Wow, I'm glad someone else decided to give it a read based on this thread! Brilliant stuff. Hearing that has made my day! Harebrain, what you say is true - the first book is not the best book, by any means (and the opening builds slowly), but it's not plotless either. Yes, there's just about only one POV character in the whole book and he doesn't come into his own. But think of it like this: Jordan is grounding you in the world right now, teasing you with hints of what's to come without bogging you down with too much (if you can pick up on the hints). By a short way through book two, I was completely hooked. The first time I read someone else's POV (not in a prologue) I was excited! I was finally getting a glimpse into a person and people who are intriguing.
But, I ask - if no new author should write in such a detailed way (oh, I wish I could!), why did John Jarrold react the way he did upon reading it (see my quote from him above, if you haven't)? Why did he say how writers today can still learn a lot about "POV thoughts and dialogue to put across the background and characters with no info-dumps, while also engaging the reader in the story"? He even states that "It's terrifically well done". I mean, imagine writing something so good that a publisher actually "jumps up and down"! For me, I think your style of writing should match the story you're trying to create. Slow styles can suit some better than others.
For me, I've learned so much about POV from Jordan (I'd learned it before speaking to JJ). I see the little tricks he uses to really make POVs unique and interesting, the way he captures a character's background in the words he chooses and the ways of looking at a world that his characters do. I mean, all writers do it - but imo Jordan does it really well.
And look at his sales figures! For a long time he was the leading adult-fantasy-series author. His sales figures were over 44 million a few years ago. Love him or hate him, the man's done something right.
And, thinking further, I feel his style suits the genre he's writing in. I like epic fantasy to be full of description, because it creates the sense of epicness and awe (imagine if an epic was all action, action, action - you'd feel there was lots going on, but you'd never really get a sense of how the world worked, never feel it could exist beyond the places visited; I've heard that's
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn's flaw, though I haven't read it yet). And Jordan's VERY good at creating different peoples and different places. The world feels so vast and unique, when plot threads and POVs come together, you get tingles!
As for his females, yes, I do agree that they are very much action-oriented, rightly or wrongly (weirdly, Jordan's wife was his editor, and she never suggested taming it or making the women's role more understandable at first). But you
will get in their heads at some point, too. However, I don't have a problem with the woman's actions. Yes, one braid-pulls (but that is
her trait; we all have bad traits) and they "sniff" when annoyed, but I feel they do that because of the role they have in society. If I can give a sort-of spoiler, they're used to being in charge. It's Jordan's flaw that he hasn't made this clear in book one, though, because it's led to a lot of people hating his women rather than understanding that they react the way they do because they have an elevated position (and sometimes the men rub them up the wrong way by being "stubborn", which basically means the women aren't used to men standing up to them and think it's a man's "stubbornness"). And I don't think the women know how to handle a man being stubborn, so they sniff and stomp and braid-pull, thinking the men will react to it and back down, because they see men as easily subdued (they're hanging out with the wrong crowd, then!). If anything, I think the women have such an elevated position, they misunderstand things about men that we get. But, I could be talking out my butt, here...
Boneman, I read for an hour or less most nights, and I'm at the end of book five...
To be honest, I can't believe how I don't notice the pages flying by. The series has drawn me in so much! The first book was definitely the one I liked least, in some way because of what HareBrain said: at that point I didn't feel for the main character, because he stayed pretty tame. And I would have liked more POVs.
Ratsy - great to hear! I intend to stick with it. I'm glad others have come on to defend the series. I didn't want this thread to be all about
my reasons to read it, since there's got to be others out there who love it just as much, even with the derailed middle books.
