns are for fun and not really for harming others let alone a predator. Although the sight of you naked besides the socks, covered in mud, might just be scary enough for a predator to run away.
 
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E-Book version finally came out yesterday. Gotta finish my current book and then I need to find a place I can lock myself in.
 
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I'm through. What a ride. I'm both sad and happy that it's over. I'd name The Wheel of Time the best of epic — read: Tolkienesque — fantasy. It started out like any other high fantasy book but developed into so much more.

The first fantasy series I read was Shannara. Good fun. I advanced to Midkemia — Magician is still, in my mind, the best coming-of-age mage story ever. And lastly I graduated to WoT. Each series was a step up in my opinion. I kept reading various other works that were fun but didn't resonate as much with me, like Dragonlance (ok), some Drizz't books (meh), Aurian (ok), Lord of the Rings, Assassin books (ok), Sword of Truth (ok soap opera). The first series after those that gripped me like before was A Game of Thrones, but that's already very different; fantasy seems to branch of in different directions nowadays, which of course has its own merits.

What I liked most about the Wheel of Time was the sheer amount of detail in everything. Things that others apparently found "slow", I reveled in. The magic, cultures, factions, landscape and clothing descriptions. And the names — Robert Jordan's names for his characters and everything were so … flowing. Or I just read so much about them that they grew on me (although "Asha'man" always reminded me of Saiya-jin from Dragonball for some reason, hehe). I must say that Brandon Sanderson, albeit one of my favorite authors of modern times, doesn't quite have the same knack for names.

R.I.P. Robert Jordan.
Thanks for finishing, Brandon Sanderson.
 
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I completely agree. I love the level of detail. I recently re-read "New Spring", which is a great book, and it reminded me just how much we lost when Jordan died. If he had been able to complete the main series, he could have expanded the Wheel of Time universe through novels like New Spring.

I doubt they will allow anyone else to do that. At least not for quite some time. Rather similar to Middle-Earth where there's a ton of untapped potential.
 
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I stopped reading after volume 6 or so, for the time being. Level of detail is sure great, but it just seemed the story does not really want to go anywhere. And more than half still to go! And of course there was so much braid-tugging and other endlessly repeating mannerisms that I was getting ready to scream.
Still, occasionally I find myself wanting to continue the series, it does have a certain pull after all. Guess one day I will.
 
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I'm on book 5 right now of this series, and I swear 90% of the book seems to be characters sighing and whining at or about each other. I might, might give book 6 a chance, but if it doesn't improve I'll be done with this series. It seems there's maybe 50 pages of real stuff that happens in each book, then a lot of drivel.



-Carn
 
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I found it actually got better towards the end. Arhu, have you read any LEM, especially the Recluse series? I'd also strongly recommend his Imager series.
 
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When you say LEM, I think Stanislaw Lem. ;)

>>> Warning: some spoilers! <<<

I really loved the Wheel of Time books! The main problem, though, and I think a big reason why it seems like nothing is happening, is that it tries to do way too many parallel plots. The first books stuck with just three or four but they started to go to 6+ plots per book! When you divide between 6 plots, even 1000 pages aren't enough to advance any one plot very much.

The Wheel of Time Encyclopedia is really handy for me. There's no way I could possibly remember who's who in these books without that website.

Starting with Lord of Chaos and going through to the end of Jordan's books did get trying. There were some good plots in there (Fayle escaping the Aiel was real good) but the cultures got less interesting to me and they had pretty much discovered all the interesting stuff about the world by this point.

Sanderson's books helped out a lot. The resolution of the White Tower rebellion was particularly good. (Actually, Egwene's story is my favorite of the whole series.) And the final book was really great, though having a 1000 page book be a page-turner plays havoc with sleep patterns.

I can't imagine how Red Eagle could ever make movies out of these books. Sure, you can turn 1000 words into one picture but this monster? Nah. Maybe they could just do "New Spring" and leave it at that.
 
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Arhu, have you read any LEM, especially the Recluse series? I'd also strongly recommend his Imager series.
Yes, started with Recluse but so far only made it to book 2. Liked it well enough so far to want to continue reading, but other books also crave for attention.

I can't imagine how Red Eagle could ever make movies out of these books. Sure, you can turn 1000 words into one picture but this monster? Nah. Maybe they could just do "New Spring" and leave it at that.
Movies? No way… they should make series like A Game of Thrones. Anything less would probably not do the world justice.
 
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It might even be too massive for that.

I'm still waiting for a serious RPG set in the WoT setting, something along the lines of Dragon Age: Origins, where you get to choose your background (Warder/Aes Sedai in Tar Valon, Whitecloak in the south, Aiel in the east etc) and take it from there. Each with their own story affecting the overall plot. Either that, or you start as a blank slate (Elder Scrolls style) and choose a class by choosing a "camp", similar to Gothic 1 and 2. Of course, it should not follow the plot of the books.

Ambitious, but man it would be fantastic.
 
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A first season focus on Moiraine could work. They are all still together in the beginning, after that it gets more complicated in preventing it from becoming a mess.
 
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I'd say the good ones ended with about #3. I gave up after one where nothing of significance happened the entire book. The prolog and epilog would have been enough.

Agreed. I stopped halfway through #4, when I felt that a lot of new elements were introduced with no apparent purpose and without adding anything significant to the story.

pibbur whose memory of it may be a bit rusty after all those years.

And who just realized the thread is 5 years old, and he already said the same thing back in 2013.
 
So another GOT type series that will take years to finish, It might be good but lets just say I'm skeptical after the two season failure of Shannara Chronicles on Spike.

Just make that rumored open world Wheel of Time ROG already and I'll be fine.
 
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I finished all the books and long winded as they were at times, I enjoyed them. He really stretched the story here and there I feel. I think it would have been an even better series of books totaling half of the volumes. Equally, a six season series could tell the story as well.
 
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Agreed. I stopped halfway through #4, when I felt that a lot of new elements were introduced with no apparent purpose and without adding anything significant to the story.

pibbur whose memory of it may be a bit rusty after all those years.

And who just realized the thread is 5 years old, and he already said the same thing back in 2013.

I've been at my chair waiting for you opinion of book 4!

No Morraine for season one - let's just get straight to the boys and girls and take some liberty to speed things up and
let's not kill Morraine right away - or at least bring her back a lot sooner.

We can hope that Amazon will streamline this series to something like the 6 books but with GOT the way its going, we know that's not going to happen if this is successful.
 
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Well, I'm definitely going to re-read the series soon after I retire. Being able to read them straight through should help a good bit.
 
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