Wheel of Time, where to start?

[Steel_Wind]

I gave up on it too. It turned into protracting a series for $$. The lack of plot evolution was one thing - but the part that made it intolerable for me was the lack of character evolution, especially among the female Aes Sedai.

I began to despise The Sword of Truth novels for similar reasons, though in that case, the lack of any real clue by the author as to where each novel was going - let alone the series - was a big factor (the man clearly did not write many of the novels with an outline. Wizard's First Rule as a stand alone book is still a good read though).

Compare all of this broken fat fiction to A Song of Ice and Fire, where characters grow, change and move forward as the plot unlimbers with a deliberateness that underscores that the author knows precisely where he is going with all of this (Shame that he is just taking far too long to write them though: success and riches have clearly undermined GRRM's motivation to write).

 

[lkj]

It's probably worth noting that Jordan's health is not good, so while we'd probably expect the 12th and final volume next year by the pace he'd been working at since about book 6, that's almost certainly not going to happen.

Just to emphasize this a bit more-- His health is not only 'not good', he's very sick. He has a rare blood disease with a pretty dubious prognosis. From his blog, he's had good news of late, but it sure sounds like he's barely got the energy to get around sometimes. Regardless of how I feel about the books, I sure hope he comes through it. Sounds horrible.

Anyway, I loved the first few books. I did sort of stop reading them after awhile, for the same reasons noted above. Thousands of pages with little happening got tiresome. And I'm one who loves extensive characterization. Haven't read the last one, but supposedly it's much, much better in that regard from what friends have told me.

So, in sum, I'd start at the beginning if I was going to try it, and maybe skim some of the later books (get a synopsis off the web?). But I'd also be afraid the series wasn't ever going to be finished (due to RJ's health problems), though I know he's committed to pulling it off.

AD

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

So, in sum, I'd start at the beginning if I was going to try it, and maybe skim some of the later books (get a synopsis off the web?). But I'd also be afraid the series wasn't ever going to be finished (due to RJ's health problems), though I know he's committed to pulling it off.

Pretty much.

The quality demonstrably drops off about Book 7; more succinctly, the end to Book 6 reads like a college student's term paper that was finished at 7 AM the day it was due. (IIRC, he was locked in a hotel room to finish it)

Book 10 is, in fact, very good, as apparently someone got through to him that for the love of all that's holy, the last few had been boring. Stuff happens, the plot moves forward, and there's quite a bit of action. I believe that exactly three things happened in all of Book 9, so it's a big change.

Brad

 

[Umbran]

Every single one of my friends picked up the series, and loved the first couple or few fo the books.

Every single one of them also curses Jordan's name for how horribly he deals with the later books. The man seems to be in dire need of a good editor.

So, while I myself have never read them, I'm going to suggest you don't start. At least, not until the sotyr is finished. And given Jordan's illness, the story may never get finished...

 

[Zaukrie]

I really liked the first book, then sort of the 2nd, and a little less the third, barely finished the 4th, and couldn't get started on the 5th. They just bogged down too much, and the characters didn't seem to advance either. I'd say "don't".

 

[Taelorn76]

Every single one of my friends picked up the series, and loved the first couple or few fo the books.

Every single one of them also curses Jordan's name for how horribly he deals with the later books. The man seems to be in dire need of a good editor.

So, while I myself have never read them, I'm going to suggest you don't start. At least, not until the sotyr is finished. And given Jordan's illness, the story may never get finished...

I thought I heard that his wife was his editor for a few of the books. Then when those didn't do so well they got him a new one for either book 10 or 11.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I thought Book 1 was an interesting, if overlong, standalone novel.

Then whoops, it gets expanded into a series! That first novel must have done well

I quite enjoyed 2/3/4, and there are aspects of 5 that were excellent (especially if that is the one with the trolloc attack on the village), however 6 and 7 bogged down so much that I abandoned it.

My biggest beef with it was the pernicious stupidity of the characters. They never share information, always behave in the most childish and culpable way possible and never seem to really get a grip of themselves.

Cheers

 

[shilsen]

I thought Book 1 was an interesting, if overlong, standalone novel.

Then whoops, it gets expanded into a series! That first novel must have done well

I quite enjoyed 2/3/4, and there are aspects of 5 that were excellent (especially if that is the one with the trolloc attack on the village), however 6 and 7 bogged down so much that I abandoned it.

My biggest beef with it was the pernicious stupidity of the characters. They never share information, always behave in the most childish and culpable way possible and never seem to really get a grip of themselves.

Cheers

Get out of my head! That's exactly my response, and I quit right after 6 and 7 too.

One thing I'd add is that Jordan is one of the two fantasy authors whose books make me think that he is completely and utterly clueless about women. The other is John Norman, of Gor infamy. That's a series which, coincidentally, started with a decent novel and then went downhill and plumbed depths that Jordan would be very hard put to reach.

 

[Hypersmurf]

I quite enjoyed 2/3/4, and there are aspects of 5 that were excellent (especially if that is the one with the trolloc attack on the village), however 6 and 7 bogged down so much that I abandoned it.

I think it was about halfway through book five that I realised I hadn't picked the book up for several days, and just didn't care.

Of course, that was over ten years ago, so maybe it would be different if I tried again

-Hyp.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

My biggest beef with it was the pernicious stupidity of the characters. They never share information, always behave in the most childish and culpable way possible and never seem to really get a grip of themselves.

I second that, and I'll raise you Jordan's use of different communities as character personalities rather than giving characters any depth. By which, I mean to say that he will describe a new nation or region, and then have every character encountered there or associated with it as conforming to the regional stereotype in lieu of a genuine personality- ie, all Kandorans are wheeling dealing merchants, all Cairhienans are plotting, etc. It's like David Eddings writ large.

Like you, I gave up around book 6 or 7 or thereabouts. I really shouldn't have continued after the first (since I didn't care too much for it), but I didn't have anything else at the time to read, and I'd heard how great it was, so I thought I'd bear with it a while longer. Then, it got to the point that I just wanted to get the answers to a ton of the plot points Jordan introduced and never followed up on, if only to justify my investment thus far. Finally, the frustration, lack of substantive answers, and lack of enjoyment outweighed any interest in the answers- that, plus by that time the world wide web had grown to a point where it was easy enough to find answers in the online communities that are out there, so I no longer had to waste my money to learn these things myself. (There still seem to be more questions than answers, though.)