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It gets much worse before it gets better
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Feb 12, 2018 22:41
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That's actually the general feeling I've gotten from talking to a couple friends about the series. Blah middle, but the last books get really really good.
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Feb 12, 2018 22:48
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I'm not good with audiobooks anyway but I can't imagine listening to the entirety of WoT in audiobook form
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Feb 12, 2018 22:50
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Some people like audiobooks...never could get the appeal. The bad news: there's a definite dip in quality from books 6->10, bottoming out at 10 (which is mostly just reactions to the end of 9--which is a high point). 11+ are all really good though. The Good News: the quality dip is decently mitigated by reading them in a marathon/quick fashion. In real time, this was almost a decade to get through, but re-reads let you push through this in a few days/weeks. Really keeps momentum from flagging. Don't worry about the 500 ancillary characters. Most are unimportant and can be shelved under "good guy/bad guy channeler" and "good guy/bad guy normie"
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Feb 12, 2018 23:27
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I tried to get into wot multiple times but just didn't like it. Might be because it was in audiobook form but if I can deal with malazan in audiobook that should have been fine. Also for Sandersons books they lead themselves well to audiobooks. The characters are pretty clearly identifiable as it switches between characters.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:09
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To be fair, WoT is the first audiobook I've ever listened to. Between life/wife/kids, I don't get much time to actually read during the day, but I do have a 40-50 minute commute to and from work every day, so audiobooks make sense. I've been reading the Dark Tower series while I brush my teeth and before bed, and listening to WoT in the car. I'm actually enjoying the audiobook format, but the lady who does the Aes Sedai stuff is a bit bland. At least the dude tries to mix up the voices. The voice for Loial is pretty funny. I think the most annoying part is I have no idea how all the character names and places are spelled.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:13
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WoT books... 1-3: Good 4-5: Okay 6-10: descend from mediocre to terrible 11+: Good and better The wordiness is definitely a thing, though it lightens up under Sanderson. I've always considered Jordan a sort of Tolkien Lite, right down to overstuffing the pages of his books with unnecessary baggage.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:20
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Habibi posted:WoT books... Yup, this is basically spot on. There's an entire book in that 6-10 range without a single page of (spoilers, I guess) ____Mat_____ and it's such a fuckin drag, ugh.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:25
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I feel like WoT would be worse in audiobook form, because WoT turned me into a speedreader by honing my ability to just rapidly skim through excessive amounts of irrelevant exposition or description and still get all the important details. Of course this is sometimes a bad habit because I often reread books and notice little actually relevant details I missed, but it's necessary for sanity in bricks like WoT.
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Feb 13, 2018 00:32
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I'm surprised you disliked the Aiel history in Rhuidean, that's generally considered one of the best sections of the early books. But agreeing that the middle is a total slog and the end is a nonstop ride.
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Feb 13, 2018 07:02
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:Perrin's chapters are easily the best so far. Ahah. Ahahahahahahaahahaahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahaha. Yeah, um, good luck when he gets out of the Two Rivers and his story line regresses harder than you can believe is possible. It's probably a tossup as to whether this or Malazan is worse material for an audiobook. While Malazan has more audaciously bad lines when read by a real person, WoT slogs like none other for thousands of pages, and can really only be appreciated for what it is on a reread that skips copious amounts of largely thin worldbuilding through lovely plotlines that paid off only if you happened to be jonesing for the next book on the internet for a few years. EDIT: And I say this as a huge fan of both series - I think they're both better than anything Sanderson has yet produced on his own despite their obvious and offputting flaws. aparmenideanmonad fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Feb 13, 2018 |
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Feb 13, 2018 07:11
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Perrin's story is actually a huge part of what drags the middle books down for me. I just don't care about that at all. I think you could summarize books 6 to 10 in a single book without missing much.
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Feb 13, 2018 07:29
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Come to think of it when I listened to them on audiobook, I discovered the speed up option on the audible app and listened to books 4+ at high speed. 2.5x I think. If you zone out for a bit you can miss a LOT though.
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Feb 13, 2018 08:13
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I enjoy having the google book app read the ebook in its robot monotone voice. Only works on books that the author has sold without DRM, like Sanderson.
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Feb 13, 2018 08:25
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Tahirovic posted:Perrin's story is actually a huge part of what drags the middle books down for me. I just don't care about that at all. I think you could summarize books 6 to 10 in a single book without missing much. Once Perrin meets Faile all of his sections become absolutely loving insufferable.
