Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn/The Heart of what was Lost/The Last King of Osten Ard

[Lord Varys]

Oh, okay, well that could make things much more interesting since, as you put it, from a contemporary point view MST is very much resembling a children's book with some dark scenes.

By the way, would you guys say that Tad continues his old tendency to spend a lot of time with POVs who basically know nothing and stand around talking about their own (small) problems while the important people are either right there behind closed doors or at the other end of the world? That was very much a disadvantage of the original trilogy. I know that Tolkien does that, too, but it is just as vexing with him as it is with Tad.

[Lord Patrek]

All the time. . .

[Jiriki]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

Oh, okay, well that could make things much more interesting since, as you put it, from a contemporary point view MST is very much resembling a children's book with some dark scenes.

By the way, would you guys say that Tad continues his old tendency to spend a lot of time with POVs who basically know nothing and stand around talking about their own (small) problems while the important people are either right there behind closed doors or at the other end of the world? That was very much a disadvantage of the original trilogy. I know that Tolkien does that, too, but it is just as vexing with him as it is with Tad.

 

Spoiler

As you say, MS&T could be reasonably read by a teenage audience. I wouldn't recommend TWC for the YA market. The violence and sexual stuff is strongly reminiscent of ASOIAF. It's not 1988 anymore.

In MS&T, Tad tended to "cut away" before any scene became too sexual, or graphic. Although readers knew Aspitis/Miriamele, Josua/Vorzheva, and Simon/Miriamele were having sex, Tad ended those scenes before readers read anything really risque. He doesn't do that in TWC, which I suspect will cause him to lose the Christian part of his readership: the readers who read Narnia and LOTR, and want something similar. TWC is not MS&T.

The brutal scenes of sexual violence in TWC were often hard for me to take. A friend who was also reading TWC texted me when she got to one particularly brutal scene to say that this was not what she expected.

You asked about the POV characters. MS&T started off with the POV of a servant, told at a fairly slow pace, as the world had to be introduced to readers. TWC's POV characters are already spread across the world, as there is no need to introduce readers to the world. Action scenes happen very early on in the book. Most of the POV characters are important folks, not so much the servants, although there are two servant POV characters.

 

 

[ylvs]

Tad rewrote the one unnescessary scene of sexual violence - the one I complained about in the first draft. 

@Pat: the end of one storyline was changed between second draft and ARC but I doubt that what was pushed back would have changed your mind in any way. As in politics there seem to be different realities we are both living in. I am happy in mine where I have read and offered my two cents on a book I love and cherish while you are raging with fury and slanting the very same story. All that anger everywhere. Weird times.

[Jiriki]

16 minutes ago, ylvs said:

Tad rewrote the one unnescessary scene of sexual violence - the one I complained about in the first draft.

He did; and yet, the first half of Chapter 14 is still brutal.

[redeagl]

23 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Maybe they sent you a bad copy on purpose? As a joke!

(kung pow reference)

I'm certainly going to have to do a re read, I have no idea what you people are talking about.

At this point, I am seriously thinking that Pat got a prank copy.At the very least heavy changes were made between the draft ylvs and Jiriki received and the ARC.

[Jiriki]

2 hours ago, redeagl said:

At this point, I am seriously thinking that Pat got a prank copy.At the very least heavy changes were made between the draft ylvs and Jiriki received and the ARC.

Haha! No, ylvs and I received a manuscript in May 2015, and then again in July 2016, followed by the ARC in February 2017. When Ylvs says there are similarities between ASOIAF and TWC, she is right.

 

 

[Lord Patrek]

2 hours ago, Jiriki said:

When Ylvs says there are similarities between ASOIAF and TWC, she is right.

I disagree, but that's the way love goes.

Got the official ARC from Daw, so no prank copy. You have the opinion of two people heavily involved in the process of writing that novel and a long-time fan who never had a problem with Tad Williams. Understandably, theirs will feature a more positive bias. Time will tell what readers will think about the book. . .

