WoT

[Lord Baelish]

The difference is that Erikson always planned to have a 10-book series, and he apparently has all ten of them plotted out, so it's highly unlikely he will keep extending his series like Jordan has.

[Errant Bard]

I just ordered the first book off of Amazon after reading all of the threads on this board. Maybe I will just put em on the shelf till the last one is published! You would think that I learned my lesson already...

I would recommend reading it straight away, then imagine that which each book, the plot coupons grow in number, as do the glares, braid tuggings, and stupid plans.

If you feel comfortable with that and the way the women are portrayed in the Eye of the world, then I think you can confidently order all the other published volumes.

I say that because all the talk about WoT made me buy the first few, just to see what it was about, and it appeared I spent money on several books I'll never read now, seeing as I could not get myself to go past The Dragon Reborn.

[Sword of the Morning]

Sword of the Morning (who is not SwordoftheMorning, our LoveMachine) gets a royalty check every time he defends Robert Jordan. You can ignore him like any other ballot stuffer.

Robert Jordan completely lost control of the story and his WIFE is his editor. She may not be his editor any more - I think I read that he has a new one. *shrugs* Its not going to make his books better now. Its too damn late. There is one book left that has to wrap up 2000000000 plot lines. Ain't going to happen. The last 6 books have been 6000 pages of complete tripe. Terry Goodkind is more entertaining at least for the possibility of mocking him. Robert Jordan is like reading a REALLY bad historical romance novel. Its all about the dresses, who is being a bitch and soft core smut. Strong appeal to young boys. No appeal to anyone with sense or taste, unless its your guilty pleasure (and you should feel really guilty).

Ok, I'll play.

Let's see, no appeal to anyone with sense or taste . . .

Excuse me but are you really that stupid or just trolling and looking for a laugh? Well, please smile at this by all means:

Do you understand Quantum Mechanics and Astrophysics? Do you know the difference between a Stage IV squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx versus an external laryngocele? Why is the Brothers Dostoevsky so important? How about the soaring melodies of Mozart or the magnificence of Beethoven?

Do you really understand Einstein's theories of relativity or higher level mathematics or multi-dimensional Calculus?

Do you think everything you don't understand or don't have the wit to see is worthless or stupid?

No? Then don't assume that just because people don't SEE the brilliance or depth of a certain work (whether it's Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time or Martin's Song of Ice and Fire or even Rowling's Harry Potter) that it isn't there. Maybe it's just YOUR limitations that prevent you from getting it.

There's a trend among people in general to dismiss and minimalize what they can't understand or appreciate. Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.

But I personally would never be so arrogant as to believe that just because I don't understand something or appreciate something that there's no worth to it. And trust me when I say that I probably know a lot more about a great many things than most on this board regardless of age or background. And still the things I don't know can fill libraries and that keeps me humble.

I would take the time to prove your ignorance and stupidity except you've already taken care of that far better than I could dream but if you're really that comfortable making a blanket judgment about tens of millions of Jordan fans around the world then you need to go back to school and get some more education and expand your horizons.

I hope to God you're 13 because if you're actually an ADULT then I am more profoundly saddened than you can possibly appreciate if your post is anything to judge you by.

[Werthead]

Post deleted.

[Bronn Stone]

Ok, I'll play.

Let's see, no appeal to anyone with sense or taste . . .

<trimmed>

I like WoT and obviously don't agree with everything thebadlady said, but this was one of the more foolish responses I've seen around here. I especially enjoy WoT in the context of other early 90's fantasy - the genre was all but dead and WoT is to a great extent responsible for the revival that made things like Bakker, Martin and Lynch possible today - publishers are more willing to give those types of books a chance because of the success of WoT.

But suggesting that a very bright person like tbl is missing the Mozartness of WoT because she doesn't care for it and focuses on its flaws rather than its strengths is simply a great way to make the many of us around here who know and respect her think you are a complete idiot.

[Ran]

Interestingly, I just discussed the books with Linda while out walking, for various reasons. We were very big fans of the series, once. I rushed out to buy CoS on the day of release, and I pestered the university bookstore for weeks trying to find out if they'd gotten Path of Daggers in yet (finally I gave up and picked it up from a B&N).

