The Lord Bude posted:

Lan isn’t white though. Borderlanders are pretty clearly intended to be Asian. Particularly Malkier/Shienar which have very strong Japanese overtones.

ONE YEAR LATER posted:

Yes. Using spoilers because we have some people reading for the first time in the thread:

wounds on the palms of his hands, crown of thorns, wound in the side, produces food from nothing to feed the hungry, dies and comes back to life, his return signals the beginning of the end times.

Cicero posted:

Is it mormon to have a lot of spanking, or is that just a reference to Sanderson finishing the series?

mewse posted:

Ugh I thought Robert Jordan was mormon as well as Brandon Sanderson

Sab669 posted:

e; ^^^ That's a stupid attitude when there have explicitly been a few posters saying they're just starting it. If one were simply assuming that were the case, fine sure the series is old as hell. But that's not the case.

DarkHorse posted:

That's them. Rand has parallels with Tyr too I think. And then of course there's the parallels with Arthurian legend.

Part of why Wheel of Time feels so rich is because so much real world stuff is layered on them. It's not a simple 1:1, there's overlap between characters, cultures, and stories.

EvilTaytoMan posted:

I think first Egwene is Faile.

Data Graham posted:

Lol if the series makes up more characters

Henrik Zetterberg posted:

lol the original covers were so bad they were good/funny

Atlas Hugged posted:

They Broke with the World with the Power. That's all people really seem to remember about Aes Sedai.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

It really is amazing on this reread how much of books like seven through ten is just outright skippable. If the series gets that far they could do all four books in half a season.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Don't care, Tits & Trollocs

Pander posted:

am I missing here or...?

Sab669 posted:

I think you have this backwards; when I hear Lena Headey 300 pops into my mind. But yea I don't know quite how big she was pre-GoT. I had no idea who Dinklage was beforehand though.

and Bean didn't stick around long, whereas Moraine is supposed to be more of the focus of WoT-TV. Who knows, though.

ONE YEAR LATER posted:

It is intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.

EvilTaytoMan posted:

Rand became royalty though not nobility.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Yeah, Sanderson was probably the best possible choice onxe Jordan had passed. Still, sadness, though.

I think Jordan would have finished the series as quickly if he'd lived. Book 11 showed he was over his hump, and the parts of the final books that were Jordan-written are excellent.

The Lord Bude posted:

He was releasing one book a year early on because he'd already written the first 3 books by the time the first one hit shelves. The slowdown was mostly the result of him catching up to the release schedule. After Lord of Chaos there was a fairly consistent window between books. The longest was around two and half years which frankly isn't unreasonable for a book of the size and scope of WoT.

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

I'm thinking Sanderson may well be the worst big-name fantasy author working.

The Lord Bude posted:

Eragon was the first of a 4 book series which sold approximately 39 million books worldwide, which is nothing to sneeze at. (not to mention the film rights).The only think he's written since the conclusion of the series was a collection of short stories set in the same world, which he published at the end of last year. Apparently he has a scifi book in the works and he also plans to write another full sized Eragon book.

His writing is godawful, and arguably plagiarism, but that level of success I feel does qualify him as a big name, at least for the purposes of authors who've been around for a similar time period.

By way of comparison, Brandon Sanderson had sold a total of 7 million books world wide (across all his books, excluding WoT) as of 2015. (That's about 15 books, including a bunch of YA stuff)

Source: http://awfulagent.com/brandon-sanderson-sells-over-7-million-copies

edit: according to this: https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-sff-all-time-sales-list-revised.html

Paolini is the 24th highest selling fantasy/Scifi author of all time. (for comparison, Gaiman is 23rd) He's sold maybe 40% of Robert Jordan's sales. Vastly more than most big deal literary names you care to mention. More than Savatore, Goodkind, Fiest, Orson Scott Card... The list goes on.

The Lord Bude posted:

Yeah, although she turns into a frothing loon the instant anyone mentions fan fiction.

Torrannor posted:

Yeah, her attitude to fan fiction is nuts.

Atlas Hugged posted:

Sanderson's kind of bad is mostly that it's not all that interesting to read. He has clever mechanics and plot devices, but the characters are samey and flat and they are usually a slog in the middle.

But they're notably devoid of his personal fetishes and have the least amount of rape in fantasy (though it's still there, at least in the original Mistborn).

bitprophet posted:

Invalid Validation posted:

The one thing I dislike the most in these books is how much of a prude everyone is. I don’t need sex and rape every other chapter like GRRM. But non stop ewww cleavage is tiring.

silvergoose posted:

But boobs are awesome???

So are butts?

I don't understand your point.

Characters go "what a behind" pretty often...

Anias posted:

The opening of EotW has LTT completely bugnuts talking to a once close friend now enemy while standing over the dead body of his wife oblivious. He keeps repeating she "must be here somewhere". He cries out ~"Ilyena my love?! We Have Guests!". Dead Ilyena isn't moved, or even noticed by LTT until healed.

The series literally cold opens on insane Lews Therin, and in the process he is "healed" by Shai'Tan's power as channeled by Ishmael. We then see him flee and form dragonmount as he remembers murdering his family. Arguably LTT went insane -twice- in the age of legends. Once when the dark one struck back, once again when his insanity was temporarily lifted by Ishmael.

It is entirely gripping, and one of the most analyzed prologues in fiction precisely because it does such a magnificent job of grabbing reader attention. I was going to quote it here but it's too much. Go reread it.

