is the WoT series worth reading

[TheRevanchist]

Read it 3-4 years ago and absolutely loved it. I love it near as much as ASOIAF, and I find it the most epic thing ever.

Saying that, there is absolutely no doubt that it is quite juvenile, some characters (to be fair, most of them at some stage) feel like stupid kids, and books 9-10 are atrocious. But as an entire experience, it is amazing. I feel about it same as Star Wars (I love it despite the flaws and the juvenile feeling).

[TheRevanchist]

5 hours ago, Gronzag said:

Every WOT character is a Mary/Gary Sue on pair with Kvothe. Males are all handsome and super manly, and every girl is the most powerful, most talented and prettiest ever, ever, ever, E-V-E-R!!! to live. Of course, every one of them also has a super special origin, not to mention super special ability that goes with it. Because how do you go about fighting evil if you are not a royalty or descendant of proud and honorable group that defeated that same evil 2000 years ago? How?

What is the royal origin of Mat, Perryn, Egwene and Nynaeve? 4 out of 6 main characters there.

Totally disagree with the Mary Sue argument. Only Egwene was a Mary Sue like argument, with the main character being totally insane for half of the book and stupid for the rest of it.

[Gronzag]

31 minutes ago, TheRevanchist said:

What is the royal origin of Mat, Perryn, Egwene and Nynaeve? 4 out of 6 main characters there.

Totally disagree with the Mary Sue argument. Only Egwene was a Mary Sue like argument, with the main character being totally insane for half of the book and stupid for the rest of it.

They are the descendants of the Manetheren super-race. I never said that they are all royalties. 

[Lord Patrek]

24 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

They are the descendants of the Manetheren super-race. I never said that they are all royalties. 

It's been a few years, but I don't recall Manetheren being a super race. Just an old country or city-state.

Rand, Mat, and Perrin are ta'veren (spelling?) and can affect the Pattern personally or collectively, but they're no descendants of any super-race that I can remember.

Or am I full of shit about this???

[Darth Richard II]

2 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

It's been a few years, but I don't recall Manetheren being a super race. Just an old country or city-state.

Rand, Mat, and Perrin are ta'veren (spelling?) and can affect the Pattern personally or collectively, but they're no descendants of any super-race that I can remember.

Or am I full of shit about this???

That sounds right, I think this guy just reaaaaly hates WoT.

[Darth Richard II]

17 hours ago, Yukle said:

Wow - I just looked it up: 80 million copies printed, the biggest fantasy success since LOTR. Not bad.

Also, thematically from the synopses I've been reading it seems to have much in common with the mythologies surrounding the cyclical nature of time, as found in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Does it do these well? Or is it Orientalism?

I always thought the whole cyclical time thing was the coolest thing about WoT. Jordon does the all this has happened before and we're doomed thing really well.

[Veltigar]

I thought it was absolute rubbish. I started reading them when all but last (or was it the penultimate one? I can't remember) came out and I never bothered finishing the series. I just didn't care about any of the characters apart from Mat (?) maybe. I did break all the speedreading records with the series, because unlike most other books I'd never linger on a page or read something twice because it was engaging or intellectually challenging. If I had started the series now, now that I'm time poor, I would never have bothered with anything beyond the second book probably. 

[TheRevanchist]

10 hours ago, Gronzag said:

They are the descendants of the Manetheren super-race. I never said that they are all royalties. 

Manetheren were not a super-race though, and were destroyed 1000+ years before the events of the books. Anyway, 4 out of 6 main characters have absolutely no royalty lines, and all of them bar to some degree Egwene had many flaw which make your comment pretty wrong.

About only royalty can fight evil comment, you know other books who do so:

1) The Lord of the Rings - I kind of understand people who dislike WoT, but when the same people dislike WoT and adore LotR it is too much for me. Come on, LotR is much more juvenile and simplistic than WoT, and pretty much every problem that WoT has, LotR has too. And while Rand's powers don't have anything to do with his royal ancestry (but they have to do with him being Dragon Reborn), Aragorn is awesome purely in the basis of being the rightful king.

