Wheel of Time Books

[Pitchwife]

Welcome to the Downs, dlsevern! I used to be quite fond of WoT myself up to, say, somewhere between Lord of Chaos and Crown of Swords - I felt Jordan had something interesting and (apart from the nods to LotR in the first book) original going there, but like alatar said, he sort of failed to deliver. In my experience, the last couple of volumes have all more or less been like this:

• Prologue, which hints at some momentous action going to happen soon;
• 100-150 pages of 'reaction shots' referring back to the last vol.;
• Several hundreds of pages containing a tiny amount of dragging development buried under tons of 'skirt-straightening' (more of this later);
• 50 pages of hastily slapped on momentous action;
• Epilogue containing three or four cliffhangers to guarantee the reader buys the next book.

It gets tiring. I haven't tackled any of the posthumous volumes yet - I'm probably going to read them sooner or later, just to satisfy my curiosity how it all ends, but I'm not really ready to spend money on them. (Thank Eru for libraries!)

On the matter of skirt-straightening, braid-tugging and other assorted habits: Yes, they can be a nice element in characterisation if used economically; but when I get Aes Sedai by the score thrown at me and only can tell them apart because of their different compulsive tics, it gets, once again, tiring. Not to mention their annoying habit of bullying everybody who has a Y chromosome and isn't stronger than them; if I want a reverse satire on sexism, I prefer Daughters of Egalia, thank you very much.

Sorry if this comes across as perhaps a tad too dismissive of Jordan; much of my frustration with him is really disappointed love. He had a couple of great ideas, but not quite the ability to work them into a truly great series in my opinion.