Poll: Wheel of Time...Have you read it?

[iwinatlife]

Just a random note for those on the fan side of the discussion
http://phoenixalthor.deviantart.com/journal/Wheel-Of-Time-Feature-345547338 check out the awesome fanart XD

 

[barbzilla]

I quit after book nine. And considering I was still in my teens when I read that book and I'm turning THIRTY this year, I think I made the right choice. Not to mention all that smoothing of skirts and "Oh Rand u so smexy, take me now u beast" that the females in the books did drove me up the flipping wall.

I did like Mat and Perrin though.

I always viewed the rand thing as part of how powerful of a Ta'veren he is. Just being in a city causes birth rates to raise, so imagine what effect a personal meeting would have with him. On the up side he has limited his bigotry to just three of them (with an obvious preference to Min). On the topic of women being un-relatable, I can see that to an extent. But there are a few good shiny examples in my opinion. Min tends to remain her own woman and is quite reasonable (most of the time) and Cadsuane is an amazing strong female character. Cadsuane is better than most of the "strong female" types you see in video games anyhow. He over did her "wisdom" a bit in my opinion, as he did with Verin, though she was a bit of a mystery.

OT: Yes I have read them all, and I am forcing my girlfriend to listen to them on CD during our road trips (which are fairly frequent), thus far she has enjoyed them quite a bit, though I hold some reservations once we get to books 7-10 (they tend to get a bit dull there). If she can make it through the lull before the storm (gathering storm that is), I think she will like the series as well.

Off Topic, how about Sword of Truth? How many people have read this one and like it. I am quite fond of it, though I am not a big fan of the recurring rape theme.

 

[greyscarf]

Jordan dreamed up the world, but he also bogged it down with superfluous and redundant details.

I have to agree with you on that one. Like a lot of others have posted, I made it up to "Crossroads of Twilight," skimmed "Knife of Dreams" & then just stopped. I loved the world that Jordan created too, as well as discovering it with these characters from a rural place who never dreamed of seeing all the different settings. But once the books became primers in the intricacies of Daes Dae'mar, I really stopped caring.

I have to say, though, that the series is special to me in a lot of different ways. It was one of the last extensive fantasy series I invested time & emotion into (the last being Janny Wurts' Wars of Light & Shadow. . .if she ever finishes it). It taught me the patience & endurance needed to take on the classic long epics of Southern & Russian literature. And Jordan was the first author whose signings nearby excited me.

It's worth reading "The Gathering Storm" and "Towers of Midnight". Firstly, Sanderson wrote most of them, which means the quality of writing improves. More importantly, shit gets real early on in "The Gathering Storm" and stays that way. Plot twists come thick and fast, there are some crazy action scenes, and several characters get moments of incredible badassery. It all got me pumped for the final installment.

Thanks for the suggestion! I've been thinking about it since hearing that the last one was coming out.

 

[Camaranth]

Working my way through the series now, at the end of the Path of Daggers it is becoming a bit of a slog and the characters are getting irritating, but I'll get through it. (It took me four years to read a tale of two cities) Especially with this thread promising better things to come.

Strangely what's annoyed me the most about the last couple of books has been how nothing really happens and then right at the end some big fight erupts. or maybe I'm just not really paying attention to what I'm reading.

Off Topic, how about Sword of Truth? How many people have read this one and like it. I am quite fond of it, though I am not a big fan of the recurring rape theme.

Read it all except for the Omen Machine. It annoyed me how freaking bloody perfect Richard is and how everyone simply loves him.

I watched the Television adaption too, before I read the books mind, I enjoyed that. I'm not sure I could watch it now though, knowing the plot and characters of the books.

 

[Chris Mosher]

I read the first four or five books completely before the sixth book was released but I don't think I finished. This series and GRR Martin's series basically killed any enjoyment I got from high fantasy. The good news is I gained a lot of appreciation for authors who can finish a story in one book. I tried reading the first of Sanderson's books but it did nothing for me. I am also trying out Steven Erikson's Mazalan books just because the ten books are a single cycle.

