Wheel of Time TV show

[Sandydragon]

So I’m half way through book 4 now and… it’s sometimes a struggle. Any time characters interact with each other it’s just terrible. The history and the section with Rand in Rhuidean was really good for me, I loved piecing together the history instead of having it told to me in one go.

But my God, if they’re all like this, I’m going to struggle to finish this. I hear Sanderson is better, but that’s a good 2 million words away…

If you've made it past the opening 3 books with their bog-standard hero's journey and hunt for the McGuffin; I'd recommend getting to the end of book 7 before really re-assessing commitment.

There's an event in Book 6 that I suspect the show writers have been told they'll be allowed to reach more-or-less regardless (given second season before S1 aired, and a 3rd already greenlit about half way through the first season.)

In terms of plot books 4-7 are the peak of the series - but that's mostly looking back in retrospect.

What did you think about the last few books in the series? I read a lot of criticism but I though Sanderson brought the series to a good conclusion, and possibly in a less roundabout way than Jordan would have.


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[Stom]

So I’m half way through book 4 now and… it’s sometimes a struggle. Any time characters interact with each other it’s just terrible. The history and the section with Rand in Rhuidean was really good for me, I loved piecing together the history instead of having it told to me in one go.

But my God, if they’re all like this, I’m going to struggle to finish this. I hear Sanderson is better, but that’s a good 2 million words away…

If you've made it past the opening 3 books with their bog-standard hero's journey and hunt for the McGuffin; I'd recommend getting to the end of book 7 before really re-assessing commitment.

There's an event in Book 6 that I suspect the show writers have been told they'll be allowed to reach more-or-less regardless (given second season before S1 aired, and a 3rd already greenlit about half way through the first season.)

In terms of plot books 4-7 are the peak of the series - but that's mostly looking back in retrospect.

This book appears to suffer from the same thing the last Harry Potter did: a nice 12 day journey taking up 100 odd pages where all the action could have been explained in 2.

I find this a lot with fantasy, especially older fantasy: these editors really weren’t very good, lol.

I would never have let some of this through. And I’m far from the most ruthless editor.

I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine I will get too much from the story, but I do enjoy the drip feeding of lore. That couldn’t have happened with more knowledgeable main characters, so I can forgive some of their ignorance, but still… jeez. The women are some of the worst written characters I’ve ever encountered, ffs.

[Sandydragon]

So I’m half way through book 4 now and… it’s sometimes a struggle. Any time characters interact with each other it’s just terrible. The history and the section with Rand in Rhuidean was really good for me, I loved piecing together the history instead of having it told to me in one go.

But my God, if they’re all like this, I’m going to struggle to finish this. I hear Sanderson is better, but that’s a good 2 million words away…

If you've made it past the opening 3 books with their bog-standard hero's journey and hunt for the McGuffin; I'd recommend getting to the end of book 7 before really re-assessing commitment.

There's an event in Book 6 that I suspect the show writers have been told they'll be allowed to reach more-or-less regardless (given second season before S1 aired, and a 3rd already greenlit about half way through the first season.)

In terms of plot books 4-7 are the peak of the series - but that's mostly looking back in retrospect.

This book appears to suffer from the same thing the last Harry Potter did: a nice 12 day journey taking up 100 odd pages where all the action could have been explained in 2.

I find this a lot with fantasy, especially older fantasy: these editors really weren’t very good, lol.

I would never have let some of this through. And I’m far from the most ruthless editor.

I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine I will get too much from the story, but I do enjoy the drip feeding of lore. That couldn’t have happened with more knowledgeable main characters, so I can forgive some of their ignorance, but still… jeez. The women are some of the worst written characters I’ve ever encountered, ffs.

If you don’t like Egwene now, wait until the later books…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stom]

If you've made it past the opening 3 books with their bog-standard hero's journey and hunt for the McGuffin; I'd recommend getting to the end of book 7 before really re-assessing commitment.

There's an event in Book 6 that I suspect the show writers have been told they'll be allowed to reach more-or-less regardless (given second season before S1 aired, and a 3rd already greenlit about half way through the first season.)

In terms of plot books 4-7 are the peak of the series - but that's mostly looking back in retrospect.

This book appears to suffer from the same thing the last Harry Potter did: a nice 12 day journey taking up 100 odd pages where all the action could have been explained in 2.

I find this a lot with fantasy, especially older fantasy: these editors really weren’t very good, lol.

I would never have let some of this through. And I’m far from the most ruthless editor.

