[ChrisW]

US$. Depends how ya look at it. For the fans that would like a sneak peak 3 months early it's well worth the money and one could say RJ is being nice in allowing it to be published. Tor will also post a excerpt on there website closer to release. It's only a rip off if he was making you buy it.

Here's a good post from some who who attended comic-con that RJ attended. Some nice tidbits in there. http://www.wotmania.com/wotmessageboardsho...essageID=213415

I'm sure there wouldn't be many people complaining if SE released 140 pages of BH for $3.

[cauthon]

It's just so degraded after book 4.

[Morgoth]

Jordan killed his own work when he forced his characters into a static role with no chance of escape. How exactly does his characters change? Do they evolve, do they revise their opinions, change their view on life, grow up, tugg of their hair? No, Rand was getting depressed and slightly mad in book three. Now, after book ten, he is more depressed and slightly more mad. That's about all the development you get of his character... Jordan continously make his characters talk about him growing harder and stuff, but he acts just as he did like five thousand pages ago.. The worst part is that Rand is perhaps Jordan's best developed character. I'll avoid moving onto the subject of the women seeing that I don't want to test whether the swearing filter has been put in place yet..

Another problem with Jordan's books is that they stopped dead somewhere around book five and have yet to get back moving. There's no point reading them anymore. You can get someone else to give you a ten minute summary and you wont have missed a single, even slightly important detail! Try to compose a ten min summary of a GRRM or an SE book without leaving out anything important. You know it's impossible, you know you could easily manage with Jordan and still have time for questions..

[cauthon]

The women are a bunch of stupid childish whiners. Three of them screw Rand, but they get a red head at the mere suggestion of sex. The do not grow up, they keep doing the same suff when they get uypset (yank tha' braid honey) ...

The series went dead after book 4.

[Dagger]

I never started this series and I am glad I didn't. I salute Jordan for keeping the genre viable in the 90s but from I have read on this board and others, reading WoT would drive me nuts. There's only a few current fantasy writers I can read (SE, Martin, Hobb, Gaiman) and the rest are not up to my standards in terms of style, characterization, plot, originality, etc.

[Brys]

Dagger, what do you mean RJ keeping the genre viable in the 1990s? In commercial fantasy you can't seriously ignore the roles of David Eddings or Raymond E Feist or Terry Brooks in keeping it popular. Jordan just added a little to it.

Dagger - in epic fantasy, I agree with you (except - where's Bakker in this?). Outside of epic fantasy, I disagree - Mieville, Moorcock, Wolfe and Harrison are all better in terms of style and originality than those you listed, even if they aren't always as enjoyable. I can only imagine how painful starting to read WoT for the first time would be now for me (after just finishing the Warrior Prophet by Bakker, and having read recently Zelazny, Wolfe, Leiber, Peake, Calvino, Harrison and Kafka to name a few fantasy authors of far higher calibre).

[werewolfv2]

Jordan is very good, Im just getting worried that he has run out of words. His last book in the WoT series was worse than seeing Tool nekkid humping an Ay.

[cauthon]

Come on, he's been out of words for a truckload of books. His first thre were good, it was free fall afterward. I like the epic feel at the beginning, but now, I feel there's no end to it. Certainly no advancing.

And some Jordan lovers say tMBotF is bad. Grrrr.

[McLovin]

cauthon said:

And some Jordan lovers say tMBotF is bad. Grrrr.

WHO SAID THAT?! *pumps shotgun*

[Omras Ghum]

to me, the wot is one more fantasy series I started when I was much younger, liked it then and have since kept on reading although it's getting worse every book
just to find out how the whole thing ends but not because it's good anymore - I'm not sure how many books the wot is large in english, in germany we are by now at about 30, I guess (i'm too lazy to check right now)

and i agree with longhorn but I suggest we'd send a few ascendants to the lot who claim mbotf is bad - sounds like a rakey-challenge to me

[gyrehead]

Oh without a doubt, the first three of Erikson's books were nowhere near the quality of WoT for me. They were good. They got progressively better. And as a series, WoT still stands head and shoulders for me over MBotF even with the lackluster but still readable CoT.