But ... the story drifted from the narrative arc it had before, and not in a way that I found redeeming or interesting. I'm not sure why, really, that the story began to cover fewer and fewer days, and seemed rather aimless, as if he wasn't quite ready to pull the trigger. He didn't have anything important to say thematically, I think, that required this -- at least, I didn't detect any overriding thematic messages which differed from anything, in scope or scale or purpose, than what had come before. If there were, I could have appreciated the book on that level, but I don't think that Jordan is really a particularly subtle writer when transmitting thematic messages, so I'm dubious of that ever happening.

Perhaps he's come to like his characters so much that he really thinks listening to Elayne spend time considering what clothes to wear is something fans want to see? And so on? I don't know, I shouldn't speculate. It always seems to cause more flames.

In any case, some fans obviously still love it. More power to them. But he's not telling a story I'm interested in any longer, except in the vaguest sort of, 'Eh, I've gotten this far' sort of way. I appreciate the world he built, flaws and all (his views on gender relations are, frankly, weird -- not John Norman weird, but still...). It's a setting I like gaming in (this is the main reason we were discussing it, as we're kicking around the idea of opening a WoT-themed MUSH following his granting permission to such an endeavor some years ago), for various reasons, and I think there's a lot of admirable stuff in his world-building. But the story? It's not for me anymore, and I don't believe Jordan is going to make it a story for me -- the young guy who ate up the first books in the series, who doubted that the guy who wrote the perverse and creepy "Sandkings" could be anywhere as good with his Big Fat Fantasy -- with the last book.

I'll read Memory of Light (once it's in paperback, or if an e-book is released), or at least skim it, but mainly to see how it ends and to learn any new details about the world and setting. We're looking at dumping our hardcovers, after having stopped buying them following PoD.

[Kalbear]

The difference is that Erikson always planned to have a 10-book series, and he apparently has all ten of them plotted out, so it's highly unlikely he will keep extending his series like Jordan has.

True; he'll probably keep doing sidestories and the like like he has been instead of extending the actual books, and I can totally see Erikson doing a bunch of prequels and whatnot to fill in blanks and histories, but not stretching out the books themselves.

Might mean the things take longer, but he's probably the kind of guy that would only add a couple short stories in between books and do the prequels after everything's done.

[Werthead]

Similar story here. I started reading the series in the summer of 1996, around the time ACoS came out in hardcover (on the grounds that a seven-book series had to be near its end ) and really enjoyed it. This was my favourite series for about five years after that point. Jordan has a pretty informal but interesting prose style, capable of handling lots of information alongside (somewhat) reasonable dialogue and pretty constant worldbuilding. It's easy to read without it being patronising. The story was refreshingly complex and the central thematic message of the entire series - that history is malleable and changes depending on the observer - came through loud and clear.

However, his gender relations were always awkward and his villains, for all their supposed machivellian evil, were unconvincingly dumb (with the sole exception of Pedron 'Could Have Been in ASoIaF' Niall, who actually had some depth; naturally he had to be killed off!).

His worldbuilding remains good even in the later books, despite their flaws.

SPOILER: Late WoT

Some of the things that get done with the One Power in KoD are jaw-dropping, yet make perfect sense given the information that has come before. He has also shown the ability to introuce interesting storylines late in the day. For example, in Books 10 and 11 arguably the most intriguing side-story is that of the Domani General Rodel Ituralde and his ballsy plan to attack the Seanchan (hint for those who haven't read it: Ituralde has none of Rand's squeamishness about hurting women). This story is visited in brief, short interludes in the prologues and is very well-handled.

Coupled with the quality of the original New Spring short story (but absolutely not the novel), we can conclude that given a restricted amount of space, Jordan actually works pretty well. Certainly I'd be interested in seeing more short fiction from him in the future.

But overall, WoT has meandered away from its original plan. It became somewhat self-indulgent and, whilst KoD is indeed a major improvement on the three novels before it, it still has a lot of the flaws of the later books in the series. It certainly isn't a return to the series at its very best, sadly. Certainly, Jordan does seem to have acknowledged the criticism and taken steps to rectify it, which is interesting and hints at a distinct lack of ego in this matter, and I do have hopes that the final volume will be interesting and enjoyable to read, but I think that a lot of people's final analysis of Wheel of Time will be wistful thoughts of what it could have been, rather than what it has emerged as.

But Mat is still a great character though

[pat5150]

Hmmm, I've been reading Jordan's opus since 1991. Bought The Dragon Reborn when it came out in hardcover. Like most, I fell in love with the Wot saga, and I'm still a big fan, even if the overall quality of the series isn't what it was at the beginning.