I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine I will get too much from the story, but I do enjoy the drip feeding of lore. That couldn’t have happened with more knowledgeable main characters, so I can forgive some of their ignorance, but still… jeez. The women are some of the worst written characters I’ve ever encountered, ffs.

If you don’t like Egwene now, wait until the later books…


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All 3 of them are some of the worst written characters I've ever read, and it's the biggest thing making me think I'll never finish these...

Honestly, how this can be held up as important fantasy is beyond me. The world is great, sure, but this is appalling literature, and the interaction between characters is the worst I've ever read, worse than critiquing my fellow students' work when I was a uni!

Lol, I remember critiquing one girl's story, and it was good, but it was basically the story from the computer game Oblivion. She had no idea. Don't know why that came into my head.

While reading this, I'm thinking that you could easily chop 3-4 books worth off of this and still have a coherent story.

I might dig out one of my stories again and try to turn it into something usable. My problem is, it was originally from the PoV of a female character, but then it felt stale and bland, so I switched it to the PoV of a male character, but the female character was still the "lead". Then I thought that might not be taken very well in this day and age...maybe rightly so...and now I'm kind of lost. I was reluctant to copy the ASOIF style of multiple lead characters, even before GoT.

[Sandydragon]

This book appears to suffer from the same thing the last Harry Potter did: a nice 12 day journey taking up 100 odd pages where all the action could have been explained in 2.

I find this a lot with fantasy, especially older fantasy: these editors really weren’t very good, lol.

I would never have let some of this through. And I’m far from the most ruthless editor.

I’ll be honest, I can’t imagine I will get too much from the story, but I do enjoy the drip feeding of lore. That couldn’t have happened with more knowledgeable main characters, so I can forgive some of their ignorance, but still… jeez. The women are some of the worst written characters I’ve ever encountered, ffs.

If you don’t like Egwene now, wait until the later books…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

All 3 of them are some of the worst written characters I've ever read, and it's the biggest thing making me think I'll never finish these...

Honestly, how this can be held up as important fantasy is beyond me. The world is great, sure, but this is appalling literature, and the interaction between characters is the worst I've ever read, worse than critiquing my fellow students' work when I was a uni!

Lol, I remember critiquing one girl's story, and it was good, but it was basically the story from the computer game Oblivion. She had no idea. Don't know why that came into my head.

While reading this, I'm thinking that you could easily chop 3-4 books worth off of this and still have a coherent story.

I might dig out one of my stories again and try to turn it into something usable. My problem is, it was originally from the PoV of a female character, but then it felt stale and bland, so I switched it to the PoV of a male character, but the female character was still the "lead". Then I thought that might not be taken very well in this day and age...maybe rightly so...and now I'm kind of lost. I was reluctant to copy the ASOIF style of multiple lead characters, even before GoT.

WoT could definitely be condensed a bit without loosing too much.

I think, FWIW, that many fantasy writers get hung up with their fantasy world and lose sight of the readability of the novel. The plot in WoT remains pretty good but the characters can easily get annoying and the reader gets bogged down in some details that don’t add a lot of value.

I think if you are going to create a fantasy world then explore it a bit at a time with different characters, a bit like Gemmell does with the Drenai books. You can still have the excitement of your world that you have spent an age to create but without letting your fantasy overtake the story.

Good fantasy should be readable without the fantasy, a bit like in my opinion good sci fi should be just as good without the tech elements.


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[Stom]

If you don’t like Egwene now, wait until the later books…


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

All 3 of them are some of the worst written characters I've ever read, and it's the biggest thing making me think I'll never finish these...

Honestly, how this can be held up as important fantasy is beyond me. The world is great, sure, but this is appalling literature, and the interaction between characters is the worst I've ever read, worse than critiquing my fellow students' work when I was a uni!

Lol, I remember critiquing one girl's story, and it was good, but it was basically the story from the computer game Oblivion. She had no idea. Don't know why that came into my head.

While reading this, I'm thinking that you could easily chop 3-4 books worth off of this and still have a coherent story.

I might dig out one of my stories again and try to turn it into something usable. My problem is, it was originally from the PoV of a female character, but then it felt stale and bland, so I switched it to the PoV of a male character, but the female character was still the "lead". Then I thought that might not be taken very well in this day and age...maybe rightly so...and now I'm kind of lost. I was reluctant to copy the ASOIF style of multiple lead characters, even before GoT.

WoT could definitely be condensed a bit without loosing too much.

