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Robert Jordan?

#61 User is offline   haroos 

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Posted 04 October 2010 - 06:11 AM

View PostDefiance, on 04 October 2010 - 02:56 AM, said:

View Postharoos, on 03 October 2010 - 08:44 PM, said:

there are no good sides to wot, except for it's impact in the genre.


...what?

Just because it's impacted the genre doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing. I mean, just replaced "wot" with "Twilight." Twilight has had an impact, but I don't think anyone here would say that was for the better.

I read the first seven books and about 100 pages of the eight before I gave up for the same reasons as most people.

Min might be my favorite character from the series. She's certainly the only female (at least that I can recall) that I'd rather fuck than kill.

Lan must have gotten some wonderful handjobs from Nynaeve with all the tugging she does (on second thought, maybe not).

I also liked how Rand became a bigger asshole the more power he got.



no, before robert jordan fantasy was somewhat different, i remember.
there weren't that many series (except the themed series like forgotten realms and dragonlance books).
you can read today every fantasy lover, you will see that many of a certain age consider wot as great.
that's the impact, not many know feist for example (today anyway).

#62 User is offline   Terez 

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Posted 04 October 2010 - 08:40 AM

View PostIlluyankas, on 03 October 2010 - 09:20 PM, said:

There's always going to be people who haven't and the best way to prevent a forum turning into a steadily shrinking pile of circlejerk is to be inviting to new guys, and that doesn't involve spoilers from books outside their specific forums, I'm afraid.


Yeah, it just seems weird to me. None of the WoT forums do that. We post spoilers indiscriminately on any forum, even the off-topic ones, except when the spoilers are for a new release. No one complains, and everyone seems to expect that you've read the books before you join the forum. I've never heard of anyone thinking the forums were 'uninviting' because of that; the noobs seem to assume they'll be spoiled. Some of them create noob threads while they're reading the books, and ask that there be no spoilers in that thread, and then they use that thread to ask book questions.

I'm not trying to say this forum should change its ways or anything - not that anyone would care if I said that - just saying. An interesting difference.

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#63 User is offline   Kanubis 

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Posted 04 October 2010 - 09:18 AM

Terez, I think the difference with Malazan Book of the Fallen is that it's fairly infamous for first-time readers to feel 'lost' at points in the series. It's therefore quite common for people to look for a community of Malazan geeks to shed some light. Consequently there's a lot of new members who haven't read all the available books yet. 

Then there's people who will have read the core series, but maybe not ICE's books yet etc.
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#64 User is offline   acesn8s 

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Posted 04 October 2010 - 02:32 PM

View Postharoos, on 04 October 2010 - 06:11 AM, said:


. . . no, before robert jordan fantasy was somewhat different, i remember.
there weren't that many series (except the themed series like forgotten realms and dragonlance books).
. . .


What? Before WoT there were a lot of series. Before Jordan published WoT, Tolkein's LotR seemed to be the template most fantasy author's used (epic fantasy, multi-book series).

I was an employee at Waldenbooks from 1988 - 1996.
Here's an example of fantasy series written pre-WoT that I can remember sitting here at my desk (and I'm only going to list 1 series by each author many of them had multiple series started before EotW was published in 1990):

Piers Anthony - Xanth series
Robert Asprins - Thieves' World shared universe
Terry Brooks - Shanara
Steven Brust - Vlad Taltos series
Glen Cook - Black Company
David Duncan - Seventh Sword series
David Eddings - Belgariad
Raymond Feist - Riftwar
Kenneth Flint - Sidhe series
Gary Gygax - Gord series
Guy Gavriel Kay - Fionavar Tapestry
Robert Howard – Conan series
Katherine Kerr - Deverry series
Stephan Lawhead – Pendragon series
Ursula Le Guin - Earthsea series
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series
Anne McCaffrey - Dragon Riders of Pern series
Dennis McKiernan - Mithgar series
Elizabeth Moon – Paksenarrion series
Michael Moorcock - Elric series
Peter Morwood – The Book of Years
John Norman's Gor series
Melanie Rawn - Dragon Prince series
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Bifrost Guardians
Joel Rosenberg - Guardians of the Flame series

