One of the major problems the series has Jorden defaults to have characters "think" the story at the readers. A chapter with Perrin will start with him riding into camp, he thinks about all the factions in his camp, and then Perrin thinks about what has happened recently in battles, and then Perrin thinks about how he hasn't talked with Rand in ever. The chapter ends when Perrin arrives at his command tent and gets a hint that a third rate plot MIGHT be on the horizon. End chapter. He cuts out so much of the action in the series by just having characters summarize it in their heads.
I wonder if this is why the show was doomed from the start: a lot of the charm of the series is simply the misconceptions of the main characters and letting them puzzle out how the world works from each different perspective. Characters' inner thoughts don't typically translate well to television though; you'd need to add intentionally ignorant characters just for the sake of producing more voiced exposition.
He was never a very efficient writer to begin with. Now imagine those little story points that happened every 10 pages happen every hundred pages because it's split between a bunch of characters. If he comes intolerable if you're not absolutely in love with them.
That sounds terrible. My personal preference is that a good 70-80% of a story should be dialogue. Even in good stories, I tend to just skim the narration and get to the next chunk of dialogue.
I'm one of those who loved the middle books. I understand and respect why many readers have a problem with the "slog", but I didn't have the same experience. Jordan was such a master at evoking his characters and world that I was enthralled from start to finish.
I was into WoT around 20 years ago. Blazed through the first four books, I think, and enjoyed them. I want to say the troubles start with book 5. I only remember it was a thousand pages and almost nothing happened except Egwene and Nynaeve hanging out and chatting. It was excruciatingly boring, as were the next couple of books. It's like one significant thing might happen in a book, but you had to grind through a thousand pages of nothing to get there. I caught up with the publishing around book 8 or 9 to where I had waited a year or two before I could read the latest book. When I started reading it, I couldn't remember who any of the characters were which were being written about in the first 100 pages, or what they had been doing. I closed the book and never went back to the series.
I just want to know how the heck you remember two character names from books you read 20 years ago?! And very strange names at that. The only author who’s character names stick with me is Joe Abercrombie. His books always have the best character names. Glamour Golden, Logen Nine Fingers, Black Dow, Deep and Shallow. Good stuff.
@@overbuiltlimited Fair question! I liked all the main WoT characters for the first several books and thought the story was memorable. However, there are several thousands of pages worth of side characters and B and C stories which I can't remember at all from those middle novels. They are terrible.
Agree first four books were good. I would have liked the series to end with rand marrying aviendha, and morraine's death. Book 5 and on was a snoozefest, and even by book 3 something felt off with the main character barely in it.
So funny. I thought the same thing in RJ's description of women clothes. Pages of the material and accents. I gave not one bit about those uptight womens clothes.
I know for me there came a point where I was just begging for Matt to come back despite the fact in the first couple books he was my least liked character
Ya, book 8 not having Mat was a shame. But the next two books that did have him were so bad even his presence couldn't save them. At least Mat being in those two gives me something to enjoy on re-reads.
I had similar feelings about the slog in those books when I read the series as each book was released. My main gripe back then was that the time span described was getting shorter and shorter each book until it culminated living through the same week in two books. After a long pause I "had to" re-read the series at the beginning of this year to wash away the bad taste the adaption into the TV series left. This time the slog perceived wasn't so much about the flow of time coming grinding to a halt, but more the ridiculously in depth description of every pebble and piece of cloth we come across, or we hadn't seen in the previous 50 pages. As it took 10 pages to get that done, there was little space left for any actual character or plot progression. But since I was reading the whole series in one go, the distinction between each book and thus the need for structure into rigid acts was less pressing. It just took more than one book from setup to resolution. And therein was the problem: I just had an excruciatingly detailed description of something "a book ago" and have to go through that same yet again...
I didn't mind the middle books, because I love the world and the characters and their development. The central protagonists were not much more than kids when the story begins, so They needed time to grow and develop. Jordan just decided to let the reader in on the details. I could have done without about 90% of Elaynes struggle for the throne, but otherwise I liked them.
Yeah, I read them initially as they came out. It was incredibly frustrating to have this series that was moving along at a fair clip. Then as you say in book 7, 8, or 9. I forget which, I lost the will to care. Too many protagonists, too many separate quests, and it felt hugely unsatisfying. Reaching the end of that book, feeling disappointed, knowing the characters had moved around the map, but not much else. The quests were of uncertain significance, and connection. It did feel nice to have the characters filled in, but much as I loved the early books, and I did. I just gave up. I returned to re-read them when I heard about the Amazon TV series, and hoped my frustrations came from the delay between the books, and tried again. Sadly I hit the same snag, and I personally didn't find the slog ever ended. I hated the convenience of 'luck' being used as a plot device, it felt incredibly lazy and contrived. I resolved to never bother re-reading, or even looking at them ever again.
I find that the problem of too many threads is solved by reading things in a shorter time frame. If i had read the wheel of time as the books were released, i could see being very disappointed with them being disjointed. As it was, I started reading them when 11-12 of them had already been published, so I was able to simply zip through and conceptualize the gaps in each character's storyline as just a cliffhanger between chapters, only longer.
yeah, imagine waiting several years for a book to get released, only to have it barely advance the plot, and knowing it would be a few years before the next one came out. .And if I recall correctly, one of the books didnt even have a Mat chapter or had maybe one?
The reason the middle books were called the slog for me was that there were periods of 2 to 3 years between every book. Reading them with no wait makes the middle books just the middle of the story and a stepping stones toward the end.
Yeap, that's exactly the issue, mostly I got frustrated with perrin's storyline, the series as whole is still great. Jordan had some really great concepts and absolutely awesome moments.
Between Perrin looking for his wife for 4 books and Elayne being ... Elayne for those same books, the series was borderline unreadable even for me. I'm sure there are chapters I've never read even though I've read the series multiple times.
One other problem with the story itself, that begins at book 6. The overuse of the magic system, specifically the idea of creating portals for Traveling. If you ever stopped to think about it too much, it really defeats the entire plot. NO need to actually travel anywhere anymore, no need to march armies around, or go on quests, or stop for supplies. For the last book, Memory of Light, during all the Last Battle scenes I kept wondering, why not simply drop endless boulders on top of the trollocs with portals? Or, one character develops a trick to open a gateway that spews molten lava on one army... then inexplicably they cease using their superweapon and just start fighting normally again, WHY?
I dropped the series ten pages before Rand decided to cleanse Saidin, it just slowed down so much after the explosion of awesomeness that was the end of The Lord of Chaos. A year later, I reread the first six, then powered through the part that bored me, and somehow that reenergized my reading experience, so I got through the slog a little annoyed, but still enthralled. I just wanted Faile and Perrin to wrap their situation up two books earlier and it was the biggest detraction from enjoyment. LOVED Mat's arc, and watching the fall of Rand was pretty wild.
Agreed! Why couldn't Perrin have his ashamen call the Black Tower for backup if they were "weapons expected to die" and sitting idle? Perrin was on a mission for Rand that was held up by his dealing with the Aiel.
I had problems reading book VIII and big problems reading book IX (was not enjoying it) in the series but slogged through them somehow.. But book X? My Lord.. I just could not make myself to finish it.. i've barely read through half of the tome and then I was stuck.. for a long time. And then I just went on the internet and read a summary so I can finally move on to book XI.. not my proudest moment, but that was the only way I was going to move on with the plot. WoT is a great series, a real fantasy classic in my opinion (I don't mind the massive amounts of exposition or size of the books at all).. but these 3 titles, and especially the Xth one.. yeah, could have been written better, to say the least.
By book 7, I stopped caring about any of the characters and actively disliked a few of them. It was so boring that I actually felt insulted as a reader.
I re-read them and thought they were good. But when Winter's Heart was first released, and I was excited to find out what happened next, and nothing happened, and it was another 2-year wait to find out what happened next, that was a big disappointment.
Agreed. It felt to me by the end of book 8 that he was trying to milk the series. To many plots dragging on with little payoff. The whole Faile/Shaido thing felt like he just needed somewhere to stash Perrin for a couple books so he conjured a side story to stick him in. After book 9 I put the series away for about 10 years. I'm re reading the series right now, just starting book 4. I'll still read the middle one because I like the series despite its flaws(did every female character really need to be waspish?) but it'll be a chore.
@@DVSPress That would be interesting for a self publishing author. One could figure out which protagonists are liked and which ones aren't and adjust the story accordingly
Shallan is finally in a place where I enjoy her. Her whole progression through multiple personality disorder drug on for far to long. It was a good plot device, it was just too drawn out.
The increased number of characters didn't really alter the scale, it just added more plots the same conflict. Every Kingdom has been seen and interacted with by book 4.
@@DVSPress I understand but when I have tried to come up with a story of similar scale I fall into the same problem of trying to follow too many characters. The story gets out of hand. Its hard to keep the focus on only a few characters. But when I write a story about modern life I don't have that problem. It seems its easy to confuse epic scale with following too many plots and characters rather than the seriousness of the situation the overall plot entails.
I finally understand why the middle books, while feeling disjointed, didn't feel all that low-quality as most readers believe they are. Sure, they still are the weakest part of the series, but I tend to zone-out as soon as more than 3 characters have their own arc, so that's why the main argument for books 7, 8 and 9 being the worst, while being true, didn't bother me that much. I figure: "if he/she is that important, than the arc will converge with the main storyline sooner or later". That said, I agree that books 7, 8, 9 and 10 would've benefited from being one book with less characters having those long-ass arcs. After all, everything eventually comes back to Rand and the Last Battle. I'm currently on book 12 and it seems that Sanderson really picked up the pace, even more than Jordan in the best parts of the series.