Anias posted:

https://www.tor.com/2009/01/20/the-wheel-of-time-re-read-the-eye-of-the-world-part-1/

It's been torn apart by a lot of different editors/authors trying to figure out why it works so well. I linked tor.com's stuff by Leigh Butler above but she's hardly alone.

I suppose I could amend it to "modern publishing" if you prefer. I'm not trying to argue that it's taught in schools, I'm saying that actual writers/editors/publishers have been tearing that particular prologue apart for nearly 30 years. If you talk with a recently established author of epic fantasy, they have almost certainly looked at EotW, much like older authors have almost certainly looked at Tolkien.

Mat Cauthon posted:

Yeah a lot of the more grimdark fantasy of the recent era was influenced in tone if not in substance by that prologue. It's up there as far as essential readings in SFF, I've seen it used in more than a few writing workshops.

I find myself wondering who they are going to cast as Bashere, especially if S2 has already been greenlit. I think Navid Negahban would be great - he can be jovial, he can be serious, dude can grow a killer stache, and isn't Saldaea one of the places in the books with the vaguely Middle Eastern aesthetic/culture?

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

The prologue works really well for a lot of reasons. It's very high concept, high fantasy, high magic, and throws the central hook of the series at you right away in a really dramatic fashion. It's high drama. It has lots of subtle touches and ambiguities that aren't answered for books and books and books (do we ever find out what or who the nine rods of Dominion are?). It lets you know right from the start that there is more going on here than just another farmboy fantasy.

Then the next chapter is farmboy fantasy and a three thousand year timeskip that isn't explained for hundreds of pages. It gives the reader immediate whiplash and makes them read to find out how the gently caress that connects with that.

Lord Awkward posted:

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

COT really isnt a bad book, it just had the misfortune of being after the biggest event of the series and relatively slow paced. I'm enjoying it this time around, and even the Faile plot isn't really grinding much now I can just blitz it.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

At some point someone will need to go through and make an abridged version of WoT that cuts books 7,8,9, and 10 down to one volume.

ONE YEAR LATER posted:

There's a number of things you can criticise the books for, but they resolve most of the major and minor plot threads through the course of the series. Care to post some examples of things you are referring to? I'm always curious to read other opinions of the books, even if I disagree.

Sab669 posted:

I think the one of the most memorable "lol alright then" moments of the series for me was when Sanderson just had Faile knife Masema. And actually now that I think back on that arc, his whole "No! Only the Lord Dragon can use magic, I refuse to use gateways" thing was also incredibly annoying and definitely "meanders", to use Chubby's word.

I'm pretty critical of the series but I wouldn't go so far as to say it failed though.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I don't know what "failed" means in this context

Artistically it's a mixed result but a great one, a deeply flawed masterpiece.

Commercially and in popular culture though it was a *huge* success. Jordan was the jacket quote that launched Game of Thrones. Estimates are 90 million books sold worldwide. You didnt see many fantasy novels in airport bookshelves in the 1990's.

Data Graham posted:

That kinda goes to what gets my hackles up about Rand, where even if we accept that he's an insane megalomaniac with schizophrenic delusions and all that, he's still presented for the bulk of the series as this superman who picks up ninja swordfighting skills in like two months and can do everything from naval tactics to grain distribution to remaking the social order of multiple kingdoms that put him on the throne (never mind being the Best Channeler Ever) because he's just so awesome. Like a kid's idea of a superhero who has ALL the powers, bigger and better than the powers his little brother is pretending to have. He goes straight from 18-year-old sheepherder who doesn't even wonder about the outside world to World Bestriding Gold Plated Hero in what I can only read as some kind of wish fulfillment for a certain kind of reader for whom the "everyman who saves the world" trope isn't fundamentally about the everyman succeeding despite being unsuited to the task, but rather that it proves that any everyman can be a galactic emperor if he just bootstraps his poo poo up and climbs the drat obstacle course wall.


E: but this is off the "artistic merit" topic and just my personal hobby-horse, so pay no mind

How are u posted:

I get the criticism of "Rand is just too strong and too good!", I do conceptually understand it. However, that seems to kind of be the point of the character. The chosen hero with all the power and all the skills to remake the world, but he's not omnipotent and he makes stupid mistakes and he's going insane at the same time, and also most everybody hates him for who he is and what he's supposed to do.

I dunno, I think there's some layers and nuance to the whole of it.

Ferrosol posted:

Now if we're talking about characters whose deletion could improve the series I nominate Gawain, he fucks up everything he ever does and then dies like an idiot screwing over Egwene in the process.

silvergoose posted:

Also I'm getting weirdly irritated by people misspelling Gawyn's name unless you're doing it on purpose to annoy me, in which case carry on

Basileus777 posted:

This post could have worked if you hadn't tried to throw Egwene into it who is actually more important to the plot than anyone other than Rand and Mat. It's closer to saying that you could remove Sam from LOTR than Bombadil.

Anias posted:

Robert Jordan's The Waste of Time - Also Birgitte and Mat got drunk together.

It really is the best summary of these books.

VikingofRock posted:

Since Birgitte's presence in the physical world is a bit of a spoiler, I'd personally rather keep it out of the thread title. I'm fine with saying that people who haven't finished the series browse this thread at their own risk, but IMO just seeing the thread title shouldn't give anything away.