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A Memory of Light [FULL SPOILER DISCUSSION] Part 2


Stubby

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Just saying.....i think this may be your problem, not the books

No, it's the books. As stated before, RJ devoted snippets of time to characters we shouldn't give a shit about, and really have no bearing on the story.

Geeks obsess of these characters, and they shouldn't. DR obviously didn't, which i believe is the right thing to do. RJ had too much bullshit going on, and not enough plot. He was trying too hard, and couldn't manage it. Passing the books onto to BS was like handing a ton of poorly written bricks to a shit slinging chimp.

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No, it's the books. As stated before, RJ devoted snippets of time to characters we shouldn't give a shit about, and really have no bearing on the story.

Geeks obsess of these characters, and they shouldn't. DR obviously didn't, which i believe is the right thing to do. RJ had too much bullshit going on, and not enough plot. He was trying too hard, and couldn't manage it. Passing the books onto to BS was like handing a ton of poorly written bricks to a shit slinging chimp.

Meh i have no problem remembering all the names. Sure theyll fade over time but what exaclty doesnt? All books have loadsa names for you to remember e.g. ASOIAF, which has scores of whole family trees to memorise if you want

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No, it's the books. As stated before, RJ devoted snippets of time to characters we shouldn't give a shit about, and really have no bearing on the story.

Geeks obsess of these characters, and they shouldn't. DR obviously didn't, which i believe is the right thing to do. RJ had too much bullshit going on, and not enough plot. He was trying too hard, and couldn't manage it. Passing the books onto to BS was like handing a ton of poorly written bricks to a shit slinging chimp.

Except those minor characters do matter. And many of them we do give a shit about and do have a bearing, sometimes a large one, on the story.

I mean, if you are reading ASOIAF and always going "Hey, who's this Tom Sevenstrings fucker?", you know, maybe you ain't getting the whole experience. And that's not the book's fault.

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there's a big difference between remembering who characters are and caring about them/them being that interesting.

if you are not remembering who characters are, that's your fault, if you don't care about them, it's probably the book's fault

Look at the Egwene of KoD (who argued with Elaida how to treat the Dragon) with the Egwene of MoL who treats rand like a shepherd boy.

wasn't that in TGS, at least mostly?

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With regards to the death count:

YES a ton of people died. I can read that on the page: "demandred did some super balefire shit and a ton of people died" but it doesn't mean that I FELT a ton of people dying.

There's almost no character... anything throughout. Not once do we see Egwene getting reports of all the AS under her command who are missing presumed dead or whatever, names are never even mentioned. Anything at all like that which would make us feel like the deaths matter is completely ignored. I don't really give a flying fuck about the ten thousand pikemen from whereever or so-and-so's cavalry being massacred.

I mean the whole character of the book is totally off with all that BS with footsoldiers and battle tactics taking up way too much space anyway, given that 99% of the characters we are introduced to and thus to one degree or another care about through 13 books are fucking mages in the first place. Channellers get sidelined so hard in AMoL that it boggles the mind. Forget about the abundantly retarded military tactics and hundreds of wasted pages and think on the subject of deaths, or sacrifices actually hitting home and MATTERING. Think about the characters we know and how many of them could have been killed if someone even bothered to mention them. And how maybe that might have been more effective than what we were given.

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I agree Brandon Sanderson messed up the last book. He did good with TOM. But he left to many unanswered questions.

For example, Is Galad bloody blind? I know hes missing an arm but it sounded like demandred blinded him. That would be depressing if true, but I still don't know if it is true, because bloody Sanderson never mentioned it.

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I don't really give a flying fuck about the ten thousand pikemen from whereever or so-and-so's cavalry being massacred.

to be fair, i don't care about the dozens of named aes sedai of no personality either

I agree Brandon Sanderson messed up the last book. He did good with TOM.

yeah i think TGS and to an extent TOM were very good, but he slipped with the finale

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I hate how it's one long battle in the book and then it ends. I don't know why Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson didn't put an extra 200 pages or so to know what happens in the future. For example, What is the relationship between the Black Tower and the White Tower? How to warders work because of that? How does the black tower recruit? What's Logain doing? What about the Seanchan and the Aiel? DO the seanchan get kicked out because of their civil war back home? Where are the Aiels new borders since they're the new police? I assume a good spot is the Caralain Grass. Does Nynaeve heal the madness in the Asha Man? Just so many bloody questions that weren't answered.

