Brendan Moody Posted January 12, 2013 Share Posted January 12, 2013 I think the problems Larry and fionwe are discussing also shed light on Jordan's insistence after KOD that there had to be only one more book in the series, even if it was 2,000 pages long. There's no good way to divide the material of TGS, TOM, and AMOL across multiple books. It's one volume's worth of development for each major storyline, then an action-driven finale. Splitting that finale off into a separate book produced a remarkably shallow novel. I don't mean to blame Sanderson or "Team Jordan" for this; Jordan himself would probably have had similar problems, since I don't think he actually had the clout to get Tor to reinvent publishing models and methods. But I do wonder whether Jordan would really have had the Last Battle go on quite so long. Action scenes were never the source of his bloat, as fionwe points out. And even if he didn't have much character development for this point in the story, I imagine he would have handled character interaction less awkwardly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fionwe1987 Posted January 12, 2013 Author Share Posted January 12, 2013 And even if he didn't have much character development for this point in the story, I imagine he would have handled character interaction less awkwardly.That's very well put. Many of these characters had already been " developed", at least to face the last battle. What was left was the expectation of a large amount of payoff as these characters had been apart since before they had many of their formative experiences. We got a few of those, but many of those were unsatisfactory. And too many were missed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brendan Moody Posted January 12, 2013 Share Posted January 12, 2013 Indeed. A small digression to underline the point: having given up on the series after The Gathering Storm for reasons not worth getting into, I haven't read Towers of Midnight, but I know a fair bit of what happens from online summaries. The part that most activated my nostalgia wasn't a long-expected narrative payoff like who killed Asmodean or the Tower of Ghenjei; it was reading that Elayne and Morgase were finally reunited. I'd been waiting for that since, oh, "The Irrevocable Words," if not longer. Obviously I have no idea if that particular chapter was well done or not, but at least it was there. A Memory of Light could have used more of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fionwe1987 Posted January 12, 2013 Author Share Posted January 12, 2013 Indeed. A small digression to underline the point: having given up on the series after The Gathering Storm for reasons not worth getting into, I haven't read Towers of Midnight, but I know a fair bit of what happens from online summaries. The part that most activated my nostalgia wasn't a long-expected narrative payoff like who killed Asmodean or the Tower of Ghenjei; it was reading that Elayne and Morgase were finally reunited. I'd been waiting for that since, oh, "The Irrevocable Words," if not longer. Obviously I have no idea if that particular chapter was well done or not, but at least it was there. A Memory of Light could have used more of that.Actually, that meeting went okay. Elayne and Morghase have both changed, and that comes across. Its from Elayne's PoV, and we see her surprise at what her mom is like, now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AverageGuy Posted January 12, 2013 Share Posted January 12, 2013 Some genre readers' ridiculous reactions to negative reviews they don't agree with are almost as much fun as is reading those negative reviews in the first place.Good thing I'm not like those other genre readers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry. Posted January 12, 2013 Share Posted January 12, 2013 Had family matters last night and was too tired afterward to write responses, so this will be more of a summary of responses I would have otherwise made. The thing about the WoT series that I think is most frustrating is that despite the clash of styles late in the series or the morphing characterizations is that there are glimmers of some really intriguing ideas (the hero's burden being that of popular hatred toward his past persona and the expectation that he is to be the quasi-Jesus lamb is the one that sticks out the most), yet it gets lost for huge stretches in a shuffle of other characters/roles that in a great many cases just do not come together at the end. Once the end was reached, rather than thinking that it was a series that had major flaws yet had a worthy thematic/character/plot conclusion, I was left thinking that the elements that I did enjoy about the series, the ones that were enough to keep me reading despite finding the prose severely lacking, had been dampened to the point that if I had known this is how it would be presented, I would have never read the books even as a callow 23 year-old in 1997. The end did not justify the means, nor did the means make the end anywhere near what it could have been. Even with expecting to be frustrated by the writing, AMoL fails in the sense that it provides barely even a shadow of a payoff for the slogging it through to the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted January 12, 2013 Share Posted January 12, 2013 Gah, started reading last night. Read the spoilers page, so know what to expect (and unlike most folks, I enjoy spoilers), but I can't fucking remember all the characters that are in the goddam prologue. That alone makes me want to stop reading it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WrathOfTinyKittens Posted January 13, 2013 Share Posted January 13, 2013 Out of curiosity which ones do you not remember? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted January 13, 2013 Share Posted January 13, 2013 Out of curiosity which ones do you not remember?All of them. I remember the main players, but all the fuckers in the prologue are killing me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neal Posted January 13, 2013 Share Posted January 13, 2013 All of them. I remember the main players, but all the fuckers in the prologue are killing me.This was always my biggest issue with WoT in general, I'd never remember all the secondary characters. Didn't help that I could never be bothered rereading the series after about book 9 came out.That said, I was pretty happy with how it ended and I'm glad I skipped all the spoilers. I'm actually kind of sad there wont be anymore either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cseresz.reborn Posted January 13, 2013 Share Posted January 13, 2013 THIS is the post of the year.Mark D, on 09 Jan 2013 - 19:16, said:When I think of WoT, this is what comes to mind now:http://www.bbc.co.uk...europe-19349921http://api.ning.com/...restoration.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Tachyon Posted January 13, 2013 Share Posted January 13, 2013 This came to my mind when reading the book... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterbound Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 Fuck it. I'm done with this. The spoiler thread is more interesting than the actual book itself. I'm going to finish my re read of the First Law. I forgot how fucking bad Randland was. Lame. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reposado Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 All of them. I remember the main players, but all the fuckers in the prologue are killing me.Yeah. Its the proliferation of named but disposable characters that kills it for me. And the prologue. Forgot how much I hated those. Halfway through knife of dreams now, and I can see why some people like the series so Mich but also why many dislike.Factor one in dislike has to be those prologues . Its the equivalent of dwd. Starting with 150 pages of slavers bay, from the pic of five or so ghiscari we don't care for Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Starkess Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 I agree about the prologues. I have never liked them. Why make me start caring about one storyline only to have it not really be part of the book? From time to time they work (ie Long Price Quartet), but in WoT they always irritated me.ETA: Except for EotW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myrddin Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 I agree about the prologues. I have never liked them. Why make me start caring about one storyline only to have it not really be part of the book? From time to time they work (ie Long Price Quartet), but in WoT they always irritated me.ETA: Except for EotW.Agreed about EotW's prologue. That was a really good way to begin. And it wasn't 100 pages... The second book's prologue was good too (about the Darkfriend?). Somewhere, Jordan decided to practice writing short fiction for his prologues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nearly Headless Ned Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 I'm in the Larry school of thought and not sure weather I'm going to read AMOL or just plunge into the spoiler threads.I do remember that the EOTW prologue was brilliant though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reposado Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 The eotw prologue was also notably a prologue. Not a side story. The worst part is that you end up racing through it, rushing to get to the characters you do want to read about and very little sinks in. I read the kod prologue 3 days ago and I couldn't say who all the pops were now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cseresz.reborn Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 The biggest problem with BS: http://theweek.com/a...ars-episode-viiedit: btw, The Shadow Rising (HC): 385.000 words vs 704 pages... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muttering Bill Posted January 15, 2013 Share Posted January 15, 2013 The biggest problem with BS: http://theweek.com/a...ars-episode-viiHuh? What does Star Wars have to do with Sanderson? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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