[Jiriki]

Geek In has just posted their video review of The Witchwood Crown.

Their verdict? "This book is exactly what I had hoped for... the story is fast-paced and exciting, and it doesn't lag anywhere. I think in terms of writing, it may be even stronger than the original trilogy, in some ways. I LOVED it!"

 

[Darth Richard II]

Well, you kind of lost me when you said Fall of Light was better than Toll the Hounds, but I know I'm an outlier on the Toll the Hounds front. LEt's be hones though, to be Crossroads of Twilight bad it would have to be 50 one off povs looking up and going WHOA WHAT WAS THAT BRO? for 1000 pages.

 

Damnit now I'm remembering Crossroads of Twilight, you monsters!

[Jiriki]

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Damnit now I'm remembering Crossroads of Twilight, you monsters!

Which one was Crossroads of Twilight? The one where they were looking for that stupid bowl, or the one where Egwene/Rand/Faile/whoever gets kidnapped? (And what was the deal with all the random kidnapping in that one book?)

[Lord Varys]

And thinking that I though the Jordan stuff was boring as hell with no plot around the third book or so. I got through 'The Dragon Reborn', I think, but that was it. The fact that people who got through the entire thing and like it think there are much worse books later on must mean those are really horrible.

[Darth Richard II]

Crossroads of Twlight was the one where every character got one pov and the book was set over one day, with every pov pretty much ending with the character going: whoa what was that?

[ylvs]

9 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

And thinking that I thought the Jordan stuff was boring as hell with no plot around the third book or so. I got through 'The Dragon Reborn', I think, but that was it.

Me, too. I think I even owned the next one at some pont but did not get past chapter 2 and donated it to charity. Poor charity.

[Lord Varys]

5 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Crossroads of Twlight was the one where every character got one pov and the book was set over one day, with every pov pretty much ending with the character going: whoa what was that?

I think I'm speaking for the entire world when I ask: What?

[Darth Richard II]

7 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

I think I'm speaking for the entire world when I ask: What?

Haha, Yes, that's the entire book. Seriously. It's like The Matrix, no one can be told how bad it really is, you have to read it for yourself.

[Lord Varys]

3 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Haha, Yes, that's the entire book. Seriously. It's like The Matrix, no one can be told how bad it really is, you have to read it for yourself.

I think I'm not going to take that particular pill.

Was Jordan trying to write another 'Ulysses' there, or what?

[Darth Richard II]

I believe he was trying to do something different plus the publisher/fnas bitched about certain povs not being in every installment, so the entire book literally takes place over a single day, with every pov experiencing said day. As you can a imagine, a series already known for not moving the plot along, er, at all, it was...it was bad. Jordon himself didn't like it.

[Brendan Moody]

It's "only" the first half of the book that takes place over a single day; the rest of it covers three weeks or so, which is about average for one of Jordan's later WOT novels. A Crown of Swords spans nine days, and the whole first half of Winter's Heart is two days. But when you foreground the fact that so little time is passing, it's just going to heighten readers' frustration with how slowly the plot is moving. If Jordan had kept the "everyone reacts to the (spoiler thing)" scenes to a prologue, and left the chronology of the different plot strands in the background as he usually did, I think Crossroads of Twilight would be less hated. Still hated, though, because almost nothing happens in it.

(Ignore the spoiler box below; it's empty and I can't figure out how to make it go away. This may be a metaphor for The Wheel of Time.)

 

 

[Darth Richard II]

Well I haven't read it since it was published. But yeah it's the slowest moving book....ever? Hmmm. that would be an interesting thread.

Slightly more on topic, just ordered hardcover copies of Stone of Farewell and To Green Angel Tower for my re read. Last time I read these I think I must have gotten them from the school Library. Finding that first book in hardcover though for a decent price is going to be a no go, looks like I'll have to settle for a filthy trade paperback.