[QuickTidal]

Oh dear me. Okay.

I got to page 140 before stopping. It took the entire first chapter for the supergirls to walk from the palace to the stables, all the while talking of lace.

It took those first 140 pages to actually get to a quiet place and use the Bowl Of The Winds...and the guys are nowhere to be seen yet. Okay, this is the book that broke my stride in this series. I was doing perfectly well till this one.

So I came up with a good, nay a brilliant plan! I was going to get a download of the Audio book and LISTEN to it on my ipod instead. That had to be better with all the description and boredom right?

Oh gods...wrong. The woman (Kate Reading) who reads the female-oriented chapters, is kind of monotone and doesn't help the narrative..in fact she hinders it. She mispronounces the word "livery" and "Cairhien". Sigh. Her impression of Lan was just her doing a poor bass-y voice. There are also so many female characters in that first chapter that anywhere there was a conversation involving more than 4 or 5 of them her voice blends them together where there was a specific "Said Nynaeve" ident.

So her hubby Michael Kramer reads the guys chapters. Was he better? I hoped. He was...worse. He sounded like he was using exhaled breath for every sentence and it came across like he was bored and rushing to get it out. I tolerated the female chapters for 3...and Kramer's guy chapters for like two pages and then I wanted to throw my ipod across the room.

Okay, so listening to it ain't for me.

So that brings me back to reading it. Wish me luck.

Gods this one is boring though. If there is another character sniffing with disdain or I get a description of every piece of nature (leatherleafs!!) in every scene I am going to be very irate.

My brain keeps telling me to push through cause it gets better. But it doesn't look good for me when folk have said that this one, Winters Heart and Crossroads are all boring as hell.

Sigh.

Wheel of Time you begin to try my patience.

[Tattersail_]

all i can say is that the last 2 books are amazing. i think there are some good things in the books you're reading but not much. what gets me, btw i am a huge fan of WoT, but the fact that you read for ages and each book psses by but only months pass in real life. To me it feels like its years. thats an annoying aspect.. other than that i suppose these 3 books set up the last 3 books in the way that these are boring so the last 3 can be amazing if that makes sense

[End of Disc One]

I'd at least suggest struggling/skimming until you get to Rand's chapters. They're good in both The Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart.

With Crossroads of Twilight, I would suggest skimming the whole book. Or maybe even just reading chapter summaries.

[Illuyankas]

When you finish Winter's Heart I'll post the important plot point from Crossroads so you don't have to read it and can just go straight to Knife of Dreams.

[Abyss]

yeah you're really into the wastelands middle of the series now.

It DOES get better tho'.

[QuickTidal]

Illuyankas, on 26 November 2010 - 04:43 PM, said:

When you finish Winter's Heart I'll post the important plot point from Crossroads so you don't have to read it and can just go straight to Knife of Dreams.

Dude. Awesome. Thanks!

[Flawed]

dig in you can do it, im currently on page 237 of Towers of Midnight. The last book and this one are actually pretty good and things are finally being tied up

[Stalker]

I am almost up to the Sanderson books on my reread. "Finished" Crossroads of Twilight yesterday, and by that I mean I skimmed it yesterday. I haven't actually read any of them since A Crown of Swords, just been skimming one each day.

I completely agree with you though, QT. I couldn't stand it, but luckily it wasn't my first time reading so I skimmed it all. Just keep pushing though, it will get better with Knife of Dreams. There are even a few good parts of the next couple books you have to get through, not many though.

[Terez]

IMO it starts to get really good in ch. 14. I understand that the 'pleasant ride' is irritating, but I think for most people, that is the worst part of the book by far. If they've used the Bowl, then it's pretty much over - there is some other stuff on the trek to Caemlyn but it's not so bad as the 'pleasant ride' IMO. Some interesting things happen.

What did you think of the prologue? It's one of the better ones IMO. The Borderlanders (that ends up weird...no expectations there, trust me), Verin, and Moridin.

