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bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

The VVheel of Time

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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice
Aes Sedai VVitches

Mad Hamish
Jun 15, 2008

WILL AMOUNT TO NOTHING IN LIFE.



Lanfear asking Rand if he would like to live deliciously.

Affi
Dec 18, 2005

Break bread wit the enemy

X GON GIVE IT TO YA
Wow they're actually making the show?

I've spent so much time reading WoT. Its like I read Tolkien and then I just couldn't find any fantasy growing up in 90's sweden that wasn't poo poo like Thomas Covenant or Shannara. When I found Wheel of Time I was blown away. I read every book and I reread it every time a new one got released. And every english book was divided into two swedish books (for reasons?) so i've read the first three books I think 9 times and the last one once.

drat. I should reread the series one more time.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Affi posted:

Wow they're actually making the show?

They started shooting a week ago.

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

Finished book 13 today. Good stuff. Was pretty surprised when Mat lost his goddamn eye. It was pretty funny how casual he was about it for the rest of the book.

RC Cola
Aug 1, 2011

Dovie'andi se tovya sagain

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

Finished book 13 today. Good stuff. Was pretty surprised when Mat lost his goddamn eye. It was pretty funny how casual he was about it for the rest of the book.

Do you remember his 3 answers? It's been foreshadowed since book 4.
Also that whole sequence is one of my favorite of the series. What did you think of Perrin in this book?

bloom
Feb 25, 2017

by sebmojo

RC Cola posted:

Do you remember his 3 answers? It's been foreshadowed since book 4.

Since book 1 actually. Unless I'm remembering it wrong Min's initial vision about Mat was an eye on a scale.

Henrik Zetterberg
Dec 7, 2007

RC Cola posted:

Do you remember his 3 answers? It's been foreshadowed since book 4.
Also that whole sequence is one of my favorite of the series. What did you think of Perrin in this book?

I didn’t remember it specifically, but they did a callback to it when he was there previously.

It’s hard for me to judge characters on a book-by-book basis since I’m blasting all of them sequentially, but I wasn’t as annoyed by him in this one as I was with previous though. He does some good (saves the Children), and finally starts to accept that he has goddamn wolf man powers after 13 goddamn books.

The last chunk of his in the book was hazy at best (I was dealing with cranky babies while listening) and I’m going to have to read the chapter summary to clear it up.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
https://twitter.com/WoTonPrime/status/1179425813327798273?s=19

cryptoclastic
Jul 3, 2003

The Jesus

bloom posted:

Since book 1 actually. Unless I'm remembering it wrong Min's initial vision about Mat was an eye on a scale.

I’ve been listening to the podcast that was posted earlier in the thread (thanks!) and they talk about this. I’m sort of amazed that Jordan had all of this stuff mapped out so early.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

cryptoclastic posted:

I’ve been listening to the podcast that was posted earlier in the thread (thanks!) and they talk about this. I’m sort of amazed that Jordan had all of this stuff mapped out so early.

Jordan had something like two pages of background notes written out for each page of text. As in, each individual Aes Sedai had her own separately documented bio.

Apparatchik Magnet
Sep 25, 2019

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

cryptoclastic posted:

I’ve been listening to the podcast that was posted earlier in the thread (thanks!) and they talk about this. I’m sort of amazed that Jordan had all of this stuff mapped out so early.

Yes, very weird that in a book based on the cyclical nature of history as a cosmic fact and with characters obviously named after Arthurian heroes and Norse gods that one of them was already patterned after Odin.

Atlas Hugged
Mar 12, 2007


Put your arms around me,
fiddly digits, itchy britches
I love you all

Apparatchik Magnet posted:

Yes, very weird that in a book based on the cyclical nature of history as a cosmic fact and with characters obviously named after Arthurian heroes and Norse gods that one of them was already patterned after Odin.

Sure, but see the above, and also the Tower of Genji shows up in Book 1 as well. Compare this to guys like GRRM and Rothfuss who really seem like they're just making it up as they go and the contrast is stark. If it took Jordan 2-3 years to release a book, he still released them, and it wasn't because he was a whiny baby who couldn't work or was swamped with a thousand other little projects. Guy was clearly doing a massive amount of work between each release to get the story right as best he could, even if that didn't always translate to the page.

The Glumslinger
Sep 24, 2008

Coach Nagy, you want me to throw to WHAT side of the field?