 

[Bleidd Whitefalcon]

I'm in the process of reading it. Slowly. I've come close to stopping more then once because of all the sexism in it - both sides are guilty of it but it's really bad from the women. ESPECIALLY Nynaeve (seriously. fuck her and her opinions)

I feel like a lot of this stuff is an intended characteristic of the world rather than a fault with the writing. The fact that for the past 3000 years, men have had the unfortunate tendency to randomly go mad and simultaneously gain immense power, not to mention the fact they pretty much destroyed the world and returned society to the dark ages has, quite fairly, embedded an underlying distrust of them in society.[/quote]

That justifies them being scared of men who can channel - and that I have no problem with at all. It makes sense to me. But it DOESN'T justify Nynaeve calling men "wool-brained idiots" every other sentence (yes, I know it's not that often. It feels like it though) Really, it's just her and Aviendha, to a lesser extent, who bug me. And even Aviendha's doing that less now with her character development.

Edit: GAHHH. I don't know how to do multiple quotes Someone help me with it, please?

 

[barbzilla]

snip

The TV adaptation was completely ruined by my reading the books well beforehand. If you want to see Richard being hated and him making mistakes, Check out Omen Machine. The start is pretty rocky, but it picks up pretty quickly and becomes decent. I would wait till after you finish the Wheel of Time though, as I consider WoT a better series. (Might be because I hate rape scenes that much)

 

[Crazy Zaul]

I read the 1st chapter with the dark rider and they got to some village place and talked for ages. It was good but I never continued.

 

[Tiger King]

what's it about?
I've heard the song wheel of time that was posted above and it's pretty awsome.
didn't know it was based on a book

 

[WolfThomas]

what's it about?
I've heard the song wheel of time that was posted above and it's pretty awsome.
didn't know it was based on a book

In 25 words or less?

Huge fourteen book fantasy series, shit-loads of characters, magic system that has rules, gender issues for better or worse, moments of sheer awesome-sauce, some boredom.

 

[Feylynn]

I've gotten into reading entirely to late and my work conveniently allows me to listing to Audio Books unhindered so I've been systematically devouring a lot in recent years. After I got through with Sanderson's Mistborn his endorsement of Wheel of Time pushed it to the front of my line. I'm not sure the series aged well as a whole but I liked most of it quite a lot.
7-10 was honestly quite painful and only some twisted obligation to see it through kept me going but 11 seems to have picked it up quite a bit, I'm halfway through at the moment.

I trust Sanderson can finish it off well, I'm pretty excited to see how he handles another author's work.

 

[Oinodaemon]

GAAAAAAHHH!!! 3 days away! Narglebarleglesh!!!!! sorry, I just had a little fit. I have read all of the wheel of time books a minimum of 6 times, and am VERY excited to finish the book series I've been reading for 12 fucking YEARS.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

It has always been something I have wanted to read. I plan to get around to it one day, if I do not die before then.

I am reading the Belgariad series at the moment, just started the third book. I have a lot of books to read in my future, like Cedar House Rules, the Millenium series, Ulysses, ect,ect. Still, I feel this is a must read for me.

 

[Shadie777]

I think my new avatar completely shows I read the books.

To be honest, I didn't have much trouble with pacing when I started reading them. Books 7-9 were generally good, and the character development was very nicely portrayed for most characters (except for the small stagnation in terms of Perrin's arc and in certain other characters), I especially enjoyed Rand's character progression.


In fact, the only book I could call really bad, especially in pacing was book 10, and even that wasn't much of a slog as I heard it was for older readers. Still was quite bad though.

I think that reading all those books in one go has probably helped, and I would definitely recommend anyone picking up the series since its just about to end.

In other words, I'm excited!

2 DAYS LEFT!

ALLL MY YEEEESSSSSSS!!

 

[EclipseoftheDarkSun]

I was up to date by around book 8 or so.. then I had to wait for more to come out and I wasn't going to read them from scratch again every time a new book came out. Plus by that time I'd grown quite annoyed by the man-child, she-***** dynamics between the men and women. I really think Robert Jordan must have been henpecked quite severely, because most of his female characters were insufferably arrogant - Min seemed to be the exception, though maybe she was too unrealistically compliant by contrast. And his male characters were often stupid, at least around the women.. The best parts of the books were his apparent sadomasochistic tendencies that allowed him to write the Forsaken as complete and utter wankers.. along with the Seanchan slavers.. he really had a good grip of writing characters who knew how to be as degrading as possible to others. Which was good as you loved to hate the bad guys. His grasp of epic scale was nice, though he did waffle on an enormous amount about the 'Bowl of Winds' search, which was the main bone of contention for me - I really didn't care and would have like it to be wrapped up in about a fifth of the number of pages he took. The highlights for me were the times when Rand rediscovered the old 'magic/technologies' and did things that blew the minds of the Aes Sedai, as well as the revenge moments after being captured by a full circle of women from the Tower, as well as the male-female dynamic between users of the One Power. Oh and the escalation among the Forsaken of the 'True Power' and watching them screw each other over. The pinnacle moments were when Rand was personally hunting down members of the Forsaken. I really lost track of what the hell was going on by about book 10 and 11 - wasn't going to reread all that bowl of winds guff, and now I've skimmed/read through book 13, I like how things are speeding up - although I'm not super fond of Rand now having apparently transmogrified into a seemingly all powerful inscrutable npc, being seen mostly from the viewpoint of others now. When the final book comes out, maybe I'll reread them all over the course of a year or so.. maybe.. no promises