2) A Song of Ice and Fire - the two main characters have royal ancestry. Heck, Jon the guy who started from nothing in the end turns out to be the rightful king of Westeros.

3) Realm of the Elderlings - Fitz is a price (and could have been king).

4) The Broken Empire - main character Jorg is a prince.

5) Dune - Paul is a prince (to be fair, Rand was modeled after Paul, I think).

I can go forever. Being prince or having royal ancestry is extremely common in fantasy stetting. However, only Aragorn is great because he is king, in all other cases (bar Daenerys), the abilities of protagonists don't come from their royal ancestry. 

[TheRevanchist]

9 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

It's been a few years, but I don't recall Manetheren being a super race. Just an old country or city-state.

Rand, Mat, and Perrin are ta'veren (spelling?) and can affect the Pattern personally or collectively, but they're no descendants of any super-race that I can remember.

Or am I full of shit about this???

Rand's mother was daughter-heir of Andor, but she left everything and married a clan chief of Aiel, which resulted on Rand being born. Then the royal line in Andor changed and went to Elayne's mother whom if I am not mistaken was second cousin to Rand's mother. So, Rand in some sense has royal blood, essentially being son of a princess and an Aiel chief.

Mat and Perrin, absolutely not.

[Mladen]

1 hour ago, TheRevanchist said:

About only royalty can fight evil comment, you know other books who do so:

1) The Lord of the Rings - I kind of understand people who dislike WoT, but when the same people dislike WoT and adore LotR it is too much for me. Come on, LotR is much more juvenile and simplistic than WoT, and pretty much every problem that WoT has, LotR has too. And while Rand's powers don't have anything to do with his royal ancestry (but they have to do with him being Dragon Reborn), Aragorn is awesome purely in the basis of being the rightful king.

2) A Song of Ice and Fire - the two main characters have royal ancestry. Heck, Jon the guy who started from nothing in the end turns out to be the rightful king of Westeros.

 

1. People who like LOTR love it for so many reasons. The prose, the impact, the depth, much of that is missing from Jordan's work. Simply, LOTR has fewer pages, characters and braids, but the depth is unquestionable. It's poetic, linguistically superior and it shaped the modern fantasy genre. Simply, the two can be compared only to emphasize how Jordan wanted to start from WoT and create something new. LOTR is neither juvenile nor simplistic. The range of themes Tolkien did in such short novel and in such successful way, should be reminder to everyone. Finally, as Rose from Titanic said: "His (Freud's) ideas about male preoccupation with size might particularly interest you". 

2. ASOIAF is not completed yet so we don't know how royal ancestry of Jon will play out. A lot can be said about Jon Snow and a lot has and will be said, so we don't know whether, at the end, his royal ancestry will play a role, as some assume it will. 

1 hour ago, TheRevanchist said:

I can go forever. Being prince or having royal ancestry is extremely common in fantasy stetting. However, only Aragorn is great because he is king, in all other cases (bar Daenerys), the abilities of protagonists don't come from their royal ancestry. 

No, Aragorn is not great because he is a King. He is great because all his characteristics make him a great King. It is his bravery and skill that have helped many of his companions. He is a true leader and we have seen that in occasions when his ancestry wasn't as widely known. He is noble, romantic. Yes, he is not no one, but neither are Rand, Jon, Richard etc. As you said, it's a common trope, but separating Aragorn from others is a mistake.

[Loge]

Aragorn is of Numenorian descent, which makes him somewhat superhuman. He has a longer life span, which is what allowed him to become such a great leader. (I think he is about 90 years old.) Also, being the rightful king gives him the power to heal injury or disease, as demonstrated in the house of healing chapter. He can also use the palantir and call those dead guys to battle. A man of random descent couldn't have done any of this. 

As for WoT and royalty, I guess the criticism is legitimate insofar as everybody ends up being royalty at some point. I don't know how the Fantasy readership has changed over the last 30 years but Jordan seems to have had a rather adolescent demographic in mind when he wrote the books. And the characters sometimes acting childishly is because there's supposed to be character development i.e. going from spoiled teenager to grown up, responsible adults. 