In my opinion -- which isn't necessarily worth much, mind you -- I believe that Tor Books' biggest mistake was to forgo the editorial procress for the volumes that followed Lord of Chaos. Knife of Dreams was the first novel that went through that process, and the result is a book that's written more tightly.

The volumes in between fell well short of the "original" six volumes because RJ was allowed to pursue subplots that, in the end, took way too much space in what was already an enormous series. Ibstead of moving the main story arc forward, we had to plow through scenes after scenes of Aviendha, Elayne and the Kin, Windfinders, and every other fucking female channeling group in the universe. Finding the Bowl was supposed to be a major event and all that, and how many pages were "wasted" on that plotline alone?

At some point, RJ lost track of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Lan and the rest of the "important" members of the cast. All of a sudden we were spending a lot more time among the Wise Ones, had to sift through so many Aes Sedai and rebel Aes Sedai machinations, etc. In retrospect, we now realize that a majority of that stuff could have happened "behind the scene."

I mean, it took about 250 pages for us to first see Rand in The Path of Daggers. Don't get me wrong. There are still many storylines that are fascinating and I can't wait to read the next installment. It's just that those gems of plotlines are now buried beneath a lot of less interesting stuff.

Same thing with characters. For every Logain, there is, unfortunately, a braid-tugging Nynaeve or a Cadsuane Sedai.

Fortunately, Knife of Dreams was a throwback to the first volumes, when you didn't really have to look for the cool and interesting stuff. It was just there and reading those books blew your mind. In the last couple of books, those storylines are still there. But you have to sift through so much less appealing plotlines that it devalues the reading experience.

I still love Robert Jordan and the Wot. Heck, I've been following this series for 16 years, for crying out loud! But there's no denying that reading the last few books (Knife of Dreams being the exception) didn't offer the sort of reading experience provided by The Eye of the World through Lord of Chaos, which established the series as the "one to read."

My two cents!

Patrick [who will kiss some serious ass to get a galley or an ARC of A Memory of Light from Tor Books!]

[Whitebull]

Everyone has reiterated the main problems with series in this thread. Suffice it to say I agree with most of it, that the series could have been absolutely fantastic, and was on it's way still about halfway through, then lost it's way.

I love Rand. When I've re-read, I've pretty much concentrated on his chapters, and the chapters that directly affect his storyline. I skip what doesn't interest me.

SPOILER: Rand

One thing I haven't noticed people talk about is the obvious and extremely lame neutering of Rand over the last few books. When he cleansed Saidin, it had come shortly after Dumai's Wells. After Winter's Heart, I was really looking forward to the badassness to come. I didn't have illusions that Jordan would stop with most of his crap, but I did think that what good stuff there was, really would be good. Instead, Rand has some kind of sickness, possibly linked to his balefire crossing with the weird stranger when he killed Sammael, but whatever it is, it's persisted after cleansing Saidin, essentially gentling him, and it is the most annoying of all the things Jordon has done to hurt the series.

[AverageGuy]

I'll try not to reiterate too much.

Robert Jordan introduced me to the fantasy genre. I'd read Lewis and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander when I was younger, but for all intensive purposes, EotW was the reason I go out of my way to read fantasy. After working up through CoS, I picked up Legends, which introduced me to Martin, Williams, and Goodkind (I do have some regrets ). PoD didn't seem that bad to me, though I'm not sure if that was because fantasy was new to me, I didn't have to wait long for it, or just because of my age. Winter's Heart was fine, too. Then came CoT, and the novellette, New Spring. Those two books threw me off Jordan. CoT because (I've said this so many times now) I read the cover flap, read the book, read the cover flap again, and realized that nothing had happened. New Spring upset me - more than it should have, really - because I'd already read it and didn't see why we needed a hundred pages added to a story we'd already seen when we could've gotten the new book. I suspected that Jordan had sold out (yes, that's my opinion, not a fact, Os ). Now I feel less strongly about the series either way. I've come this far, I plan to finish.

[kuenjato]

Wow, confession time!

I picked up WoT around the same time Pat did ('91?), when the second book was newly released in trade paperback. I bought EotW while on a road trip with my uncle to Yellowstone, and can still remember the ... eerieness of those opening chapters, the difference between Jordan's style and world to the regular ol' cookie-cutters clogging the bookseller shelves. It was perhaps the first fantasy novel after Tolkien and Williams that felt suitably epic, with a darkness festering at the edges and enough interesting world-building to promise at least four or five books to come. The Great Hunt felt even more mature/weird and had a better climax; and while The Dragon Reborn felt like a step back in some ways, it had the interesting twist of the White Tower splintering and in many ways felt like the climax to the previous two books.