I think, FWIW, that many fantasy writers get hung up with their fantasy world and lose sight of the readability of the novel. The plot in WoT remains pretty good but the characters can easily get annoying and the reader gets bogged down in some details that don’t add a lot of value.

I think if you are going to create a fantasy world then explore it a bit at a time with different characters, a bit like Gemmell does with the Drenai books. You can still have the excitement of your world that you have spent an age to create but without letting your fantasy overtake the story.

Good fantasy should be readable without the fantasy, a bit like in my opinion good sci fi should be just as good without the tech elements.


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It's why I liked Feist very much. One character goes through a transformation much like it looks like Mat is going through, and he has the sullen apartness...but not for the entire bloody series. He eventually returns to some semblence of himself, and it really works, for me. Mainly because the story is quite tightly woven, perhaps. No wondering around.

That's one thing you don't get, reading digitally: a feel for how long the books are until you're half way in and the kindle tells you that you've still got 14 hours worth of reading to finish the bloody thing, lol.

[Sandydragon]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

[Stom]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

Raymond E. Feist. Author of the Riftwar Series. I think it would work really nicely on the screen, actually, and it's one of my favorite series.

[Sandydragon]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

Raymond E. Feist. Author of the Riftwar Series. I think it would work really nicely on the screen, actually, and it's one of my favorite series.

Ah, I have seen Riftwar advertised. Might give it a go.

[Stom]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

Raymond E. Feist. Author of the Riftwar Series. I think it would work really nicely on the screen, actually, and it's one of my favorite series.

Ah, I have seen Riftwar advertised. Might give it a go.

I've not read all of them, and I've heard it drops in quality later on, but the ones I have read are very good. And it is also not just one big series you have to read in one go, it's basically just a series of trilogies that can be read independently of one another, if you wanted to.

[Stom]

Nope, sorry.

Watched episode 1. Forgave it because it's episode 1, they're usually a bit crap.

But I'm 12minutes into episode 2 and that's it, I cannot take this. The script is awful, the changes to the stories make no sense, it's built around pointless set pieces and the dialogue is simply filling us in on what we could have known if the first 12 minutes hadn't been 1 big set bloody piece. I can't even blame the acting, as the script is so obviously dog shite, the actors have nothing to work with. Couple that with the fact they've changed the stories of all the characters to make them all super simplistic...damn.

I don't care, this is utter drivel. I'm out.

[switchskier]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

Raymond E. Feist. Author of the Riftwar Series. I think it would work really nicely on the screen, actually, and it's one of my favorite series.

Feist can write a decent yarn but his books got really quite repetitive, lots of the same story arcs dressed up in different clothes. I find Magician and the early books fun, but there's not a lot of depth and they're not books to challenge.

Much the way I feel about wheel of time so far. Currently on the second book, having enjoyed the Amazon adaptation. Engaging but the creativity is in the creation of the world, not how it's being used.

[Stom]

That’s the downside of the Kindle! But it’s bloody convenient.

What’s Feist?

Raymond E. Feist. Author of the Riftwar Series. I think it would work really nicely on the screen, actually, and it's one of my favorite series.

Feist can write a decent yarn but his books got really quite repetitive, lots of the same story arcs dressed up in different clothes. I find Magician and the early books fun, but there's not a lot of depth and they're not books to challenge.

Much the way I feel about wheel of time so far. Currently on the second book, having enjoyed the Amazon adaptation. Engaging but the creativity is in the creation of the world, not how it's being used.

That's generally the case in all fantasy, though. The more interesting books from a literary perspective are usually not as involved in world building. And while it's cool to see a Middle Earth or Westeros every now and again, I think I prefer the style of Gemmell or Feist where it's all about the characters and their thoughts and feelings. You become attached to characters, not to worlds. And The Wheel of Time is like the peak of "world-attachment", as I feel next to no connection to the characters themselves.

[Stom]

I know I've turned this into talking about the books, not the TV series, but...

Has anyone actually watched the series? I gave up during episode one as it was just so badly done.

But I just finished the first Sanderson WoT book. What a difference. Now I'm definitely going to read Sanderson after this, he can write.

Very impressed with the pacing changes. Nynaeve chapters are still annoying as fook, but the turnaround in Egwene chapters is amazing. They're a high point now, which is great.

[Sandydragon]

I know I've turned this into talking about the books, not the TV series, but...

Has anyone actually watched the series? I gave up during episode one as it was just so badly done.

But I just finished the first Sanderson WoT book. What a difference. Now I'm definitely going to read Sanderson after this, he can write.