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Feb 13, 2018 14:09
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I have to stop being an alone wolf hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooowl
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Feb 13, 2018 16:34
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I skip the Perrin chapters after the two rivers stuff. It's that bad.
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Feb 13, 2018 16:46
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Wheel of Time is a really interesting series to talk about. The first 6 or so are really good (astoundingly so, for the time they were written). He pushed so many boundaries in fantasy writing that many of the tropes we are tired of today can trace the lineage back to Jordan. Is he without flaw? Of course not. Did his series collapse under the weight of its own details? Absolutely; his last book was almost entirely spent cutting all that dead weight loose so it was even possible to end the series. But to say he sucks is to discount the level of impact that his works had on the genre as a whole. A modern reader who has grown up with modern stories may feel that Jordan is boring, or derivative, even early on when the series was at it is best. This is directly analogous to how a modern reader could dislike Tolkien's work. Hell, I myself am not a fan of the written LotR. I find them stilted and plodding. Nevertheless, I don't discount the effect Tolkien had on fantasy novels. His impact is almost immeasurable. Jordan is nearly as influential. He provided an entirely new set of tropes and expectations for what a fantasy novel could be. The entire genre shifted around his works, much the same way the genre has shifted (is still shifting) around Game of Thrones. Such an author only comes along once in a generation.
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Feb 13, 2018 16:58
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EYE of the World is the best book, but also the one that is an inferior clone of Fellowship of the Ring. The boys leaving Two Rivers mirrors the journey out of hobbiton almost perfectly. But female Gandalf.
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Feb 13, 2018 17:22
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Khizan posted:Once Perrin meets Faile all of his sections become absolutely loving insufferable. A lot of it is bad, especially their interactions, but Perrin commanding the armies of the Two Rivers vs the Trollocs is pretty decent. BananaNutkins posted:I have to stop being an alone wolf hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooowl This is one thing that I'm not enjoying. He has these cool-rear end wolf powers, but is actively refusing to use them now. Lame. Bring back Elyas at least so he can give me some rad wolf action. BananaNutkins posted:EYE of the World is the best book, but also the one that is an inferior clone of Fellowship of the Ring. The boys leaving Two Rivers mirrors the journey out of hobbiton almost perfectly. But female Gandalf. Yeah, Eye was really good. I love the traveling and exploring a world I know nothing about stuff. The Hunt was great because of the same reasons as well, especially when they go into that portal stone world with the Grolms or whatever they are. That was super interesting. When they're sitting in one place for 700 pages at a time generally doing nothing is what is killing me. I just listened to Chapter 7 of Fires on the way to work. It was 25 minutes of Egwene rambling on about literally nothing at all other than reflecting on how her relationship with Rand has changed. Boring, and nothing new that wasn't said multiple times already throughout the past couple books. That could have been summarized in like 2 pages. Give me more melting Darkhounds with Balefire! 
Henrik Zetterberg fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Feb 13, 2018 |
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Feb 13, 2018 18:35
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I think this is a common problem with the fantasy genre as a whole. Jordan, GRRM, Sanderson, etc. for some reason feel it is necessary to produce these behemoth door stoppers to get their story across. But then you end up with chapters like above, or in Oathbringer where you could easily cut out or par down most of the chapters because they don't tell us anything new. Back in the day I've read the WoT books a good 10 times, excluding the last 4 or so. I recently went back to do a re-read and I can't do it. The writing isn't bad but I have other things to spend my time on than reading massive books.
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Feb 13, 2018 20:36
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Khizan posted:Once Perrin meets Faile all of his sections become absolutely loving insufferable. Faile is the loving worst. Ugh. Except for all of Jordan's other women. But seriously, she is the worst.
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Feb 13, 2018 20:42
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Habibi posted:Faile is the loving worst. Ugh. haha the horse's name is also dagger.. haha oh man what a dumb mistake... epic faile. Faile is bad, most of WoT is pretty bad, especially the writing of the women.
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Feb 13, 2018 21:33
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Some people really like the spanking
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Feb 13, 2018 21:39
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Captain Monkey posted:especially the writing of the women. The sad thing is, this is an issue that only gets resolved when Sanderson appears on the scene.
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Feb 14, 2018 00:07
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I ploughed through the first two Stormlight Archive books and really, really enjoyed them, but I dunno, I'm finding Oathbringer quite a bit less engaging around 10% in. Maybe I just need a little break after binging the first two over a few weeks, but the sudden lull in action and momentum just makes the book seem a little plodding and boring.