Edit- And after fourteen bloody books, I think we deserve the answers.

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I've always felt that one aspect in which separates the good, the bad, and the ugly authors is how they handle the death of characters. There has to be some sort of purpose or reasoning and it has to be written well, not in three sentences. An ugly death is that in the book the Death cure. There's pretty much a love triangle throughout the entire series and three pages before the book ends one of the chicks die abruptly. Horrible death. A bad death is Finnacks death in the Hunger Games. There was really no purpose to that death and it was in like two sentences Good death are deaths like Eddard Stark, Liet Kynes from Dune and overall George Martin is very good with death scenes.

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I mean, if you are reading ASOIAF and always going "Hey, who's this Tom Sevenstrings fucker?", you know, maybe you ain't getting the whole experience. And that's not the book's fault.

I disagree. The show has been insanely popular, and retained most of the 'experience' while dropping all the ancillary bullshit. I can be done. I enjoy those books, A LOT, and have been reading the goddamn things since they started being published, I've met George and Ty on several occasions, i come to this fucking board for crissake, but I still would be hard pressed to remember most of the fucking names in the books.

I remember the main characters, but I go up into the crazy part of the board (you know what i'm talking about) and the fact that those people obsess over the little details freaks me the fuck out (any fandom like that does), and I personally think it takes /away/ from the enjoyment of the books. They aren't goddam text books man.

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With regards to the death count:

YES a ton of people died. I can read that on the page: "demandred did some super balefire shit and a ton of people died" but it doesn't mean that I FELT a ton of people dying.

There's almost no character... anything throughout. Not once do we see Egwene getting reports of all the AS under her command who are missing presumed dead or whatever, names are never even mentioned. Anything at all like that which would make us feel like the deaths matter is completely ignored. I don't really give a flying fuck about the ten thousand pikemen from whereever or so-and-so's cavalry being massacred.

I mean the whole character of the book is totally off with all that BS with footsoldiers and battle tactics taking up way too much space anyway, given that 99% of the characters we are introduced to and thus to one degree or another care about through 13 books are fucking mages in the first place. Channellers get sidelined so hard in AMoL that it boggles the mind. Forget about the abundantly retarded military tactics and hundreds of wasted pages and think on the subject of deaths, or sacrifices actually hitting home and MATTERING. Think about the characters we know and how many of them could have been killed if someone even bothered to mention them. And how maybe that might have been more effective than what we were given.

I think RJ would have done alot better in this regard in that he knew who all these damn minor characters were. There's a story about how RJ (or it might have been his wife after his death) whips out a list at some point with the names of every single Two Rivers person who left with Perrin.

BS, partially because it's not his work, partially cause he's just not that kind of writer, can't do that.

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I hate how it's one long battle in the book and then it ends. I don't know why Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson didn't put an extra 200 pages or so to know what happens in the future.

really, i feel its that jordan wrote that bit about rand walking away, (who knows if he intended it to be the absolute last words of the book(actually, some may know, i don't)) and sanderson wanted to end it with those words by jordan. even it might have made sense to have an epilogue. it may not have answered every question, but at least get the post battle feeling and some much needed interaction between our main characters/ reunions of apart characters post tarmon gaidon

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I disagree. The show has been insanely popular, and retained most of the 'experience' while dropping all the ancillary bullshit. I can be done. I enjoy those books, A LOT, and have been reading the goddamn things since they started being published, I've met George and Ty on several occasions, i come to this fucking board for crissake, but I still would be hard pressed to remember most of the fucking names in the books.

I remember the main characters, but I go up into the crazy part of the board (you know what i'm talking about) and the fact that those people obsess over the little details freaks me the fuck out (any fandom like that does), and I personally think it takes /away/ from the enjoyment of the books. They aren't goddam text books man.

I think the show doesn't at all retain the experience. It's not a bad experience, but it's a distinctly different one. It's an adaptation after all. It even changes the plot.

Your problem seems to be you hate anything you view as a "side detail". You talk like all you ever care about is the plot. There's also a recurring undercurrent in all your posts here of some sort of random prejudice against people who are fans of books/series and enjoy looking at the details.

Just because you have no interest in looking past the obvious surface details doesn't mean they aren't important.

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I think the show doesn't at all retain the experience. It's not a bad experience, but it's a distinctly different one. It's an adaptation after all. It even changes the plot.