The slog for me starts at the beginning of Winter's Heart and Crossroads in Twilight. I had stopped reading them right after Robert Jordan passed away and wasn't aware that Brandon Sanderson actually finished the series until recently. Happy that I reread them because after 13 years I definitely love some of the characters I hated as a teen.
The last 2 books of ASOIAF have the same problem, I think but to a lesser scale. I know after book 3, GRRM didn't have the same editor he had on the first 3 books, and 4 and 5 were supposed to be the same book, but ended up being too much content. Thus, they were split into the two books, and split in such a way that they were mostly split on character POVs. They felt much slower to me when I last tried to re-read them. Also, for Wheel of Time, I gave up at book 6 or 7, because I felt like nothing was ever happening, and it kept bouncing between every character in the series. I was so bored reading it that I just quit.
Those middle books were such a slog for me. It took me over Ten years to just motivate myself through Winter’s Heart where I’m still trying to just motivate myself to start the next book because that entire plot line just turned into Mush and not even remembering where your protagonists are located nevermind what they’ve been doing and why.
Part of me wonders if the 50-75% mark of these long form fantasy series suffer from a systemic or structural weakness. Like the author had a good idea of where things are going for the first 50% or so and can execute on that, but even if they had an outline, the immensity of the plot and where characters actually ended up makes the 3/4rths arc a kind of unknown wilderness that must be muddled through to reach the ending. I enjoyed bookes 7-11 of WoT, but in hindsight, that segment of the series would benefit from being reworked in to 2 or 3 books.
So before WoT most fantasy books were actually 200-300 pages at the most. Any of the drizzt or dragonlance are not that long, the Demon War books have different characters but they all come together in a plot very quickly after an introduction and fight the evil. There is a huge series of them by RA Salvatore but he doesnt waste peoples time on 900 page book that repeats plot points
For me, the main complaint was Jordan's unwillingness to let a forsaken die even when they really should have. And they never seemed like coming back was necessary for the plot so it felt like treading water for no reason.
I remember waiting patiently for each release after having binge reading the first 3 books. I literally threw Crossroads of Twilight on the floor. I didn't pay retail for any of the following books. Picked them up used after they had bottomed out in price.
Felt the slog on the first read and having to wait for the next books. On re-read though I actually didn't feel it as much and have enjoyed them much more. Maybe having the complete perspective, seeing them as one story (seeing even more of the foreshadowing and references), helps.
Good technical evaluation! It strikes me that JRRMartin ran into the same problems with ASoIaF Books 4&5. He ran into the famous 'Knot' that caused him to tear apart the plot and rearrange the story-threads. Unfortunately, I think this major rewrite burnt him out, leaving us still waiting for Book6. Also, Tolkien famously had to deal with this and solve it with the story of Frodo and Sam being written as a self-contained story-arc/narrative in Book2&3 (The Two Towers & RoTK)) versus the Aragon/Gimli/Legolas and Merry/Pippin plot-lines. Of course, this was handled differently in the movie adaptation, which worked in the cinema-format versus the books which also worked but in the book-format. Thanks for addressing this lesson.
The middle books drug, but in no terms would I say they "sucked". By book 3 you can see the pattern in developing in Jordan's writing, He uses exposition to reestablish lore, that was already fleshed out in previous books. It's like he wrote each book so that someone fresh to the series could pick one up and get a overcap of the series, so they wouldn't have to read, reread, the series from the start to understand all that was going on. Too many story lines, was one of the main reasons they drug on. Just sticking with Rand, Perrin, Matt, Egwene, Nyneve, was enough.. or use side characters briefly, to help flesh out the main characters arch's, for a brief chapter here and there.
I'd have to say that's my biggest problem with 'epic fantasy' since The Lord of the Rings. In fact, I found switching between Frodo/Sam's story and Mery/Pippin's story to be confusing and a little unsatisfying and they did that only once in both The Two Towers and the Return of the King. A song of Ice and Fire is an okay book but I get major character whiplash every time the book switches to another character's point of view. I'm sure Wheel of Time suffers from this also. If I had to choose between following one point of view, then going literally back in time to follow another character's point of view or keeping the timeline consistent and switching characters every chapter I'd choose the former. But that point of view, completely disregarding the popularity or success of Lord of the Rings, is considered wrong in literature. In fact, it was one of many literary mistakes JRR Tolkien was considered to have committed as a newcomer ignorant of appropriate novel standards of the time. In fact, the degree of freedom Tolkien received in his creation not only of his opus but even the Hobbit was incredibly unusual at the time and would be very unusual now. An editor and a publisher today would not release Lord of the Rings as it was released at the time. It would switch more frequently between characters and it would focus far more on action and plot than description and setting that was his focus. In my opinion this character switching, frequent cliffhangers and fragmented storytelling is incredibly unsatisfying and I'd prefer to read seven novels in the same timeline in the point of view of seven characters one after the other than to read seven characters and their stories simultaneously interspersing chapters.
Yup, loved overall, and it makes sense to have other characters have a page or occasional chapter to give us an outside view on say Rand, but it's like the Dr. Strange/M-She-U at some point where it's like wait, who's show is this, and why is Cadsuane et al. getting so much focus? Incidentally this is part of why I was greatly confused at the claims the WoT show had to change the things it did for time. What? 8 Hours? Remove all of Jordans recaps, many character thoughts, garment descriptions, exposition, and (later) extraneous character chapters. ie. get straight into meat of the plot and character, and SHOW the world- it could have been so so good simply by focusing its attention.
Good analysis. When I read those, I felt I was in some sort of impenetrable fog: I had no idea which book I was reading, and didn't know where one ended and the other began, as they all felt the same; I was up to my neck in women straightening their skirts; Salidar Aes Sedai arguing; Rand moping around uselessly; Perrin running around a table chasing Zarine and running away from... whatsherface, the big tiddy noblewoman (and the entire Saldaean family soap opera related to this); Nynaeve and Elayne's circus adventure; and most importantly, not enough Min, that I felt I was suffocating in annoyance, drowning in pointlessness, deep in a bog, sinking in a quicksand pit. I didn't know if I'd make it through. But I did. My guess was that Jordan dropped the ball and couldn't find a more elegant way to make the events he wanted happen. Surely even with a publisher demanding all characters are present, you could exercise some restraint and keep things in check. I do fully agree that the first books are fantastic, and IIRC the last two of Jordan's books were great too. Sanderson's conclusion was great as well. I did enjoy the series, it's just unfortunate the middle bit drags on the way it does. If I were doing a "fan cut" that unites Perrin's story in a single book, I'd probably make the executive decision to kill Zarine at the end of Dragon Reborn, and save Perrin and the readers a lot of annoyance. But then there might be not enough material for Perrin for a whole book, kek. But hey, at the end of the day the middle WoT books are still better than Amazon's pathetic excuse for a TV show. :D
I finished reading the series at the beginning of this year. My initial thoughts were that the series as a whole is quite overrated- at his best, Jordan is a capable storyteller reminiscent of an old man weaving a tale around a campfire, and at his worst, someone whose editor/publisher should have told to scrap and rewrite entire books in this series. It started strong but after book two, it started to lose its way. The slog was fairly unbearable and the Path of Daggers was probably the worst fantasy book I’ve ever read. However, Jordan really did get back to his original form in his last book, Knife of Dreams. Sanderson did a fantastic job, finishing the book with the material he had to work with. His three final books are some of the best in the series.
This video was really interesting! I’ve thought a similar thing myself about the shuffling together of lots of different plots, though I don’t think it bothered me as much as it did you or other readers. Personally, I enjoyed books 6-9, though there were moments where I really felt the slog and had to take a week or two week break. I think part of this is that I didn’t really have characters or plot lines that I disliked; I enjoyed seeing pretty much every character’s perspective, and even if there were characters/plots I preferred over others, I didn’t find any of them to be actually bad. Funnily enough, the book that felt slowest to me as a reader was the first, I think because I already had some idea of what to expect out of the story long-term and I was waiting for it to get there (eg: Rand being a chosen one), and simply because I wasn’t used to Jordan’s short-term writing style (eg: prose, repetition, repetition, etc).
I was one of those who read the books when they first came out, and it was slow torture waiting for the next books to come out. I finally got my hands on one book, and it did little to advance the story. Then waiting YEARS for the next one to come out. Then when Jordan passed away, I felt betrayed. I'd invested so much time in something that (I thought) would never be finished. That's why i won't read a novel series that isn't already finished. Now, however, the Wheel of Time is quite managable. You can skim through the boring bits knowing that a fantastic ending is waiting for you!
Just started rereading the whole series and man eye of the world and great hunt slap. great books. not looking forward to after the shadow rising tho i remember those books being slogs
So I like having a lot of protagonists in a series, but each book in that series focuses on one, two, or most three of them and they are all involved in the same story and area. The other characters will be support characters or barely in the book with a scene or two about them that will mix well with the story of that book.
So I was actually reading the entire series a few years back and I got well into Winter's Heart before I just stopped one day and never picked it back up (until very recently). I never really figured out why I couldn't remember most of what happened in those books, nor why I had stopped. Now, having started re-reading the series again and watching this it does occur to me that not much happened in those books because the progress forward was so incremental. I wonder if it would be better for me, as a reader, to do what you suggested with the ebook versions, or to just read summaries and skip those books entirely. I'm about halfway through Eye of the World now, and it's something I'm not looking forward to later in the series.
