Wheel of Time

[Thornir Alekeg]

My opinion:

The first three books: fantastic.

Each successive book through book 7 - worse than the one before. I woudl say books four and five were good, but not as good. With six and seven I began to lose all interest in spending time on this series and I gave up.

I would not suggest waiting for the series to be completed as the rate things are going, you may need to cryopreserve yourself to be sure you can read it - actually it is more likely that Jordan will die before finishing and somebody else will do it posthumously.

That said, I would suggest reading the first five books, then if you want to keep it going, find out if there are abridged versions of the next several books on tape. I would guess a two to four hour abridged version should allow you to get the few important things that happen without all the fluff and filler (and unlike when I am talking about gaming books, I am using fluff as a derogatory comment).

Oh, and don't be surprised by sub-plot lines that vanish or never go anywhere...

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I agree somewhat. Lord of Chaos definitely drags in places, but the stellar finale went a long way to making up for it, IMHO.

The one problem with that finale was that it read like one of my term papers that I finished at 5 AM the morning it was due.

In other words, you could tell that it was rushed. That was one where, I understand it, they had editors in his hotel room, editing as they went, so they could try and get the book out on schedule.

Brad

 

[tec-9-7]

honestly think his issues with women are pathological,

Everything became much clearer to me when I glanced at his bio on a fly-leaf and saw that he was a Citidel graduate.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Everything became much clearer to me when I glanced at his bio on a fly-leaf and saw that he was a Citidel graduate.

Insufficient justification. I've known much more stable and well-adjusted men to come out of there and similar places.

 

[Starman]

The one problem with that finale was that it read like one of my term papers that I finished at 5 AM the morning it was due.

In other words, you could tell that it was rushed. That was one where, I understand it, they had editors in his hotel room, editing as they went, so they could try and get the book out on schedule.

Brad

Except that Jordan never really goes into a lot of detail in any the major battles. They tend to get glossed over in favor of some individual character moments during the fight and then the aftermath.

Starman

 

[Starman]

Insufficient justification. I've known much more stable and well-adjusted men to come out of there and similar places.

So Jordan is not stable and well-adjusted? :\

How do other females feel about Jordan's females? My mom and sister are both reading the series now. Neither has had any complaints and have made comments that they enjoy the "strong women."

I have issues with some of the females, but not as much as some people seem to.

Starman

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

So Jordan is not stable and well-adjusted? :\

How do other females feel about Jordan's females? My mom and sister are both reading the series now. Neither has had any complaints and have made comments that they enjoy the "strong women."

Most of the women I know who have read the books are reduced to fits of rage, barring the one who went into gales of laughter. The primary complaint seems to be that among the women "strong" correlates with "dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks" and "overwhelming hubris." Actually, I think he does that with both genders, it's merely exaggerated with the females.

And don't get me started on his psychosexual issues.

 

[Orius]

And until the previous poster, I'd never even heard of anyone who liked The Path of Daggers, which featured the worst prose in the entire series, and where only Egwene's thread wasn't cringe-worthy, but didn't like Winter's Heart (book 9), which, along with the prequel novel, is the only reason I have some hope that Jordan can still write.

Yes, I found that very strange as well. I didn't hate The Path of Daggers, but it also feels like one of the slowest paced books of the series. Rand and the Seanchan fight each other to a standstill, and the weather is fixed, but other than that, little else happens. Winter's Heart does indeed rock, except for the fact that Perrin's storyline seemed to have been dropped midway through the book. And the ending literally rocked the world. But Crossroads of Twilight was such a huge letdown.

 

[Samnell]

The first three are very strong, like everyone's saying. I'm in the middle of rereading the series to date now. I've only gotten so far as I am (nearly done with Lord of Chaos) this once, but I've reread the first three several times.

Jordan's two major weaknesses I see as a writer are his apparent inability to run with a character very long any more and his women. Since Book 4, he's become totally scatterbrained. His major characters are all over the world and he can't bother to stick with one for more than a few chapters. This can be a big let-down when he throws you up to a great cliffhanger and then drops it in favor of a must less interesting subplot. I can forgive that in part because he does set up some of the cliffhangers very well, but over the last half of the series he's become pathological about it. He'll drop one of his three main characters for a whole book. The latest book had the series' chief protagonist present only in an epilogue.

The women. Uh, I'll say in Jordan's defense that fantasy fiction has at best a mixed history of portraying female characters well. Jordan definitely makes them more than designated mates for his males. But over the course of the series they slowly change from being strong and in control (if a bit sexist, I think everyone in the WoT universe has got to be a major sexist) to being a band of increasingly similar harridans.

The pacing is something that Jordan's fighting with sometimes and sometimes has beaten fairly well. Path of Daggers is truly an atrocious piece of crap, but while Winter's Heart takes place over maybe 10 days it's built far better. Crossroads of Twilight, the latest, is a return to something of the Path of Daggers problem. I think a part of this comes from every single character in the book being more paranoid and secretive than a whole world of J. Edgar Hoovers. The end of WH makes you think they're set to start cooperating for the first time in like seven books, but Crossroads tells us that Jordan was just fooling and WH is an isolated incident.

The big divider in between the first five or so books and the later seems to me to be that Jordan switches over from a sort of journey/quest oriented plotting to something approaching political intrigue. He's better at the quest stuff.

 

[drothgery]

Most of the women I know who have read the books are reduced to fits of rage, barring the one who went into gales of laughter. The primary complaint seems to be that among the women "strong" correlates with "dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks" and "overwhelming hubris." Actually, I think he does that with both genders, it's merely exaggerated with the females.

I don't think this is as bad it seems, really. The women that seem poorly written are, for the most part, very young, extremely physically attractive, products of an insular culture, grew up in a strongly matriarchal society, and have an insane amount of magical and/or temporal power. Throw in a male prophecied-savior/destroyer who goes around breaking down social norms without a care for what he's throwing away, and, well, it's not likely that many women with those characteristics are going to come off as rational and well-adjusted by modern standards.