Robert Jordan's Wheel Of Time

[CelticBrennus]

Also, WoT society is based on 17th/18th Century Europe, even if technology is somewhat behind. So although farmers would make up a large percentage of the population, they would certainly not be the overwhelming majority.

Ok, so they would be 75-85% then.

[Gerold Hightower]

But why? It doesn’t take that long for population losses to be rebuilt, especially nowhere near 1000 years. Hell, Europe’s population jumped from 40 million to 60 million in a couple centuries during the Middle Ages.

I don't see how that is inevitable. Ancient Rome had 1.5 million inhabitants. Medieval Rome had a few 10,000. Other places that had been great cities in Caesar's day weren't inhabited at all until the 19th century, like Athens.

[CelticBrennus]

Certain cities populations dropped dramatically, but that was due to very specific circumstances, usually dealing with changing political circumstances (Rome shrank when it lost Egypt and North African grain imports). In any case, the cities as described certainly don’t seem to be shrinking – there are no vast swaths of uninhabited blocks like you saw in Rome or Constantinople before its fall to the Turks

In short, the population of a city may dramatically rise or fall, but that tells you little with large scale population numbers, especially of rural dwellers.

[Crazydog7]

He... hit him on the head?

Was RJ joking around, or was he actually pissed off?

He was serious i'm telling you, he's a holy terror when it comes to dealing with his fans.

[Diva]

BTW - anyone care to distinguish between high fantasy and other fantasy?

I studied fantasy quite extensive at uni, one of my lecturers was passionate about it which was nice (and he runs the MA course that includes a lot of fantasy, including sources of mythology and fantasy)

Anyway, according to what i learned, and which I understand is generally widely accepted in academe:

High Fantasy is set in another world, and involves fantastical creatures and a lot of magic, spell casting etc. Tolkien, WoT, etc.

Low Fantasy is set in another world, but does not have much in the way of magic or mysticism. It is more the fact that it is an author created setting, than one involving wizards and dragons, which is what makes it 'fantasy'.

Contemporary Fantasy is a modern, real world setting with many elements the same as high fantasy. Harry Potter would fit into this. Yes, it is the real world, but Hogwarts is separate and its own little universe compared to say Edinburgh (Hogwarts is somewhere in Scotland I believe).

Urban Fantasy is contemporary fantasy using a modern city as the setting. Borrowing quite a lot from the mystery 'gumshoe noir' style, there is a lot of darkness in the setting, as well as modern social issues. There might be magic and fantastical creatures, but only a few people can see them. Charles de Lint is, imo, the inventor and master of urban fantasy.

Then there are other styles, such as Tim Power's Speculative Fantasy - he uses the real world, and real people (often historical, sometimes contemporary), and weaves a magical story around them. It is speculative because of the 'but what if . . .' nature of the stories. For example, what if Bluebeard was looking for the fountain of youth, and that explained why he was running around doing weird shit in the Carribean (On Stranger Tides), or what if Byron and Shelley and Keats' work was inspired by mystical vampire lamias who give them creativity but drain their life energy (The Stress of Her Regard).

There are also Historical Fantasy writers who use our own history (generally, but not exclusively medieval europe) as the setting for their work, and include fantastical elements. Barry Hughart's 'Bridge of Birds' and sequels, set in a mystical ancient China would fit into this category.

None of these definitions are hard and fast of course, some books cross over and cover multiple genres. For example I would say that ASoIaF started off as low fantasy, and the setting has been getting higher with each book. (legends are coming to life, more magic is entering the world etc).

Other than the authors I have mentioned (Powers, Hughart and de Lint), whom I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in fantasy other than high fantasy, I would also suggest Katheryn Kerr's Deverry series.

The Deverry books are complex, political, has magic, have an alternate welsh setting, and is one of the best fantasy series around. She is currently writing the final book (12th, although it might be split due to length), but unlike other authors [Robert Jordon!] the books are crafted in sequences of 4 books. So there is a climax and resolution, but she then uses the same setting and some of the same characters for the next sequence. Very well written, and using alternate timelines in a way that works well.