Read everything up to Book 6, no skips. They're really good. Then, if you feel yourself about to DNF, switch over to chapter summaries or audio books for 7-10. Then 11-14 are a fantastic charge to the finish line.
@@Freelance170 pleasure! I sincerely hope that you make it to the end, it's really worth it. P.s. If any chapter summary sounds interesting then jump into it at that point and read in full before jumping back into the summaries. Good luck!
That is partly true. However I would also suggest that some of the stories are just bad even if considered as a full story. Perains story drags to an absurd degree. Elaine's story is just not very good political drama. There are a number of issues in most of the main plots. Many fantasy series struggle with the split up, but if the individual stories are good, you still want to follow. Each individual story didn't have enough punch, and then you just have a bunch individual story all individually not very good, and then spreading it out over 3 books. But of course as a right your not doing yourself any favors trying to do 8 parallel story lines.
Elayne and Perrin. I dislike Elayne as much as Gawyn. When I reread the series, I skip every chapter with an Elayne or Gawyn PoV. Makes the series much more enjoyable and you lose nothing of the story.
Boy, don't let Shadiversity hear you say this 😁. I haven't read WoT since my early 20's, nearly 20 years ago, so I don't remember much about the middle part of the story. But I do remember the first 3 books pretty well, so that probably says something.
Not exaggerating, the only book I have ever returned to the bookstore was Winter’s Heart. I was a big fan and reading as they were released 20 years ago. I got part way through WH and took it back for a refund in disgust. Recently finished the entire series via audiobooks and the middle were still a chore but much more doable and worth finally completing. Still an amazing series.
I'm the opposite. If a book is boring I can't deal with it as an audiobook, especially if it's 36 hours. If I have a physical book I can speed read and skim, get through it pretty fast.
The trick is to speed them up. It is for me at least. Sometimes I even use text to speech on kindle titles if the prose style slows me down. I'm beginning to have some health issues that affect my ability to read, so audio helps a lot. I think I prefer it actually. Any chance of audio versions of your books in the future?
@@dansmith3085 Speeding up works, but if I lose enough interest in a characters story line then I usually just skip the chapters they’re in entirely. This works really well if the author has parallel story lines neatly separated by chapter. I remember doing this in Sanderson’s Storm Light Archive. The first two were such good books. The arrogant scholar girl (whatever her name was) drove me mad though. When her parts came up I just skipped the entire chapter. Boom, done. Life’s too short to waste it reading about crappy, irritating characters.
Agreed. There's too much good stuff out there to waste time on books that don't work for you. As to audio, when my progress in a book is slow for whatever reason but I'm still interested in the story, then the audiobook is the way to go. Just the way my brain works, I guess.
The middle Wheel of Time books were a problem for me during the period Jordan was still working on them because of the 2+ year gaps between books. In fact, with Book 10, it got so bad that it took me a year to force myself to finish it. That being said, now that the series is complete and I can read them as part of a continuous story, I don't have any difficulty at all. I'm able to see how everything fits into the larger narrative and just enjoy the in depth characterwork that goes on in them. Also, id say 8-10 are the problematic ones. 11 was a return to form and probably a top 3 book in the series, imo. And Book 7 was one of the most focused books in the series with only two major plotlines: the hunt for the bowl of the winds and Rand's war wiwitSammael. And both were resolved in that book.
I'm in the midst of reading them, I've been "reading" path of daggers for about a year now. The middle books really are a slog to get through. I feel l should be taking notes on who is who and what their allegiances are, their overarching plot and development to fully understand what is happening in the story. It's maddening
I personally liked Crown of Swords and Winters Heart, but Path of Daggers really suffers from not including a character who had a cliffhanger at the end of book 7. That definitely irritated me. Also parts of Crossroads of Twilight are tough to get through. Edit: also I think the slowing down of those books does end up giving a great pay off later. There were definitely characters that were worse to read than others. I love getting back to matt in winters heart and I also love Rand's arc in that book and it's climax. Perrin during those middle books is pretty boring though.
About a third of the way through winters heart and holy hell I usually go through 600 pages a month and Ive been stuck on book 7 and 8 for 6 months its painful to get through
The fact that there's so many characters and so much plot but basically zero character growth and the man vs women 2d repeat characters and dynamics is just becoming repetitive predictable and boring
It might be worth it to skip to book 11, knife of dreams, and just read a synopsis of the other books. By the time I got there I had forgotten most of what happened, but it didn't seem to matter anyway.
I think a lot of people are finding the middle books more tolerable now for two reasons: 1) they know the series has a conclusive ending 2) all the books are out, so there's no years waiting between books.
To be honest, I dropped the series on the second book. Tried re-reading multiple times and failed. These books are so boring, the characters are not engaging, the plot is rather predictable. I had no problems with The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, Wizard of Earthsea or many other books considered "heavy reading" by some, but damn, Wheel of Time is just not for me.
You made it further than me. I tried years back to jump in, but unfortunately nothing gripped me at the time. I'll probably have another go at some point.
@@Agonis100 glad I'm not the only one who had issues with WoT. Perhaps I'd have a better experience if I had been introduced to the series when I was younger and hand't yet read all these other fantasy books. Then, WoT might've seemed fresh and exciting.
Sorry but Robert Jordan is not a good writer and the WOT series is not a good read. I am a big fan of Fantasy and sci/fi literature. Absolutely love all things Tolkien. So I purchased the first three books of the WOT series because of my love of the genre and because so many people online and a few of my friends just raved about their greatness. The first three books were being offered in package deal so I went ahead and picked them up. I read the first one and just found it awful. It was a slow tedious slog of a read. And it wasn't slow because it needed to be. It was just slow because it seemed like the author just wanted to drag it out due to a misguided belief that this would make it seem more epic. Boy howdy was that a bit of foreshadowing for the whole series. 100 pages of a story spread across 826 pages. Like trying to take one pat of butter and spreading it across 6 loaves of bread. There was not a single character I gave the least bit of shit about and there wasn't a single line of memorable dialog in the entire book. So I confront my friends and ask "WTF?" This sucks! Only to be hit with the standard WOT fanboy defense, "Oh yeah the first book isn't that good but it really picks up after that." "The later books are nothing like the first one" Blah, blah, blah. So I figured screw it I already have the second book so I'll stick with it. So I read the second book. Aaaannnnnndddd? It sucked just as bad as the first one. Not to mention containing virtually every lame run of the mill fantasy genre cliche imaginable. It was like something a student turned in for a class assignment in a Fantasy Literature 101 class. And not one of the A students either. One of the D students who went online to a website called youcanwriteafantasyepic.com and just downloaded some standard format story outline that leaves blank spots where you fill in your own personalized town and character names before you turn it in to the teacher. So I confront my friends again and I'm like, "this shit is still awful and I'm done with it." Only to be hit with, NOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOO, you can't stop at book two." This where it really gets good and this happens next and that as well. And so and so hasn't even entered the story yet. This is where Jordan is really about to come into his own as a writer. Blah, Blah, Blah. And I'm thinking, "None of you fuckers mentioned that the first two books sucked when you recommended this series." Why am I only being told this now? But screw it I already have the first three so I'll read the last one I have. And I have to admit when it comes to book three it......it.......it.......SUCKED JUST AS GODDAMN BAD AS THE FIRST FUCKING TWO! It wasn't one milligram better. It wasn't better by so much as the weight of an ant turd. I still didn't give two shits about a single character in it. I still had not read one line of memorable dialog. And it was glaring clear to me at this point that the author of this shit had no plan whatsoever to ever draw this shit to a close. Nope, he had found his meal ticket and he was going to ride this train until he dropped fucking dead. And that is exactly what he did. I felt like a prophet when I heard he died without finishing this series requiring it to be closed out by another writer. And if he was still alive right now book 21 of the WOT series would be coming out this year with still no fucking end in sight. I have no clue why this series is so popular. Given that it is 14 books long perhaps some people view completing it as some kind of harsh and grueling ritual that not everyone can complete. Like climbing Mt Everest. It's not really enjoyable while you are doing it but once back home you can brag that you endured the hellish conditions and reached the summit. Sometimes when the conspiracy part of my brain kicks in I think the WOT series is a long running prank to get gullible dumb-asses to read 14 terrible books by constantly telling them every time they want to quit that things are just about to get good. Then when you finish book 14 the other fans let you in on the joke and you can join them in leading other poor unsuspecting souls down this long awful waste of their life. Laughing as you prod them into starting one awful book after another in the vain hope that this is the one that will finally be good. 1 Reply
Man! I couldn't wrap my head around the title: "Why (the Middle Wheel) of (Time Books Series) suck". If we are talking about syntagmatic relations, that was a confusing orgy.
Are fan edits of books a thing like they are with film/tv? There are fan edits for example of Star Wars The Clone Wars (the animated series) that cut and paste the episodes into linear themed movie-length viewing experiences. I think the WoT's middle part (at least) could use a similar treatment, just for the fun of it. I would think even old fans would appreciate it. I know I've spent some read-throughs going right past huge chunks of the books because I didn't want to read yet again what this person was doing in this place, and would rather have had at my disposal "The Mat Cauthon Volume" of the WoT at my fingertips instead for example. Also: I remember how dumbstruck and rather infuriated I was when Perrin spent a whole book accomplishing absolutely nothing. NOTHING. As much as I love Jordan for 'stringing things out', a book is a finite thing, like a series, and sometimes putting an ending on a thing is better than the 'stringing out', regardless of how glorious and 'baroque' that thing might be.