Damn I've read a lot of books. :)
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#65 User is offline   haroos 

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Posted 12 October 2010 - 07:02 AM

View Postacesn8s, on 04 October 2010 - 02:32 PM, said:

View Postharoos, on 04 October 2010 - 06:11 AM, said:

. . . no, before robert jordan fantasy was somewhat different, i remember.
there weren't that many series (except the themed series like forgotten realms and dragonlance books).
. . .


What? Before WoT there were a lot of series. Before Jordan published WoT, Tolkein's LotR seemed to be the template most fantasy author's used (epic fantasy, multi-book series).

I was an employee at Waldenbooks from 1988 - 1996.
Here's an example of fantasy series written pre-WoT that I can remember sitting here at my desk (and I'm only going to list 1 series by each author many of them had multiple series started before EotW was published in 1990):

Piers Anthony - Xanth series
Robert Asprins - Thieves' World shared universe
Terry Brooks - Shanara
Steven Brust - Vlad Taltos series
Glen Cook - Black Company
David Duncan - Seventh Sword series
David Eddings - Belgariad
Raymond Feist - Riftwar
Kenneth Flint - Sidhe series
Gary Gygax - Gord series
Guy Gavriel Kay - Fionavar Tapestry
Robert Howard – Conan series
Katherine Kerr - Deverry series
Stephan Lawhead – Pendragon series
Ursula Le Guin - Earthsea series
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series
Anne McCaffrey - Dragon Riders of Pern series
Dennis McKiernan - Mithgar series
Elizabeth Moon – Paksenarrion series
Michael Moorcock - Elric series
Peter Morwood – The Book of Years
John Norman's Gor series
Melanie Rawn - Dragon Prince series
Mickey Zucker Reichert - Bifrost Guardians
Joel Rosenberg - Guardians of the Flame series

Damn I've read a lot of books. ;)


of course there were other books, did you realy understand my words like that ?
i meant that before him, fantasy was less about heroic fantasy (i'm not sure about the many sub genres), the style of a hero growing out of nowhere , a saga on many books, long books, that
was less frequent before jordan.
for some reason after RJ people couldn't write a book with less than 800 pages ...

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Posted 12 October 2010 - 08:50 AM

View Postharoos, on 12 October 2010 - 07:02 AM, said:

of course there were other books, did you realy understand my words like that ?
i meant that before him, fantasy was less about heroic fantasy (i'm not sure about the many sub genres), the style of a hero growing out of nowhere , a saga on many books, long books, that
was less frequent before jordan.
for some reason after RJ people couldn't write a book with less than 800 pages ...

I will have to disagree with that. I've been reading constantly since I was a child, i.e. for several decades (although my earliest reading wasn't fantasy-dominated). When I read the first WoT book I had anyway read enough literature to conclude right away that the book was simply a put-together of a number of concepts already existent in earlier literature, obviously including the hero growing out of nowhere (think about it: That must be the oldest concept ever.. it's present in the oldest of folk lore and oral stories as far back as you can go.). Long books wasn't anything new either. My biggest problem with the first book in WoT was that I was just going "oh this he took from that author, and this from this other author", and so on and so fort. Later I felt a bit more of originality in the series, until I eventually got utterly disgusted by every single character and stopped reading it, after a number of books (but that's another story).
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#67 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 12 October 2010 - 10:34 AM

WoT got me into fantasy. IMO it is a great series, I would have hated it if SE finished his series at 3 books. Going back to WoT, without this I would never have read MBOTF, I would not have gotten into fantasy at all, I would have stayed reading Robert Patterson and his Alex Cross series. Every single book in the fantasy series needs a build up, they have a good start, a building middle and a fantastic end. This is what the WoT series is for me, a great start, a building middle and going off The Gathering Storm it is set to finish with an amazing end. Look at the series as you would a book and it is relevant, it does change perspective. There are thousands of people who love Jordans Wheel Of Time the same as thousands of people who like SE's Malazan book of the Fallen and so on so forth.

