is the WoT series worth reading

[eac]

Apologies if a similar thread has been done before. 

I'm considering giving a start to reading the Wheel of Time, as it's such a big fantasy series and I have certainly heard hype about it before, remember people around me reading it when we were teenagers, etc. With the daunting length of the series though, I was wondering if it's worth the commitment?

[Dora Vee]

Not to me. I quit reading during the third book because I got bored. It has some good moments, but it's a hell of a slog that isn't worth the effort, imo. It gets better with Sanderson though. 

[Darth Richard II]

Wait, how do you know t gets better with Sanderson if you quit at book three?

[Dora Vee]

Well, I read a sample of Sanderson's work(Memory of Light). But, tbh, I'm only going by what I've heard from the WOT fandom. 

[Darth Richard II]

I don't disagree really, but you must listen to a very select slice of the fandom. P

[Gronzag]

No it is not worth reading. Its an 'old fashion' series full of terrible characters and worst fantasy cliches. Its terribly infantile, almost a parody of a fantasy genre. 

People may have fond memories about WOT because they read it when they were younger and there was nothing better around, but if you have read anything that came out since (GRRM, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Bakker, Sanderson), than reading WOT is likely going to be a torture.

[Errant Bard]

Is it too late to answer RAFO(tm)?

 

Anyway...

22 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

if you have read anything that came out since (GRRM, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Bakker, Sanderson), than reading WOT is likely going to be a torture.

May I ask why you picked those authors out specifically, most notably one who actually WROTE the last WoT books? When there are a myriad of other good, some might even say better, new voices who debuted after Mr Rigney's departure from this world, I mean.

[Corvinus85]

I was going to ask the same thing, about why was Sanderson named better than Jordan.

[Darth Richard II]

*insert snide Bakker comment*

[Gronzag]

While I agree with criticism of Sanderson, Mistborn and Stormlight are still miles ahead of the first two and a half WOT books that I managed to cringe through.

[Mladen]

35 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I was going to ask the same thing, about why was Sanderson named better than Jordan.

For me, it is that he is more dynamic. It is not that his prose is far superior to Jordan's, it is more of the rhythm in his books. The chapters are shorter, there are not as much procrastination as in Jordan's volumes. Jordan can feel aimless, while I never get that from Sanderson. 

And if people find the first three books of WoT boring and insufferable, I can only imagine opinions on books 7-11

I do believe people should read WoT. It has a special place in the world of fantasy literature even though the likes of Martin or Erikson have done much better jobs in creating the worlds and telling the story. 

[Corvinus85]

10 minutes ago, Risto said:

For me, it is that he is more dynamic. It is not that his prose is far superior to Jordan's, it is more of the rhythm in his books. The chapters are shorter, there are not as much procrastination as in Jordan's volumes. Jordan can feel aimless, while I never get that from Sanderson. 

And if people find the first three books of WoT boring and insufferable, I can only imagine opinions on books 7-11

I do believe people should read WoT. It has a special place in the world of fantasy literature even though the likes of Martin or Erikson have done much better jobs in creating the worlds and telling the story. 

I gave up on Oathbringer and the Stormlight series as a whole. I decided this series was taking too much of my time, and it just wasn't worth it slogging through that prose. To be fair, I don't think, nowadays, I would have the time to read WoT either. Sanderson's main strength is in his imagination to create interesting magic systems and worlds.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Gronzag said:

People may have fond memories about WOT because they read it when they were younger and there was nothing better around, but if you have read anything that came out since (GRRM, Rothfuss, Abercrombie, Bakker, Sanderson), than reading WOT is likely going to be a torture.

Jordan is a comfortably superior writer to Rothfuss and Sanderson, a much better worldbuilder than Abercrombie and his work is far more approachable than Bakker (although Bakker is a better worldbuilder, his characters are all over the map and we're still waiting for the last two books to make the last seven make sense). Jordan is more old-skool and he has a whole metric ton of flaws (like almost a quarter of the series being filler), but the story, the world and the thematic elements still hold up reasonably well.

And yeah, Mistborn may be more dynamic than WoT but it's also a fair bit dumber, and Stormlight's pacing (especially in Oathbringer) is start to approaching Path of Daggers levels of wading through treacle (not Crossroads of Twilight levels though...yet).

I'd rank GRRM and Erikson as comfortably better than Jordan across the board, but he's definitely still up there in terms of epic fantasy series which are reasonably decent (and it has a pretty good ending, which is more than most can say).