[Defiance]

Heh, Path of Daggers is the book that made me quit the series. I got about the same length in (150 pages or so) before I just gave up because absolutely nothing was happening.

[Terez]

It's not really true at all that nothing was happening. Those chapters were very important to laying down the difficulties that will inevitably come from the disparate groups of female channelers - the only thing that was missing was a bunch of Wise Ones. I found it tedious on first read, and probably second and third, but in retrospect those chapters are humorous.

But also, they used the Bowl of the Winds, the Kin's farm got attacked by the Seanchan, and Elayne nearly killed everyone by trying to unweave her gateway after the Bowl screwed with the One Power in the area. It was action, but just from RJ's caricaturish female perspective, which some people can't stand.

[QuickTidal]

Terez, on 26 November 2010 - 09:11 PM, said:

What did you think of the prologue? It's one of the better ones IMO. The Borderlanders (that ends up weird...no expectations there, trust me), Verin, and Moridin.

Yeah, I was actually impressed with the length and the characters concerned in the prologue. Which was why it was harder to get into the chapters after....

...However, miss Terez, considering you are our resident WOT info guru, I will take your advice and stick with it. We shall see where it goes.

Up till now I was really loving the series and I don't want to stop reading it.

[Terez]

IMO one of the most interesting mysteries in the series is What the Hell Is Going On In Rand's Head? It steps up a notch in this book.

RJ gets a lot of flak for his ubertropiness, but he was able to take almost an entire book outside the POV of his main character as early as book three. 4-6 had a lot of important Rand stuff. In 7, Rand takes a bit of a back seat again, with the first of his chapters in Perrin's POV (just like 3), and later chapters in Min's POV or someone else's, though we do get some Rand POVs. Beetween books 10-13, there are two books where Rand has as few POVs as in 3, maybe a little less.

TPOD is about half Rand, as far as the meat of what actually happens in the book. I felt like the direction RJ took with this book was an important one in terms of maintaining realism in the plot progression. It can't always be a flashy finish with an emotional high. Sometimes things take a turn downward. Sometimes you don't know what the fuck is going on.

You could say that books 8-10 are very character-driven, focusing on Rand, Perrin, Elayne, Egwene, and Mat in particular. In their plotlines, it often seems like a lot of nothing happens, but what's actually happening is that they are becoming the people that they need to be to be prepared for the Last Battle. The lack of satisfying action in their plotlines (not that there isn't any - the end of book 9 comes to mind, and a certain person who shows up in book 9) tends to annoy people, but all of the setbacks are believable.

Perrin's plotline of forever gets probably the most criticism, and though it starts in this book, it doesn't really start until book 9, and it didn't really start to piss people off until book 10 when it still wasn't resolved at the end of the book. But just because it seems like Perrin isn't accomplishing anything doesn't mean there is nothing going on. The resolution of the plotline happened in book 11, but the we didn't see the fallout of the experience as far as What the Hell Is Going On In Perrin's Head? until book 13.

Another thing that is going on in these slow books is that RJ is planting little clues about What The Fuck Is Going On (In General) in various places. The casual reader won't have any interest in them - I think RJ did this for the net fandom, because we really seemed to get into that sort of thing. The characters were clueless most of the time, but we were given enough hints to figure out what was going on.

In some ways I find it odd that the Malazan fans dislike TPOD so much because it takes such a decidedly dark turn, even in the women's plotlines. But I found Rand's turn to be the most interesting.

The women...I admit they are a different story. This is how I see RJ's women: RJ always felt like he got the women right because he had tons of female fans who told him that they thought he was actually a woman because he wrote them so well (and probably because his men are so cute and cuddly too). But in reality, I think a lot of bookish nerdy females probably find the Supergirls to be realistic because they are that group of girls in high school who were too good to talk to anyone not in the group. I don't think there is a bookish nerdgirl on the face of the planet who didn't often want to smack every one of them repeatedly from time to time. They are tolerable because, as characters and human beings, they're a far sight better than most of Those Girls, as if RJ had skimmed the cream of them, but they are still Those Girls. Every now and then you get a balanced female character, but most of the women are somewhat overly cattish, and I think it often resembles the way most women really do act around each other (especially when there are no men around). The bookish nerdgirls are often exceptions, and a lot of us hate RJ's women for what I suspect might be exactly the same reason. Took much stereotype.