The Shadow Rising is still my favorite of the series. Rand going to the Waste and reliving his past (one of RJ's best sequences) sequenced with Perrin returning home to deal with Whitecloaks, Trollocs and Slayer and the girl's adventures in ... Tanchico? Ebou Dar? -- maintained a strong pace and IMO the best climax of the series (rain over Rhuidean) due to the fact that the novel as a whole was strong (Dumai's Wells is perhaps the most cathartic but it comes after hundreds of pages of sweltering summer boredom). The Fires of Heaven felt like a clean-up novel for the events of book 4 (sort of like Feast...) and I liked it at the time, though the circus stuff should have been contained to just that volume and was a precursor to the BS to eventually follow.

Volume six has three events that I remember clearly: Rand taking on multiple opponents at the beginning (rather ridiculous), Nynaeve discovering something new to healing, and the Wells sequence. A good chuck of Lord of Chaos was filler, though, and years later it came as little surprise to later learn that RJ had decided to split an idea in two to craft books 6 and 7. By the time Crown of Swords came out I was beginning my third year of college -- I remember it being "pretty good".

Then two and half years passed. Rumors floated on the 'Net that RJ had suffered a heart attack (apparently false). I bought Path of Daggers the day it came out, and a friend of mine bought The World of the Wheel of Time. The shoddy quality of both -- the disjointed pacing, overly verbose and seemingly pointless result that volume 8 turned out to be, and the utterly craptacular "illustrations" and stunning opportunity-missed world -building of the World -- pretty much killed my interest in Jordan. To be honest, I felt like a sucker, like TOR had just raped my wallet with VERY obviously substandard material -- RJ made money, so who cares about quality? Anyway, I've read the later volumes (speed reading vol. 9 in a bookstore, thumbing through a guesthouse copy of Crossroads while resting from hard travel in China, borrowing KoD from a co-worker) just out of curiosity.

In the end, I'll read Memories of the Light as well, though I certainly won't buy it. Looking back, something must have happened to RJ. There is a discernable entropy to his later books, both in prose and plot. If he'd kept disciplined, I think that he could have pulled out a very strong 8 volume series, maybe even maintained quality with 10 books if he'd actually utilized some of his better ideas (Tower of Ghenji could have filled a book of its own, I suspect) and ditched the gender horsepucky, pathetic attempts at politics and thousands upon thousands of words devoted to random and increasingly stitled/turgid description.

If anything, RJ earns his place in the pantheon due to the strength of his first few books and as a valuble lesson to fantasy fans/authors (pro and wannabe) everywhere ----- milking in such manner drains the cow dry.

[Sword of the Morning]

I like WoT and obviously don't agree with everything thebadlady said, but this was one of the more foolish responses I've seen around here. I especially enjoy WoT in the context of other early 90's fantasy - the genre was all but dead and WoT is to a great extent responsible for the revival that made things like Bakker, Martin and Lynch possible today - publishers are more willing to give those types of books a chance because of the success of WoT.

But suggesting that a very bright person like tbl is missing the Mozartness of WoT because she doesn't care for it and focuses on its flaws rather than its strengths is simply a great way to make the many of us around here who know and respect her think you are a complete idiot.

Bronn,

Let me get this straight.

thebadlady posts an obviously inflammatory and belittling remark characterizing ALL people who enjoy reading Jordan as devoid of good taste or sense. She makes no attempt to give any cue that this may be tongue in cheek.

The very next post is by someone who took exception to her dismissive characterization of people who liked Wheel of Time as "young boys."

As someone who likes Wheel of Time, you were ok with this?

What in that original post illustrated any modicum of a "very bright person"??? Her post obviously shows that SHE thinks very highly of herself and her opinion. But her arrogant and clumsy display only impressed me with her shocking lack of courtesy and social manners. Or perhaps she only speaks like this behind the anonymity of the Interent and behind her keyboard.

It's fine to express your opinion and back it up with well thought out arguments and facts and perspectives in a RESPECTFUL manner. Why not read Ran and Werthead's overall negative experiences of Wheel of Time among others for reference?