Did anyone like that “bowl of the winds” storyline, i liked it, it just wasn’t what I wanted? I just finished reading the books so I’m looking at different opinions now
Brandon Sanderson may have over-learned from the mistakes of Jordan though: the Stormlight books have extremely organized character development structures with 1 primary character arc each book and 3 or so sub-character arcs. Don't think Kaladin would have PTSD at this point? Tough! He needs an arc and you're going to see him depressed whether you want to or not!
Read the next Stormlight book! See Kaladin repeat his character arc again, see Shallan become even more annoying, and encounter plot points related to other books in the universe because the whole thing is more interconnected than a capeshit movie! You'll even get 500 pages more than the previous book, at no extra charge! I loved the Way of Kings and enjoyed Words of Radiance, Elantris was fantastic and the other Cosmere stuff has been decent, but I checked out after he ruined Dalinar in Oathbringer. I think Sanderson's overrated, and I think he got in way over his head when he said he'd make Stormlight a ten-volume series.
I actually take that as "character growth is not a straight line, and for many people depression is a life-long battle, not something you just 'win' and never deal with again."
Yeah… “Stormlight” too started strong and lost me in “Oathbringer”….. I was hoping for better after his Mistborn series….. but some authors only have a few good stories in ‘em.
This series is wildly overrated in my opinion. I finally got off the Jordan crack after reading book 9. The guy wrote 1000-page novels where nothing happened. He filled dozens of pages per volume describing banners and flags or talking about the women glaring at the men and folding their hands under their breasts or tugging their braids. It's a shame because the first three books were quite good, albeit derivative of Tolkien and Herbert. I remember coming across a site in the early 2000s called wheeloftimeiscrap where we could commiserate about the problems with this flawed series. I understand that people were generally happy with the job Sanderson did in finishing this, but I was not interested in it anymore by then.
@Daniel Rumbacher A classic is not something to be proud of..? okay, buddy. Sure.. that doesn't make any sense but whatever. Pulp novels can be of great quality, anyway. Conan The Barbarian is a great example of that. And Lovecraft stories. You sound like a bit of a your-own-fart sniffer to me, to be honest.
I've always thought that the issue was never with the middle books; but the early books. For multiple early books we are reading at breakneck pace with a saga which seems to feel only 4-6 books long. and we are taught: Rand is the main character; when he does things the plot moves forwards. and that is the *only* way plot can move forwards. Yet, starting in book3 onwards and increasingly later it begins to feel a lot more of an ensemble cast; which is how it ends as well. The first time reading through we are 'plot light' in the middle section as we (at the time correctly) assume where is Rand - we need the plot, wait is that all we get this book? I was 'lucky' in that I read the first 7/8 very early on, and multiple times before I had to wait for the books to be drip-fed over the next few years; so I had moved away from the 'Rand centric' view I had in the beghinning and was invested more in the secondary characters; so when winter's heart came out I could enjoy all the plotlines equaly. The biggest 'dip' in quality for me only occured with a single book and that was crossroads of twilight where literally *nothing* happened in any of the plotlines; and this was compounded by new spring being written and released during that same 5 year timeframe. If CoT and WH were merged into a single book and a few things trimmed down the slog on subsequent rereads would barely be noticable. It would still be noticable to first time readers due to the issue with the early book forcing a randcentric viewpoint
Perhaps he was was trying to imitate the WEB Griffon type series novels that follow multiple protagonists through career progression--The Brotherhood of War for example. Those were insanely successful.
In game of Thrones G.R.R.M. kinda split up the narratives in book 4 and 5 too, and many don't like A Feast for Crows. Although thinking about it, it might have been because book 4 mainly had "B-characters", the main cast were mostly missing until the next book.
Several years ago I started a personal project of editing down books 6,7,8, (LoC thru TPoD) and 9,10,11 (WH thru KoD) into two abridged books, in which form I'd nickname them "Upon the Heights" and "The Shadow Falling". 11 is mostly a return to quality but does drag somewhat in places, 10 is mostly skippable, 9 has a lot of meh going but also some things worthwhile. 6,7,8, all actually good on a readthru, but none of them advance the plot as much as we were expecting back when we were waiting for their release, and the typical things could be trimmed down, without outright discarding much. Broadly, 6-8 focus on Rand's tragically doomed attempt at winning by being a king (and Mori's progress at reining in the Forses), thus the title references the first part of the proverb from which the canon Book 8 takes its title ("Upon the heights, the paths are paved with daggers.") Rand is dejectedly wandering through the second trilogy (and Mori is coming to realize that the Forse losses aren't entirely due to a lack of good coordination for Team Evil -- Team Dragon doesn't depend entirely on the Dragon and has become a serious threat in their own right, which starts Mori's own fatalistic slide into the depression of being still stuck in this no-win scenario, culminating later in his hopeless nihilism while other Forses step up their game to fight it out, most especially Dem who was promised the title of Nae'blis replacing Mori.) Got distracted by doing other things, as usually happens, but I made good inroads into trimming down LoC, and I think it could be done well.
You hit the nail on the head.... When I wrote my own ending to the story.... I consolidated it down to 3 groups Mat & Perrin/Black tower... Egwene/White tower....Rand's issues....
The crossover idea is wild to think of as a WoT revision, I'm imagining what that would have been like. Like reading a Mat book, and in one or two chapters this "crosses over" by having Rand in it, lol, or Egwene and Nynaeve. Who knows, it might have worked. I confess, I have read the first 7 three times over, I always stall out around there.
I do agree on your criticism of The Stormlight Archives, despite these books being my favorite Sanderson series. I have to force myself to slug through Shalan's and Venli's plot, for example. I want to focus on Kaladin and Blackthorn, but the books are all over the place with many characters and subplots I am not interested in. Edit: by the fourth book, this issue gets worse. At first, we had three protagonists (maybe four, if you count Szeth). By the fourth book, we have like six or seven main characters.
While I think Sanderson is a fantastic writer, it seems like he breaks too many of his main characters just to have a story that results in fixing them by the end of each book. I did actually think Raboniel was an interesting villain in book 4 though.
@@otomicans6580 agreed on your first point. Can't say much about Raboniel as I am in the middle of The Rhythm of War right now. Sanderson is a great writer, but he is not flawless, by any stretch. I think too many readers are too awestruck to see it, though.
Man this doesn't make me feel good about my chances of finishing. I'm stuck on Oathbringer and have been for years. I have read tWOK and WOR twice through but always peter out on the 3rd book
@@FelineElaj I find that Sanderson is following a little in Jordan’s boots - that the endings are the heaviest parts and the rest of the book is just building up to that. Instead of having an interesting and gripping journey all the way through, we’re subject to intense worldbuilding and general backstory filling instead. TWoK and WoR weren’t so bad, but Oathbringer felt very reminiscent of Jordan’s tendency to make his books back end heavy.
Every book except Crossroads of Twilight has at least one major plot point resolved, which is the only book I didn't like. The splitting up of the characters didn't bother me. I enjoyed watching what was happening in the other places in the world and seeing how it affected the larger part of the story.
My opinion is that the books would have felt more meaningful if they each had more focus on one plotline rather than being so spread out among all the characters and subplots. I'm not going to chart it out but it certainly felt like the first 5 or so books had many more significant events than the middle ones, but you're right most of them do at least give you one big point per book.
I always wondered if Robert Jordan's illness was starting to take its toll on him and interfered with his writing while working on the middle books. I didn't have the sense that he knew where he wanted things to go.
Agree with ya. I stopped reading around book 10. Couldn’t take it any more. I also hated that every female character was the most annoying kind of feminist
Lol. I noted the same thing! In fact, when I first read Eye of the World, I assumed “Robert Jordan” was a pseudonym, and the real author was indeed a woman.
The idea of putting the characters' stories in separate books does make sense, but I agree it wouldn't work out. George R.R. Martin only focused on certain characters in A Feast for Crows and it was the worst received book in the series.
Yeah, it felt almost like punishment to read from about Crown of Swords until around Knife of Dreams. I'm wondering if you've read Will Wight's Elder Empire series? It's two trilogies that cover them same period of time, but from the perspectives two different protagonists who occasionally cross paths (and swords). I thought it worked brilliantly, though I did end up hating one of the characters.
Book 7 is ok, but definitely started the downward trend. Book 8 isn't the worst, but suffers since Mat isn't in it. Pretty sure he meant books 8, 9, and 10 when he said 7, 8, and 9.. Nine and ten were certainly the worst nooks of the series.
Yeah amen, I got so bored reading those never ending anecdotes and simply stopped. Another problem was that everything seemed to get epic'er and evil'er ad nauseum.
My favorite finished Fantasy series tied with Malazan. I hated the slog the first time I read the books (as they were released), before it was known as the slog. Waiting for the books to come out and then getting 3 books in a row of meh was so disheartening. Thankfully Knife of Dreams to the end are top notch fantasy writing with one of the most satisfying endings imo. I’m on my 3rd re read. It’s not as bad when you power through. This reread I have done books 1-6. Break and read another book/series. Books 7-10. Break. Books 11-14 + a new spring. Also not as bad when you’ve read the whole story once. One series that kinda did this was ASOIF. Going from Storm of Swords to Feast of Crows felt like deja vu to me lol.
I said the same thing to my mum discussing The Wheal of Time. Should have been "The Wheal: Book of X." But I also don't mind, probably because I am listening to it in piecemeal.
