Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time Series

[Kreth]

Yeah, the whole Bowl of Winds arc with Nynaeve as the major character had me about ready to slit my wrists...
Another thing I noticed is that Knife of Dreams was considerably shorter than the last few books...

 

[aplonis]

Fortunately for me, I started late. I have churned through this whole series to date on CDROM audiobooks. Same again for several other fantasy and scifi series. I like Jordan's books very well.

As for Jordan dying before its finished, I shant worry. My own favorite author is Jack Vance, who's been writing continuously since the forties. He being over ninety now, his last book came out just this year. One can hope for a similar career for Jordan. And if things turn otherwise, someone almost as good will finish it surely.

There exists a certain trilogy in four volumes. It is called the "Fuzzy Sapiens" trilogy by H. Beam Piper a very early SciFi pioneer. He'd published the first two and showed his completed manuscript for the third to several persons, then blew his own brains out with an antique shotgun on account of SciFi was such a small niche market that it could not provide even very good authors with enough income even to pay for food and shelter. Yes, that long ago... But no one could find the final manuscript. Decades later, folks disputed whether it had existed at all.

Some twenty years later another writer is hired to finish the now classic series. This long awaited closure is in print for only a very short while when...viola! Someone turns up the the orignal ending in the bottom of a steamer trunk from somebody's attic in Pennsylvania.

So the Fuzzy Sapiens trilogy now enjoys two completely separate endings. And both of them are pretty good, Piper's own being the better, of course.

 

[Marginal]

Yeah, the whole Bowl of Winds arc with Nynaeve as the major character had me about ready to slit my wrists...
Another thing I noticed is that Knife of Dreams was considerably shorter than the last few books...

Spoilers may follow...

I've got a feeling the next will be thicker. Jordan's left a lot of ground to cover if he's really going to keep the series under 13 installments. Just Matt going to fetch Moraine from the snakes is probably going to suck up a lot of time/text.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Oh no, he tanks after book 5, which puts you exactly halfway through the currently written books.

Lamont

Well, I'm nearing the end of book five...


BTW, I've loved the series so far - especially the first three.

 

[Kreth]

Well, I'm nearing the end of book five...


BTW, I've loved the series so far - especially the first three.

I love the series, but just be prepared to wade through a lot of complicated subplots as you read the next several books.

 

[Sukerkin]

Forgive the impetuous post here {I've not read the thread yet and I know that's a cardinal sin :blush:}.

The Wheel of Time is a fabulous concept that is starting to go horribly wrong because the author has other irons in the fire.

I first thought that it was going to have a number of books equal to the number of seals holding you-know-who at bay. Now we're up to book eleven (plus New Spring) and no sign of an end in sight.

I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying the journey and I actually approve of the non-central-character story-lines but, as has been mentioned, if Jordan dies before finishing the arc, I'm voting for a mass search for the Book of the Dead, bringing him back to life, gving him a kicking and sending him back .

Oh, and this also applies if Moiraine is just 'paff' gone rather than waiting to return at some opportune moment.

 

[Steel Tiger]

Forgive the impetuous post here {I've not read the thread yet and I know that's a cardinal sin :blush:}.

The Wheel of Time is a fabulous concept that is starting to go horribly wrong because the author has other irons in the fire.

I first thought that it was going to have a number of books equal to the number of seals holding you-know-who at bay. Now we're up to book eleven (plus New Spring) and no sign of an end in sight.

I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying the journey and I actually approve of the non-central-character story-lines but, as has been mentioned, if Jordan dies before finishing the arc, I'm voting for a mass search for the Book of the Dead, bringing him back to life, gving him a kicking and sending him back .

Oh, and this also applies if Nyneve is just 'paff' gone rather than waiting to return at some opportune moment.

I have always referred to this series as the Wheel of Pain because it never seems to end.

 

[Sukerkin]

:lol:

I quite agree - I've just realised that I've been reading this series for seventeen years. That's about 4/10 of my entire life !

 

[Kreth]

I first thought that it was going to have a number of books equal to the number of seals holding you-know-who at bay. Now we're up to book eleven (plus New Spring) and no sign of an end in sight.

I'm not saying that I'm not enjoying the journey and I actually approve of the non-central-character story-lines but, as has been mentioned, if Jordan dies before finishing the arc, I'm voting for a mass search for the Book of the Dead, bringing him back to life, gving him a kicking and sending him back .

I'm with you. However, I read an interview with Jordan shortly after Knife of Dreams came out, where he said something along the lines of the next book being the last, even if it had to be 1500 pages.

 

[Sukerkin]

Ah! So there is light at the end of the very interesting tunnel ... or is that just an oncoming train of Conan books? ROFL.

 

[Kreth]

Ah! So there is light at the end of the very interesting tunnel ... or is that just an oncoming train of Conan books? ROFL.

Maybe that's how he plans to wrap things up. Matt will blow the Horn at Tarmon Gaidon (sp?) and Conan will show up.

 

[Sukerkin]

ROFL and ROFLMAO!

A most worhty post to bid my goodnight on - much praise sir for raising a laugh from an aging Englishmans lips :tup:.

 

[wade]

I stoped at Winters Heart............ I kept forgeting what went before and it took forever to keep catching up. but, I did enjoy it while I was reading it.

 

[Kreth]

I stoped at Winters Heart............ I kept forgeting what went before and it took forever to keep catching up. but, I did enjoy it while I was reading it.

Well, I don't want to throw any spoilers at you, but Knife of Dreams does a good job of finally starting to wrap up some loose subplots. It's worth the read.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Well, I don't want to throw any spoilers at you, but Knife of Dreams does a good job of finally starting to wrap up some loose subplots. It's worth the read.

Can I safely skip 7-10?

 

[Kreth]

Can I safely skip 7-10?

Painful as some of it will be to read (long subplots involving Nynaeve come to mind) there is a lot of important information in those books.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Painful as some of it will be to read (long subplots involving Nynaeve come to mind) there is a lot of important information in those books.

That's what I feared...

 

[Kreth]

That's what I feared...

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there with Matt, the Seanchan, Perrin, and the White Tower split. It makes the Nynaeve stuff bearable. She's quite possibly my least favorite character. I even like Bella better than her. :lol:
The nice thing about Jordan, and the sheer density of subplots is that, if you don't like a character, you usually only have slog through a few chapters before he's off on another tangent.

 

[Jonathan Randall]

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there with Matt, the Seanchan, Perrin, and the White Tower split. It makes the Nynaeve stuff bearable. She's quite possibly my least favorite character. I even like Bella better than her. :lol:

I can't stand Nynaeve, but I do like Mat and the Seanchan are an intriguing people. Thom Merrilin and Moraine are my favourites so far.

 

[Kreth]

I can't stand Nynaeve, but I do like Mat and the Seanchan are an intriguing people. Thom Merrilin and Moraine are my favourites so far.

Thom is a great character. If you read some of the WoT sites, there's a lot of people theorizing about how he survived his encounter with the Fade in Book 2 (or was it 3?).