And my post was about humility. There are LOTS of things we don't know or understand or appreciate and just because there is that LACK within us doesn't mean that subject should be minimized. I don't know shit about Mozart or Beethoven or Dostoevsky but that doesn't mean I don't respect the people who do. And obviously it NEVER crossed thebadlady's mind (nor any of you perhaps) that maybe there was a possibility that the reason she doesn't enjoy Jordan is more about her than the inherent quality of the work itself. It's one thing to say like Ran that personally he just didn't find Wheel of Time compelling anymore and state his reasons for it. I find that interesting and educational reading. But what she did was assinine. It looked like she was picking a fight with people who like Jordan or something. It was the least I could do to oblige her.

As "smart" as you think she is, there are many, many, many people much more accomplished than her who love Wheel of Time. And we don't appreciate being told that we are simplistic "young boys" with bad sense and taste.

And in case you think I'm a newbie overreacting, I've been here quite a long time. I've read this board since before it was moved here. I've read a WHOLE bunch of posters who post regularly who think they're much smarter than they really are. I find their attitude in general offensive and belittling and this little post by thebadlady exemplifies that sort of smarmy, elitist, snobby attitude that sucks.

As for her being a long-time poster many of you know and respect well just read her post again and think about it for a minute. You really think you could get away with saying that to someone to their face at say a book-signing or in casual conversation:

"I enjoy Wheel of Time."

"Oh really? Why? Only people with no sense or taste would really like it or as a guilty pleasure if you're slumming. It's adolescent tripe geared to little boys."

Come on, Bronn, give me a fucking break. You'd have to be a moron or have the social graces of a monkey to say that to anyone in real time.

She posted her opinion in her own way and I felt compelled to return the favor and give her mine in a manner as classy as hers.

Dennis the Idiot

[Sword of the Morning]

Everyone has reiterated the main problems with series in this thread. Suffice it to say I agree with most of it, that the series could have been absolutely fantastic, and was on it's way still about halfway through, then lost it's way.

I love Rand. When I've re-read, I've pretty much concentrated on his chapters, and the chapters that directly affect his storyline. I skip what doesn't interest me.

SPOILER: Rand

One thing I haven't noticed people talk about is the obvious and extremely lame neutering of Rand over the last few books. When he cleansed Saidin, it had come shortly after Dumai's Wells. After Winter's Heart, I was really looking forward to the badassness to come. I didn't have illusions that Jordan would stop with most of his crap, but I did think that what good stuff there was, really would be good. Instead, Rand has some kind of sickness, possibly linked to his balefire crossing with the weird stranger when he killed Sammael, but whatever it is, it's persisted after cleansing Saidin, essentially gentling him, and it is the most annoying of all the things Jordon has done to hurt the series.

Whitebull,

We have to read the final book to see what significance if any Rand's "neutering" has to do with the main plot. A lot of his weakness like double vision and the wounds in the side that won't heal and even the loss of his hand will have plot repercusions in the final book that may actually significantly impact the climax.

It is sad that we see less and less of Rand but I feel that's a deliberate plot point by Jordan. In the beginning we see Rand as the young, innocent, head strong farmboy. Somewhere along the way, that person died a horrible death and the Rand we have that's left just makes me very, very sad reading about him.

It's also hard to write effectively from the viewpoint of a person who is basically going crazy. Even worse as the series progresses toward it's conclusion, Rand becomes more and more important and any insight into his thoughts would prove disastrous from a dramatic tension point of view. So by necessity and by plot, we are forced farther and farther from Rand until we really don't know him at all . . . and that mirrors the isolation he has from the characters as well.

Dennis

[Sword of the Morning]

Hmmm, I've been reading Jordan's opus since 1991. Bought The Dragon Reborn when it came out in hardcover. Like most, I fell in love with the Wot saga, and I'm still a big fan, even if the overall quality of the series isn't what it was at the beginning.

In my opinion -- which isn't necessarily worth much, mind you -- I believe that Tor Books' biggest mistake was to forgo the editorial procress for the volumes that followed Lord of Chaos. Knife of Dreams was the first novel that went through that process, and the result is a book that's written more tightly.

The volumes in between fell well short of the "original" six volumes because RJ was allowed to pursue subplots that, in the end, took way too much space in what was already an enormous series. Ibstead of moving the main story arc forward, we had to plow through scenes after scenes of Aviendha, Elayne and the Kin, Windfinders, and every other fucking female channeling group in the universe. Finding the Bowl was supposed to be a major event and all that, and how many pages were "wasted" on that plotline alone?

