I bought TEotW in August 1990, and have read the rest as they came out ever since. Some were purchased a little more quickly than others, for sure, but looking back it's no wonder I have trouble remembering who is whom. Alzheimers aside, of course.
I recall preordering The Dragon Reborn and believing the retailer when they said this one was apparently going to be the last one. And of course being mystified at the end when it sure as shit wasn't. Of course, WoT scholars may say that it was originally "apparently" intended to be a quartet/quadrilogy/4 fecking books, but trust when when I say that at the time this wasn't what we were told in the book stores.
And I still think Sanderson did a pretty damn good job with TGS. Not a tugged braid or page after page of smoothed skirts, sniffing or descriptions of seafolk porcelain to be seen.
Still, aside from 10 years or so of padding in the middle, it has been mostly positive. And you certainly can't argue the results for the genre as a whole. Gave our lad a shot, for starters.
This post has been edited by Sombra: 17 January 2010 - 02:52 AM
"Fortune favors the bold, though statistics favor the cautious." - Indomitable Courteous (Icy) Fist, The Palace Job - Patrick Weekes
"Well well well ... if it ain't The Invisible C**t." - Billy Butcher, The Boys
"I have strong views about not tempting providence and, as a wise man once said, the difference between luck and a wheelbarrow is, luck doesn’t work if you push it." - Colonel Orhan, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City - KJ Parker