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WoT not having the Harry Potter/GRRM problem of actually knowing where it all goes is going to be one of its greatest strengths. The Harry Potter books and movies are ok but JKR was obviously a novice writer and she should have done a better job of laying the foundation for important things in earlier books than she did. As they started to adapt them into films, the studio didn't really know what they could cut or not and the movies are weirdly disjointed as a result. ASoIaF was slightly better in that they at least had an outline to work off of, but the show runners clearly had no idea how to turn the outline into a compelling story or ending. Wheel of Time has the big picture all looked in. They can safely alter any detail and they'll know exactly what kind of butterfly effect it will have on the rest of the story. That doesn't guarantee they'll put that level of thought into it, but I can hope.
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Sep 8, 2019 12:29
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I'm doing a reread for the first time since the last book came out and holy wow is the style so different. But I'm echoing what's been said here or in the other thread and there's literally nothing to suggest that anyone is Caucasian in the village except for Rand. Everyone is described as dark in tone and complexion, dark hair, dark eyes. Rand is marked as the odd man out and no one seems particularly bothered by it but some lovely Coplins and Congars who get punched in the face for it and it's never brought up in Rand's childhood again.
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Sep 19, 2019 14:13
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9 has the loving Cleansing. Anyway, book 1 is real interesting on a reread. Rand is channeling all the time and it's awesome how Jordan had the language for it down even that early in the series.
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Sep 24, 2019 06:27
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The scarves thing confused me the first time I read it because I wasn't expecting him to try and throw a narrative curveball, but on rereads I've never had an issue with it and it's hardly very much of the book. The first 100 pages, on the other hand, are fairly dull, but at least all the principle players of the book are introduced and given a moment to shine before chaos breaks out. Key character traits are firmly established before things get going. Then it's 200 pages of running from trollocs with the odd action sequence before the party splits. The one thing I'm critical of is that everyone keeps saying that Rand has always fantasized about leaving the village, but the Rand chapters up until Shadar Logoth have him very much opposed to leaving the Two Rivers and thinking that such ideas are foolishness. He seems very nearly ready to settle down with Egwene and live the life of a farmer. The only references to him daydreaming about adventure are when he reaches Baerlon and he debates bringing the sword with him since he had fantasized about wandering a city with a sword before, which lasts all of a sentence before they move on and never mention it again, and then when they reach Shadar Logoth he says he had poured over the mayor's old map daydreaming about adventure but had never heard of Aridhol or seen it marked. It's not the biggest complaint, but it is 200 pages in before Rand starts to hint that he wants this and 300 before it's clear that Rand had had flights of fancy same as everyone else. But everything up to and in between those moments are very much Rand not wanting anything to do with any sort of adventure and thinking the whole thing madness, for himself and especially for Egwene. The really big moment for his character is when he finds out that Egwene might go and be Wisdom in a village on the boundaries of the Two Rivers and that upsets him because it doesn't fit his life of shepherding. It just feels contradictory, especially because until the 300 page mark, he's the only point of view outside the omniscient prologue. In his head, he has no interest in this bullshit, but Nynaeve and Egwene keep telling him otherwise. Like it makes sense for them to do that to Mat because at least from his dialogue he's the most excited one to be out of Emond's Field, but it doesn't fit Rand very well early on. I think Robert Jordan is making the assumption that we all agree that all little boys daydream of adventure and the mentions of exploring in the woods as children are proof of that.
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Sep 25, 2019 02:36
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It's in a lot of the dialogue, especially between him and Egwene. It comes up between him and the other boys as well. To me it's mostly just a case of telling and not showing, reminding us the reader that he deep down wants an adventure despite the thoughts in his head being exactly opposite. The sword thing in Baerlon stands out especially because it's himself saying, "Oh man I've been waiting for the day that I could wear a sword in a city," but the preceding 200 pages mention nothing of the sort. It's then dropped entirely until Shadar Logoth and the reference to the mayor's map, 100 pages later.
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Sep 25, 2019 04:11
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Guiness13 posted:I always took this as a kind of youthful, "Man, wouldn't it be cool if..." kind of daydreaming contrasting with the traumatic reality of the situation. Rand is getting to live out one of his fantasies, but at this horrifying cost. I doubt any of the Two Rivers kids thought they'd ever leave, but that doesn't mean they didn't dream about it. bloom posted:To be fair desperately running from monsters that he until very recently thought were fairytales is probably not the sort of adventure he'd been daydreaming about. I think this is exactly what Jordan was going for, I just don't think he pulled it off as well as he could have is my point. By making Rand such a homebody early on, it makes the conversations he has stand out and that moment in Baerlon seems completely counter to his established character. "I once daydreamed about wandering around a city with a sword, better take this chance," really feels like it comes out of nowhere. Jordan should have found a way to mention pouring over that map in like the second or third chapter, not on page 300. It's not like there weren't plenty of moments where Rand was being reflective or remembering his childhood fairly early on.