At some point, RJ lost track of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Lan and the rest of the "important" members of the cast. All of a sudden we were spending a lot more time among the Wise Ones, had to sift through so many Aes Sedai and rebel Aes Sedai machinations, etc. In retrospect, we now realize that a majority of that stuff could have happened "behind the scene."

I mean, it took about 250 pages for us to first see Rand in The Path of Daggers. Don't get me wrong. There are still many storylines that are fascinating and I can't wait to read the next installment. It's just that those gems of plotlines are now buried beneath a lot of less interesting stuff.

Same thing with characters. For every Logain, there is, unfortunately, a braid-tugging Nynaeve or a Cadsuane Sedai.

Fortunately, Knife of Dreams was a throwback to the first volumes, when you didn't really have to look for the cool and interesting stuff. It was just there and reading those books blew your mind. In the last couple of books, those storylines are still there. But you have to sift through so much less appealing plotlines that it devalues the reading experience.

I still love Robert Jordan and the Wot. Heck, I've been following this series for 16 years, for crying out loud! But there's no denying that reading the last few books (Knife of Dreams being the exception) didn't offer the sort of reading experience provided by The Eye of the World through Lord of Chaos, which established the series as the "one to read."

My two cents!

Patrick [who will kiss some serious ass to get a galley or an ARC of A Memory of Light from Tor Books!]

Pat.

I dislike posting "me too" posts but your analysis hits the nail right on the mark for me.

Add to this the incredible frustrations of waiting YEARS for each new installment and the backlash of angry fans can easily be appreciated.

I do think that we need to reserve a bit of judgement until the final book is written. Many, many, many plotlines that seem nonsensical may finally turn out to be critical.

There is a chance that in the final movement of this grand symphony everything will fit together like the last turns of a Rubix cube.

For instance I really hope that the Bowl of the Winds served some more purpose than just breaking summer's grip on the land. I never understood what the point of that was. We come off a HUGE climax from Lord of Chaos, we're ready to ride with the Dragon on the winds of Time, and what do we get? Ebou Dar to find this Bowl that literally dropped out oft he sky from nowhere.

As you say, it takes A LOT of filtering to get to the good stuff while in the earlier volumes the good shit just wouldn't stop. I honestly thought I was reading the greatest epic fantasy of all time through Shadow Rising. Then, Fires of Heaven happened and I started wondering what in the world is going on with this fucking circus?? Lord of Chaos had a few great scenes among them Dumai's Wells, Nynaeve curing Logain, and Aveindha meeting Elayne but for the life of me I can't really remember what the hell else happened in that book and that's not good for the longest novel of the series.

My point is that stuff really began to slow down after Shadow Rising but people forgave Fires of Heaven and Lord of Chaos for their great climaxes. I still think that when he's "on" he can write some of the most exciting, spine tingling scenes ever. It's just that the later books have forced us to prospect for them like miners on a stream.

Knife of Dreams wasn't perfect but it came closest to delivering some of the spine-tingling moments (Nynaeve rallying the Malkier) and kick ass battle scenes (Rand losing his hand) I loved in the earlier books. If he can keep this up and finish off the series with the passion and focus he started it with, I think we can still have a legitimate discussion of Wheel of Time as truly great epic fantasy.

Memory of Light is the most important novel for Jordan's legacy and I hope he is healthy enough to give us the ending to his mangnum opus that he's known for over 30 years.

Dennis

P.S.: For the haters who said the battle in which 100,000 Trolloc died was unrealistic . . . well think about it. Jordan is giving us a taste of what unbridled destructive potential truly means. How many men do you think could channel total back in the Age of Legends when they went crazy? They DESTROYED THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD. You don't think a small group of Ashaman along with the Dragon Reborn and Logain (almost as strong) can decimate 100k Trollocs?

Check up how many millions machine gun nests mowed down in World War I's notorious trench warfare. 300 Spartans wiped out conservatively close to 20,000 Persian soldiers at the Battle of Thermopylae. With Rand an dLogain raging out of control, I can easily see 100,000 stupid Trollocs getting smoked.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

Check up how many millions machine gun nests mowed down in World War I's notorious trench warfare. 300 Spartans wiped out conservatively close to 20,000 Persian soldiers at the Battle of Thermopylae. With Rand an dLogain raging out of control, I can easily see 100,000 stupid Trollocs getting smoked.

