A Memory of Light official Release Date

[unJon]

Um, Graendal killed Asmodean, and she's dead now, so I don't see how Logaine's going to do that bit.

[Slick Mongoose]

she's dead now

Pffft, as if.

[peterbound]

I for one am glad to see this shit over with. They've gone on too long, and have become a pale shadow of what they once were. Sanderson hasn't really improved the books (i stand by my statement that is one of the most god awful writers we have in the genre as of today), so much as sped them up.

I honestly believe RJ would have stretched this shit out even more. Sanderson didn't have that option*.

For those of us that stopped caring long ago, but will likely read the last book, a great primer has been complied by our very own Wert:

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2012/01/wheel-of-time-so-far-part-1-age-of.html

Hope that gets you caught up.

*unless you count splitting the last book. Although i think that was an editor's decision, not BS's

[Myrddin]

No one knows how ASOIAF or other long awaited series end exactly, so the middle books feel just as important.

So said many a WoT fan about twelve years ago. ;)

We know the Last Battle is coming for Rand just as we know there's a battle against the Others looming, with probably dragons thrown into the mix. That doesn't mean we know how either story is going to end (or what is going to happen along the way).

Granted the road to book 13 was way too long, but the payoff for Rand's zen-ness was actually pretty cool. It was a realistic progression of innocent farm boy to cold-hearted soldier to calm experienced general. The progression is especially poignant considering the journey was experienced by Jordan himself during Vietnam.

Wasn't his nickname Iceman or something because he was so cold in the bush? In some interview, I remember him mentioning a buddy snapped his photo after a firefight. He was sitting next to (or on?) a corpse smoking a cig as calm as could be.

[Adept Havelock]

Wheel of Time was a wasted opportunity. I truly feel that it could have been as respected as Lord of the Rings if he hadn't stretched the material out to ridiculous lengths. Consider

Books 1 to 4 - Same as originally published

Book 5 - Combine Books 5 and 6

Book 6 - Combine 7,8 & 9

Book 7 - Combine 10 & 11 (Mainly 11 - Just throw away 90% of 10)

Book 8 - Books 12 & 13 (1st Half of 13)

Book 9 - Books 13 & 14

This 9 book series would have been remarkable and had proper character and plot development in every novel, not 5 books reading about Perrin trying to find his wife very slowly and 3 books chasing after the bowl of the winds (possibly the worst subplot in fantasy). Jordan drowned in pointless details and minor characters, his editing team and alpha readers should have made this clear. If they had he would be seen as the most important fantasy author since Tolkein.

[Switchback]

Wheel of Time was a wasted opportunity. I truly feel that it could have been as respected as Lord of the Rings if he hadn't stretched the material out to ridiculous lengths. Consider

Books 1 to 4 - Same as originally published

Book 5 - Combine Books 5 and 6

Book 6 - Combine 7,8 & 9

Book 7 - Combine 10 & 11 (Mainly 11 - Just throw away 90% of 10)

Book 8 - Books 12 & 13 (1st Half of 13)

Book 9 - Books 13 & 14

This 9 book series would have been remarkable and had proper character and plot development in every novel, not 5 books reading about Perrin trying to find his wife very slowly and 3 books chasing after the bowl of the winds (possibly the worst subplot in fantasy). Jordan drowned in pointless details and minor characters, his editing team and alpha readers should have made this clear. If they had he would be seen as the most important fantasy author since Tolkein.

"wasted opportunity"??? The books become #1 bestsellers like clockwork, and it is easily one of (if not THE) most successful fantasy series of all time. Some people (relatively few actually, when you compare to the number of people who love every book) have gripes with the books, but I don't think "wasted opportunity" is the right way to describe the series.

[awesome possum]

Take a look at the main players: Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nyneeve, Elaine, and Morraine- Ready to fight in the last battle, pretty much were ready to do that at the end of TEOTW.

No they weren't.

[Caligula_K2]

"wasted opportunity"??? The books become #1 bestsellers like clockwork, and it is easily one of (if not THE) most successful fantasy series of all time. Some people (relatively few actually, when you compare to the number of people who love every book) have gripes with the books, but I don't think "wasted opportunity" is the right way to describe the series.