And as the presidents of Random House and Time Warner Publishing have both said, even without Rowling, Jordan has delivered fantasy to one of the largest new audiences ever seen in the last thirty years. Debuting at #1 and staying there with a book that is eighth in a genre series is an incredible impact. Doing so against Stephen King and Anne Rice, even more so.

Bantam said that Jordan's success and viability was what prompted the industry to take gambles on long extended series. It even made them eager to sign a little multi-book deal with an unknown Canadian author. The editors at Eos give nods to WoT as being the prime influence in giving 14 authors in the last five years hardcover debuts. Overall, Dagger, Jordan not only kept the subgenre viable, but his success bankrolled several new authors at Tor.

But what do I know? I like the series. Did not think it downgraded at all until book 10; I think books 6 and 7 are probably the best if I had to pull the series apart. And everything I have read of book 11 already makes it the best book of the year.

MBotF is gaining in quality by leaps and bounds. But it does not come close to matching WoT. Not sure it ever will for that matter. And that is not a tragedy by any means. Plenty of great series that don't come close to WoT. Bakker's series and Pinto' series are nudging it, but will have to see where those go. And with Bakker, that question won't be resolved really until he cranks out the entire collection which is about ten or fifteen years out is my guess.

[Brys]

WoT better than MBOTF? On what grounds? WoT is clearly, undeniably derivative, poorly written and it's been dragged out to make money. Even if it was a trilogy, it wouldn't come close. Jordan has little skill at worldbuilding (the map in the front has striking similarities to Middle Earth, just he doesn't have the detail of Erikson or Tolkien, at least that which matters) and he can't write well. He's overdescriptive with a very limited vocabulary, he has no idea of pacing and he is very predictable. Erikson is pretty much the opposite, and while he isn't the best writer in terms of quality of language (that obviously goes to Mervyn Peake/Italo Calvino), he's not a bad writer, unlike Jordan. Jordan has no power to move me, because he has come to the syndrome of invincible characters, while Erikson does so at almost the end of every book.

I'm not denying Jordan's been a more influential author in the genre, and a more important one, but he certainly isn't a better one. It's like saying Tolkien's better than Peake. If you're talking about sales, than yes, he has sold more, but I think number of sales is a poor measure of quality of an author, as it has very little to do with their skill.

What rubbish are you talking about Bakker? The Prince of Nothing series is a trilogy, the first two are out and the third is coming out in early 2006, if not before, as has been said by him and his publishers!


Omas Gruhm, Longhorn, you've got a target.

[werewolfv2]

gyrehead said:

But what do I know? I like the series. Did not think it downgraded at all until book 10; I think books 6 and 7 are probably the best if I had to pull the series apart. And everything I have read of book 11 already makes it the best book of the year.

.

I wouldnt go so far as saying 11 will/could be the best book fo the year But yes, Jordans work did fine for me till 10. 10 in my view shouldnt have been put out, it was a total waste of paper. 9 I did like, it wasnt the best but it was good, 8 - 1 all rocked

[Imperial Historian]

Quote

What rubbish are you talking about Bakker? The Prince of Nothing series is a trilogy, the first two are out and the third is coming out in early 2006, if not before, as has been said by him and his publishers!

Bakker has said that the Prince of Nothing series was originally intended to be the first book of a trilogy... which has been expanded, he's mentioned at least anotehr 4 books set over a 20 year period as far as i'm aware after the prince of nothing series.

Personally I liked the first 5-6 books of WoT, but its started deteriorating after that in my opinion, 9 was ok, but 7,8 and 10 were awful. That said i'd still rate Jordan higher than many others and will still read the rest of the series...

I prefer erikson myself though.