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Sep 25, 2019 07:35
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Does Nynaeve's ability to sense people close by who she has healed ever get referenced outside of book 1? It's a minor plot point but I can't remember it ever coming up again.
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Sep 26, 2019 10:14
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aparmenideanmonad posted:I feel like it gets brought up again with other channelers but I could be crazy. I did enjoy that it helps to explain why she's such a good tracker in addition to "grew up huntin' with my dad" as she's been healing people in the village with the OP ever since she was an adolescent. The Eye of the World has a very clever structure to it and does a lot of things right narratively. Nynaeve is a great example how a clever reader would be rewarded the same as someone doing a reread. When Nynaeve finds Moiraine after Shadar Logoth, Moiraine does the exposition dump of how she knew Nynaeve was there and a channeller, but if you pay attention and remember details from a hundred pages back, you'd realize that Rand showed all of those symptom as well in Baerlon after refreshing Bela. But there's just enough pages between the events that if you weren't looking for those details, you'd miss the connection altogether. But all the evidence you need to know that Rand is at the very least a channeller and probably the Dragon Reborn is in the first third of the novel. Apparatchik Magnet posted:I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. Which is a shame because characters are healing each other all the time throughout the novels and it would be a neat way for them to know where men or women they weren't bonded to were. It could even have been used to track specific members of the Black Ajah or other Darkfriends. I can't recall it ever being mentioned outside of book 1 and I had even forgotten that it existed in book 1 until this reread. Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 02:55
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seaborgium posted:This thread made me start a reread, and he does actually bring up that he's daydreamed about adventures, or talked about it with the other boys before. He doesn't say it to anyone, but it's part of his POV that he's wanted to go on an adventure. I'm curious where just because I may have glossed over it.
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Sep 27, 2019 09:36
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seaborgium posted:I didn't say he still wanted to go on an adventure, he just wanted to when he was a kid. It did not turn out like he expected. 91 of the paper back is just him stumbling after Egwene. Maybe we should go back chapter markers?
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Sep 27, 2019 20:27
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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.
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Oct 3, 2019 01:05
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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.
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Oct 7, 2019 14:07
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I find Bornhald the Elder more terrifying than Byar. Byar is bad but it's almost comical because he's just so obviously evil and corrupt. Bornhald has really good reasons for everything he does and his thinking is quite logical. Why on earth would two country bumpkins know about Shadar Logoth and the physical features of Trollocs? Bornhald is the classic example of the kool-aid drinking sycophant who genuinely believes they're doing the right thing for the right reasons even as they have you tortured. As an American, this strikes really close to home for me as I've met a lot of people like this and a lot of my high school friends have turned into these guys as they've gotten married and had kids. Guys I used to drink beer in the cornfield with when we were in high school are all fire and brimstone and demanding that we round up immigrants and ban Islam for the good America. But they genuinely love their families and think this will make America a better place. They'll calmly explain to you why abortion is murder and providing healthcare for poor people is evil. It's the same type of logic as Bornhald explaining why Perrin and Egwene are clearly darkfriends, citing such perfect logic as "wolves are in league with the devil". If you just accept these things as fact, then they do follow logically. And you can't argue with their facts since the very foundations of their worldview are different than yours and reality.
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Oct 8, 2019 08:17
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That's intriguing. It's a bit ghoulish, but at least it wasn't pieced together from notes and was a complete product well before he died.
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Oct 9, 2019 03:23
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The Lord Bude posted:Actually It's Robert Jordan's previously unpublished first novel. He finished it in 1977 but was unable to get anyone to publish it. Yes I am aware. It's a bit ghoulish that they're cashing in on his unpublished work despite him being very dead. It's a complete manuscript that was sold in 1977 and hence a complete product well before he died.
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Oct 9, 2019 03:47
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The Lord Bude posted:Ah I see what you mean now. I agree it is kinda ghoulish. There must be a reason he never tried to get it published again after he became a big deal. Could be any number of reasons really. Brandon Sanderson is a good window into this sort of thing since he's very transparent about his own development as a writer. Elantris was his first published, but not first written, novel. He has a blog post about all of his early unpublished books and talks about how any one of them could have become good enough to publish, but only Elantris got picked up. The others had good ideas, but needed a lot of work. He ended up taking bits and pieces of them and reusing them in other books and series (Warbreaker, Way of Kings) and so it might not make any sense to publish them. I assume this is the same. The review linked above mentions that this book is really interesting for fans of Wheel of Time. I am guessing it has some elements that would eventually make it into that series and would therefore make it redundant to publish in his lifetime. Now it's a curiosity and it's been long enough since there was a book put out with his name on it that that alone will catch the attention of readers. I will likely pick it up just to see what the Wheel of Time links are.
