AryaUnderfoot said:
I have to say I found Jordan to be fine until:
Nynaeve tugged her braid the hundredth time.
Egwene and Elaine? drank tea/ changed their clothes the billionth time.
An entire book was written about people looking up and staring off into the distance.
Utter crap.
With all of the talk on the forums regarding Robert Jordan's
Wheel of Time series and seeing that it's been a blockbuster, if not
the blockbuster, of the last two decades in Fantasy, I decided that it was time for me to read
The Eye of the World, the first book in the series (lol, like none of you know that). I started
The Chronicles of Narnia at age eight and I've read
The Lord of the Rings over thirty times (not bragging... it's not something I should probably admit since most people say, "Get a life!"). Burroughs, Howard, Brooks, Norton, Eddings, Donaldson, Feist, Le Guin, Jaques, Alexander, King, McCaffrey, McKiernan, and many other authors' books have come and gone from my shelves over the years. I'm not the most well read Fantasy reader, but I've been around enough to know the good story tellers, the good writers, and those who are both. All that to say... I'm ready to weigh in at the halfway point of
The Eye of the World.
Pros. Jordan seems to have a vast amount of background stories. Every page has a reference to people, places and events of the past. This gives the story depth, perspective, and realism. This also gives the reader hope of something to look forward to. I expect the author knows what he is doing. If these references only started appearing in the sixth book, I'd be worried that he's flying by the seat of his pants.
With eleven or twelve books already in the series, a new reader has a wealth of material at hand and will not need to immediately wait for the next book.
Some Celtic flavored names.
Jordan is a good writer, not stupendous, but good.
Cons. The steady progression of evil minions shows that evil is stupid. It's like a D&D munchkin game... First encounter: One Trolloc... Second encounter: Sneak by two Trollocs. Third encounter... Let big NPC wizard drive off Dire Bat... Sixth encounter 2,000 Trollocs... If the characters were needed dead so badly, why did they not send in the 2,000 in the first place.
The Celtic names are mixed with Anglo-Saxon, Mid-Eastern, Norse and Jewish... in the first village!
The characters are not fazed by bizarre, unnatural, and incomprehensible events, creatures and places. "Trollocs, creatures of myth, have just shown up and tried to kill us all... by the way I love what you've done with your hair!" "The Dark Lord is personally haunting my dreams... well, I'll just roll over and forget the whole thing." "A witch has shown up at my village, all the people detest her, nasty creatures are trying to kill us bumpkins... yet she says I may be the Messiah, hmmmmmmmm, I believe her!" "We're fleeing from an army of monsters, lets hide in the city of the dead, no I don't need sleep...I'm bored, let's go adventuring!"
The story from the opening paragraph throught the city of the dead was from Rand's perspective, but it switches abruptly, in mid-chapter, during the flight from the city of the dead.
The use of magic is way too heavy handed. If the Dark Lord, False Dragons, Halfmen and Aes Sedai et al have these tremendous powers why has no one bothered to try and join in? Moirraine puts a twenty mile fog down in seconds... She creates localized earthquakes and firestorms... now that's power! An Ancient Evil Mist wanders the ruins of the dead city, but nobody knows it.
I've been around the block, I'm not thirteen anymore. My suspension of disbelief is not as easily given as when I was a teenager. The author needs to prove to me I should suspend my disbelief... at least Tolkien had the grace to wait until the fourth chapter or so to reveal a Nazgul, Jordan does it on the second or third page. And the way that Perrin (sp?) just accepts his new telepathic wolf powers is amazing...
In addition, the characters are never really in danger. I've never felt that any of the fellowship was going to die. Remember when the fellowship charges a hundred Trollocs? None of them got so much as a scratch! Yet, Rand's father was almost killed by five of them. Sheesh, Tam did not die... he's waiting for his son to return... ahhhh, a Happy Ending.
And all these kids from this same town are the special group of Messiahs? Right.
What book am I describing? A gentle young man in a pastoral setting is beset by black cloaked fiends. Only the help of a wizard allows him to escape with three friends. The wizard wants them to get to the ultimate refuge so a plan can be formulated to defeat the Dark Lord. With the black fiends hot on their tails they take a ferry and escape for the time being. At the first town, they are forced to try and sneak out when the gentle young man inadvertantly blows his cover. The wizard has a friend, a ranger, who works hard to protect the bumpkins. When the fellowship is finally attacked by monsters, it is broken up and scattered. Is it
The Fellowship of the Ring or
The Wheel of Time? The formula is pretty much the same. McKiernan and Brooks, though decent story tellers, worked Tolkien's formula for good paychecks, it seems Jordan has topped them. I must admit that Jordan disguises the formula much better than either Brooks or McKiernan (who border on plagiarism).
Now, as to the OP's original question...
nisaea said:
Is George R.R. Martin's fourth Song of Fire and Ice book just like Rodert Jordan's fifth Wheel of Time book? I mean: are they both just long winded, nothing-really-happens, update-on-all-the-characters, I-like-to-write-big-books novels?
Why should I even stick around to find out?
The trend in fantasy seems to find a good story, setting, and characters and then milk it til the cash cow runs dry. Tolkien only published his Magnum Opus in a series because the publisher was afraid one book would never sell. But Tolkien was finished with the
entire story when the first book was published. Eddings and Feist seem to know no bounds in their pursuit of fame or money... perhaps that's not fair since I know neither of them, but their books seemed to stop being about
the story a looooong time ago.
I guess I've not read enough of Jordan to have a sense of if he even knows where the story is going. I feel that he started with a good idea of how to start and how to end the
Wheel of Time, but that he's gonna get as many books published in between as he can.... this is only a guess.
In my opinion, Martin has a very clear idea of what each book is to be about. Character development and plot progression seem to be highly important to him. I envision a huge flow chart... twenty pages of giant easel paper tacked up in his office... that details the whole story.
AFFC did not really drop off for me. Sure, Tyrion was missing, but so was Jon (and that's a plus). Jaime's POV was excellent and offset my disinterest in the Greyjoys. But that's all personal preference... I feel that the story kept moving at a good pace. Dozens of new questions and theories have arisen with AFFC.
Should I have posted this in the Jordan forums? Nah, I'd get flamed to a crisp.
