Does anybody actually enjoy these books? (Spoilers)

You know, I really hope his book gets tied up soon, that it finishes. I mean, he had all the plot ready and everything, and most of the writing done right? So Can his editor and whoever he picked to finish it just hurry up and finish it? I would like for them to try to get his style right, but they probably won't. But I don't want the series to die without knowing the final outcome. I just want to know if I can read it and accept it, or if it shall turn into thousands of fan fic's with different endings cause everyone hated the prescribed one?
 
I feel the same way. I came to the series late, but whether it's selfish of me or not, I'd like to see it finished. Especially since Jordan created such a detailed world and so much of the last book mapped out.
 
I agree with everything bsom80 said. I love to picture every scene in my mind and give a face to every character but that is exactly what I dislike about these books. The fact that I have to try and manufacture a face for the one thousand characters he comes up with is difficult for me to do. I just cant create a new person's image for the thousands of characters he has. I get them confused and forget what they were doing after thousands of pages of talking and after he forgets about characters for a thousand pages or more. And how many times does he think I want to picture in my mind yet another woman spanking another woman? This might have been cool if I was 15 but alas I am not 15 anymore. I get sick of these women constantly spanking and giving pennances and whippings and constantly threatening each other and being mean to each other without fail or even without a good reason. Here is a typical example of how many times spankings are mentioned on ONE PAGE.
"Last night, she made my bath water too hot, and she is so welted, I had to order the soles of her feet beaten. That is not very effective when she must be left able to walk."
"Anyone passing Therava's tent was likely to hear Galina howling for mercy inside."
"Every day Therava added to the bands of welts that striped Galina from her shoulders to the backs of her knees. Whenever one band began to heal, Therava refreshed it."
"So long as the faintest bruise remains on her face, the rest of her will be bruised as well. I have left the front of her unmarked so she can be punished for other misdeeds." Galina began trembling. Silent tears leaked down her cheeks.
"Faile suppressed a sigh. Her last switching had been for a sigh at the wrong moment."
All of this is not something I enjoy dwelling on or picturing in my mind day in and day out. Did this guy have a fetish for women spanking each other? If so leave it at home. And Mr. Jordan has a bad habit of taking something and repeating it over and over til I am sick of it. For example in book 11 there are weevils in the wheat and he will go on and on about looking for weevils and eating weevils and winnowing the wheat for weevils until you are sick of hearing the freaking word WEEVIL! Every single time he mentions the Seanchan he will say they have helmets that look like insect heads. After reading 11 books and after him mentioning it for the 1000th time I understand perfectly that they wear those insect helmets. It is like he thinks somebody just picked up the 10th book in a series and he has to explain everything over again every chapter. I get it they have insect heads, Jeez! And don't even mention all the clothing descriptions. I get so tired of trying to imagine the number of beads that line Egwene's dress and how many birds and stars Cadsuanne wears in her hair. Oh God that is so boring! Meanwhile the plot has not advanced at all and nothing has really happened at all. And he will say a hundred times "She stood with her arms folded beneath her breasts." Women have breasts, I get it! How many times do I need to picture in my mine Nynaeve jerking her braid? He is so repetitive it gets old.
 
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Well, I agree with you about the clothing descriptions, the spankings and the braid-pulling. However, the weevils was RJ's (unsubtle) attempt to tell you that there was a Foresaken in the area. He did have to mention them a few times to let you know they were important weevils.

I get annoyed that all the Aes Sedai have similar names - Merille, Myrelle, Myrill, etc.
 
I tend to approach books the same way I do cinema and some forms of interactive entertainment. When it comes to film, theater productions or video game titles, I go into the experience understanding what to expect based on the director and producers; on most occasions there is some element of style and pacing inherent to each creative individual, and that always translates to the medium they've chosen to deliver their message.

If I were to go see a Wachowski brothers film, I would expect it to be thought provoking, paced in the same way their other productions have been and with a similar visual theme. Same thing goes for Lucas, Gibson, Spielberg or Ang Lee. When I play an Insomniac, Square-Enix or Valve title, I have a good sense of what to expect given what these studios have done in the past. Not every director, producer or development studio has a consistent style, but I find that the majority do, especially those individuals or companies who've been successful in their respective market.

Authors have differing styles, we all know and understand that, and in many cases those styles are what kept us going back to particular writers who've become favorites.