300 Spartans + 6,700 other Greeks while holding a small check point. Quite the subtle difference.

[Sword of the Morning]

300 Spartans + 6,700 other Greeks while holding a small check point. Quite the subtle difference.

From wikipedia:

Failure of the frontal assault

Xerxes I sent in 10,000 Medes who had been only recently conquered by the Persians, perhaps, as Diodorus Siculus suggested, because he wanted them to bear the brunt of the fighting.[24] The Medes soon found themselves in a frontal assault. The Greeks had camped on either side of the rebuilt Phocian wall. That the wall was guarded shows that the Greeks were using it to establish a reference line for the battle, but they fought in front of it.[25]

Details of the tactics are scant. The Greeks probably deployed in a phalanx, a wall of overlapping shields and layered spearpoints, spanning the width of the pass. Herodotus says that the units for each state were kept together.[26] The Persians, armed with arrows and short spears, could not break through the long spears of the Greek phalanx, nor were their lightly armoured men a match for the superior armour, weaponry, and discipline of the Greek hoplites.[27] Glotz has argued that three Persian Empire soldiers were necessary to put down one hoplite.[28]

Yet there are some indications the Greeks did not fight entirely in close formation. They made use of the feint to draw in the Medes, pretending to retreat in disorder only to turn suddenly and attack the pursuing Medes. In this way they killed so many Medes that Xerxes is said to have started up off the seat from which he was watching the battle three times.[29]

According to Herodotus and Diodorus, the Persian emperor, having taken the measure of the enemy, threw his best troops into a second assault: the Immortals, an elite corps of 10,000 men.[30] However, according to Ctesias, the Immortals did not attack until the second day. Ctesias tells that Xerxes sent another 20,000 troops against the Greeks, after the first 10,000 were defeated, who also failed to open the pass even though they were flogged by their leaders to keep on attacking.[23] On his side, Leonidas had arranged a system of relays between the hoplites of the various cities so as to constantly have fresh troops on the front line. In the heat of the battle, however, the units did not get a chance to rotate. Able to approach the Greek line only in such numbers as the space allowed, the Immortals fared no better than the Medes, and Xerxes had to withdraw them as well. The first day of battle probably ended there.[31]

On the second day Xerxes sent, according to Ctesias, another 50,000 to assault the pass. Again they failed. The account of the slain gives some indication why: the wall of bodies must have broken up the Persian line and detracted from their morale. Climbing over the bodies, they could see that they had stepped into a killing machine but the officers behind prevented them from withdrawing. Xerxes at last stopped the assault and withdrew to his camp, totally perplexed. By now he concluded that a head-on confrontation against Spartan-led troops in a narrow place was the wrong approach

This is breathtaking stuff even if the numbers were exaggerated. The hoplites did the bulk of the fighting. After the betrayal, Leonidas sent everyone home except 700 Thespians. They fought with spears until every one was shattered, then switched to their swords. They fought to the last man and in the end had to be taken down by hails of arrows (archaelogical digs at the site have uncovered massive numbers of arrowheads).

Some say that if not for the betrayal and flanking of the Spartans, they may have held up forever by rotating hundred waves of Spartans. The initial assault of 10,000 Medes were wiped out and only 2 or 3 Spartans died.

300 Spartan hoplites plus a few thousand support troops who were not warriors slaughtered upwards of 70,000 to 90,000 troops over three days. Before they died, they killed two of Xerxes' brothers. In a rage, he decapitated Leonidas' dead body and crucified him. Later he regretted his actions and returned the body to Sparta for proper burial.

Leonidas was offered the kingship of Greece if he surrendered and he stated that he would rather die for Greece than rule over his compatriots.

At the bural site, a simple inscription is roughly translated: Go tell Sparta, stranger passing by; that here according to Spartan law we lie. Ruskin said of this epitaph that it was the noblest group of words ever uttered by man. Its purpose is not to attract attention, but rather to show that they fear that Sparta may become suspicious that their soldiers left their duties, and they wished to ask travelers to tell Sparta the truth.

My point is simple: There's no room in that narrow pass for more than a hundred or so Spartans anyway. If you think that the Arcadians or Phocians did much, you're sadly mistaken. The Spartans are the greatest infantry the world had every seen. Martin's Unsullied are based in part on the Spartans especially the training.

Superior terrain and better trainied troops with superior armor did something in history that is mind-numbing.

Granted it's over the course of 3 days. But this REALLY HAPPENED!!

