Is Jordan really that bad?

[Ser Greguh]

I disagree to an extent that the story "Got away from Jordan", although I see what the people who say that are getting at. I think that Jordan simply managed to direct the story smack-dab into his weaknesses as a writer. As already mentioned, he simply cannot write women well. The majority of the early books focused on Rand, Mat, and Perrin, so this wasn't so much a problem. In fact, reating tEotW, I found myself having the thought that the female characters all seemed fairly simple and poorly-done, but wrote it off to the fact that I was seeing things (more or less) from the POV's of male characters that failed to understand women themselves. As the books have progressed, though, the female characters have gained center stage, and Jordan's weaknesses in writing them have become that much more clear.

That's one complaint. The other is Jordan's bizarre choice to describe every inch of action, every last ass-scratch of every last character in every last day of their little adventure (except when the characters do something minor, like decide to have sex). I swear, the dude has a macro on his word processor for whenever Rand grabs Saidin; he just presses ctrl-alt-c (for "channel") and boom, up pops a paragraph. Enough already. He could have conveyed everything he needed to convey in Perrin's search for Faile in 2, maybe 3 chapters. Instead we've gotten blocks and blocks of them for book after book after book. I stopped caring if he ever found her somewhere in book 8 (okay, let's be honest, I quit halfway through CoT and haven't picked up Jordan since). But because the journey takes a long time, we get chapter after chapter after chapter.

I like a great deal about his series: the epic worldbuilding, the rich sense of history, many of the characters, and much of the writing is quite good. Perrin's organization of the defense of the Two Rivers in Book 4, for example, and the climaxes of books 5 and 6 were very evocative, approaching Martin even at times. But the series just seems to have consumed itself, lost in its own minutae.

[L'Sana]

That's one complaint. The other is Jordan's bizarre choice to describe every inch of action, every last ass-scratch of every last character in every last day of their little adventure (except when the characters do something minor, like decide to have sex).

Don't forget every last stitch, hem, and neckline from every single one of the 14 dresses your average female character tries on during her first 30 seconds or so in the World of Dreams.

I like a great deal about his series: the epic worldbuilding, the rich sense of history, many of the characters, and much of the writing is quite good. Perrin's organization of the defense of the Two Rivers in Book 4, for example, and the climaxes of books 5 and 6 were very evocative, approaching Martin even at times. But the series just seems to have consumed itself, lost in its own minutae.

I agree with you, which is why I am so inclined to rant about Jordan. If he had just written a bad fantasy series, I wouldn't be inclined to complain at all, any more than I do about, say, the Rhapsody books. But he didn't. He started well enough to get me interested, wrote some hauntingly brilliant parts in the middle, then let the whole thing go to pot.

[Isabel]

I thought i remember someone in this thread asking what Jordan thought of Goodkind.

Well his latest blog makes much clear, although ofcourse it is wondering if the snipe at goodkind is justified, but still:) Not that i didn't know already what rj thought of goodkind.

Here is the blog.

A VERY quick check-in

Posted by Robert Jordan on August 22nd, 2007 in the Robert Jordan's Blog category

Just a very quick check-in to let you know I’m still alive and, with the inestimable help of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Mn, I am keeping things under control. Once again my Lambda Light chain numbers are in the normal range. Now I just have to get my foot healed up so I have a chance of getting out of this bloody wheel chair. Strange to think that my foot off all things, would be giving me he most trouble. Unfortunately, the Amyloidosis makes healing go very slowly. Oh, well. You put up with what you have to put up with while working your way around or over the “minor†problem.

I hear things now and then floating out in the air. For instance, I hear that word was floating about ComicsCon in San Diego that I am displeased with Red Eagle. Too true. Too very true. In a few more months that last contract they have with anyone on God’s green earth that so much as mentions my name will come to an end and we can see what happens after that. You see, among other things they forgot an old dictum of LBJ back when he was just a Congressman from Texas, when he famously, or infamously, said “Don’t spit in the soup. boys. We all have to eat.†Worse, Red Eagle though they could tell me they spit in the soup, or pee in it, if they wanted to and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop them. You can’t apologize your way out of that with me, not that they tried. There isn’t enough money in the world to buy your way out of it with me. Not that they tried that either. So they get no further help from me. Once they are completely out of the picture, we’ll see what happens.

I seem to feeling rather viperish today. I also hear that a certain writer, on hearing that I had heart problems, announced that his cardiologist, on holding his (the writer’s) heart in his hands said that he could have been holding the heart of a sixteen year-old or some such. My cardiologist told me much the same thing, but I made him give it back. Ahem. A question occurs. What was wrong that anyone had their filthy fingers palping his actual heat. All my heart examinations have been via catheritazation or electrocardiogram or echocardiogram or the like. Only if they saw cause would anyone be sticking fingers into my chest must less fingering my heart. Some discrepancy there, eh?

On, well. Down, Simba! Down, Big Boy. That’s what Harriet says when I get like this. Lets get on to something a little more pleasant.

Many people have given gifts to Hematologic Malignancies Program –

amyloidosis research since the last time I thanked anyone. For donations since then. my thanks go out to Virginia A. Schomp and Chip

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I just saw that it was posted at Goodkind thread:P

Oh well:)

[Werthead]

So, as far as Jordan goes, is he more like Goodkind, a terrible author to begin with, who only gets worse (if getting worse is even possible, in Goodkind's case, a proposition that makes me skeptical, given the heinous quality of WFR); or more like Martin, a great author who simply overextended himself at some point in the series? Or somewhere in between?

Or, to ask another question about Jordan (similar but not exact to the first): if I like writers like Bakker and Martin and Williams, and have little use for Goodkind, Feist, and Eddings, what are the general chances that I'm going to like Jordan? Who does Jordan, in terms of writing style and quality, compare to?

To the first, Jordan is somewhere inbetween, but much closer to GRRM than Goodkind. A shorthand I used to use was that Jordan is a great storyteller but merely a slightly above-average writer, whilst GRRM is great at both. Tairy is simply inept at both.

To the second, Jordan falls inbetween Bakker/Martin and Goodkind/Eddings, on a par with Williams and Feist-when-he-gives-a-damn (meaning Magician, The Empire Trilogy and the first three books of The Serpentwar Saga).

Otherwise I'd go with the majority view, with the cavet that I quite liked Book 7 and found it quite enjoyable. Book 8 is where the series hit the skids for me and I think Books 9 and 11 get too many passes just because a few plotlines are sewn up (largely in an unsatisfying manner: the cleansing of saidin starts off well but falls in mediocrity quite spectacularly). That said 11 is still better than 8-10, but not as good as 1-7 IMO.

Good to hear that RJ has had it with Red Eagle though. They were quite clearly full of it and their somewhat bizarre war of words with Dabel Brothers over the New Spring comic was unintentionally funny, as was their promise of huge announcements to come over the WoT movie that a year on we are still waiting for.

[Werthead]

It's the kind of light reading where people can create 15 page, 8pt font excel spreadsheets listing the Aes Sedai, their Ajahs, any hints on whether they are black or not, and their warder's names.

And where certain fans hate the world book so much they make up their own 300,000-word guidebooks to the series. Erm, not that I know anyone who'd do that