First of all I want to thank you for articulating yourself to amazingly without a single spoiler . That was impressive . You made me realize after reading eye of the world maybe the series isn’t for me and it’s sad because I’d love to see Rand in his prime . But I can’t go through more than 1 book of filler . Maybe song of ice and fire is best for me because GOT quickly became my favorite
I'm on book 9 and I hate the series so much. But I'm invested and there are some REALLY great characters. Sadly they are outnumbered 60 to 1 by boring or detestable characters.
I am determined! to finish this epic slog! I read the first book and listened to books 2-4 via Audible and it's been enjoyable, but yes a slog and confusing several times throughout. I have started book 5 in paperback
I'm currently working through book 9, so I'm in the slog. Not my first time. These days, it may take a reader a few weeks to a couple months to make it through these middle books. Ironically, that's almost real time with the story (book 9 mentions events from book 7 having occurred a month or two in the past). When I was younger, the publication time between books 6 and 10 was a decade of my life waiting for the plot to advance significantly. It was painful and I forgot all the details between each book, especially all the nuance with minor characters. Reading it now isn't so bad. And each book ends with a MAJOR event. These books are a jumbled mess in part because all the main characters are in their own messes. No one's plans have gone well following the events of book 6. The world is sorting itself out and that takes time and patience. And all the minor factions that have barely affected the plot in several books are coming into their own narratives and colliding into the major factions and plots. I agree these are all books in the third act of a four act structure (Asian kishotenketsu), which serves as a diversion from the major plot.
Sounds like Malazan series, only there it was done from the book 1. Later I found out they are actually world building books for Erikson's tabletop system. 🤨 Wish someone had told me that before I wasted time on 3 books hoping it would get better. It doesn't. 😖
** SPOILERS** Crown of Swords certainly slows down the pacing. I mean months would go by in and between books up until Crown of Swords. but I wouldn't add it to the slog. The character changes were too big at that point to add it to the slog. Another youtuber explains the slog as the Expansion novels. Most best faith argument, and honestly better for trying to sell the series to others to try. But the slowness did provide some great moments though I found. Like how big the cleansing of Saidin was to the whole world and how depending on which side (Wetlanders vs. Seanchan) they all thought the other side had a magical nuke. That was fun as hell to read. Or Rand's deepening madness, Perrin's deepening rage, and even Mat showing how much of an anti-hero he truly was. I'm in the middle of an audiobook re-read, and honestly, I think it's better heard than read. (Metaphor coming) It's like how Shakespeare's plays are meant to be watched... in a play. They don't really read all too well. Wheel of Time has that similar quality. To me at least.
A intriguing and delicious entree. A main dish with too many flavours, ingredients and they gave you too much. A nice dessert but they rushed you to finish and you were already full
I came here because these were my feelings exactly struggling to get through the fires of heaven. Too many people. Too many locations. Too much explanation Ive heard before in the previous books.
Sounds to me like Jordan stretched his series out way too long to the point that the middle stuff is the literature equivalent of anime filler that just exists to pad it out past its limit. Bloated cast too. FYI I've never read the series, don't have time or interest to do so, that's just my impression of it.
I've now read the books or listened to the audiobooks somewhere over 40 times, I can tell you why those books were a slog for me. Perrin and Faile. Even while waiting for each new book to be published, there was a build up of her rescue, only to once again not get it. Everything surrounding that got old. It was dragged out to the point Perrin and Faile were on a different timeline then everyone else. I believe it was 2 months or so, behind the rest of the characters. Now, I sometimes gloss over swathes about Perrin and Faile and find I barely even miss them. Perrin's angst about his place in things versus his angst just over Faile is just hard to read. The best part of that entire episode was Galad's change of heart about Perrin at the end of it.
I’m currently doing a re-read for the first time since the books came out and I’m surprised at how good the first two books are. There’s a heist! There’s all kinds of interesting and weird scenes! I’m dreading books 7-10
One of the major problems the series has Jorden defaults to have characters "think" the story at the readers. A chapter with Perrin will start with him riding into camp, he thinks about all the factions in his camp, and then Perrin thinks about what has happened recently in battles, and then Perrin thinks about how he hasn't talked with Rand in ever. The chapter ends when Perrin arrives at his command tent and gets a hint that a third rate plot MIGHT be on the horizon. End chapter. He cuts out so much of the action in the series by just having characters summarize it in their heads.
I wonder if this is why the show was doomed from the start: a lot of the charm of the series is simply the misconceptions of the main characters and letting them puzzle out how the world works from each different perspective. Characters' inner thoughts don't typically translate well to television though; you'd need to add intentionally ignorant characters just for the sake of producing more voiced exposition.
He was never a very efficient writer to begin with.
Now imagine those little story points that happened every 10 pages happen every hundred pages because it's split between a bunch of characters. If he comes intolerable if you're not absolutely in love with them.
That sounds terrible. My personal preference is that a good 70-80% of a story should be dialogue. Even in good stories, I tend to just skim the narration and get to the next chunk of dialogue.
@@bmardiney Jordan never conceived of a scene without painfully describing every single stitch of clothing every character was wearing
@@MaxCadyS well I’m never reading his books!
The problem was worldbuilding without disipline and writing without editing.
I'm one of those who loved the middle books. I understand and respect why many readers have a problem with the "slog", but I didn't have the same experience. Jordan was such a master at evoking his characters and world that I was enthralled from start to finish.
I was into WoT around 20 years ago. Blazed through the first four books, I think, and enjoyed them. I want to say the troubles start with book 5. I only remember it was a thousand pages and almost nothing happened except Egwene and Nynaeve hanging out and chatting. It was excruciatingly boring, as were the next couple of books. It's like one significant thing might happen in a book, but you had to grind through a thousand pages of nothing to get there. I caught up with the publishing around book 8 or 9 to where I had waited a year or two before I could read the latest book. When I started reading it, I couldn't remember who any of the characters were which were being written about in the first 100 pages, or what they had been doing. I closed the book and never went back to the series.
I just want to know how the heck you remember two character names from books you read 20 years ago?! And very strange names at that.
The only author who’s character names stick with me is Joe Abercrombie. His books always have the best character names. Glamour Golden, Logen Nine Fingers, Black Dow, Deep and Shallow. Good stuff.
@@overbuiltlimited Fair question! I liked all the main WoT characters for the first several books and thought the story was memorable. However, there are several thousands of pages worth of side characters and B and C stories which I can't remember at all from those middle novels. They are terrible.
Book 5 actually has Rand leading the Aiel against Caloudon
Agree first four books were good. I would have liked the series to end with rand marrying aviendha, and morraine's death. Book 5 and on was a snoozefest, and even by book 3 something felt off with the main character barely in it.
The drudgery in the middle books was almost intolerable. How even the clothing descriptions or whatnot just drug on for eternity. It was rough.
So funny. I thought the same thing in RJ's description of women clothes. Pages of the material and accents. I gave not one bit about those uptight womens clothes.
I know for me there came a point where I was just begging for Matt to come back despite the fact in the first couple books he was my least liked character
Ya, book 8 not having Mat was a shame. But the next two books that did have him were so bad even his presence couldn't save them. At least Mat being in those two gives me something to enjoy on re-reads.
I had similar feelings about the slog in those books when I read the series as each book was released. My main gripe back then was that the time span described was getting shorter and shorter each book until it culminated living through the same week in two books.
After a long pause I "had to" re-read the series at the beginning of this year to wash away the bad taste the adaption into the TV series left.
This time the slog perceived wasn't so much about the flow of time coming grinding to a halt, but more the ridiculously in depth description of every pebble and piece of cloth we come across, or we hadn't seen in the previous 50 pages. As it took 10 pages to get that done, there was little space left for any actual character or plot progression.
But since I was reading the whole series in one go, the distinction between each book and thus the need for structure into rigid acts was less pressing. It just took more than one book from setup to resolution. And therein was the problem: I just had an excruciatingly detailed description of something "a book ago" and have to go through that same yet again...
I didn't mind the middle books, because I love the world and the characters and their development. The central protagonists were not much more than kids when the story begins, so They needed time to grow and develop. Jordan just decided to let the reader in on the details.
I could have done without about 90% of Elaynes struggle for the throne, but otherwise I liked them.
Yeah, I read them initially as they came out. It was incredibly frustrating to have this series that was moving along at a fair clip. Then as you say in book 7, 8, or 9. I forget which, I lost the will to care. Too many protagonists, too many separate quests, and it felt hugely unsatisfying. Reaching the end of that book, feeling disappointed, knowing the characters had moved around the map, but not much else. The quests were of uncertain significance, and connection. It did feel nice to have the characters filled in, but much as I loved the early books, and I did. I just gave up. I returned to re-read them when I heard about the Amazon TV series, and hoped my frustrations came from the delay between the books, and tried again. Sadly I hit the same snag, and I personally didn't find the slog ever ended. I hated the convenience of 'luck' being used as a plot device, it felt incredibly lazy and contrived. I resolved to never bother re-reading, or even looking at them ever again.
I find that the problem of too many threads is solved by reading things in a shorter time frame. If i had read the wheel of time as the books were released, i could see being very disappointed with them being disjointed. As it was, I started reading them when 11-12 of them had already been published, so I was able to simply zip through and conceptualize the gaps in each character's storyline as just a cliffhanger between chapters, only longer.
yeah, imagine waiting several years for a book to get released, only to have it barely advance the plot, and knowing it would be a few years before the next one came out. .And if I recall correctly, one of the books didnt even have a Mat chapter or had maybe one?