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Oct 9, 2019 04:26
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RC Cola posted:Rand madness is better every reread. Same with character relationships. Like how important certain Aes Sedai or Sea Folk or Aiel are. Or knowing how the Seanchan society is structured. Knowing the history of the world helps. The Big Book of Bad Art.
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Oct 9, 2019 15:43
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Two thoughts on Warriors of the Altaii: it's half the size of The Book of Dust 2 and twice the cost. Yikes.
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Oct 12, 2019 11:21
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It occurred to me yesterday that DOOM and Wheel of Time have basically the same backstory.
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Oct 13, 2019 01:29
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Just finished my reread of The Eye of the World. I can't even say for sure if it's my 2nd, 3rd or 4th time reading it. I feel like I must have read it a second time in anticipation of a new book release at some point, but I know on some rereads I just skipped forward to like book 3 or 4 to get straight into the action. But I am glad that I did reread it again. There's a lot of book here and it makes me wish I was 15 again so I could run home from school and jump right into the next book. Sadly, everything after The Eye of the World is literally on the other side of the planet from me and I don't really feel like buying them again. Maybe as eBooks if I ever get a dedicated reader. I'm visiting home for Christmas, so I'll be able to start reading at least one more and maybe will find a way to fit a couple into suitcases. Probably not all 14 though. I can't say I was particularly engaged by the first hundred pages, but knowing the whole story, it was nice to see Emond's Field again still as a quaint farming village. I would be really curious to see what his original outlines or plotting looked like when he thought he could get this done as a trilogy. At nearly 800 pages in paperback, if the other books had moved at this speed and not really introduced any more plots or characters, he probably could have gotten it done. But the Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills. Also, my current take on Fain is that he's a cross between Renfield and Gollum, at least early on. There's also a big enough seed planted in Fal Dara when Moraine says that part of the Dark One has been imprinted on him for the idea that he would replace the Dark One to not be a totally crazy fan theory.
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Oct 14, 2019 14:35
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My biggest, nerdiest hope for the TV show is that it has enough popularity that we can get some semi-decent miniatures out of it. I just hope CMON isn't the one to get their hands on the license.
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Oct 15, 2019 00:39
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Stupid loving monkey paw. I'm a few chapters into Warrior of the Altaii and while it is quite light, I am actually enjoying it a lot. There's a ton of world building, but it never gets in the way of the storytelling. There narrator talks about the monsters, creatures and factions as if the reader is already familiar with the world, so you don't have multiple page long blocks of exposition, just a few clarifying lines here and there. Chapters are a few pages long and move the plot along briskly. And there's enough weirdness early on to make it clear this is not strictly fantasy. There are parallel universes and possibly time travelers. Wheel of Time seed: And only women can use magic, which is itself an inherent ability, not exclusively a learned skill.
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Oct 15, 2019 01:22
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Bathing is to Elayne what scowling out of window while clutching a cup of wine is to Cersei.
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Oct 15, 2019 13:29
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shirunei posted:Been rereading the first book during my downtime at work. Is the altercation between the whitecloaks and Rand the first time he manifests the One Power? Tried looking for it earlier in the book but this seems like the very first instance. He's not using the Power. This and the headache are the after effect of him using the Power on Bela. It's cleverly hidden (especially since he attributes the headache to the dream), but Moraine explains what happens when you channel for the first time to Nynaeve a few chapters later.
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Oct 16, 2019 04:21
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Either way, he's like the anti- Little Finger and I hope he's in the show.
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Oct 16, 2019 08:47
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Warrior of the Altaii: Bondage:  Paddling: Man Rape: Magic Rape: I, uh, think Robert Jordan was into some stuff.
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Oct 16, 2019 13:55
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Also two books per season seems totally absurd.
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Oct 18, 2019 02:05
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ulmont posted:Eh, one book per season until you get to the middle and then 3 books per season until poo poo starts to happen again would be better. I am mostly fine with this. Book 10 happening about the same time as book 9 for instance means they should basically just merge those into a single season. And then you have Perrin just disappearing for a book, but they're not going to want him to vanish from the show like Bran.
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Oct 18, 2019 06:50
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Also, while I tend to agree that Mat isn't as well written in the Sanderson books, one of the segments that people found most off was actually penned by Jordan. It's possible it was a rough draft and Jordan would have fleshed it out during the editing process, but the point is that Mat coming across differently is just as much a result of the nature of how the books were written as Sanderson's own style is. I got into Sanderson briefly after he was announced as the writer to complete the series since I had never even heard of him. I bounced off his writing right about when the sequel Mistborn series came out. I got two books into Stormlight and I just don't have the will to go forward. He's fine I guess, but he's not for me.