If a few hundred flesh and blood men can kill that many, then Rand and company with unlimited One Power on their side could easily take down 100,000 Trollocs and much more quickly.

As a precursor, it shows that the actual NUMBERS of Trollocs or Myrrdraal don't really matter. Aes Sedai and Ashaman wielding the One Power can slaughter millions at a time. So cna the Dreadlords. While that stalemate goes on, the real conflict will be the spiritual battle that Rand must face against the Dark One.

Sorry we got a little offtrack. But the sheer bravery of the 300 Spartans who made their last stand always takes my breath away.

Dennis

P.S.: By the way, Matrim Fox Cauthon imagine if I got together even 5000 armored men (half the initial force sent against the Hot Gates) and had them line up to the slaughter with NO effort to defend or attack. How many of the greatest athletes in the world would be able to kill them all? Most would drop of exhaustion long before. Here we're talking real human beings with real swords desperately fighting for their lives while being whipped from behind and the hoplites fought them hour upon hour upon hour. I'm not sure if there's a combat related feat in human history to rival this?? Whatever the numbers, it's an incredible feat holding their own for so long against such vast numbers. Various estimates placed the Persian combined force at over 2 million. Absurd . . .

[Spring Bass]

I know (although the Persians' total force number was closer to 250,000, at least according to most historians).

As for the Breaking - was that only the Companions of Lews Therin, or all the male Aes Sedai (who all eventually went insane)? We have to keep in mind that, at least according to the WoT Encyclopedia, the percentage of channelers in the pre-Breaking world was around 3%, so if you had a world with a population in the high hundreds of millions or billions, there would be millions of them, and millions of male Aes Sedai. Even assuming that the War wiped out a lot of them, that's still a lot of insane male channelers running around.

[Krafus]

Time to add my bit...

Up until I read Path of Daggers, I thought WoT was the greatest fantasy series ever written. I'd rest the first seven books back to back, and while I'd noticed a slowdown of pace in the last two books, I firmly believed Jordan would get back up to speed in book 8.

As everyone knows, that's not what happened. That's when I began to have real doubts about WoT, but I still hoped that book 9 would be a return to the greatness of the first five books. Coincidentally, I picked up Winter's Heartand A Storm of Swords at the same time.

I read Winter's Heart first, what struck me the most was that I'd lost touch with the characters. I couldn't make myself care about them in the least. I felt like a spectator watching a boring movie from home instead of being immerged in an exciting story, as had happened with the first five or six books. Even the scene where Rand was finally reunited with Elayne and Aviendha, something I'd been looking forward to for years, felt flat. That's when I finally realized and acknowledged that, to me, WoT was dead.

Then I read A Storm of Swords. It was a true epiphany. With the memory of WH fresh in my mind, I realized just how great GRRM was - and just how low Jordan had fallen. By the time I finished ASoS, I was a Martin fan, and though I've looked back at WoT from time to time, I never enjoyed what I saw. I can still remember going to see the Amazon reviews for Crossroads of Twilight, hoping for a hint that Jordan had improved, and instead seeing page after page of one-star reviews. I know that Amazon reviews aren't the most reliable ones to be found on the Internet, but when you see so many people who didn't enjoy a book for very similar or even identical reasons, there has to be something fundamentally wrong with it.

Though in the early 2000s I was shamefully vitriolic toward WoT due to my bitterness, that emotion has since been replaced by sadness for what could have been. I can't count the number of times I've read on message boards "I'm not a fan of Jordan anymore, but I've come too far to quit now." If all the fans with similar sentiments hadn't bought the latest book, I'm sure Jordan would have lost a substantial number of sales.

I still count the first five books as among the best fantasy novels I've ever read. Unfortunately, I can't read them now without sadly contrasting them with the later novels.

[kuenjato]

Personally, I've been expecting something like the 100k scene from KoD from the first book, when 'Dreadlords' and 'Last Battle' were introduced. I don't think Jordan pulled it off, however: it felt ridiculous in conception ("from out of nowhere!!!?!") and poorly written to boot, with a notable lack of tension (for me). But then, my perception has been corrupted ever since the scene from PoD when Elayne etc. start hurling fireballs out of a jouncing wagon -- it seemed like something out of a comic book.

I believe it was that scene, actually -- the climax to the Bowl of Winds arc -- that sealed my negative impression on RJ's saga. Dozens and dozens of pages of squabbling women, then an action scene that felt more comical than tense.