relating to the characters is easy in WoT, they aren't soldiers ready for war, they are normal people thrust into saving the world. I like this. I like the underdog coming through to save the day but on the journey he is a bit corrupt or things aren't going well. Look at Frodo when he wanted to get rid of the ring, he wanted to keep it when he was at the end of his journey, only a fight with Gollum saved the day there. Would people say Tolkien was a bad writer? I doubt it. Jordan is a great author and has left us something great, his lifes work, literally!! The Gathering storm was a great read, the ideas still came from Jordan. I am sure Towers of Midnight will be just as good if not better. Then the final book next year, the end of a great series and a genre changing writing style. Ask SE what he thought of WoT, I bet you my bottom dollar that he would give it praise!
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#68 User is offline   Thel Akai 

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Posted 12 October 2010 - 11:00 AM

I can easily see how WoT would be a great way to get into the genre. Obviously it's a totally different read if you come into WoT as the intro to Fantasy, vs. reading it after years of reading other authors. In that sense WoT has it all (note what I wrote about finding elements from everywhere in there.. ;))

A large part of what made me like SE's work so much though is because of reading so much other fantasy in the past that the things popping up over and over started to get to me, and the fact that it didn't, in SE's work, was really refreshing.

I'm not certain though how much my previous reading has affected my opinion of the characters in WoT. Maybe to some extent - you get to recognize patterns after a while. The main problem I have with the WoT characters is that they seem to always walk blindly into every possible mistake they can, with large signs flashing everywhere that This Is A Stupid Thing To Do. Everyone, including the protagonists, seem to be less intelligent than the reader: They don't take into account the facts they have available before making decisions. That, and the common people's automatic deference to 'nobility' (always running to the latest newest 'lord' for advice on everything. Nobody did that in the real world, that is, the old Earth feudal societies. The nobility had to hold on with force, all the time.) So the feeling I was left with, after five or six [EDIT: 8, when I went back checking] books (the point where I gave up on WoT), was that the people in there walk like humans and look like humans, but they're only playing humans - they aren't, not really.

EDIT: I think I should qualify the above a bit, at least about the characters and their (non-)intelligent choices. This is possibly also more related to how much you've read before of the genre, because the more you read the more you'll forced to recognize the signs of where something's heading - it's very difficult for authors not to follow some narrative path or another that hasn't ever been visited before.

Taking the WoT world and what happens there on its own merit I'll have to agree again that it's a great story to start with for someone beginning with Fantasy. The genre is certainly full of examples of the opposite, i.e. stuff that would just turn the reader off and never go back.

This post has been edited by Thel Akai: 21 October 2010 - 04:40 PM

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#69 User is offline   QuickTidal 

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Posted 19 October 2010 - 11:34 PM

I'm still working my way through the series and I just finished THE FIRES OF HEAVEN, but I continue to keep notes about my experience with the series over at the blog...

http://icebergink.bl...dow-rising.html
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#70 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 20 October 2010 - 08:26 AM

View PostQuickTidal, on 19 October 2010 - 11:34 PM, said:

I'm still working my way through the series and I just finished THE FIRES OF HEAVEN, but I continue to keep notes about my experience with the series over at the blog...

http://icebergink.bl...dow-rising.html


cool. keep it going. all the way through. each book in this series usually takes me about a month, mainly because i read to and from work and a little at the weekend. The malazan books for me can be finished in 2 weeks. so i agree with the long winded comment, but I do thoroughly enjoy the WoT. TGS to me is fantastic!
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#71 User is offline   globish rip 

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Posted 21 October 2010 - 07:41 AM

kinda think posting a longass list of pre-jordan fantasy series is disingenuous esp. if you arent posting the sales figures for like melanie rawn books (lol). im not old enough to have 'worked in a bookstore' or w/e in the 90s but im p sure jordan did have a huge impact on both the scope and the reach of epic fantasy. mostly by selling retarded amounts of books. also the internet but its all kinda intertwined i guess...