 

[iwinatlife]

GAAAAAAHHH!!! 3 days away! Narglebarleglesh!!!!! sorry, I just had a little fit. I have read all of the wheel of time books a minimum of 6 times, and am VERY excited to finish the book series I've been reading for 12 fucking YEARS.

Im both excited to read it and sad that it will be over

 

[trollnystan]

I quit after book nine. And considering I was still in my teens when I read that book and I'm turning THIRTY this year, I think I made the right choice. Not to mention all that smoothing of skirts and "Oh Rand u so smexy, take me now u beast" that the females in the books did drove me up the flipping wall.

I did like Mat and Perrin though.

I always viewed the rand thing as part of how powerful of a Ta'veren he is. Just being in a city causes birth rates to raise, so imagine what effect a personal meeting would have with him. On the up side he has limited his bigotry to just three of them (with an obvious preference to Min). On the topic of women being un-relatable, I can see that to an extent. But there are a few good shiny examples in my opinion. Min tends to remain her own woman and is quite reasonable (most of the time) and Cadsuane is an amazing strong female character. Cadsuane is better than most of the "strong female" types you see in video games anyhow. He over did her "wisdom" a bit in my opinion, as he did with Verin, though she was a bit of a mystery.

SNIPPED REST

Ah yes, Min! I do remember liking her the best of all the main women; at least she didn't fiddle with her braid or smooth her skirts ad nauseam. I don't remember Cadsuane unfortunately - it WAS a while ago I read the books - but IMO female characters wasn't one of Robert Jordan's strengths. Mostly because he seemed to treat them as some mysterious alien creature instead of writing them as people who happen to be female.

But this might be my memory playing tricks on me. I'm not about to pick up the series again to find out though.

 

[barbzilla]

I quit after book nine. And considering I was still in my teens when I read that book and I'm turning THIRTY this year, I think I made the right choice. Not to mention all that smoothing of skirts and "Oh Rand u so smexy, take me now u beast" that the females in the books did drove me up the flipping wall.

I did like Mat and Perrin though.

I always viewed the rand thing as part of how powerful of a Ta'veren he is. Just being in a city causes birth rates to raise, so imagine what effect a personal meeting would have with him. On the up side he has limited his bigotry to just three of them (with an obvious preference to Min). On the topic of women being un-relatable, I can see that to an extent. But there are a few good shiny examples in my opinion. Min tends to remain her own woman and is quite reasonable (most of the time) and Cadsuane is an amazing strong female character. Cadsuane is better than most of the "strong female" types you see in video games anyhow. He over did her "wisdom" a bit in my opinion, as he did with Verin, though she was a bit of a mystery.

SNIPPED REST

Ah yes, Min! I do remember liking her the best of all the main women; at least she didn't fiddle with her braid or smooth her skirts ad nauseam. I don't remember Cadsuane unfortunately - it WAS a while ago I read the books - but IMO female characters was one of Robert Jordan's strengths. Mostly because he seemed to treat them as some mysterious alien creature instead of writing them as people who happen to be female.

But this might be my memory playing tricks on me. I'm not about to pick up the series again to find out though.

I didn't really get that feeling, though I think he was writing from a male perspective and being male myself that could be why. I do remember what you are talking about, I just thought it was more the nature of his writing style. He was trying to be detailed, letting the information flow. At the same time, that detracted from the moment, so it slows the pacing down. I don't blame people for thinking it is dull, everyone has their own tastes in books. I find it very engaging myself.

 

[Xaio30]

Welcome to Sweden, where all the books were split into two, efficiently making 22 books of the series.

Got the first three on my 13th birthday and got hooked. Borrowed the rest from a library and finished them and the Prequel during the rest of the year.

That series is, in the true sense of the word, epic.