@@hrbacon That's book 8, I just finished re-reading it 😄
Never read wheel of time, but it must be a testament to something in the earlier books if this many people even made attempts at the middle books.
The first book is probably a good test. If you like it but probably find things worth reading later on.
If not it's probably not the series for you.
The reason the middle books were called the slog for me was that there were periods of 2 to 3 years between every book. Reading them with no wait makes the middle books just the middle of the story and a stepping stones toward the end.
Yeap, that's exactly the issue, mostly I got frustrated with perrin's storyline, the series as whole is still great. Jordan had some really great concepts and absolutely awesome moments.
Yeah I agree, it's a classic albeit a decently flawed one. Still - great series and worth checking out and having it in the library, imo.
Between Perrin looking for his wife for 4 books and Elayne being ... Elayne for those same books, the series was borderline unreadable even for me. I'm sure there are chapters I've never read even though I've read the series multiple times.
@@jeremybrowand5941 Hear, hear!
Stopped after #4, the characters achieved the objective but kept exploring...seemingly for no rational reason . I felt it was a cheap cash grab.
I think it was supposed to be 6 or 7 books but was so popular, they told him to keep going for the money
The only parts that are boring are Perrin and Elayne thinking about what they are going to do before they do it.
One other problem with the story itself, that begins at book 6. The overuse of the magic system, specifically the idea of creating portals for Traveling. If you ever stopped to think about it too much, it really defeats the entire plot. NO need to actually travel anywhere anymore, no need to march armies around, or go on quests, or stop for supplies. For the last book, Memory of Light, during all the Last Battle scenes I kept wondering, why not simply drop endless boulders on top of the trollocs with portals? Or, one character develops a trick to open a gateway that spews molten lava on one army... then inexplicably they cease using their superweapon and just start fighting normally again, WHY?
The plot has to happen.
I dropped the series ten pages before Rand decided to cleanse Saidin, it just slowed down so much after the explosion of awesomeness that was the end of The Lord of Chaos. A year later, I reread the first six, then powered through the part that bored me, and somehow that reenergized my reading experience, so I got through the slog a little annoyed, but still enthralled. I just wanted Faile and Perrin to wrap their situation up two books earlier and it was the biggest detraction from enjoyment. LOVED Mat's arc, and watching the fall of Rand was pretty wild.
Agreed! Why couldn't Perrin have his ashamen call the Black Tower for backup if they were "weapons expected to die" and sitting idle? Perrin was on a mission for Rand that was held up by his dealing with the Aiel.
I had problems reading book VIII and big problems reading book IX (was not enjoying it) in the series but slogged through them somehow.. But book X? My Lord.. I just could not make myself to finish it.. i've barely read through half of the tome and then I was stuck.. for a long time. And then I just went on the internet and read a summary so I can finally move on to book XI.. not my proudest moment, but that was the only way I was going to move on with the plot.
WoT is a great series, a real fantasy classic in my opinion (I don't mind the massive amounts of exposition or size of the books at all).. but these 3 titles, and especially the Xth one.. yeah, could have been written better, to say the least.
By book 7, I stopped caring about any of the characters and actively disliked a few of them. It was so boring that I actually felt insulted as a reader.
I re-read them and thought they were good. But when Winter's Heart was first released, and I was excited to find out what happened next, and nothing happened, and it was another 2-year wait to find out what happened next, that was a big disappointment.
I don’t know if I could stand a whole book of just Elayne and Nynaeve
Agreed. It felt to me by the end of book 8 that he was trying to milk the series. To many plots dragging on with little payoff. The whole Faile/Shaido thing felt like he just needed somewhere to stash Perrin for a couple books so he conjured a side story to stick him in.
After book 9 I put the series away for about 10 years. I'm re reading the series right now, just starting book 4. I'll still read the middle one because I like the series despite its flaws(did every female character really need to be waspish?) but it'll be a chore.
It gets specially bad when you hate one of the characters and they’re a third of the book. Ninaeve and shallan specifically.
If they had their own book you could elect to skip it.
I'm pretty sure you could figure out what they did.
@@DVSPress That would be interesting for a self publishing author. One could figure out which protagonists are liked and which ones aren't and adjust the story accordingly
Shallan is finally in a place where I enjoy her. Her whole progression through multiple personality disorder drug on for far to long. It was a good plot device, it was just too drawn out.
Note to self:
Do an Epic Fantasy in two books only.
Subverting expectations is tight!
@@ulaznar
Indeed it is and I'll totally won't do it out of spite against the Cursed Three Rule.
😠
@@lucascoval828 Just do what Valve and Patrick Rothfuss did, release 2 parts and never deliver an ending to the story ;)
@@ulaznar
Funny you mention that.
The HL Episodes were one of the many straws that broke the camel's back in my dislike for trilogies.
You could cut The first book to 300 pages and the others much shorter.
Is this a symptom of trying too hard to make a story an epic scale?
The increased number of characters didn't really alter the scale, it just added more plots the same conflict. Every Kingdom has been seen and interacted with by book 4.
@@DVSPress I understand but when I have tried to come up with a story of similar scale I fall into the same problem of trying to follow too many characters. The story gets out of hand. Its hard to keep the focus on only a few characters. But when I write a story about modern life I don't have that problem. It seems its easy to confuse epic scale with following too many plots and characters rather than the seriousness of the situation the overall plot entails.
So we're living the decadence of fantasy genre? It brings some Neverending Story vibes.
It makes you wonder whether 4 million words is too much to tell a single story. Maybe 3 million words would have been sufficient? 2 million?
I finally understand why the middle books, while feeling disjointed, didn't feel all that low-quality as most readers believe they are. Sure, they still are the weakest part of the series, but I tend to zone-out as soon as more than 3 characters have their own arc, so that's why the main argument for books 7, 8 and 9 being the worst, while being true, didn't bother me that much. I figure: "if he/she is that important, than the arc will converge with the main storyline sooner or later". That said, I agree that books 7, 8, 9 and 10 would've benefited from being one book with less characters having those long-ass arcs. After all, everything eventually comes back to Rand and the Last Battle. I'm currently on book 12 and it seems that Sanderson really picked up the pace, even more than Jordan in the best parts of the series.
The slog for me starts at the beginning of Winter's Heart and Crossroads in Twilight. I had stopped reading them right after Robert Jordan passed away and wasn't aware that Brandon Sanderson actually finished the series until recently. Happy that I reread them because after 13 years I definitely love some of the characters I hated as a teen.
The last 2 books of ASOIAF have the same problem, I think but to a lesser scale. I know after book 3, GRRM didn't have the same editor he had on the first 3 books, and 4 and 5 were supposed to be the same book, but ended up being too much content. Thus, they were split into the two books, and split in such a way that they were mostly split on character POVs. They felt much slower to me when I last tried to re-read them.
Also, for Wheel of Time, I gave up at book 6 or 7, because I felt like nothing was ever happening, and it kept bouncing between every character in the series. I was so bored reading it that I just quit.
Those middle books were such a slog for me. It took me over Ten years to just motivate myself through Winter’s Heart where I’m still trying to just motivate myself to start the next book because that entire plot line just turned into Mush and not even remembering where your protagonists are located nevermind what they’ve been doing and why.
Part of me wonders if the 50-75% mark of these long form fantasy series suffer from a systemic or structural weakness. Like the author had a good idea of where things are going for the first 50% or so and can execute on that, but even if they had an outline, the immensity of the plot and where characters actually ended up makes the 3/4rths arc a kind of unknown wilderness that must be muddled through to reach the ending. I enjoyed bookes 7-11 of WoT, but in hindsight, that segment of the series would benefit from being reworked in to 2 or 3 books.
So before WoT most fantasy books were actually 200-300 pages at the most. Any of the drizzt or dragonlance are not that long, the Demon War books have different characters but they all come together in a plot very quickly after an introduction and fight the evil. There is a huge series of them by RA Salvatore but he doesnt waste peoples time on 900 page book that repeats plot points
For me, the main complaint was Jordan's unwillingness to let a forsaken die even when they really should have. And they never seemed like coming back was necessary for the plot so it felt like treading water for no reason.
I remember waiting patiently for each release after having binge reading the first 3 books. I literally threw Crossroads of Twilight on the floor. I didn't pay retail for any of the following books. Picked them up used after they had bottomed out in price.
That was my strategy also. Never retail. Once they hit the clearance shelf at Banres and Noble I was in.
Felt the slog on the first read and having to wait for the next books. On re-read though I actually didn't feel it as much and have enjoyed them much more. Maybe having the complete perspective, seeing them as one story (seeing even more of the foreshadowing and references), helps.
I'm on Fires of Heaven and I find myself feeling itchy to get back to someone meaningful.
Good technical evaluation! It strikes me that JRRMartin ran into the same problems with ASoIaF Books 4&5. He ran into the famous 'Knot' that caused him to tear apart the plot and rearrange the story-threads. Unfortunately, I think this major rewrite burnt him out, leaving us still waiting for Book6. Also, Tolkien famously had to deal with this and solve it with the story of Frodo and Sam being written as a self-contained story-arc/narrative in Book2&3 (The Two Towers & RoTK)) versus the Aragon/Gimli/Legolas and Merry/Pippin plot-lines. Of course, this was handled differently in the movie adaptation, which worked in the cinema-format versus the books which also worked but in the book-format. Thanks for addressing this lesson.