@ some point i think any serious reader has to recognize that the repitition and the glacial pacing was intentional and effective - not always obv but often - & whether its something you enjoy as a reader its part of what makes the series unique, and interesting to think/talk/write about. but w/e the series flaws its hard not to think of it as a 'gamechanger' within the genre
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Posted 21 October 2010 - 09:11 AM

I don't think I've ever read Jordan thinking 'this is brilliantly wholly original'; I'd read Tolkien and Eddings before hand and read Dune in between a couple of the earlier WoT books and recognised that his books shared many conventions with general fantasy (I mention Dune because the Aiel are pretty much Fremen minus sandworms). Not to mention stuff like the fact that the names of the Forsaken are mostly biblical (fallen angels etc) in origin. However, I enjoy Jordan because his world, whilst it can be cliched, is richly realised, and because most of his plotting, though generally sprawling with obvious stagnant meanderings, I have found genuinely engaging.
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#73 User is offline   Abyss 

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Posted 21 October 2010 - 04:02 PM

While the element based magic system RJ used in WoT is far from original, even with the additional spirit element, he did do a really REALLY good job of describing it in a way that was both simple yet complex, and then complicate it by the again unoriginal yet thoroughly approachable means of characters learning and stretching their limits.

Sure, the Aeil are like the Fremen, but then the Fremen are like the Bloodguard and so on and so on... RJ made the Aeil interesting, again but gradually introducing us to them bit by bit.

We're sort of spoiled because of SE's 'throw the reader into the ocean and let them sort it all out' approach, but that works best when the reader has already gone through the RJ process a few times.
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#74 User is offline   Tattersail_ 

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Posted 21 October 2010 - 04:15 PM

yeah I agree with that. SE wouldn't be able to land us right in the middle of it without authors like Jordan
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#75 User is offline   Terez 

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Posted 23 October 2010 - 01:40 AM

Before Erikson, I think WoT was the only series out there that was complex enough to seriously challenge the average reader. And of course, there are nuggets within to seriously challenge even the highly intelligent reader; RJ always intended his books to be an easy read on the surface, because he knew that was required to sell books. He had ambition in terms of scope and complexity, but he was realistic in that sense.

I find it odd that RJ gets so much criticism for being 'unoriginal'. The entire concept behind the Wheel is that all of the stories, legends, and myths of our time are actually garbled misremembrances of the events in WoT. Over time, stories change, split, get added together again, and embellished to boot. But nearly every detail in WoT, down to the people's names and the place names, was intentionally derived from something else. Like Brandon said:

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Brandon on Twitter - 30 March 2010 2:37 pm
Calling WoT derivative of Tolkien is like calling Tolkien derivative of Beowulf. True, but missing the point entirely.

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#76 User is offline   Deragoth 

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Posted 24 October 2010 - 11:32 PM

I started reading WoT when I was 11, it took me a good amount of time to get past the first third of the book because at that point in time I was not used to reading much more than the Hardy Boys (The Thief of Kalimar by Graham Diamond was my first fantasy type read). I thoroughly enjoyed the series up to book six and then found that for whatever reason, books seven through ten were frayed threads. There was a long time, almost a decade, where I was extremely disallusioned with the series. The Gathering Storm was enough of an interest catalyst to pull me back on the bandwagon.

I am very glad that Mr. Jordan chose a successor to the writing duties of his series, despite any juxtapositional problems with a new writer on an old series, I will gladly look forward to the conclusion.

The Wheel of Time was a landmark series, and it appealed to a wide swathe of the population. Despite any cliches, wandering plotlines or any other issues, the series greatly expanded the visibility of fantasy in the last 20 years. I think that attribute, more than any other, is a testament to the importance the Wheel of Time.
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