ETA: I think some women probably found it impressive because often male authors don't seem to think much beyond 'would I fuck her?' for female characters. They probably felt that RJ was paying more attention than most guys.

Lots of generalizations there, but it was a thought.

This post has been edited by Terez: 28 November 2010 - 02:56 AM

[HoosierDaddy]

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

That is my net contribution to TPoD discussion.

[Terez]

HoosierDaddy, on 28 November 2010 - 03:01 AM, said:

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!

That is my net contribution to TPoD discussion.

Silly Mat fanboys. The last thing you want to do in a book that's supposed to be taking a dark turn is put Mat in it.

[HoosierDaddy]

Dark turn scmark turns.

Where have you gone Matrim Cauthon
Wheel of Timer's turn their bleeding eyes to you (woo woo woo)
What's that you say Mr. Rob Jordan
Matrim Cauthon's under a brick wall to stay (hey hey hey)

[Terez]

Only for one book. He had to get stuck under a brick wall so that he would be in Ebou Dar for...you know. And RJ seems to think it would have been boring to show him laid up in the bed and grumbling about how he wishes he could get out and find a serving girl or two.

[HoosierDaddy]

Nurse Tylin wouldn't be boring.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 28 November 2010 - 03:15 AM

[Terez]

Yes, but RJ never gives much more than hints in the way of sexual relations, so he probably didn't feel like it was enough to work with. He had already left Perrin out of book 5, and though that caused some grumbles, he apparently did not anticipate the Mat fanboy (and fangirl) rage at his absence for a whole book.

[QuickTidal]

Okay, Done.

Wow, that was tougher than I thought it would be.

things I enjoyed in this book:

Egwene and the war vote. Yeah, that was cool. Super cool even.

Sheriam....so Black Ajah....just sayin. Also, call me dumb but I didn't see that one coming.


Rand. Insanity. Callandor. Crazyness. Pretty cool in an overboard kinda way. Still, good, not great.

The breaking of the unnatural heat...into crazy ass snowstorms. That was cool for me.

Siuane FINALLY admits she's in love with Bryne...fuck....was it that hard Siuane?

Things I didn't like in this book:

Rand. Okay sir, you are without a doubt a HUGE mega dick at this point in the series and are behaving like a spoiled petulant child. You deserved to have your thankless ass beaten down by the Maidens. Nuff said.

Min. You deserve better.

I am still really irritated by the Seanchan. I can't explain it, I just am.

Rand should have listened to Bashere. End Of Story. No, fuck that...Rand should ALWAYS listen to Bashere.

The first half of the book being one big long ass bored ride through "find-a-place-to-use-the-bowl-land while we discuss other boring crap". God that was not pleasant.

The ending is ho-hum....except for Faile getting taken. Cause I hate Faile anyways. Although I spose this means she'll need to be rescued at some point...after which she'll bitch at Perrin for taking too long to do it or something. Cause that's the kind of useless girl she is. Sigh.

FINAL THOUGHTS
That was a severely LONG book to tell me a small few things of interest. I mean if you list out the things that happen to drive the plot forward it is a short one.

That said, Terez was indeed right...the second half of the book is LEAPS and BOUNDS better than the first half.

That second half is still not great, but at least it didn't make me want to blind myself with wadded up pages from the first half...soaked in gasoline and lit on fire....

Oh, and I agree the absence of Mat pissed me off. He is one of the main reasons I read the series and to have him missing for a whole book was annoying...moreso than Perrin missing from TFOH.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 28 November 2010 - 09:00 PM