In my eyes Jordan was always the type of author who, rather than thrust you into the gut-wrenching action or political drama of his world, took you by the hand and led you through it. Rather than spend ephemeral moments with each character, skipping through the progressing plot, he forces you to watch them, almost as if time were playing out at the same pace it does in our every day lives. Sure, there are times it feels like a drawl, but that's how he chooses to tell his stories. And while some may see the first six or seven books as being better paced than the latter, I think what Jordan was doing was expanding upon that methodology, characterization became more important as the plot became more and more complex and the characters began to change with it. We needed to slow down and watch every detail, see everything as clearly as possible.

People have it in mind that there were times Jordan paid too much attention to characters, and not enough to plot progression or moving the characters forward in their particular stories, but I think the reason for this is they're expecting something different from him as an author. Jordan has always paid close attention to his characters and has remained consistently descriptive throughout the series. He has a different style of telling his stories and not every reader is going to enjoy his methods.

The problem I have is when readers blame the authors for writing a "bad story." It's not the author's fault. There are no bad stories, only stories that don't cater to you as a reader.

My personal opinion of the series is that, while I do enjoy the books, I have to be in a certain mood to read them. They take a level of commitment and attentiveness you don't normally invest other novels, and in order to pick up on of his books I need to go into it with the mindset that I'm going to be reading Jordan, and that I'll need to devote the next few hours, not only to reading the page, but also to consciously think about the story as a whole.
 
I loved some of the characters. But as said before, after book 7 I was horrified at how tedious it was becoming, Reading the books became a chore, because I wanted to know what happened next. That is usually why you keep turning the pages but if you don;t get the answers what is the use of reading on?

I actually bough and read book 8 and 9. I bought book 10 and gave up after 50 pages. I bought book 11 and never even read it. And now I am seriously considering just doing away with books 8-11. I guess I am more of a reader that likes to be challenged in a different way. Throw me in the middle of the action. Leave some things unexplained but with some clues for multiple interpretation. But don't make vague promises and prophecies over and over again without actually getting anywhere. It's irritating to me.

Mind you, I did read a lot of other books that I enjoyed a lot more and I also read one or two books that were worse. And I still am grateful for the experience of reading the first book in this series, which was a wonderful experience.
 
I believe most people blame Jordan, not so much for writing a bad story, as much as they do because he changed the pacing. Even RJ admitted that some methods he employed in his story didn't work so well as he would have liked. Art and writing are often experimental.

There are many series out there that are all about plots and plotting, ASOIAF for example, but WoT didn't start out that way. It can only be expected that many people that enjoyed the beginning, wouldn't necessarily like recent developments.

Had RJ started the series off, writing as he did in the last few volumes, his fans would have grown to love it because of that style. Fewer people would have been disillusioned by the changes in pace, although he may have had a number of different fans.

You'll find that musical artists are often like this. Throughout their careers their interests often change. It's up to the fans that were there in the beginning, and the ones who come along later on to define the popularity of such artists. Good and bad are just a point of view in this respect. With art, such classifications will always be subjective, and people will always rate it as one or the other.

The pace of the first few books is largely part of what made WoT popular to begin with. Robert Jordan became the leading author in High Fantasy because of the beginning of his series. Would he still hold that position if Eye of the World had been written more like Crossroads of Twilight? Or would WoT have been more enjoyable had it not changed pace so drastically? I think fans consider these things when they decide whether or not RJ's last couple books are either good or bad. The number of hardcore fans he has right now might actually reflect how things may have turned out for him.

Oh, and welcome, Daenerys! The Dragon has three heads.
 
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C Of K said:
I believe most people blame Jordan, not so much for writing a bad story, as much as they do because he changed the pacing. Even RJ admitted that some methods he employed in his story didn't work so well as he would have liked. Art and writing are often experimental.

There are many series out there that are all about plots and plotting, ASOIAF for example, but WoT didn't start out that way. It can only be expected that many people that enjoyed the beginning, wouldn't necessarily like recent developments.

Had RJ started the series off, writing as he did in the last few volumes, his fans would have grown to love it because of that style. Fewer people would have been disillusioned by the changes in pace, although he may have had a number of different fans.

You'll find that musical artists are often like this. Throughout their careers their interests often change. It's up to the fans that were there in the beginning, and the ones who come along later on to define the popularity of such artists. Good and bad are just a point of view in this respect. With art, such classifications will always be subjective, and people will always rate it as one or the other.

The pace of the first few books is largely part of what made WoT popular to begin with. Robert Jordan became the leading author in High Fantasy because of the beginning of his series. Would he still hold that position if Eye of the World had been written more like Crossroads of Twilight? Or would WoT have been more enjoyable had it not changed pace so drastically? I think fans consider these things when they decide whether or not RJ's last couple books are either good or bad. The number of hardcore fans he has right now might actually reflect how things may have turned out for him.