Very impressed with the pacing changes. Nynaeve chapters are still annoying as fook, but the turnaround in Egwene chapters is amazing. They're a high point now, which is great.

Read all the books and seen the TV programme. TV programme took a few character stories that differed from the book which was annoying but thats pretty standard in my experience so didn't upset me too much. Maybe its the lack of decent TV, but I didn't find the TV programme that bad.

The books are very good (mostly) Theres a mid series blip where the strategy he uses just doesn't work that well, but the depth of the characters and the world around them is incredible. Nynaeve is one of those characters who is a bit marmite; Egwene's future development is also interesting. My favourite female character was always Min, but I don't think she was in the first book.

[Stom]

I know I've turned this into talking about the books, not the TV series, but...

Has anyone actually watched the series? I gave up during episode one as it was just so badly done.

But I just finished the first Sanderson WoT book. What a difference. Now I'm definitely going to read Sanderson after this, he can write.

Very impressed with the pacing changes. Nynaeve chapters are still annoying as fook, but the turnaround in Egwene chapters is amazing. They're a high point now, which is great.

Read all the books and seen the TV programme. TV programme took a few character stories that differed from the book which was annoying but thats pretty standard in my experience so didn't upset me too much. Maybe its the lack of decent TV, but I didn't find the TV programme that bad.

The books are very good (mostly) Theres a mid series blip where the strategy he uses just doesn't work that well, but the depth of the characters and the world around them is incredible. Nynaeve is one of those characters who is a bit marmite; Egwene's future development is also interesting. My favourite female character was always Min, but I don't think she was in the first book.

Don't know how you can think it was good TV...I think that says a lot about the standard of TV, tbh. The script was poor, the whole thing was built around the set pieces, not around the story, and it was just boring.

I'm getting a little Fable vibe right now, which isn't the best, tbh, but I'm sure it'll pass. Also, the jumping around in time depending on the narrator is annoying. Hard to tell exactly where we are.

[Sandydragon]

I know I've turned this into talking about the books, not the TV series, but...

Has anyone actually watched the series? I gave up during episode one as it was just so badly done.

But I just finished the first Sanderson WoT book. What a difference. Now I'm definitely going to read Sanderson after this, he can write.

Very impressed with the pacing changes. Nynaeve chapters are still annoying as fook, but the turnaround in Egwene chapters is amazing. They're a high point now, which is great.

Read all the books and seen the TV programme. TV programme took a few character stories that differed from the book which was annoying but thats pretty standard in my experience so didn't upset me too much. Maybe its the lack of decent TV, but I didn't find the TV programme that bad.

The books are very good (mostly) Theres a mid series blip where the strategy he uses just doesn't work that well, but the depth of the characters and the world around them is incredible. Nynaeve is one of those characters who is a bit marmite; Egwene's future development is also interesting. My favourite female character was always Min, but I don't think she was in the first book.

Don't know how you can think it was good TV...I think that says a lot about the standard of TV, tbh. The script was poor, the whole thing was built around the set pieces, not around the story, and it was just boring.

I'm getting a little Fable vibe right now, which isn't the best, tbh, but I'm sure it'll pass. Also, the jumping around in time depending on the narrator is annoying. Hard to tell exactly where we are.

That is a weakness in the series.

[Stom]

OK, so I finished the books now.

I've read that some Jordan fans did not like the last book. I think that's insane. It was written very, very well. Except the epilogue, which was a little lacking to me...

And then I found out it was pretty much a copy paste from Jordan's writing. So, yeah, that says a lot about the kind of writing I like and what I don't.

Was a little too clean at the end, for me. I like my fiction a little messier, more like real life. I don't want to give away too much, but, yeah...some more messiness would have been good.

[Sandydragon]

OK, so I finished the books now.

I've read that some Jordan fans did not like the last book. I think that's insane. It was written very, very well. Except the epilogue, which was a little lacking to me...

And then I found out it was pretty much a copy paste from Jordan's writing. So, yeah, that says a lot about the kind of writing I like and what I don't.

Was a little too clean at the end, for me. I like my fiction a little messier, more like real life. I don't want to give away too much, but, yeah...some more messiness would have been good.

You can detect a slight change in style with Sanderson, although my understanding is that he kept very closely to Jordan's notes. I think whatever Sanderson had done, he would be slated by some who were very committed to the series and worshipped Jordan. I thought he did a decent job - the ending is a bit neat, although Im glad that he didn't submit to the approach of keeping all the major characters alive. I personally enjoyed the last book as it brought everything to a head and the pace seemed appropriate.

You can't please everyone.