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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Serge" data-source="post: 1562798" data-attributes="member: 4049">I don't think there's anything worth refuting.  Essentially, it's my contention that within similar genres, one will find a great deal of correlation and overlap if not in theme, then in characterisation.  In this case we have both.  This does not diminish the quality (relatively speaking) of Jordan's work in the same way that the similarities between early Hebrew myths and Mesopotamian/Sumerian/Babylonian myths do nothing to diminish Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.  Afterall, we see wolves and dreamlands and differences between men and women and prophecies and so on in many speculative fiction texts.  Many of these writers are influenced by the same material, so it stands to reason that many of the same elements will appear within their work.If there is a relationship/correlation, I think Jordan does a good job of redirecting his energies.  Both stories share a great deal of emphasis on destiny, messianic figures, differences and similarities between men and women, a strong connection to internal past, and a cavalcade of fairly complex characters.  Both stories also get easily distracted, cumbersome, and pendantic.  However, the two stories have different goals, IMO.  Dune attempts to reveal a more...  cut-throat, moral relativity in the creation of its messiah; although prophecy will be fulfilled, from the start, it's fairly certain that it's not a good thing, won't work out in the end, and will result in the deaths of billions.  WoT, on the other hand, does not seem to hint much of anything.  Indeed, although readers are confronted with prophecy becoming reality in ways not always anticipated and although we have been told that Rand will die, we really don't know what's going to happen...  There's also a degree of optimism buried under the WoT story to date that is utterly non-existent in Dune.However, let's look at this from another perspective.  Why is it okay for there to be a correlation between Dune and WoT, but not (IMO) such a relationship between WoT and the Sword of Truth (SoT)?  Largely because Jordan does a much better job all the way around in the material.  There's a degree of ownership with Jordan's work that we don't find in Goodkind's.  We know that before he wrote much of his stuff that he created a world, studied shared myths and legends in the real world (largely from Europe, the Middle East, and N. America... and perhaps Africa) to intensify our ability to appreciate the material, and he understands his characters.  As a result, although there are similarities between WoT and Dune, it's just as reasonable to argue that Jordan came to these conclusions largely on his own.  Afterall, we know that there are examples of shared thought within similar genres due to the nature of the genres rather than just copying.  However, we don't get this with SoT.  There is a severe transition between Wizard's First Rule and Stone of Tears.  In the first novel, although there's not much really there in terms of depth (in any sense of the word), we see something that has promise because it's so shallow (although not well written).  However, once we get to the second novel, we suddenly see elements clearly influenced by WoT to the exclusion of other possibilities; obviously, Goodkind didn't have an overarching goal in his original novel, didn't think to flesh out his world or characters, and didn't have any real, transcending themes.  He inserts these (poorly) in his second and subsequent novels in a manner that reeks of copying.In the end, there're ways to pay homage to material or to allow your material to resonate with the shared thought within similar genres.  Jordan, if indeed he's heavily influenced by Dune (and I think he is), did so in a sophisticated way that does not diminish his work.</blockquote>

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