Hair Elf
If anything Jordan wrote too many words, not too few

DarkHorse
Dec 13, 2006

Vroom Vroom, BEEP BEEP!
Nap Ghost
Yeah I think a lot of his problems would have been resolved by a more impartial editor. The first three books are tightly plotted and written. The middle really needs someone willing to cut out the fat

ShinsoBEAM!
Nov 6, 2008

"Even if this body of mine is turned to dust, I will defend my country."

DarkHorse posted:

Yeah I think a lot of his problems would have been resolved by a more impartial editor. The first three books are tightly plotted and written. The middle really needs someone willing to cut out the fat

Yeah somewhere along the line once authors get too popular, I feel like their editors just shrug and go it will sell anyways and the works really suffer for it.

Eighties ZomCom
Sep 10, 2008




Wasn't his wife his editor? I assume that's part of the reason the books feel a bit bloated.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I started reading WoT in 2003, at the age of 16. I've read the series through at least a dozen times over the years, and it remains my favourite work of fiction to this day. I've been dreaming for years about getting to see this on TV, and now I finally get the chance. I really hope they don't screw up, and I hope they keep it extremely faithful to the books.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

EvilTaytoMan posted:

Wasn't his wife his editor? I assume that's part of the reason the books feel a bit bloated.

She was actually more involved with the earlier books I believe. I think she had some health issues going on during Bloat Season.

P-Mack
Nov 10, 2007

The 'bad' books are tolerable now that you can breeze through them and get on to the next part. The original experience of having a two year wait for a book where nothing happens and the previous book's cliffhangers don't get resolved was the excruciating part.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Hieronymous Alloy posted:

She was actually more involved with the earlier books I believe. I think she had some health issues going on during Bloat Season.

Didn’t I hear that one big reason why it bloated around then was that he was trying to keep an income stream going to support her treatment?

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

I have heard that before, probably in the other thread but maybe on the WoT reddit, so I'm not sure how true it is :shrug:

Also I feel like even with audio books, one can't "breeze" through those middle bad ones. But I'm also a slow reader so...

Brolander
Oct 20, 2008

i am but a vessel
I feel like book 10 was a just an experiment that failed, hard. Rather than some sort of con

Sab669 posted:


Also I feel like even with audio books, one can't "breeze" through those middle bad ones. But I'm also a slow reader so...

Yeah, a lot of peoples' complaints about bloating don't really bother me since I've always been on the quicker side. Which isn't superior or anything, I miss poo poo all the time. Although at this point in rereads there are parts I gloss over, if not entirely skip

Brolander fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Oct 5, 2019

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I was lucky enough to read books 1-10 in one go, so perhaps that has impacted my opinion, but I don't think any of the books are bad, and my favourite stretch of the series is 6-8; or possibly more broadly 4-11. Book 4 is where the series really got good in my opinion and although book 10 was odd in a narrative sense, and maybe not quite as good as previous books, it was still a good book. The way Jordan weaves together all these plot threads is incredible, it really feels like you're watching a whole world.

The Sanderson books were fine, but they really do feel like fanfiction. His prose writing is not even remotely on the same level.

Eighties ZomCom
Sep 10, 2008




Which book was the one where the first half was just a retelling of events of the previous book from a different perspective? I wasn't a fan of that one, since it felt that too much of the book focused on that instead of giving us anything new, and it wasn't too interesting for the most part on top of that.

Syncopated
Oct 21, 2010

EvilTaytoMan posted:

Which book was the one where the first half was just a retelling of events of the previous book from a different perspective? I wasn't a fan of that one, since it felt that too much of the book focused on that instead of giving us anything new, and it wasn't too interesting for the most part on top of that.

IIRC book 10, Crossroads of Twilight is like that wrt the cleansing of saidin.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

EvilTaytoMan posted:

Which book was the one where the first half was just a retelling of events of the previous book from a different perspective? I wasn't a fan of that one, since it felt that too much of the book focused on that instead of giving us anything new, and it wasn't too interesting for the most part on top of that.

The entirety of book 10 is like that; and other than each POV mentioning the sensation of the power being used in the distance you wouldn’t know that it’s repeating the same events - it’s not like it’s retelling the same scenes from multiple POVs that were present; you are learning new things, finding out what different characters are doing. It’s a nonsense argument that that alone makes the book boring.

