[QuickTidal]

Okay, this is cool. I tweeted to Sanderson about TWoK winning my best fantasy of the year at the blog...and he retweeted it...and then the stat-numbers on the blog spiked like effing exponentially! LOL. Whoa....social media works man.

[Terez]

LOL, yeah, the 'most members online' at Theoryland remains the day that he tweeted the link to my interview database.

[Yellow]

Most nerdy names are awful but Nynaeve works imo. It's fairly obscure and sounds pretty in my head. Having said that I don't think my wife would want to name our baby that and I can imagine the look on her mother's face...

[Use Of Weapons]

The only reason Nynaeve works for me is because the final syllable (using RJ's pronunciation) is identical to the proper Irish name Niamh, which makes the whole thing work.

[QuickTidal]

Finished.

A good book that still suffers from Harriet's editing.....but is orders of magnitude better than the previous few solely because of the storylines that are finally wrapped up.

Okay, things I liked.

Matt and Tuon actually finishing the marriage thing...and the whole Prince of Ravens dealy. Me likey, though I am still not sold on Tuon's idea that the marriage is convenience...

Rand...losing....hand. Now, I KNEW this was going to happen ahead of time because of the prelim DKS cover to TGS, but it was til interesting to see, and Semirhage actings as Tuon was a nice little hook.

Shaido/Therava/Galina/Faile captivity/annoying crap....FINALLY solved. My god that took a long ass time. Seriously, if you remove this plotline from the last 3 books, Perrin and Faile wouldn't have had shit to do....Sigh. What a waste of time really. I mean, even Galina never gets done the stuff she tries to do. She wastes her time too. Perrin had better rock in the final 3 books (after all this crap) or I am going to cut out his chapters.

Seanchan and Rand's group and Matt's Red Hand groups all sort of melding together in the fallout from the last few books, and the realization that everyone needs to team up in order to fight the Last Battle.

An end to Suroth, thank crap. Finally.

Galad. Ah, I knew he was headed here. I knew that the Whitecloaks, like everyone else needed to get "onside" for the Last Battle, and they needed rid of their current head to do so. The duel was nice and a fitting place to send Galad into the next 3 books.

Egwene's plot line sort of just continues, albeit as a novice in the white tower, but it's nice to see her not lose any of her fire. Continuing to undermine Elaida is fitting and made her bits enjoyable, if not kind of plodding.

Mazrim Taim's Dunh dunh dunh "Let the Lord of Chaos Rule" thing was a nice little aside that I saw coming, but it's still makes for a vague enough story point. Is he bad or good....he's certainly powerful, but is he a true baddie....dunno.

..and yeah, the contents of Thom's letter from Moiraine (a point I knew from the ToM trailer) I was aware of, but I was never sure exactly WHERE she was (even though when you find out it makes perfect sense and is kinda obvious considering how she exited the world VIA doorframe)....Still, it's nice to know that on the horizon one of my series faves is on her way back.

What is nice here is the amount of random crap that has been going on for books and books that gets tied up....but it also makes me kind of think "all that for this?" I mean, aside from small tidbits, did certain plots NEED to be there at all, let alone for 3 books? I dunno. I'm torn. The last few books have certainly had their share of annoying longwinded poorly;y edited sections, but I am still a fan and want to see where it all goes.

and now...finally..onto Sanderson's first co-authory effort TGS.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 11 January 2011 - 06:43 PM

[QuickTidal]

...and now I am prologue and chapters 1 & 2 into TGS and already it is better paced and more interesting than the last 3 books combined. Ahhhhhhh.....it's like being back near the beginning of the series.

[Terez]

I think you ascribe more power to the editor than they actually have. Also, you are showing your bias because chapters 1 and 2 of TGS were not all that exciting, and chapter 1 in particular was probably one of the worst in terms of pace in all of Brandon's books. The wind scene was like twice as long as any of the others.

I take that back, chapter 2 picks up the pace in Egwene's plotline. Chapter 1 is not really a part of that, though.

This post has been edited by Terez: 14 January 2011 - 07:15 PM

[QuickTidal]

Terez, on 14 January 2011 - 07:11 PM, said:

I think you ascribe more power to the editor than they actually have. Also, you are showing your bias because chapters 1 and 2 of TGS were not all that exciting, and chapter 1 in particular was probably one of the worst in terms of pace in all of Brandon's books. The wind scene was like twice as long as any of the others.

That's funny, what I liked about the wind scene was that as opposed to Jordan, Brandon's wind scene was not as pointless and abstract. Jordan always made it about the wind seeing things, but never really coming down to inspect them until it settled on whatever first character would be the first POV for the chapter. The wind just sort of drifts along aimlessly through the land noticing odd at-a-distance things....whereas I felt that Brandon's wind scene dropped right down in and amongst all the places and people it blew past...giving me a far easier and clearly defined picture of what was intended....thus making the wind less abstract...to me at least. You likely see it differently.

I think my comment on the editing is more about Harriet and Robert both being "into" the way that he was writing the later books with much more filler about randomness....so yeah, I think that having his wife as his editor was detrimental...as she probably didn't bring up as much of the filler to him...cause more than likely she didn't see it as such. I think a disconnected editor might have been able to get him to move things forward more and quickened the overall pace.

As to TGS, I am at Chapter 14 now. I think it says something that I can rock through so many chapters a day with this book (a feat I haven't really been able to do since TFOH, at least not on this scale of ease).

things I like....I'm gonna post in the gathering storm thread....