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Oct 20, 2019 06:04
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Weirdly, I always saw the Cairhienin hairstyle as a precursor to the Manchurian queue. Give it a few decades, and the remaining hair would be braided in the back.
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Oct 22, 2019 03:31
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Warrior of the Altaii: Philip Pullman is very lucky this book wasn't published before His Dark Materials.
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Oct 23, 2019 14:43
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There's also nothing else in the book, and maybe even the series, that operates that way. I was expecting it this reread and how he transitions from "this is where we are right now" to "now we're in the past" is at best vague and is sloppily handled so that first time readers could easily think the story is progressing forward when it's actually gone back a few days.
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Oct 27, 2019 16:04
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Mahoning posted:The only other real complaint that continued to bother me in Eye of the World (and now into my second chapter of The Great Hunt) is everyone’s extreme mistrust of Moiraine specifically and Aes Sedai in general. I feel like he hints at the fact that maybe they’ve heard stories/legends about the Aes Sedai but we never hear any of them (so far), so it makes everyone’s distrust of Moiraine feel really forced. If a bunch of basically kids are away from home for the first time, you would think the one person guiding them and keeping them safe (with HER MAGIC) from every awful/evil obstacle they face would develop not only trust but dependence. They Broke with the World with the Power. That's all people really seem to remember about Aes Sedai.
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Oct 29, 2019 13:21
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He uses a 10 day week in Warrior of Altaii as well. It's not called a week though; he calls it a tenday.
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Oct 31, 2019 06:32
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This gives me strong Game of Throne vibes in that Rosamund Pike is basically their Sean Bean. The kids are all unknowns and there will probably be a few familiar faces scattered throughout the first season. Were there really any other big names in the first season of GoT? I feel like most of the main cast outside of the kids had one or two things they were well known for, mostly in British television and movies, but weren't exactly household names. Who was the biggest name outside of Bean? Lena Headey? Peter Dinklage? It's hard to remember how well known they were or weren't before Game of Thrones blew up. When people thought of 300, did Lena Headey really leap to mind? I think the big difference between it and Game of Thrones is that HBO had a whole stable of actors from a dozen series at that point that they could call on so even small roles got someone who had chops. I think half the casts of Rome and The Wire ended up in GoT by the end. Amazon unfortunately doesn't have that resource to draw on at the moment. Give it a few years maybe?
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Nov 4, 2019 15:54
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VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE posted:You realize that HBO doesn't actually have a stable in Santa Fe where they put actors who aren't currently filming for them, right? Yes thank you for this clarification. I certainly couldn't have meant that HBO and its production teams had spent years developing strong working relationships with several actors who were happy to make time for HBO projects because they were a reliable paycheck. ChubbyChecker posted:I had seen both Dinklage and Headey in some movies, but their roles were so unimportant, so I didn't remember them. But they both made drat fine work in GoT. Then again both Cersei's and Tyrion's roles made it possible for the actors to show their potential, but Moiraine is a much more boring character than either of them. I was aware of Dinklage but couldn't have told you it was Headey in 300 until after GoT put her on my radar.
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Nov 5, 2019 00:16
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When do Moiraine POVs start? As early as book 2? I always thought those did a good job of showing what an impossible situation she was in trying to guide Rand without making him feel controlled.
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Nov 5, 2019 01:33
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ONE YEAR LATER posted:The internet tells me that chapter 53 of EotW is a Moiraine POV. Then there are four in TGH. Oh duh, I just read that. I think it's mostly not a Moiraine POV until the very end bit though, so the only real reveal is that she knows Rand is the Dragon.
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Nov 5, 2019 02:35
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I think the Two Rivers lads are great examples of all three ways to become a noble: 1) Marry in - Mat 2) The people proclaim you one - Perrin 3) You proclaim yourself one and kill anyone who disagrees - Rand
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Nov 8, 2019 00:11
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Khizan posted:Perrin married into the nobility way before Mat ever did. Technically true, but I'm talking thematically. Perrin spends a lot of time in the Two Rivers stomping around growling at anyone who calls him "Lord Perrin" until someone sits him down and tells him that nobles don't just spring forth from the ground. Houses rise and fall during tumultuous times and during these particular tumultuous times, it's the House of Aybara that's rising. Now shut up and let us serve you. mewse posted:Nobody has ever killed to join the nobility Pretty sure this is a thing warlords would do all the time. It's less a question of "joining" the nobility and more "replacing it with a new nobility of my choosing" though.
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Nov 8, 2019 10:44
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