Umm, have you ever read the reviews for Crossroads of Twilight on amazon (all 2,481 of them, which give it an overall average of two stars- that pretty much never happens to a book in a very popular series)? Or hell, for Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart? There are definitely lots of fans out there who have gripes with many of the books.

I do think wasted opportunity is pretty apt, regardless of how many books have been sold. I would have loved a tight, well written eight book version of Wheel of Time. As it is, I don't have much urge to re-read this series, and if I do, I'm going to be skipping most of the latter half, including large sections of book 11 and 13 and all of book ten minus the Mat and Rand chapters and the Egwene cliffhanger (all in all, about 150-200 pages out of 800-850). That seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

Anyway, to stay positive: Glad the last book is finally being published, and I really hope they do a good job with this one. Towers of Midnight was a pretty dissapointing book, all in all, so I hope Sanderson can finish this off with a bang.

[Switchback]

Yeah, i've seen the amazon reviews, but what's the percentage of actual sales of the book for Crossroads do you think that 2,000+ makes up? Some people were very disappointed in that book, and made their displeasure known. I think the fact that the very next book released was again a #1 bestseller says many more people enjoyed Crossroads than didn't.

I just think the vocal internet fans being angry with a book or two gives on some kind of twisted perception that everyone hates these middle books and the series fails as a result, which I just don't think is anywhere close to the truth. The books continue to sell, so there must be some folks out there still enjoying the series? Unless you believe people are just buying the books because they feel like they need to, since they've invested so much? I don't really buy that though.

A "wasted opportunity" to me implies that the books set up a promising world and conflict, but failed to follow through in the course of the series. I for one am just as excited to read the end of the series now as I was after book 3. And I know many people in real life who feel exactly the same. So "wasted opportunity" just doesn't ring true at all to me. Though I'll concede I maybe have a different idea what is meant by that.

[Adept Havelock]

"wasted opportunity"??? The books become #1 bestsellers like clockwork, and it is easily one of (if not THE) most successful fantasy series of all time. Some people (relatively few actually, when you compare to the number of people who love every book) have gripes with the books, but I don't think "wasted opportunity" is the right way to describe the series.

1st point - sales doesn't equal quality, or Twilight would be considered the best series in fantasy and Da Vinci Code better than Shakespeares Folio. I say wasted opportunity because I feel that WOT had the potential to be considered a truly seminal work of Fantasy whereas given the incredible sprawl it descended into history will simply remember it as one of the series that first launched multi-novel epics (alongside Sword of Truth which also had #1 bestsellers).

[MattL86]

I don't understand. You really believe the unsophisticated, ignorant, powerless country bumpkins we had at the end of EotW were ready to defeat the Dark One? Maybe if this were a story about how stubborn country folk walk to a volcano and save the world, you'd have a point.

Yeah, well those unsophisticated, ignorant, powerless country bumpkins took out two of the Forsaken, then took out Ishamael, oh and blew an army of trollocs off the map with the one power. The Shadow took a bigger hit from Rand and friends in TEOTW than they have in any subsequent book.

Granted, I've enjoyed all the books to varying extents. But most of the volumes after TDR seemed a bit unnecessary, The Gathering Storm being a notable exception.

[Maithanet]

Yeah, well those unsophisticated, ignorant, powerless country bumpkins took out two of the Forsaken, then took out Ishamael, oh and blew an army of trollocs off the map with the one power. The Shadow took a bigger hit from Rand and friends in TEOTW than they have in any subsequent book.

Killing Forsaken isn't nearly the victory that you seem to think it is. Particularly since both of them came back to life immediately. And a small tactical victory in the borderlands is hardly a huge setback for The Shadow. We saw how much an army of trollocs was worth when 100,000 of them were killed in KoD with minimal losses amongst the defenders.

The biggest win Rand and Co have had in the first thirteen books is definitely the Cleansing in book 9. Without that, Rand is mad for the Last Battle anyway. Next largest would probably be Verin's successful quest to reveal and destroy the Black Ajah in book 12. Both were far larger defeats of the Shadow.

[Gormenghast]

Sanderson hasn't really improved the books, so much as sped them up.

This makes me chuckle considering that by the time he's done he'd have written 30% of the total wordcount.

Memory of Light as a whole is something like 950k

[fionwe1987]

Yeah, well those unsophisticated, ignorant, powerless country bumpkins took out two of the Forsaken, then took out Ishamael, oh and blew an army of trollocs off the map with the one power. The Shadow took a bigger hit from Rand and friends in TEOTW than they have in any subsequent book.