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

Never read a word of it, and have no plans to. I've never read a word written by Robert Jordan, and only a single short story by Brandon Sanderson.

And yet, for some reason, I've owned four different Wheel of Time books at varying points in my life. None of them were gifts.

[Lord Patrek]

Personally, I think that the first 6 WoT books were as good and entertaining as anything else I've read. Then, the absence of a true editing process and the WoT becoming a cash cow for Tor Books engendered a significant drop in quality.

Sanderson killed it, in my humble opinion. I know people are happy that at least we got an ending, but for me Sanderson never really managed to do justice to Jordan magnum opus.

WoT used to be one of my favorite fantasy series. Nowadays I can't really recommend it to new readers. Because as good as the first 6 volumes are, you then have to go through turds like Crossroads of Twilight and Winter's Heart. Knife of Dreams was a return to form for Robert Jordan, but then he passed away. And I wouldn't want anyone to go through Sanderson's last three installments, for they are mostly filler and no killer material.

Still, there are some scenes from WoT that are unforgettable and for that I'll always be grateful.

Newbies should nevertheless give the series a shot, I figure. Unlike Wert and I and everyone else who remember those long waits between books back in the day, noobs can read them all in the span of a few short weeks. Perhaps they'll be less angry with subpar volumes like the aforementioned ones if they haven't been waiting for years to read them. I mean, I recall the excitement of scenes such as Rand picking up Callandor, the trip through Rhuidean, the mindfuck ending of Lord of Chaos, yada yada yada. Despite his numerous flaws, when Jordan was on top of his game, he could swing with the best of them.

These new readers just need to go in knowing that it goes way down the crapper before the end. Then again, you can still enjoy the original Star Wars series and though everything else is utter shit. So why not the same with WoT?

[Yukle]

Having not read the books, I can still offer general advice: the books series was published until its conclusion. Obviously some people consider it worth reading or every copy would still be on a shelf.

I say see if you can find a copy in an op shop somewhere, or borrow it from a library. Then, if you like it, buy the next one and read it. If you don't, no harm done.

[Mladen]

44 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I gave up on Oathbringer and the Stormlight series as a whole. I decided this series was taking too much of my time, and it just wasn't worth it slogging through that prose. To be fair, I don't think, nowadays, I would have the time to read WoT either. Sanderson's main strength is in his imagination to create interesting magic systems and worlds.

I think nowadays WoT is simply outdated. Not even Tolkien feels as outdated and passe as Jordan. There is something in Jordan's "Venus/Mars" shallow philosophy that I find immensely irritating and his perception of female characters is simply abhorrent.

47 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Jordan is a comfortably superior writer to Rothfuss and Sanderson, a much better worldbuilder than Abercrombie and his work is far more approachable than Bakker (although Bakker is a better worldbuilder, his characters are all over the map and we're still waiting for the last two books to make the last seven make sense). Jordan is more old-skool and he has a whole metric ton of flaws (like almost a quarter of the series being filler), but the story, the world and the thematic elements still hold up reasonably well.

I never knew where to put Goodkind. I haven't read much from him, but I remember it fondly. Although, to be frank, I was younger  

As for Jordan, I feel his prose is simply void of any depth. Yes, it is imaginative, yes, it is symbolic, yes, it is tight when needed, but simply there is nothing for me below the layer of imaginative work done by Jordan. A bit of Eastern philosophy, a bit of copied sayings, but at the end... Nothing. It just feels empty.

50 minutes ago, Werthead said:

And yeah, Mistborn may be more dynamic than WoT but it's also a fair bit dumber

I would have to agree with this. I also always felt that Sanderson felt he needed to create magical system as complicated and organized as Jordan's.

But, Sanderson's work on WoT ended the aimlessness, or better perhaps streamlined the story to the end. I really liked his work on WoT. Even though I find that 200-page chapter (was it 200 pages?) borderline lost.

56 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'd rank GRRM and Erikson as comfortably better than Jordan across the board, but he's definitely still up there in terms of epic fantasy series which are reasonably decent (and it has a pretty good ending, which is more than most can say).

I am sorry, but I hated the ending of WoT. It felt like someone ended it before really leading it to the end. I missed quite a lot in that ending,

 

[Darth Richard II]

The final WoT book could have been about 200 pages, so I find anyone saying Sanderson had better pacing then Jordan to be hilarious.

[Darth Richard II]

27 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

Then again, you can still enjoy the original Star Wars series and though everything else is utter shit. So why not the same with WoT?

Them is fighting words.

[Darth Richard II]

Also, without Jordan this Forum would not exist.