Your problem seems to be you hate anything you view as a "side detail". You talk like all you ever care about is the plot. There's also a recurring undercurrent in all your posts here of some sort of random prejudice against people who are fans of books/series and enjoy looking at the details.

Just because you have no interest in looking past the obvious surface details doesn't mean they aren't important.

I'm not saying i enjoy the 'sub surface details', just some authors do them better than others. I don't think RJ handled them all that well. He had some many other plot lines, rabbit holes, and side details, that he couldn't maintain them, nor could he write them all that well into a cohesive story line. I also like 'hunting' for little detalis (why the fuck else would I read shit like Wolfe, or even Martin for that matter), but I think the author has a responsibility to actually make that shit work, and mean something. Every time I'd read RJ, I thought to myself, 'self, this is a pointless plot line', and you know what, I was right. You're also making the statement that you can't enjoy a book at a higher level if you don't go seeking out the bullshit. I disagree. Many people can, and do, enjoy the books without obsessing over Jon's parents, or a gholums ability to survive a gateway crossing.

Surely this isn't' something new to you? My complaints are pretty commonly leveled at WoT. I'm not breaking any new ground here.

And ya, obsessive fandom freaks me out. Sorry. I apply the same type of disgust to crazy ass football fans as well, so its not just a geek thing.

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What I was trying to express I think was that after book 6 or 7, there were jut too many damned characters. And he kept introducing more, And more. And more. And there's a point where I just didn't care anymore.

Basically, too much bloat.

aGoT may have all those family trees in the back, sure, but you don't need to have them printed out in front of you in order to understand the damn book.

Part of the problem is yes, I've been reading these books for 20 years and my memory is fuzzy, but I don;t think it's just my problem alone.

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really, i feel its that jordan wrote that bit about rand walking away, (who knows if he intended it to be the absolute last words of the book(actually, some may know, i don't)) and sanderson wanted to end it with those words by jordan. even it might have made sense to have an epilogue. it may not have answered every question, but at least get the post battle feeling and some much needed interaction between our main characters/ reunions of apart characters post tarmon gaidon

Jordan did intend that to be the last words of the book. He had stated before he had no intention of wrapping up everything in a neat bow. He felt it made the world seem artificial. So we'd see the main plotline resolved, but we wouldn't see, like, the Seanchan situation sorted out or the like.

What I think we would have seen more of if RJ was around would be more hints at what was to come. More scenes setting up the shape of the Fourth Age. We don't get alot of this in AMOL. In part because BS just didn't seem to want to write much more then just battle scenes in this damn book. But also, I think, because there may not have been clear notes on it and so he decided to just leave it open ended rather then make up his own idea in another guy's world.

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I hate how it's one long battle in the book and then it ends. I don't know why Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson didn't put an extra 200 pages or so to know what happens in the future. For example, What is the relationship between the Black Tower and the White Tower? How to warders work because of that? How does the black tower recruit? What's Logain doing? What about the Seanchan and the Aiel? DO the seanchan get kicked out because of their civil war back home? Where are the Aiels new borders since they're the new police? I assume a good spot is the Caralain Grass. Does Nynaeve heal the madness in the Asha Man? Just so many bloody questions that weren't answered.

I don't think that all those questions could reasonably be answered in a couple of hundred pages, and it would feel very anticlimatic to have scenes set several years after the last battle giving a rushed description of what happened with the Seanchan (for example). If we were going to be told how things like that it turned out I think it would really need some of the spin-off books that Jordan was planning at one point, although the idea now seems to have been dropped. I'm not sure if having a spin-off book written by a different author would necessarily have been a good idea, I'd probably have read it anyway and it might have potential to be good but I think there would be a risk that it could detract from the series if it wasn't well-written or felt inconsistent with the other books. I don't really mind that we're left speculating how some things would turn out after the Last Battle, I don't feel every question necessarily needs to be answered and I'm glad we didn't get a Harry Potter-style epilogue set a couple of decades in the future.

But also, I think, because there may not have been clear notes on it and so he decided to just leave it open ended rather then make up his own idea in another guy's world.

I think this might have been a factor, I think I would prefer it if Sanderson didn't make up more canon material outside the time period of the three books he wrote.

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That's pretty much why they aren't doing the outriggers (or said they aren't). RJ left basically no notes on them.

There does seem to be quite a few things in AMOL that set them up though.

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