Did you actually read the subsequent books? And killing two extremely incompetant Foresaken temporarily and killing an army of around 10000 Trollocs doesn't make a huge victory. Not in WoT.

Granted, I've enjoyed all the books to varying extents. But most of the volumes after TDR seemed a bit unnecessary, The Gathering Storm being a notable exception.

Its the volumes after tDR that really matter, though. Till then, WoT was a normal adventure fantasy with a few cool background concepts. From tSR, WoT came into its own. Sure, it may have gone on for too long for some people, but the fact remains that what makes WoT distinct, and a series that wasn't a simple "good vs. evil" adventure story came later in the series.

If anything, I wish Jordan had realized the true scope of his work sooner and cut out the earlier travelogue adventure stuff more. Maybe then he could have made some of the later novels tighter and given us a leaner version of the story. But I still love it as it stands...

[Werthead]

This makes me chuckle considering that by the time he's done he'd have written 30% of the total wordcount.

Memory of Light as a whole is something like 950k

It's more like a quarter, but surely that proves the point? A quarter of the series published in about one-seventh of the publication time of the whole project. Which actually still isn't as fast as Jordan published the first seven books of the series (seven books - and almost 50% of the wordcount - in six years and three months).

[MattL86]

Did you actually read the subsequent books? And killing two extremely incompetant Foresaken temporarily and killing an army of around 10000 Trollocs doesn't make a huge victory. Not in WoT.

Its the volumes after tDR that really matter, though. Till then, WoT was a normal adventure fantasy with a few cool background concepts. From tSR, WoT came into its own. Sure, it may have gone on for too long for some people, but the fact remains that what makes WoT distinct, and a series that wasn't a simple "good vs. evil" adventure story came later in the series.

If anything, I wish Jordan had realized the true scope of his work sooner and cut out the earlier travelogue adventure stuff more. Maybe then he could have made some of the later novels tighter and given us a leaner version of the story. But I still love it as it stands...

Point is that until he went all Zen, Rand was actually at his most powerful in the first two books. He was doing stuff in dreams and in the sky with such precise use of TOP that he seldom repeats in the later books. Granted this might by a writing inconsistency thing, as Morraine also seems most powerful in TEOTW, but the point was they were hardly helpless in the first book. I'm not saying I didn't need some books in between TEOTW and AMOL, but maybe I needed like 5, not twelve. There were just so many plotlines that don't matter, because all that matters is the Last Battle.

Look, you can come at this from a whole lot of angles, but the main character in the story is a guy who destroys the world as people know it to prepare them for this final conflict. Once you have that as your premise, that nothing in the world matters but being ready to fight in this battle, then all the plotlines that don't deal with the endgame are extraneous. These include:

1. The Bowl of the Winds

2. Perrin trying to save Faile for about 60 books

3. Elaine securing the thrown of Andor (seriously, this plotline actually came across as selfish. While Rand is trying to save the world, Elaine starts a freaking civil war for personal gain. And all because she doesn't want Rand's help.)

4. Pretty much every plotline with Egwene in it, save the last one.

EDIT: I suppose my posts (and yours) are kind of pointless. I got suckered into this by saying I was excited for AMOL because it was the only book that really matters after so many that didn't. That's devolved into me arguing the WoT is too long. That's been said before only like a billion times. You're disagreeing, which WoT hardcore fans have done just as often. I don't think anyone's going to learn anything new here. :P

How about we agree that we are excited about AMOL for two very different reasons? ;)

[fionwe1987]

Point is that until he went all Zen, Rand was actually at his most powerful in the first two books. He was doing stuff in dreams and in the sky with such precise use of TOP that he seldom repeats in the later books. Granted this might by a writing inconsistency thing, as Morraine also seems most powerful in TEOTW, but the point was they were hardly helpless in the first book. I'm not saying I didn't need some books in between TEOTW and AMOL, but maybe I needed like 5, not twelve. There were just so many plotlines that don't matter, because all that matters is the Last Battle.

You seem to have misunderstood the books a lot. What comes across as awesome magical stuff in the early books is not Rand being better at channeling but him being a lot worse. He doesn't know the mechanics of what he's doing so it all seems awesome. Plus, he wasn't consciously repressing Lews Therin's memories since he wasn't even aware of them.