I read the first 6 WoT books back to back when I was bed bound after surgery, and about 6 months before book 7 came out. I vaguely enjoyed them in a pulp fantasy kind of way, but 6 months later was unable to distinguish most of the characters when CoS came out. And the few tolerable female character got worse and worse (Nynaeve and Min), while most of them were unreadable to begin with. Faile brings out so much hate in me that even after 6 years since my last read I feel bile rising just at the typing of her name. Lan is the only character I like reading about, so there isn't much point going on with it for now.

[Padraig]

Actually, the 12th Deverry book is out. Its on sale in amazon.co.uk although I haven't read it. It seems to be the penultimate book. (Although i'm not sure does that mean it was split or whether it will end the Dragon Mage series and the last will be the "tie up a loose end book" somebody mentioned here before). Otherwise spending 5 books on a book and splitting it is becoming a trend.

[Werthead]

Indeed - Kerr, Elliott, Martin, possibly Jordan. It's becoming a bad habit.

[Diva]

Kerr had posted on her website sometime last year (I think) that book 12 was currently so long - and at that stage unfinished - that her publisher said it would have to be made into 2 books. But that is it. She is not writing anything more in Deverry because she has finished with it. I suspect the reason it is so long is because she is putting absolutely everything in required to finish it off.

I also love the coloured celtic knotwork image on her site, and how it fits with the structure of her story.

I haven't seen it in Australia yet, so thanks for letting me know about book 12

[Werthead]

Hmm. According to her wikipedia entry, Deverry is actually supposed to be 14 books long (2 more books after Book 12). But then Wiki isn't always accurate.

Mind you, they do give names for the books: 12 - The Gold Falcon, 13 - The Black Stone (The Silver Wyrm, Part 1), 14 - The Shadow Isle (The Silver Wyrm, Part 2).

[Padraig]

Well that is confusing. I heard around a year ago that there would be one more book in the Dragon Mage series and then there would be one more stand a loneish book to tie up a few loose ends. Those books would see the complete end of the overall Deverry series. I even think I recall that the Silver Wyrm was the name of the 13th book. So the whole spliting thing in wiki is different from what Diva is saying.

Good old amazon has the Black Stone out in July too.

[Jak O Shadows]

Also, the Dumai (sp?) Wells battle was patently absurd. Perrin and his merry band of Two Rivers folk should have been massacred by those oh so expert and deadly Aiel. Christ, are you seriously going to tell me that a few hundred half trained peasants could cut their way though thousands of the men Jordan has told us were the best fighters around without suffering massive losses if not annihilation?

Well it wasn't just the two rivers bow men, there were also the Mayeners, Aiel, wise ones and Aes Sedai not to mention the wolves and in the nick of time the Ashamen. Besides the two river folk are hardly untrained they are the best archers in the world shooting bloody big arrows from 6 foot longbows, and they rarely miss. Also they didn't really expect to survive, it was the ashaman turning up that turned the battle. That and rand escaping and being well pissed off.

[Gerold Hightower]

IIRC, Perrin and the Shaido were both fighting the Tower Aes Sedai who were holding Rand. They weren't fighting each other. Then the ashaman appeared and slaughtered lots of Shaido...

[add-on]

CB,

the reason the half-trained peasants didn't get slaughtered is because they never actually joined the fray. IIRC, they just sat on a hill and shot arrows; it was Perrin, the Aiel, and later the Mayeners when the Aes Sedai decided to ride into the battle because of the Three Oaths.

But why? It doesn’t take that long for population losses to be rebuilt, especially nowhere near 1000 years. Hell, Europe’s population jumped from 40 million to 60 million in a couple centuries during the Middle Ages.

I've always had a pet theory about the population decline that stuck with RJ's theme of reincarnation:

Balefire burns threads out of existence. In the AoL, entire cities were balefired, causing the threads of millions of people to cease existing. Therefore, at the time of whatever age in which this story is set, we have huge spaces of uninhabited land.