[Isalie]

I know ive answered in these kinds of threads before regarding wot, but i think that since one part that really enhanced the experience for me is gone, the theorizing, it just wont ever be the same for a new reader of the series. That said, i loved these books as a teen and will probably encourage my own kids to read them in a couple of years.

[Astromech]

1 hour ago, Mikael said:

I know ive answered in these kinds of threads before regarding wot, but i think that since one part that really enhanced the experience for me is gone, the theorizing, it just wont ever be the same for a new reader of the series. That said, i loved these books as a teen and will probably encourage my own kids to read them in a couple of years.

I loved reading the threads at dragonmount.com.

[Samsaptakas]

On 5/10/2018 at 2:18 AM, Gronzag said:

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.

Only into the third book, Stormlight already is worse than Wot.

[Samsaptakas]

On 5/10/2018 at 9:56 AM, Yukle said:

Wow - I just looked it up: 80 million copies printed, the biggest fantasy success since LOTR. Not bad.

Also, thematically from the synopses I've been reading it seems to have much in common with the mythologies surrounding the cyclical nature of time, as found in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. Does it do these well? Or is it Orientalism?

Apart from the cyclical nature of time, there isn't anything else that seems to be inspired from Dharmic traditions, unless i'm forgetting something.

[TheRevanchist]

2 hours ago, Samsaptakas said:

Only into the third book, Stormlight already is worse than Wot.

I like Stormlight (not much the last book), but WoT is superior in every aspect.

 

9 hours ago, Risto said:

No, Aragorn is not great because he is a King. He is great because all his characteristics make him a great King. It is his bravery and skill that have helped many of his companions. He is a true leader and we have seen that in occasions when his ancestry wasn't as widely known. He is noble, romantic. Yes, he is not no one, but neither are Rand, Jon, Richard etc. As you said, it's a common trope, but separating Aragorn from others is a mistake.

He has healing power because he is the king. It is literally written in the books.

Lan in Wheel of Time is kind of modeled on him, and yet again, he is a king. Of course, Lan is a secondary/tertiary character.

Kind of disagree about depth of LotR (have not read Silmarillon). ASOIAF and Wheel of Time are far more superior in that aspect, in fact, I think that WoT's world building is comfortably the best I have seen in the entire genre. About writing, obviously LotR's writing is in another level (compared to anything in the genre) but personally, not great for my taste because it is a bit difficult to read (if not native speaker), almost poetic. Someone like Guy Gavriel Kay's writing for my taste is much better. Talking about WoT, I think that its writing was decent for the first half, but in the second half kind of suffered likely because a lack of editing.

[Werthead]

9 minutes ago, TheRevanchist said:

Kind of disagree about depth of LotR (have not read Silmarillon). ASOIAF and Wheel of Time are far more superior in that aspect, in fact, I think that WoT's world building is comfortably the best I have seen in the entire genre. About writing, obviously LotR's writing is in another level (compared to anything in the genre) but personally, not great for my taste because it is a bit difficult to read (if not native speaker), almost poetic. Someone like Guy Gavriel Kay's writing for my taste is much better. Talking about WoT, I think that its writing was decent for the first half, but in the second half kind of suffered likely because a lack of editing.

Ha, that's Guy Gavriel Kay who worked on The Silmarillion as a junior editor  

[TheRevanchist]

Just now, Werthead said:

Ha, that's Guy Gavriel Kay who worked on The Silmarillion as a junior editor  

Never knew this.

He is kind of poetic too (Rothfuss is too) and while his writing is not as sophisticated as Tolkien's, I find it more enjoyable.

[Darth Richard II]

Someone calling LotR juvenile in a WoT thread may have killed some of my brain cells.

[Werthead]

39 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Someone calling LotR juvenile in a WoT thread may have killed some of my brain cells.

Well, it was written literally for kids (the opening chapters, anyway, when it was Hobbit II: The Wrath of Khand), which WoT wasn't, although weirdly the first two books were later reissued in YA editions.