[Abyss]

thadus said:

Oh, c'mon Sonny could you imagine what Apsalar would do with these chicks?

There's something intrinsically funny about the image of Apsalar cheefully slicing and dicing whole hordes of useless aes sedai characters.

- Abyss, can dream.

[Mezla PigDog]

I finally did it! I boxed up WoT books 1 - 6 (the only ones I read) and they're headed to the Oxfam Bookshop. I tried to get rid of them today but the shop was closed! Please don't force me to keep them, fate! I officially quit. No glimmer in the future that I might pick them up again. Adios!

[MecnunK]

Liked Books 1-4, marginally liked 5 but then Jordan realised how much money he could make by stretching it out so he started describing the hue on each leaf of every tree encountered by every single dimensional card board character he has in books.

Also he has this amazing ability to repeat things from one book to the next like we have forgotten that LAN has extremely cold eyes and a hard looking face or maybe he forgets that he has already described this. Then he has these utterly irritating characters like Perrin who spend alot of time deliberating whilst doing nothing and that takes up quite a few pages.. all in all Jordan started believeing his own hype. he has probably made the $$'s but lost credibility and his chance to make a great 6 or 7 book series IMO.

It doesnt help that his characters are extremely stupid as well.

[Werthead]

That's a good point actually. Jordan does sometimes repeat descriptions and give us information we already have, like this is a series where you can pick up any book at random and start reading which obviously you can't do.

Anyway, we're only two years away from the end now. My thought is that when it finishes it's going to get a lot of publicity (as the longest modern epic fantasy written to date), probably Hollywood will take a look at the series and it's profile will go up.

The irony is, of course, that I picked up The Eye of the World in May 1996 thinking, "Well there's seven books out now, it's got to be nearly finished." I didn't even think for a second that I'd still be sitting here a decade later waiting for the conclusion.

[McLovin]

Since I started reading WoT in 1991, I've earned bachelor's, master's, and PhD degrees, lived in 3 states, worked 3 jobs, got married, bought a house, bought 2 cars...talk about the Wheel of friggin Time!

[Astra]

It was the first fantasy series I have read after Tolkien.
First 7 books I could not stop reading.
8th book was so so.
After 8th book there were no more books at that point of time and I have not read WoT since then, although I dutifully buy all new books in the series and waiting for it to be finished then I will go all over again.

[Astra]

Kayasmus said:

My friend lend me the first book in audiobook format, and I found it to be merely OK. I did not find it as bad as most other people did, but I got really bugged by the love story between Lan and Naeneve that came from nowhere and went nowhere. I will read the next ones though.

IMHO and only IMHO, written books are not meant to be listened.
It is probably OK to listen to a book you have already read and you want to continue with the series, so you would like to remember the details, but I am not sure even about this option.

[MecnunK]

Werthead said:

That's a good point actually. Jordan does sometimes repeat descriptions and give us information we already have, like this is a series where you can pick up any book at random and start reading which obviously you can't do.

Anyway, we're only two years away from the end now. My thought is that when it finishes it's going to get a lot of publicity (as the longest modern epic fantasy written to date), probably Hollywood will take a look at the series and it's profile will go up.

The irony is, of course, that I picked up The Eye of the World in May 1996 thinking, "Well there's seven books out now, it's got to be nearly finished." I didn't even think for a second that I'd still be sitting here a decade later waiting for the conclusion.

I started in 99/00 so I can appreciate how you feel

[Astra]

Werthead said:

That's a good point actually. Jordan does sometimes repeat descriptions and give us information we already have, like this is a series where you can pick up any book at random and start reading which obviously you can't do.
The irony is, of course, that I picked up The Eye of the World in May 1996 thinking, "Well there's seven books out now, it's got to be nearly finished." I didn't even think for a second that I'd still be sitting here a decade later waiting for the conclusion.

I started to read it in March 1999, The Shadow Rising. Didn't know there are other books in the series. Didn't know about the series at all. So, when I started I had a feeling that I am missing something, something I should have known before I started the book, so I went to the Internet and figured out that there 8 books. I thought that's it. I bought all of them and I was very disappointed when I realized there will be more but only RJ knows when. I hate to read something that has not been finished. Waiting a whole year between one book and another, it is just not me. So, I am waiting now.

[Werthead]

One year between books? More like three now. Publication for the last book, A Memory of Light, is scheduled for October 2008, although the publishers wanted to get it out in early 2007. Given RJ has already said that this will be the longest book in the series by far, that seems hopelessly optimistic.

[Astra]

Where did you find this info about a new book?

Frankly speaking, if I had my way, I would not allow writers to issue one book every year. I would enforce them to work hard to do a thorough and QUALITY job and issue one book in two year time. Quality is much more important than quantity in my opinion. When I realized that many writers shoot books like machine-guns one book per year, I was aghast. It looks more like making money than writing out of inspiration and literature should not be heading this way. I am sorry dear writers, I just cannot believe, that your inspiration is so time and season precise that you have a new book in the series ready at exectly the same time every year. I believe that sometimes it might take 3 year to write one book, sometimes 4, sometimes maybe only 7 months. When it goes 1 book 1 year - it is only for profit and it feels like a cheap cheat to me.

[Brys]

astra_lestat said:

Where did you find this info about a new book?