No doubt there are holes in it, but it's always worked for me .

[Durckad]

I've always had a pet theory about the population decline that stuck with RJ's theme of reincarnation:

Balefire burns threads out of existence. In the AoL, entire cities were balefired, causing the threads of millions of people to cease existing. Therefore, at the time of whatever age in which this story is set, we have huge spaces of uninhabited land.

No doubt there are holes in it, but it's always worked for me .

It's not as if the land is uninhabited, I believe there are references to people living in these lands during the series. It's really that they're unclaimed by any nation

[Gerold Hightower]

There's a history of Randland in the Guide. IIRC, those lands were given up during the Trolloc Wars.

[add-on]

It's not as if the land is uninhabited, I believe there are references to people living in these lands during the series. It's really that they're unclaimed by any nation

Hmmmm, that's not how I remember it, but it has been a little while since I last read the books. If so, then this entire argument about population decline is moot.

There's a history of Randland in the Guide. IIRC, those lands were given up during the Trolloc Wars.

Yeah, and then slowly but surely deserted, IIRC.

[kedlav]

Also, the Dumai (sp?) Wells battle was patently absurd. Perrin and his merry band of Two Rivers folk should have been massacred by those oh so expert and deadly Aiel. Christ, are you seriously going to tell me that a few hundred half trained peasants could cut their way though thousands of the men Jordan has told us were the best fighters around without suffering massive losses if not annihilation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crecy

Not quite the same, but similar enough. Longbows > * until serious gunpowder weapons come about

[Werthead]

Yeah, the unclaimed territories still have people living in them (the village that Padan Fain and co. destroyed on their way from Shienar to Cairhien in The Great Hunt, for example, or the towns and even small cities on Almoth Plain and Toman Head), they're just unclaimed by any nation.

Also, the Big White Book does state unambiguously that the population of the west has decreased over the past 3,000 years. Enormous armies were possible during the rule of the Ten Nations but rarely deployed (as they were united under the Compact) until the Trolloc Wars. Then after the Trolloc Wars smaller armies (but still far larger than the modern day) were fielded in border wars until the War of the Second Dragon and then, a generation later, the War of the Hundred Years devastated most of the continent. Since then the population level has fallen "due to the growing touch of the Dark One on the world" or words to that effect.

But yeah, as people are reincarnated in the world of the Wheel, those millions of people slaughtered by balefire in the War of the Shadow would never be reborn, leading to a noticeable (if not exactly cataclysmic) population decrease. The modern population of the westlands is probably on the order of 20-30 million by some conservative counts, so they should be able to field larger armies than they have done in the past, and the shift from the armies in the thousands to the tens and occasionally hundreds of thousands (when multiple nations unite) in the later books reflects this.

[CelticBrennus]

Not quite the same, but similar enough. Longbows > * until serious gunpowder weapons come about

Not really. Longbows were only really truly effective battlefield weapons when deployed in very specific ways – that is in a position where they could not be directly attacked. The three famous 100 Years Wars battles where the English butchered the French all occurred when the British forces could deploy the longbows behind some sort of effective barrier to attack. When caught out in the open they were usually beaten - the Battle of Orleans is an example.

But, used against an unarmored foe they may prove unusually effective.

Balefire burns threads out of existence. In the AoL, entire cities were balefired, causing the threads of millions of people to cease existing. Therefore, at the time of whatever age in which this story is set, we have huge spaces of uninhabited land.

Ok, that makes some sense.

I still read those books and think that if you dropped Tywin or Littlefinger into Randland they would rule the world in 6 months.

[kedlav]

Not really. Longbows were only really truly effective battlefield weapons when deployed in very specific ways – that is in a position where they could not be directly attacked. The three famous 100 Years Wars battles where the English butchered the French all occurred when the British forces could deploy the longbows behind some sort of effective barrier to attack. When caught out in the open they were usually beaten - the Battle of Orleans is an example.

Glasdale was a goddamn idiot though... But yea, if they can take out guys in heavy plate, its going to be friggin ugly to sit around unarmored.