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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3778757" data-attributes="member: 4937">He had a true writer's craftmanship, and an amnesiac market hawker's gift of story telling.I doubt he'll ever be remembered as a great writer.  When Tolkien said, "Not all those that wander are lost...", it wasn't Robert that he had in mind.  I knew from about the 4th book that he'd ripped off too many ideas to ever finish this thing in hiis lifetime.  And he had far too much talent as a writer of bodice rippers to turn out literature.  But, he gave alot of people alot of pleasure, including me, and he could write in that white hot fire of genius as prettily and as dramaticly as anyone in the business.  I know that there are a lot of people who normally turn up thier noses at such fare who count 'Wheel of Time' among thier guilty pleasures, because they really could be a pleasure to read.I stumbled on 'Eye of the World' in an unclaimed baggage store not long after it had come out, and picked it up for I think $1.49.  Leaving aside that he was like so many in copying Tolkien through the first half of the book, I found him a great read, and eagerly devoured the first sequel when it came out.  What I saw was I thought a writer truly coming into his own, and I recommended him to my play group - with the result of them all becoming immediately hooked.They stayed exicted about him, long after the disappointing 5th book made me give up on the series.  In one of the most gratutious cases of shark jumping since a very similar turn of tone in David Wingrave's initially equally promising 'Chung Kuo' series, Rand ice cave tryst pretty much marked the beginning of the end of the increasingly slow and melodramatic series.  But it was a great scene, wasn't it?  Page after page is like that.  I'm sure I don't have to recall to mind any of the great ones from the book.Man, could that man craft a scene.  Alot of people have written better novels than Robert, but no one could write better than Robert.Anyway, that's what I have to say about the dead and what he meant to me.  My condolences to his friends and family.CelebrimFormer 'Child of the Light' on the Wheel of Time MUSH (along with Dune and Elendor, the only literary inspired MUSHs I ever visited)</blockquote>

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