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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Serge" data-source="post: 1314221" data-attributes="member: 4049">I don't see Jordan or Martin as guilty of losing characters or settings in their works.  Jordan's flaws come from having too many characters and a tendancy to fall in love with writing a lot material that seems to go nowhere...  In a sense, Jordan overcharacterizes his characters (how many times do we need to see Nynaeve lose her temper and think about why she lost her temper and then get more upset because she lost her temper in the first place).  But Jordan clearly has a very deep world view, deeper, I think, than Tolkien's.  The fact that he has an entire book on The Wheel of Time that discusses the world apart from the books (written in text-book format, no less!) is a testament to his world building talents.Martin's flaws tend to revolve around... Well, off the top of my head, I can't think of any.  I love the handling of characters and the obvious depth of his world to date.  Indeed, I think he's a stronger, more comeptent writer who handles characterization in a more sophisticated manner than Jordan.  Still, if one doesn't like the fairly relative philosophical nature of his narrative to date, and the non-heroic aspects of the work, then Martin's a tough pill to swallow.Goodkind, though...  Wow.  Talk about lousy.  It's obvious that Goodkind didn't have an overall concept for this world.  Initially, we have the evocative names of three sections in his continent:  Westlands (which surprisingly lies in the western most part of the continent), Midlands (you'll be surprised to know that this is in the middle of the continent), and D'Hara (which is where the initial badguys come from.  Another surprise).  We see no major cities.  I mean, once we get into the Midlands, we encounter what we find out a novel later is a small kingdom and the Mud People... whose leader looks nothing like the rest of them and is the Bird Man...  Yeah.  And then, in subsequent books, we find out that there's another continent that stretches for miles and miles and miles that no one knew anything about because of some mystical barrier.  Beyond this barrier are a bunch of women who have a completely new form of magic different from the additive and subtractive magic composed of manipulating existing elements.  These women live together in a big building where they train other women and some men who never age.  Does any of this sound familiar?  I could go on, but what this boils down to is Goodkind's poor handling of his world and how he just tacks on stuff (which is often very similar to other popular, contemporary writers).  I won't get into his poor characterization.But, why should I complain?  I've bought all of his books but the most recent one, reading to make sure that I don't make the same mistakes he makes.</blockquote>

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