The middle books drug, but in no terms would I say they "sucked". By book 3 you can see the pattern in developing in Jordan's writing, He uses exposition to reestablish lore, that was already fleshed out in previous books. It's like he wrote each book so that someone fresh to the series could pick one up and get a overcap of the series, so they wouldn't have to read, reread, the series from the start to understand all that was going on. Too many story lines, was one of the main reasons they drug on. Just sticking with Rand, Perrin, Matt, Egwene, Nyneve, was enough.. or use side characters briefly, to help flesh out the main characters arch's, for a brief chapter here and there.
I'd have to say that's my biggest problem with 'epic fantasy' since The Lord of the Rings. In fact, I found switching between Frodo/Sam's story and Mery/Pippin's story to be confusing and a little unsatisfying and they did that only once in both The Two Towers and the Return of the King. A song of Ice and Fire is an okay book but I get major character whiplash every time the book switches to another character's point of view. I'm sure Wheel of Time suffers from this also. If I had to choose between following one point of view, then going literally back in time to follow another character's point of view or keeping the timeline consistent and switching characters every chapter I'd choose the former.
But that point of view, completely disregarding the popularity or success of Lord of the Rings, is considered wrong in literature. In fact, it was one of many literary mistakes JRR Tolkien was considered to have committed as a newcomer ignorant of appropriate novel standards of the time. In fact, the degree of freedom Tolkien received in his creation not only of his opus but even the Hobbit was incredibly unusual at the time and would be very unusual now. An editor and a publisher today would not release Lord of the Rings as it was released at the time. It would switch more frequently between characters and it would focus far more on action and plot than description and setting that was his focus.
In my opinion this character switching, frequent cliffhangers and fragmented storytelling is incredibly unsatisfying and I'd prefer to read seven novels in the same timeline in the point of view of seven characters one after the other than to read seven characters and their stories simultaneously interspersing chapters.
Yup, loved overall, and it makes sense to have other characters have a page or occasional chapter to give us an outside view on say Rand, but it's like the Dr. Strange/M-She-U at some point where it's like wait, who's show is this, and why is Cadsuane et al. getting so much focus?
Incidentally this is part of why I was greatly confused at the claims the WoT show had to change the things it did for time. What? 8 Hours? Remove all of Jordans recaps, many character thoughts, garment descriptions, exposition, and (later) extraneous character chapters. ie. get straight into meat of the plot and character, and SHOW the world- it could have been so so good simply by focusing its attention.
Good analysis. When I read those, I felt I was in some sort of impenetrable fog: I had no idea which book I was reading, and didn't know where one ended and the other began, as they all felt the same; I was up to my neck in women straightening their skirts; Salidar Aes Sedai arguing; Rand moping around uselessly; Perrin running around a table chasing Zarine and running away from... whatsherface, the big tiddy noblewoman (and the entire Saldaean family soap opera related to this); Nynaeve and Elayne's circus adventure; and most importantly, not enough Min, that I felt I was suffocating in annoyance, drowning in pointlessness, deep in a bog, sinking in a quicksand pit. I didn't know if I'd make it through. But I did.
My guess was that Jordan dropped the ball and couldn't find a more elegant way to make the events he wanted happen. Surely even with a publisher demanding all characters are present, you could exercise some restraint and keep things in check.
I do fully agree that the first books are fantastic, and IIRC the last two of Jordan's books were great too. Sanderson's conclusion was great as well. I did enjoy the series, it's just unfortunate the middle bit drags on the way it does.
If I were doing a "fan cut" that unites Perrin's story in a single book, I'd probably make the executive decision to kill Zarine at the end of Dragon Reborn, and save Perrin and the readers a lot of annoyance. But then there might be not enough material for Perrin for a whole book, kek.
But hey, at the end of the day the middle WoT books are still better than Amazon's pathetic excuse for a TV show. :D
If nearly half of your series is referred to as ‘the slog’, you’ve probably messed up somewhere along the way.
I finished reading the series at the beginning of this year. My initial thoughts were that the series as a whole is quite overrated- at his best, Jordan is a capable storyteller reminiscent of an old man weaving a tale around a campfire, and at his worst, someone whose editor/publisher should have told to scrap and rewrite entire books in this series.
It started strong but after book two, it started to lose its way. The slog was fairly unbearable and the Path of Daggers was probably the worst fantasy book I’ve ever read. However, Jordan really did get back to his original form in his last book, Knife of Dreams. Sanderson did a fantastic job, finishing the book with the material he had to work with. His three final books are some of the best in the series.
I love The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance but I've been stuck on Oathbringer for years.
Many such cases.
I really like your idea about a book for each character. However I didn't mind so much jumping from protagonist to protagonist.
This video was really interesting! I’ve thought a similar thing myself about the shuffling together of lots of different plots, though I don’t think it bothered me as much as it did you or other readers. Personally, I enjoyed books 6-9, though there were moments where I really felt the slog and had to take a week or two week break. I think part of this is that I didn’t really have characters or plot lines that I disliked; I enjoyed seeing pretty much every character’s perspective, and even if there were characters/plots I preferred over others, I didn’t find any of them to be actually bad.
Funnily enough, the book that felt slowest to me as a reader was the first, I think because I already had some idea of what to expect out of the story long-term and I was waiting for it to get there (eg: Rand being a chosen one), and simply because I wasn’t used to Jordan’s short-term writing style (eg: prose, repetition, repetition, etc).
I was one of those who read the books when they first came out, and it was slow torture waiting for the next books to come out. I finally got my hands on one book, and it did little to advance the story. Then waiting YEARS for the next one to come out.
Then when Jordan passed away, I felt betrayed. I'd invested so much time in something that (I thought) would never be finished.
That's why i won't read a novel series that isn't already finished.
Now, however, the Wheel of Time is quite managable. You can skim through the boring bits knowing that a fantastic ending is waiting for you!
Just started rereading the whole series and man eye of the world and great hunt slap. great books. not looking forward to after the shadow rising tho i remember those books being slogs
@@siegfriedgottz698 Don't lose heart! You know it gets better!
So I like having a lot of protagonists in a series, but each book in that series focuses on one, two, or most three of them and they are all involved in the same story and area. The other characters will be support characters or barely in the book with a scene or two about them that will mix well with the story of that book.
So I was actually reading the entire series a few years back and I got well into Winter's Heart before I just stopped one day and never picked it back up (until very recently). I never really figured out why I couldn't remember most of what happened in those books, nor why I had stopped. Now, having started re-reading the series again and watching this it does occur to me that not much happened in those books because the progress forward was so incremental.
I wonder if it would be better for me, as a reader, to do what you suggested with the ebook versions, or to just read summaries and skip those books entirely. I'm about halfway through Eye of the World now, and it's something I'm not looking forward to later in the series.
Read everything up to Book 6, no skips. They're really good. Then, if you feel yourself about to DNF, switch over to chapter summaries or audio books for 7-10. Then 11-14 are a fantastic charge to the finish line.
@@wotfanedit Thanks for the advice.
@@Freelance170 pleasure! I sincerely hope that you make it to the end, it's really worth it. P.s. If any chapter summary sounds interesting then jump into it at that point and read in full before jumping back into the summaries.
Good luck!
That is partly true. However I would also suggest that some of the stories are just bad even if considered as a full story. Perains story drags to an absurd degree. Elaine's story is just not very good political drama. There are a number of issues in most of the main plots. Many fantasy series struggle with the split up, but if the individual stories are good, you still want to follow. Each individual story didn't have enough punch, and then you just have a bunch individual story all individually not very good, and then spreading it out over 3 books.
But of course as a right your not doing yourself any favors trying to do 8 parallel story lines.
Elayne and Perrin.
I dislike Elayne as much as Gawyn.
When I reread the series, I skip every chapter with an Elayne or Gawyn PoV. Makes the series much more enjoyable and you lose nothing of the story.
Boy, don't let Shadiversity hear you say this 😁.
I haven't read WoT since my early 20's, nearly 20 years ago, so I don't remember much about the middle part of the story. But I do remember the first 3 books pretty well, so that probably says something.
Not exaggerating, the only book I have ever returned to the bookstore was Winter’s Heart. I was a big fan and reading as they were released 20 years ago. I got part way through WH and took it back for a refund in disgust.
Recently finished the entire series via audiobooks and the middle were still a chore but much more doable and worth finally completing. Still an amazing series.
I'm the opposite. If a book is boring I can't deal with it as an audiobook, especially if it's 36 hours. If I have a physical book I can speed read and skim, get through it pretty fast.
The trick is to speed them up. It is for me at least. Sometimes I even use text to speech on kindle titles if the prose style slows me down. I'm beginning to have some health issues that affect my ability to read, so audio helps a lot. I think I prefer it actually.
Any chance of audio versions of your books in the future?
@@dansmith3085 Speeding up works, but if I lose enough interest in a characters story line then I usually just skip the chapters they’re in entirely. This works really well if the author has parallel story lines neatly separated by chapter. I remember doing this in Sanderson’s Storm Light Archive. The first two were such good books. The arrogant scholar girl (whatever her name was) drove me mad though. When her parts came up I just skipped the entire chapter. Boom, done. Life’s too short to waste it reading about crappy, irritating characters.
Agreed. There's too much good stuff out there to waste time on books that don't work for you.
As to audio, when my progress in a book is slow for whatever reason but I'm still interested in the story, then the audiobook is the way to go. Just the way my brain works, I guess.
@@DVSPress Same. I love the WoT audiobooks when they're good, but for those middle books, I really, *really* just want to skim through some parts.
Another Storycraft-related video! Favorite content on the channel!