Eighties ZomCom
Sep 10, 2008




The Lord Bude posted:

The entirety of book 10 is like that; and other than each POV mentioning the sensation of the power being used in the distance you wouldn’t know that it’s repeating the same events - it’s not like it’s retelling the same scenes from multiple POVs that were present; you are learning new things, finding out what different characters are doing. It’s a nonsense argument that that alone makes the book boring.

I still found it a tedious slog to read through.

RC Cola
Aug 1, 2011

Dovie'andi se tovya sagain
I'm the biggest WoT fanboy supporter and I can admit that book 10 wasn't very good.
I have still never skipped it in a reread however.

Eighties ZomCom
Sep 10, 2008




And neither have I. Anytime I read through the series I read through all of it, no matter how much of a slog some parts are to get through.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
My reread has stalled a bit at the chapter in SR where the Tower falls because it's so sad Siuan was so good

Atlas Hugged
Mar 12, 2007


Put your arms around me,
fiddly digits, itchy britches
I love you all
I just got to the part in The Eye of the World where Perrin and Egwene get caught by the Children and they start babbling about Warders and Shadar Logoth. I think it took until this reread to really hit me just how loving dumb and naive they were. On other rereads, I was much younger and more naive myself and got angry at the Children for being so happy to be so loving wrong, but this time, no, the Children definitely have the right of it. At best, at loving best, Egwene and Perrin are involved in some real loving poo poo and at worst they're totally Darkfriends.

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe

Atlas Hugged posted:

I just got to the part in The Eye of the World where Perrin and Egwene get caught by the Children and they start babbling about Warders and Shadar Logoth. I think it took until this reread to really hit me just how loving dumb and naive they were. On other rereads, I was much younger and more naive myself and got angry at the Children for being so happy to be so loving wrong, but this time, no, the Children definitely have the right of it. At best, at loving best, Egwene and Perrin are involved in some real loving poo poo and at worst they're totally Darkfriends.

I mean, Byar is a piece of poo poo either way, but he's a scarily believable piece of poo poo when you read these books as an adult instead of just comically evil. It's going to be even more obvious how scary/bad the Children are in the show when they're a bunch of white dudes in white hoods torturing black and brown kids they found in the woods as darkfriends.

aparmenideanmonad fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Oct 7, 2019

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

I will be positively shocked if:

1) There won't be colored people in the CoL
2) Amazon would be so daft as to make them look anything like the KKK


Maybe it's because I've just read too many other series with "The Faith Militant" in them by the time I picked up WoT, but I really did not enjoy pretty much anything involving them. At least not until MUCH later in the series Like when Galad (Gawyn? I can't even remember) becomes the head

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe
I guess it depends whether or not they're going for the cheap advertising/buzz via hamfisted political commentary that seems to be a thing these days.

1) The Children do accept people from all over Randland, so they have a good excuse to represent a blend of ethnicities if they want to go that route.
2) They are based on the Teutonic Order so they'll probably come off as crusader types, but they're literally called whitecloaks because they wear white cloaks with white hoods. Gonna be tough to avoid making that connection.

Sab669
Sep 24, 2009

They can just... not give them hoods? Especially not pointed ones? Also this discussion is purely an American thing. Anyone in a different country watching won't go, "Hey wait, is that the KKK?"

Like, earlier this year Games Workshop released a Warhammer model of a dude in a white hood and pretty much every American threw a shitfit and all their EU/UK customers were like "Oh, right, that's a thing isn't it"

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
The KKK hood is very distinctive and not at all similar to a standard medieval/fantasy hood that forms part of a cloak. It's a giant stretch to see them as KKK. Not to mention they wear a white cloak in combination with plate mail and not white robes.

I will say that I think that the whitecloaks are the most abhorrent antagonists in the books though.

Rosalie_A
Oct 30, 2011
Seanchan.

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Trasson posted:

Seanchan.

Whitecloaks are worse. The Seanchan are an awful, twisted culture, albeit not without similarities to real world historical societies, but the Whitecloaks hit closer to home - They are essentially a stand in for the Christian fundamentalists that are a very real, very ugly threat that we can see existing around us in the world today. They represent hatred, intolerance and bigotry in a way that none of the other antagonists do; and that has a stronger impact than traditional 'fantasy villain' archetypes.

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