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Feb 14, 2018 01:16
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Yeah its a rather calm opener. Taking a break wouldn't hurt but it does pick up.
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Feb 14, 2018 01:49
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Bardeh posted:I ploughed through the first two Stormlight Archive books and really, really enjoyed them, but I dunno, I'm finding Oathbringer quite a bit less engaging around 10% in. Maybe I just need a little break after binging the first two over a few weeks, but the sudden lull in action and momentum just makes the book seem a little plodding and boring. It speeds back up but it is such a weird dip after the way the second ended, even the characters are amazed by how kinda lame the everstorm is.
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Feb 14, 2018 06:30
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Is it just me or does Oathbringer lack detail despite its enormous word count? Like, the actual world is rarely described in the detail it was in the first two books. Use of the physical senses of characters was lacking overall, I thought. I was getting white room syndrome.
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Feb 14, 2018 06:45
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That's a characteristic of Sanderson novels in general. Most scenes take place in a featureless void.
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Feb 14, 2018 08:30
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Elhokar gets a ton of screentime, but never talks to his mother or sister.
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Feb 14, 2018 09:29
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He was thrust into kingship at a young age and struggles with feelings of inadequacy and deciding whether to hate Dalinar for being a better king than him or love and respect him for it. The last thing he wants to do is talk to his mother (who has a tendency to meddle in everything) or sister (who demonstrates control and commands respect as second nature where he never can). At least that's how I'd explain it.
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Feb 14, 2018 14:49
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Plus his sister is hundreds(?) of miles away from him or presumed dead for most of the story. But yeah, MAJOR dropping the ball on Sanderson's part to not show the Jasnah return reactions.
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Feb 14, 2018 16:42
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hnnnnggh and now there's an utterly cringeworthy Shallan and Adolin scene. She's getting worse as a character somehow - at least when there was other stuff going on I could sorta look past her annoying quirks but now everyone is just sort of sitting around in Urithiru and it's much harder to ignore how much I'm growing to dislike the character.
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Feb 15, 2018 15:01
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Well she goes through a lot in this book, so I hope by the end you've grown to begrudge her if nothing else. I happen to like Shallan a lot, she clicked for me in the chasms in Words of Radiance , and the back and forth between her and Adolin made me laugh a bunch. So I'm alittle bit more forgiving of her cringey moments, finding them amusingly awkward.  Do keep posting your takes 'tho.
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Feb 15, 2018 16:50
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I was enjoying the developments in Kal-Shallan-Adolin land. They felt fine to me. Which one were you referring too as cringe worthy.
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Feb 15, 2018 18:34
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The one I was specifically referring to was one where they're eating together in her room. It's just so twee and chaste, and I understand that that does make sense considering the societal norms they've been brought up in, and I'm not asking for hot and hardcore erotica either, just maybe a bit more of a mature or realistic approach to their developing relationship. Instead we get Shallan's quips that could be straight out of a magazine for tween girls.
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Feb 15, 2018 19:36
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Bardeh posted:The one I was specifically referring to was one where they're eating together in her room. It's just so twee and chaste, and I understand that that does make sense considering the societal norms they've been brought up in, and I'm not asking for hot and hardcore erotica either, just maybe a bit more of a mature or realistic approach to their developing relationship. Instead we get Shallan's quips that could be straight out of a magazine for tween girls. No Mating was the best scene in the book. Maybe guys just don't get it 
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Feb 15, 2018 19:54
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Potato Salad posted:No Mating was the best scene in the book. Maybe guys just don't get it Yeah I loved that one. But I can understand how you could lay the criticism that they’re too Mormon for teenagers in a war camp.
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Feb 15, 2018 19:57
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Bardeh posted:just maybe a bit more of a mature or realistic approach to their developing relationship. Instead we get Shallan's quips that could be straight out of a magazine for tween girls. Shallan has literally never been in any romantic relationship before and Adolin is implied/stated to have never taken any of his previous girlfriends very seriously. Of course they're not going to act like they have a mature relationship; they don't know how yet. What you want is given to you already: Navani and Dalinar. They're actually an amazing foil to Shallan/Adolin in a bunch of ways. Part of that is due to Vorin culture (scholarly woman with martial man isn't precisely new ground) but part of that is just that Navani and Shallan share characteristics as do Dalinar and Adolin. Shallan and Adolin aren't going to jump straight to mature and grounded relationship because they're going to be spending the series progressing from this starting point to where Navani and Dalinar are, and there's a lot of books in the way of that. Also they're adorable together, so hush up.
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Feb 15, 2018 20:10
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