Frankly speaking, if I had my way, I would not allow writers to issue one book every year. I would enforce them to work hard to do a thorough and QUALITY job and issue one book in two year time. Quality is much more important than quantity in my opinion. When I realized that many writers shoot books like machine-guns one book per year, I was aghast. It looks more like making money than writing out of inspiration and literature should not be heading this way. I am sorry dear writers, I just cannot believe, that your inspiration is so time and season precise that you have a new book in the series ready at exectly the same time every year. I believe that sometimes it might take 3 year to write one book, sometimes 4, sometimes maybe only 7 months. When it goes 1 book 1 year - it is only for profit and it feels like a cheap cheat to me.

So of course Erikson's just a cheap cheat to you, because he does one book a year? Of course they should try and do a quality job, and if that takes them more than 1 year, fine. But if they're going to take two years and still deliver something as absolutely awful as Crossroads of Twilight, I'd prefer for them to take less time over that and start writing something decent.

Quote

work hard to do a thorough and QUALITY job

Some authors can do that in less than a year. Others can't. Others just can't write a decent book, no matter how long they spend on it. Jordan's quickly falling in to the last of those categories, while Erikson's quite clearly in the first. I seriously doubt that if another year had been spent on writing Crossroads of Twilight, it would have been significantly better. There's only so much that can be done in the editing process - if there's an inherent flaw (such as having no plot) in the novel, then it's not going to be improved by spending more time correcting minor inconsistencies.

[Werthead]

Information on Book 12 is to be found on Robert Jordan's blog (to be found on the currently-closed Dragonmount website, which should be back up any time now after its 7-week refurbishment). It can be summed up as:

Working title: A Memory of Light: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time
The final book in the series even if it has to be 2,000 pages long.
The final book in the saga but three to five prequel and side-novels may follow at a later time.
A Memory of Light will be released simultaneously with or a few months ahead of The Wheel of Time Encyclopedia by Robert Jordan and his wife Harriet.
RJ started work on A Memory of Light just before Christmas. When Dragonmount and the blog go back on-line we should be able to find out what progress he is making.

Having more time to write Crossroads would have been a MAJOR bonus for Jordan. He is Tor's biggest-selling author and the publishers are keen to publish the books at 18-24 month intervals, so when he realised about a year into the writing of the book that he had ballsed up big time with the structure (following each group of characters briefly then rewinding to the Cleansing and going forward with a different group, repeat) he couldn't go back and fix it, whilst when GRRM realised he'd made a mistake with the 5-year-gap in ASoIF, he was able to fix it, if imperfectly.

Erikson actually writes each MBF book in about eight months of only writing four hours a day :eek3: It's the editing, revisions, preperation of maps etc that has caused the delays with last few novels.

[Astra]

Cannot say anything about SE. Have not read his works yet although I am looking forward to read his books.
Anne Rice got definitely worse when she started to produce one book per year from Vamp chronicles. I absolutely loved The Interview with the Vampire, the Vampire Lestat and the Queen of the Damned. I also enjoyed The Body Thief, however, starting with Memnoch the Devil, Armand, Vittorio, (well Pandora and Merrick were OK), it felt a few levels beyond her writing skills.
I perfectly understand that a writer can write a book quicker than 1 year. 6 month, why not? I have no clue how the process works. However, what makes me terribly suspicious, is when the books start to appear year after year exactly at the same time.
I think when you are writing a book, sometimes you have an inspiration and can write a book for one week non stop and get 1/5 of the book done then for 3 month nothing. It is not a physical job, it is writer's imagination. You cannot order your brains to spit out an interesting book on demand of your editors exactly 1 book per year.

I understand that due to lack of knowledge of how the books are being written and having my own imagination next to nil, I could be totally wrong, but that's my opinion.

[Brys]

Werthead, I don't think there was a single part of Crossroads of Twilight worth keeping. Having an extra year or two would only benefit if Jordan was able to write a decent book from scratch in that time. There was absolutely no positive about CoT - it would have been impossible to spend time editing and revising it and come up with a decent book, because there wasn't even the potential for one in what came out. Perhaps for some of his other books, extra time would have benefited him. But for CoT, there's not even a glimmer of hope. If you mean that he scrapped the whole thing and started again, then fine, more time would help, but that's a pretty drastic change and not one I think Jordan would be willing to make.


I seriously don't have a clue how Erikson writes so fast - 6 novels of almost 1000 pages each in 7 years (remembering that's publishing dates, not time he takes to write them), as well as 4 novellas - that's very impressive. I can't think of anyone else who writes that fast and with that kind of quality - even when Moorcock was at his most prolific, he didn't consistently produce that amount. I think the fact that he was about half way through book 7 about 6 months ago shows just how fast he's actually writing. At the current rate, it looks like Martin and Erikson will finish their series at about the same time and Jordan a little earlier. Bakker of course is in the lead, but he only wrote a trilogy.

[fan_83]

brys: l.e.modesitt.jr does pretty consistent work at around 1 book per year..maybe more.... i know his work is pretty similar but its pretty good..

astra you heathen..... repent and read SE fast

[Arkmam]

Brys said:

I seriously don't have a clue how Erikson writes so fast - 6 novels of almost 1000 pages each in 7 years (remembering that's publishing dates, not time he takes to write them), as well as 4 novellas - that's very impressive.

I'm just guessing here, but it might have to do with SE already having everything planned out, what is going to happen and such. It's only the writing left, so to speak. But perhaps every author has everything planned out, I just got the impression that SE had so even more