Look, you can come at this from a whole lot of angles, but the main character in the story is a guy who destroys the world as people know it to prepare them for this final conflict. Once you have that as your premise, that nothing in the world matters but being ready to fight in this battle, then all the plotlines that don't deal with the endgame are extraneous.

But that is NOT the premise at all. It barely scratches the surface.

These include:

1. The Bowl of the Winds

2. Perrin trying to save Faile for about 60 books

3. Elaine securing the thrown of Andor (seriously, this plotline actually came across as selfish. While Rand is trying to save the world, Elaine starts a freaking civil war for personal gain. And all because she doesn't want Rand's help.)

4. Pretty much every plotline with Egwene in it, save the last one.

Except some of THESE are the crux of the story. They may have been overlong... but they're far from unnecessary.

EDIT: I suppose my posts (and yours) are kind of pointless. I got suckered into this by saying I was excited for AMOL because it was the only book that really matters after so many that didn't. That's devolved into me arguing the WoT is too long. That's been said before only like a billion times. You're disagreeing, which WoT hardcore fans have done just as often. I don't think anyone's going to learn anything new here. :P

I'm not saying WoT isn't too long. Quit arguing against a straw man.. I'm saying WoT is not the " hero saves the day" story you think it is. It's about HOW to save the world. And how not to. And about how humanity isn't simply going to unite on its own. About how easy it is to divide...

[MattL86]

I'm not saying WoT isn't too long. Quit arguing against a straw man.. I'm saying WoT is not the " hero saves the day" story you think it is. It's about HOW to save the world. And how not to. And about how humanity isn't simply going to unite on its own. About how easy it is to divide...

And I never said I wanted a trilogy about how Rand saves the day. What I do think would have been preferable is a 7-9 book series, with at least one main character dying along the way to keep tension, and less plotlines in general. But then, this is how I feel about most mega series. I disliked some of the added plotlines in AFFC in ASOIAF (though in the interest of fairness I am reserving judgment until the end of the series),and I never understood the need for Tom Bombadil in LOTR, etc. I thought Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings was way too bulky and read suspiciously like WoT, entertaining but bloated, would be better if it was cut 30-40%. Authors who can tell the massive story while maintaining focus always win bonus points with me. Guy Gavriel Kay writes sweeping stories with deep themes (for fantasy anyway), and he does it all in one volume. So do countless others. You do that by not writing every plotline that pops into your head.

[Dr. Tachyon]

Point is that until he went all Zen, Rand was actually at his most powerful in the first two books. He was doing stuff in dreams and in the sky with such precise use of TOP that he seldom repeats in the later books. Granted this might by a writing inconsistency thing, as Morraine also seems most powerful in TEOTW, but the point was they were hardly helpless in the first book. I'm not saying I didn't need some books in between TEOTW and AMOL, but maybe I needed like 5, not twelve. There were just so many plotlines that don't matter, because all that matters is the Last Battle.

Look, you can come at this from a whole lot of angles, but the main character in the story is a guy who destroys the world as people know it to prepare them for this final conflict. Once you have that as your premise, that nothing in the world matters but being ready to fight in this battle, then all the plotlines that don't deal with the endgame are extraneous. These include:

1. The Bowl of the Winds

2. Perrin trying to save Faile for about 60 books

3. Elaine securing the thrown of Andor (seriously, this plotline actually came across as selfish. While Rand is trying to save the world, Elaine starts a freaking civil war for personal gain. And all because she doesn't want Rand's help.)

4. Pretty much every plotline with Egwene in it, save the last one.

EDIT: I suppose my posts (and yours) are kind of pointless. I got suckered into this by saying I was excited for AMOL because it was the only book that really matters after so many that didn't. That's devolved into me arguing the WoT is too long. That's been said before only like a billion times. You're disagreeing, which WoT hardcore fans have done just as often. I don't think anyone's going to learn anything new here. :P

How about we agree that we are excited about AMOL for two very different reasons? ;)

There's a reason why the story is called the Wheel of Time. It' not all about the Last Battle. Never was. It's about a the transition from one age to another. The Last Battle is just the climax of that transition process.

[End of Disc One]

No way in hell could books 5 and 6 be combined. Shortened a bit sure, but not combined. So much happens in those.