A Memory of Light To Be Released January 8, 2013 228
First time accepted submitter Hotawa Hawk-eye writes "Tor Books has announced that the release date for the final volume in the Wheel of Time series of books, A Memory Of Light, will be January 8, 2013. [Barring a Mayan apocalypse, of course.] The fantasy series, started by Robert Jordan and continued by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death, will span 15 books and over 10,000 pages."
Looking forward to it (Score:5, Insightful)
After Sanderson took over the books have tremendously improved, almost back to the initial volumes.
Yay, now we get Sanderson back! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Year of the Dragon (Score:4, Insightful)
Doorstops (Score:5, Insightful)
Robert Jordan's books redefined the level of crazy that I will accept from an author. They're fantastic writing, a wonderful, deep, involved storyline, but come ON, the length is way too self-indulgent and unnecessary. The story is nowhere near as complicated (or worthy) as, say, FOUR Lord of the Rings trilogies, but it's substantially longer. The sadness is that it is comparably well written -- length notwithstanding.
I'm currently using four of the books as monitor stands (I actually won't go so far as to use them as doorstops).
More importantly, though, this has changed the way I'll read connected books or watch TV shows. I fear the abandoned story line too much now, and I blame Robert Jordan. "Heroes", the TV show, was a similar letdown... I waited until "Lost" was finished, for fear of it falling into the same pit as "Heroes", and nearly did the same thing with "Battlestar Galactica".
Is there a name for this? Can we call it the "Robert Jordan" effect? -- the situation where you get too involved with an author or storyline and they just go on forever or (no disrespect) die?
And the expanding-storyline theme is amazing. Eight Harry Potter Movies? Really? Five Twilight movies? I love a good trilogy, and (other than the quality of the prequels) appreciate that the Star Wars trilogies are built so that you can watch the original without needing the rest to complete the story. Many authors have interwoven stories and worlds... How many books did Terry Pratchett write? Many of which made reference to one another, but at least they each had an individual story arc. The Ender's Game series is similar... Terry Brooks' series can be read in myriad configurations of trilogies and tetralogies.
ugh... the Jordan series is fantastic in many ways and I'm very glad to see it completed -- I hope the finale lives up to the series -- but please noone ever do this again, or at least give good warning so that we can avoid going down the path until it's complete.
Re:Summary please (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the wiki summary was too freaking long. Someone sum this series up in one sentence please.
This is not the book series you're looking for, move along now.
Re:Praying for (Score:5, Insightful)
I am *so* glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. The first couple of books were great, but then they really started to drag on and on with all kinds of meaningless details on what people were wearing or what they were thinking which did exactly nothing to advance the story or make the characters interesting. It got so bad that, by the ninth book, I discovered that I could just quickly skim the first and last sentence of every paragraph and literally not miss anything important.
I abandoned the series halfway through Winter's Heart. I just couldn't force myself to read through that garbage anymore. Such a shame. The series stared out with such great promise.
Now, if you want a *solid* fantasy series from start to finish (that's not quite so heavy), check out The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman. Fantastic series with great character development and interesting situations.
Re:Finally (Score:2, Insightful)
That's one of the things that makes the series great, I think. Every character has such a well developed personality, right down to habitual mannerisms, that they seem like people you actually know. It always made the mysterious characters stand out, too - he didn't describe them as thoroughly.
Re:Year of the Dragon (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea how Sanderson could possibly wrap up all the loose threads in just one more book
Easy: Bring them all together.
It has already started to happen in the previous book. Everyone and everything is coming together. And once that happens, he only needs to write one final scene.
The problem towards the middle was that everybody was going off on their own. And for whatever reason, Jordan had to keep track of everybody and describe every step of everybody's journey. He couldn't just focus on just the one, two, or three main characters. Instead, the middle books were juggling something like seven or eight characters. It's impossible to make significant advances in a story with so many lines, which is why the middle books were so slow and sucked so badly compared to the first few books (when they were all together) and now the last few (when they're coming back together).
I wonder who edited these books. Much of this is just poor editing. A good editor will not only do the usual grammar check, but also cut out the unnecessary parts that do not advance the story or develop the character. In Jordan's case, entire character lines needed to be cut. The main character (or arguably three) were the only ones relevant, and the things that happened to everybody else should've been left to inner stories after the fact.
Re:Praying for (Score:5, Insightful)
Practically every Robert Jordan fan I've ever encountered online thinks this; they just continued reading in spite of the pace of the later books, because they were hooked and wanted to know how the bloody thing ends. :)
WoT - An ego booster for bad writers... (Score:2, Insightful)
I read the first book, and it was the most horrible piece of shit that I have had the misfortune to read in years. The pacing was bad, the characters were forgettable, and the plot was meandering. On top of that, it read like Jordan just finished LoTR and really wanted to write something "just as awesome". The only reason I finished the first book was out of morbid curiosity: mainly, am I missing something? Why are fans reading 8 or 10 books of this stuff, when it is this awful?