I'd be interested to see the results of someone reading Jordan after Martin. Usually in the escalating-ladder-of-quality-fantasy it's the other way round.
Robert Jordan has written three series.
The Fallon Series is a series of Westerns with no SF&F in them.
The Conan Chronicles are additions to Robert E. Howard's mythos and are apparently not particularly accomplished. His main contribution to fantasy is
The Wheel of Time, a staggeringly massive series consisting of 11 published novels in the main series, a prequel novel and a companion book. The books in the series are:
1.
The Eye of the World
2.
The Great Hunt
3.
The Dragon Reborn
4.
The Shadow Rising
5.
The Fires of Heaven
6.
Lord of Chaos
7.
A Crown of Swords
8.
The Path of Daggers
9.
Winter's Heart
10.
Crossroads of Twilight
11.
Knife of Dreams
12.
A Memory of Light (forthcoming)
Prequel:
New Spring (read after the others though, as it spoils the revelations in the novels)
Jordan is in many ways an embryonic Martin. He has fiendish and intriguing storylines, but these are often resolved in rather disappointing ways driven by a deus-ex-machina approach to magic. He uses Fate (a literal force in the WoT universe) to get his characters out of jams a lot. That said, some of his characters are extremely well-drawn. For some obscure reason these tend to be the only ones he kills. He has some funny ideas about women (lots of crossing arms under breasts and scowling angrily at the latest scrape their menfolk have gotten into, even if it's been saving the world).
However, he can write. The first 6-7 novels (the number varies depending on reader; a lot of people stumble on the fourth book, some cannot stand the first due to its 'homages' to Tolkien, some love all of them) are fiendishly readable and quite page-turning. Some storylines are really good, particularly the ones involving the Seanchan. His world is very heavily and minutely detailed. His magic system - the One Power - was regarded as the most impressive and logically-thought out there until Scott Bakker trumped it in his
Prince of Nothing series. However, Books 8-10 are pretty poor;
Crossroads of Twilight is rightly regarded as an abomination even by large numbers of
WoT fans. Book 11,
Knife of Dreams, is something of a return to form, closing off a lot of storylines and setting things up for a killer finale.
I would recommend this series, despite its shortcomings. The main reason I hesitated to include it in my earlier recommendation list is that Robert Jordan is seriously ill and there is some question over the final book being completed (though Jordan's recent blog posts indicate his health has improved and work on the novel is picking up), and the length of caveats regarding this series and its lengthy dip in quality in its second half are quite long (see the rest of this post
. But overall I'd say it's worth checking out, at least. If nothing else, GRRM often says he has Robert Jordan's recommendation on the covers of his books to thank for a lot of the sales, and the two writers are friends (although I believe that GRRM has not read
WoT as of yet).
