Wheel of Time November Launch. The next GOT or the next Shannara Chronicles?

[TheSword]

That's an understatement. "Barely recognizable" is the term I'd use

Re: WoT, I gave up on book 4. I hope the show won't be too rigid in it's adaptation, because otherwise we'll end up with an entire episode describing the dark road. And how dark it is. And how long it is. And how slow it is. For 56 pages...er...60 minutes...

Ha ha. I don’t know if you want spoilers but the first season is going to cover a lot of ground. I think my earlier post was wrong and they could be covering the first two books in series 1, judging by the episode titles.

 

[TheSword]

One of the reasons I got a Kindle was so that I wouldn't have to lug those wrist-cracker books around.

I feel your pain!

 

[payn]

Genre specific shows like WoT are going to need good common elements to rise above the sub-genre. GoT has excellent political intrigue and hell of a slow burn mystery in the background. Those are elements everybody finds appealing; general speaking. The fact that the fantasy elements were dialed down to 1 in GoT helps a lot with the general viewing public too. Another well received series that transcends its genre is The Expanse for basically all the same reasons as GoT. The Expanse may not be GoT level of zeitgeist but its as close as I can see from Amazon offerings to date. Another thing going in GoT favor is HBO having a lot of experience in executing highly rated series.

I have not read any WoT (despite being a D&D nerd I dislike most fantasy literature) so I cant speak to the material. It will need some classic elements to raise it above another fantasy series. Along, of course, great casting and execution by amazon.

 

[Parmandur]

The books were still ongoing successes, as people still believed the series would continue to be published. Wheel of Time hasn't been published in years and hasn't been relevant for far longer than that. I don't know if it's quite as irrelevant at Shannara, but it's close.

I mean, they continue to sell well and are in print 9 years after the final one came out. The conclusion, for what it is worth and no spoilers, is the cosmic and metaphysical antithesis of the end of Game of Thrones: completely earned and justified every sentence in the prior tomes.

 

[Parmandur]

Amazon has produced a number of truly excellent shows, which MTV has not, so it's got that going for it, and shows like the Witcher show that, post-GOT, producers of fantasy series have put real money toward productions since. So this will look good.

I only got halfway through the first brick of a book, I think, and found it completely unmemorable. I will certainly watch an episode or two, but have no expectation of how it'll go.

Jordan's prose is dense (his stated main literary influences were Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen), but there is a lot of reward in reading the books. I would recommend taking a second look, if you have the time to read these days. Nobody, and I mean nobody, writes battles like Robert Jordan did.

 

[Parmandur]

I only managed to make it partway through book 5 before I got sick of the repetitive plots and repetitive characters.

From what I can recall, there were about 3 or 4 interchangeable male protagonists and about the same number of female ones. I remember thinking the series could have been much shorter and more streamlined if he’d condensed all his characters down into one or two.

Anyway, my point is, I don’t have fond memories of this series so I will most likely give this a miss … especially if they are trying to be faithful to the books, as a poster above stated. That tells me there will be minimal condensing of characters / plots.

Nevertheless, I shall withhold a final judgment until the series is out and people are talking about it.

EDIT: For what it’s worth, I was not a fan of the Shannara books either. All I can really remember of that series is the author’s overuse of the term “tendrils of mist”.

Also, I haven’t read any of the GoT books. I enjoyed the series (but agree that the show didn’t stick the landing).

I had the benefit of jumping in midstream, so I was able to to read the first 8 books in a week (I was 15 and it was Summer, good times). No character is redundant in the grand scheme, which astoundingly does coalesce in the end.

 

[darjr]

A friend of mine LOVES them. All of them. I bought the first one and never read it.

 

[Parmandur]

They were already popular, award-winning books before the TV show. The first book didn't rocket to sales success quickly, as it was in 1996 and it still took time for word to get around. But the second and third books both made the New York Times Bestseller lists for their years. The fourth hit the #1 hardcover fiction spot on that list in its year.

A Game of Thrones (1996) – Locus Award winner, World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award nominee, 1997
A Clash of Kings (1998) – Locus Award winner, Nebula Award nominee, 1999
A Storm of Swords (2000) – Locus Award winner, Hugo Award and Nebula Awards nominee, 2001
A Feast for Crows (2005) – Hugo, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards nominee, 2006

The show, years later, made the books popular again.

The show made the books popular on a different level. When I read the books, it was hard to find anyone to talk about them with. Ten years later, everyone was talking about the Targaryens at the water cooler. And now Google autocorrect recognizes "Targaryen" as a word.

 

[Parmandur]

Ha ha. I don’t know if you want spoilers but the first season is going to cover a lot of ground. I think my earlier post was wrong and they could be covering the first two books in series 1, judging by the episode titles.

That would work with the 8 season math.

 

[Parmandur]

Genre specific shows like WoT are going to need good common elements to rise above the sub-genre. GoT has excellent political intrigue and hell of a slow burn mystery in the background. Those are elements everybody finds appealing; general speaking. The fact that the fantasy elements were dialed down to 1 in GoT helps a lot with the general viewing public too. Another well received series that transcends its genre is The Expanse for basically all the same reasons as GoT. The Expanse may not be GoT level of zeitgeist but its as close as I can see from Amazon offerings to date. Another thing going in GoT favor is HBO having a lot of experience in executing highly rated series.

I have not read any WoT (despite being a D&D nerd I dislike most fantasy literature) so I cant speak to the material. It will need some classic elements to raise it above another fantasy series. Along, of course, great casting and execution by amazon.

Robert Jordan was a history buff who joined the military and served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a helicopter gunner (awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm). After Vietnam, he got a degree in physics from the Citadel and was a nuclear engineer for the Navy.

His approach to fantasy fiction is informed by this rather particular background: his battle scenes are top of the line, his overall war scenarios (who is fighting who in the big picture, and wargame level details of conflicts) are amazing. The magical system of the books is logical in a way few fantasy writers even attempt.

There is a lot to build off of here.