Oh, and welcome, Daenerys! The Dragon has three heads.
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Well said. The analogy of music artists is pretty apt, I think. Nearly any writer's style will evolve over time, and one of the troubles in taking on a massive series (the writing of which will span multiple decades) is that the author will likely not be the same writer s/he was at the outset.

As for me, I like the WoT. I've read them up through Path of Daggers, then decided to wait until the series wraps up (or, I suppose, the announcement is made that it won't) before reading the rest. You know, I might even re-read the whole series if Memory of Light comes out -- that's just how much I don't dislike this series. ;)
 
Welcome, Durandal. Here's to hoping that it is finished. There are a lot of browns here at Chronicles that would likely love to reread WoT when/if it is ever finished.
 
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C Of K said:
I believe most people blame Jordan, not so much for writing a bad story, as much as they do because he changed the pacing. Even RJ admitted that some methods he employed in his story didn't work so well as he would have liked. Art and writing are often experimental.

There are many series out there that are all about plots and plotting, ASOIAF for example, but WoT didn't start out that way. It can only be expected that many people that enjoyed the beginning, wouldn't necessarily like recent developments.

Had RJ started the series off, writing as he did in the last few volumes, his fans would have grown to love it because of that style. Fewer people would have been disillusioned by the changes in pace, although he may have had a number of different fans.

You'll find that musical artists are often like this. Throughout their careers their interests often change. It's up to the fans that were there in the beginning, and the ones who come along later on to define the popularity of such artists. Good and bad are just a point of view in this respect. With art, such classifications will always be subjective, and people will always rate it as one or the other.

The pace of the first few books is largely part of what made WoT popular to begin with. Robert Jordan became the leading author in High Fantasy because of the beginning of his series. Would he still hold that position if Eye of the World had been written more like Crossroads of Twilight? Or would WoT have been more enjoyable had it not changed pace so drastically? I think fans consider these things when they decide whether or not RJ's last couple books are either good or bad. The number of hardcore fans he has right now might actually reflect how things may have turned out for him.

Oh, and welcome, Daenerys! The Dragon has three heads.
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Agreed. My point was that he changed pace as he saw fit. I don't believe it was so drastic, however, but more of a gradual change, one that had become so much slower that between books five and seven some fans no longer enjoyed reading them. In a way the same thing happened to me, the first few books were page turners. As the series progressed I had to start getting myself in a Jordan mood to pick them up and read. That's not to say I enjoyed them any less, they're just different experiences than the beginning of the series; yet still, as I mentioned above, they're very much Jordan novels and I know what I'm getting myself into when I open one up.
 
Too right. He has always been very Jordan-esque. No one could write quite like him. A sad truth, mind you. Still I hope for a finish to the series.
 
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. We'll see things through eventually. I do have an odd note though, I was re-reading book 4 and there was a chapter that Nynaeve didn't pull on that big braid of hers, it said she pulled on a bunch of small braids. I always assumed nynaeve had a thick weave braid, but the way it described it in this chapter was as though she had tons of braids and she would grab them all together. I was wondering if there was a reason for the difference, if she had changed her appearance or if Jordan just forgot how he usually wrote it? Or did I just misinterpret it from the beginning??
 
BSOM180 said:
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. We'll see things through eventually. I do have an odd note though, I was re-reading book 4 and there was a chapter that Nynaeve didn't pull on that big braid of hers, it said she pulled on a bunch of small braids. I always assumed nynaeve had a thick weave braid, but the way it described it in this chapter was as though she had tons of braids and she would grab them all together. I was wondering if there was a reason for the difference, if she had changed her appearance or if Jordan just forgot how he usually wrote it? Or did I just misinterpret it from the beginning??
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If I'm not mistaken, that occurred when she was in Tanchico and that was the way the women in that city wore their hair, and she, Nynaeve, was following the fashion. Especially in the daring dresses they wore.
 
Yep, I was reading the next book and it came across a part where she mentioned having her hair back in the wrist-thick braid. Thanks much ^.^
 
I'm trying to read the first book at the moment, but struggling. So far not much has happened, and what has happened has been so generic and predictable... gah.
 
I enjoyed the first few so much I bought up book 10 I think but gave halfway through book 8.. I think, maybe 9. I occasionally think I'd like to know how it ends but can't make myself read them again.

Maybe one day
 
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