[Morgoth]

Oh I've never disagreed with Jordans influence on modern fantasy, Werthead. I do agree that without Jordan there would be no MBotF. However, that does not change the fact that Jordan's last books have been without both plot and importance. And I'd hardly call Jordan's provision of "context for the events at the start of the series" a triumph. I dislike infodumping, and Jordan has done a bit too much of that for my taste. I like to discover things, and I like to be both confused and mystified. Obviously when I expect the author to at one point help med put things in context, but still. I don't want to be told, I want to be shown the pieces, to use a cliché..

Seems to be a lot of the CG in the No-God of bakker's trilogy btw, but that's just me.

[Werthead]

Just pointing out that Jordan was pretty reticent himself at actually explaining everything that was going on in WoT. It wasn't until the 2nd book that we got the full story of Rand's birth and the 4th book that we got the full history of what happened between the War of the Shadows and the present day. However, when we did discover it it was through the medium of characters sitting around chatting or having the magical equivalent of a VR tour. This reached its nadir in the 11th book when a massively important plot point was revealed in a pre-written letter to be handed over at the right moment.

Erikson indeed was better at providing answers for the questions raised at the start of the series. My point was that Jordan was more successful in saying, "There's a ton of stuff you don't know, but don't sweat it, I'll fill you in later." Erikson wasn't as successful in indicating what you needed to know at that moment and what you didn't.

And yeah, WoT 8-10 blew hard (and 11 wasn't quite as great as it was advertised). I comically enraged a guy on Wotmania by suggesting that Stan Nicholls' bland and cliched Orcs Trilogy was actually more entertaining than Crossroads of Twilight.