Amph Wheel of Time (No AMoL spoilers)

Well, yeah, the last four books were fantastic, and Winter's Heart had a really strong ending. It's just that books 7, 8 and 10 were awful, bloated and boring.

 

Every epic fantasy series seems to suffer from middle book syndrome to an extent. Sword of Truth goes downhill so fast after the first 2 or 3 books, but gets slightly better for the last 3. Books 5 and 6 are the weakest of Harry Potter. ASOIAF gets rather tedious in 4 and 5. I think WoT holds up pretty well considering it has 14 massive door stoppers.

 

I think of it as a lack of editing--no one started cutting out 50-page chunks I remember liking Lord of Chaos, but most of the books in the middle were way too drawn-out while people sat around and whined. For instance, I think the first 650 pages of Fires of Heaven could have been 300 max and not lost anything.

 

I love the way you think.

I should get back to my 8-13 reread but the thought of trudging through what I know will be a bit yawn-inducing makes me go to other books.

 

Can I quote you on that?

One of my friends suggests reading this for those who can't make themselves slog through all of that

 

haha sure!

And *snerk* that's a lovely site

 

I haven't checked it out (yet) but she says it's more fun that rereading the books.

 

ah, I can't not read the books though.

 

Egwene and Elayne are even more annoying than I remember.

Spoiler

Especially Elayne. I already had some issues for demanding Perrin and the Two Rivers submit to her in the later books on my first readthrough (Manetheren forever!) but she is pretty dumb in general. Galad just showed up and offered to safely escort them back to Andor (and more importantly to me, something resembling a plot), but Elayne thinks that doing the right thing is bad somehow and is totally biased against him, so I'm stuck reading who knows how many chapters of Elayne and Nynaeve plodding through the countryside doing nothing until they reach Salidar.

On a more positive note, I liked where Moiraine figured out that trying to control Rand was the wrong way to deal with him ("Why? Because I remembered how to control saidar.") If only the other scheming manipulators could learn this (I am dreading Cadsuane showing up, my least favorite character in the series)

 

Spoiler

Totally agree about Moiraine! And Cadsuane, ug. How she made me long for Moiraine.

I think they all have their moments. Elayne is definitely silly for refusing Galad's aid and constantly refusing to acknowledge him as her brother ... for what seems like no reason whatsoever. However, if she already doesn't trust him, I can see why she would be scared enough of his Whitecloak status when she's an Aes Sedai in Amadicia to run. If his comrades figured out who she was, she could be taken.

 

In my read through, I definitely preferred Galad over either of his half-siblings. Elayne had a few good moments when Birgitte takes her down a peg or two but was overall the most annoying of the main women (though there were a couple chapters where Egwene stole that crown.) And after the Tower split Gawyn just became an idiot.

I'm enjoying reading through that re-read linked earlier. Even though I did my own re-read, the author is picking up a lot of tiny details that I missed.

 

I"m going to read it after I finish my reread.

Spoiler

Gawyn definitely chose the wrong side in that battle. I can kinda see why--he didn't trust Siuan, and he'd grown up knowing Elaida--but killing your mentors is pretty sleazy.

 

Siuan, Leane, and Min just

Spoiler

got to Salidar. I don't really like it how the former Amyrlin and Keeper are treated like nobodies just because they can't channel anymore. An interesting contrast to this situation pops up in Star Wars several times: if a Jedi loses the Force, are they still a Jedi? Ulic Qel-Droma, the Jedi Exile, and Jacen Solo all say yes.

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Cadsuane is annoying, but she makes up for every irritating moment when she spanks Semirhage. That scene was oddly hilarious .

 

I don't like it, either. In fact, I'm not really a fan of the way Jordan portrays women. Most of them are pretty annoying.

 

Sanderson tones it down a lot. I think I like his writing a bit better.

 

I don't like how Jordan portrayed genders in general. Men were always pigheaded and stubborn and women were always bossy know-it-alls. It was a reoccurring concept through all 100 billion pages of this series. Sanderson did tone it down a bit, but he didn't really change the characters enough that main players like Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve were not still stereotypically bossy entitled brats. It would have been nice, by this point in the series, if some of the damn characters would start showing maturity via introspection or lessons learned. Particularly given the fact they are all in leadership roles. Sanderson keeps using narratives from one character's point of view saying things like "wow Rand has really matured" or "Egwene is the Amyrlin seat and all grown up now". I don't see it. Still just whiny kids in adult roles.

D- for character development.

Granted I've only read the first few chapters of the last novel, but whatever. I'm not super stoked about this drawn out nonsense.

 

I agree about gender protrayals. I just don't know who acts like that in real life--so why would all the people act like that in books? Seriously, all of them.

 

I agree that Elayne is annoying throughout the entire series. Egwene was alright at the beginning of the series but once she became Amrylin, becomes worse than Elayne. And yet, man, she was awesome in book 1--taking names and kicking ass against the Seanchan. (Though it could be that I just found the entire Seanchan culture so utterly repulsive that I would've welcomed anyone who smacked them down.)

I liked Nynaeve in the first few books, she really cared about her boys and went through everything she did because she wanted to protect them. She also was pretty level headed and ultimately was the one who got Egwene away from the Seanchan. Then she became a parody of herself and did nothing but sniff, tug her braid, and stalk around. She got better once she dumped Lan in the borderlands and I liked her interactions with Rand in book 13 once he stopped being crazy.

 

Just started Crown of Swords. Lord of Chaos was much better than I remembered, better even than Fires of Heaven. I had also forgotten that Cadsuane doesn't show up until book 7, so that may have affected my memory of 6.

 

Halfway through Lord of Chaos, when Gawyn and Egwene meet again and have my favorite moment of the entire series I'm a hopeless romantic, but they're so freaking cute.

 

I'm halfway through Crown of Swords. Favorite moment so far is when Birgitte and Aviendha get Nynaeve and Elayne to apologize to Mat.

edit: also, Nynaeve really is just as bad as Elayne if not worse, but I know she gets better so I'm more forgiving of her meanness I guess. In other news, Amador fell to the Seanchan and advanced not only the Seanchan plot, but putting the Whitecloaks on the road to one of my favorite moments in the entire series: Galad's duel.

 

Finished AMOL yesterday and all I can say is wow!

 

It's fun to have read AMOL before continuing my reread. It's also a bit sad and not as anxiety-producing for some parts.

I started my reread of the 8th gook "Path of Daggers." There really isn't much that is going on.

 

is it really so boring as to call for non sequitur racial slurs?

and if rereading it is provoking john mccain-style racially-charged 'Nam flashbacks you should probably just stop reading