The middle Wheel of Time books were a problem for me during the period Jordan was still working on them because of the 2+ year gaps between books. In fact, with Book 10, it got so bad that it took me a year to force myself to finish it. That being said, now that the series is complete and I can read them as part of a continuous story, I don't have any difficulty at all. I'm able to see how everything fits into the larger narrative and just enjoy the in depth characterwork that goes on in them. Also, id say 8-10 are the problematic ones. 11 was a return to form and probably a top 3 book in the series, imo. And Book 7 was one of the most focused books in the series with only two major plotlines: the hunt for the bowl of the winds and Rand's war wiwitSammael. And both were resolved in that book.
I'm in the midst of reading them, I've been "reading" path of daggers for about a year now. The middle books really are a slog to get through. I feel l should be taking notes on who is who and what their allegiances are, their overarching plot and development to fully understand what is happening in the story. It's maddening
I'd recommend after book 5 or 6, skip every female chapter. That will save people a lot of frustration
xD
I personally liked Crown of Swords and Winters Heart, but Path of Daggers really suffers from not including a character who had a cliffhanger at the end of book 7. That definitely irritated me. Also parts of Crossroads of Twilight are tough to get through.
Edit: also I think the slowing down of those books does end up giving a great pay off later. There were definitely characters that were worse to read than others. I love getting back to matt in winters heart and I also love Rand's arc in that book and it's climax. Perrin during those middle books is pretty boring though.
About a third of the way through winters heart and holy hell I usually go through 600 pages a month and Ive been stuck on book 7 and 8 for 6 months its painful to get through
The fact that there's so many characters and so much plot but basically zero character growth and the man vs women 2d repeat characters and dynamics is just becoming repetitive predictable and boring
It might be worth it to skip to book 11, knife of dreams, and just read a synopsis of the other books. By the time I got there I had forgotten most of what happened, but it didn't seem to matter anyway.
I think a lot of people are finding the middle books more tolerable now for two reasons: 1) they know the series has a conclusive ending 2) all the books are out, so there's no years waiting between books.
To be honest, I dropped the series on the second book. Tried re-reading multiple times and failed. These books are so boring, the characters are not engaging, the plot is rather predictable.
I had no problems with The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, Wizard of Earthsea or many other books considered "heavy reading" by some, but damn, Wheel of Time is just not for me.
You made it further than me. I tried years back to jump in, but unfortunately nothing gripped me at the time. I'll probably have another go at some point.
@@Agonis100 glad I'm not the only one who had issues with WoT.
Perhaps I'd have a better experience if I had been introduced to the series when I was younger and hand't yet read all these other fantasy books. Then, WoT might've seemed fresh and exciting.
I've just started book 10, hopefully it picks up again, but I loved the ending of book 9 atleast.
9-10 are by far the worst book in the series..
Sorry but Robert Jordan is not a good writer and the WOT series is not a good read. I am a big fan of Fantasy and sci/fi literature. Absolutely love all things Tolkien. So I purchased the first three books of the WOT series because of my love of the genre and because so many people online and a few of my friends just raved about their greatness.
The first three books were being offered in package deal so I went ahead and picked them up. I read the first one and just found it awful. It was a slow tedious slog of a read. And it wasn't slow because it needed to be. It was just slow because it seemed like the author just wanted to drag it out due to a misguided belief that this would make it seem more epic. Boy howdy was that a bit of foreshadowing for the whole series. 100 pages of a story spread across 826 pages. Like trying to take one pat of butter and spreading it across 6 loaves of bread. There was not a single character I gave the least bit of shit about and there wasn't a single line of memorable dialog in the entire book.
So I confront my friends and ask "WTF?" This sucks! Only to be hit with the standard WOT fanboy defense, "Oh yeah the first book isn't that good but it really picks up after that." "The later books are nothing like the first one" Blah, blah, blah. So I figured screw it I already have the second book so I'll stick with it.
So I read the second book. Aaaannnnnndddd? It sucked just as bad as the first one. Not to mention containing virtually every lame run of the mill fantasy genre cliche imaginable. It was like something a student turned in for a class assignment in a Fantasy Literature 101 class. And not one of the A students either. One of the D students who went online to a website called youcanwriteafantasyepic.com and just downloaded some standard format story outline that leaves blank spots where you fill in your own personalized town and character names before you turn it in to the teacher.
So I confront my friends again and I'm like, "this shit is still awful and I'm done with it." Only to be hit with, NOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOO, you can't stop at book two." This where it really gets good and this happens next and that as well. And so and so hasn't even entered the story yet. This is where Jordan is really about to come into his own as a writer. Blah, Blah, Blah. And I'm thinking, "None of you fuckers mentioned that the first two books sucked when you recommended this series." Why am I only being told this now? But screw it I already have the first three so I'll read the last one I have.
And I have to admit when it comes to book three it......it.......it.......SUCKED JUST AS GODDAMN BAD AS THE FIRST FUCKING TWO! It wasn't one milligram better. It wasn't better by so much as the weight of an ant turd. I still didn't give two shits about a single character in it. I still had not read one line of memorable dialog. And it was glaring clear to me at this point that the author of this shit had no plan whatsoever to ever draw this shit to a close. Nope, he had found his meal ticket and he was going to ride this train until he dropped fucking dead. And that is exactly what he did. I felt like a prophet when I heard he died without finishing this series requiring it to be closed out by another writer. And if he was still alive right now book 21 of the WOT series would be coming out this year with still no fucking end in sight.
I have no clue why this series is so popular. Given that it is 14 books long perhaps some people view completing it as some kind of harsh and grueling ritual that not everyone can complete. Like climbing Mt Everest. It's not really enjoyable while you are doing it but once back home you can brag that you endured the hellish conditions and reached the summit. Sometimes when the conspiracy part of my brain kicks in I think the WOT series is a long running prank to get gullible dumb-asses to read 14 terrible books by constantly telling them every time they want to quit that things are just about to get good. Then when you finish book 14 the other fans let you in on the joke and you can join them in leading other poor unsuspecting souls down this long awful waste of their life. Laughing as you prod them into starting one awful book after another in the vain hope that this is the one that will finally be good.
1
Reply
Man! I couldn't wrap my head around the title: "Why (the Middle Wheel) of (Time Books Series) suck". If we are talking about syntagmatic relations, that was a confusing orgy.
Are fan edits of books a thing like they are with film/tv? There are fan edits for example of Star Wars The Clone Wars (the animated series) that cut and paste the episodes into linear themed movie-length viewing experiences. I think the WoT's middle part (at least) could use a similar treatment, just for the fun of it. I would think even old fans would appreciate it. I know I've spent some read-throughs going right past huge chunks of the books because I didn't want to read yet again what this person was doing in this place, and would rather have had at my disposal "The Mat Cauthon Volume" of the WoT at my fingertips instead for example.
Also: I remember how dumbstruck and rather infuriated I was when Perrin spent a whole book accomplishing absolutely nothing. NOTHING. As much as I love Jordan for 'stringing things out', a book is a finite thing, like a series, and sometimes putting an ending on a thing is better than the 'stringing out', regardless of how glorious and 'baroque' that thing might be.
Did anyone like that “bowl of the winds” storyline, i liked it, it just wasn’t what I wanted? I just finished reading the books so I’m looking at different opinions now
Brandon Sanderson may have over-learned from the mistakes of Jordan though: the Stormlight books have extremely organized character development structures with 1 primary character arc each book and 3 or so sub-character arcs. Don't think Kaladin would have PTSD at this point? Tough! He needs an arc and you're going to see him depressed whether you want to or not!
Read the next Stormlight book! See Kaladin repeat his character arc again, see Shallan become even more annoying, and encounter plot points related to other books in the universe because the whole thing is more interconnected than a capeshit movie! You'll even get 500 pages more than the previous book, at no extra charge!
I loved the Way of Kings and enjoyed Words of Radiance, Elantris was fantastic and the other Cosmere stuff has been decent, but I checked out after he ruined Dalinar in Oathbringer. I think Sanderson's overrated, and I think he got in way over his head when he said he'd make Stormlight a ten-volume series.
I actually take that as "character growth is not a straight line, and for many people depression is a life-long battle, not something you just 'win' and never deal with again."
Yeah… “Stormlight” too started strong and lost me in “Oathbringer”….. I was hoping for better after his Mistborn series….. but some authors only have a few good stories in ‘em.
This series is wildly overrated in my opinion. I finally got off the Jordan crack after reading book 9. The guy wrote 1000-page novels where nothing happened. He filled dozens of pages per volume describing banners and flags or talking about the women glaring at the men and folding their hands under their breasts or tugging their braids. It's a shame because the first three books were quite good, albeit derivative of Tolkien and Herbert. I remember coming across a site in the early 2000s called wheeloftimeiscrap where we could commiserate about the problems with this flawed series. I understand that people were generally happy with the job Sanderson did in finishing this, but I was not interested in it anymore by then.
Nah.. it's still a classic. Flawed, yes.. that happens.. but a classic.
@Daniel Rumbacher A classic is not something to be proud of..? okay, buddy. Sure.. that doesn't make any sense but whatever.
Pulp novels can be of great quality, anyway. Conan The Barbarian is a great example of that. And Lovecraft stories. You sound like a bit of a your-own-fart sniffer to me, to be honest.
I've always thought that the issue was never with the middle books; but the early books.
For multiple early books we are reading at breakneck pace with a saga which seems to feel only 4-6 books long. and we are taught: Rand is the main character; when he does things the plot moves forwards. and that is the *only* way plot can move forwards. Yet, starting in book3 onwards and increasingly later it begins to feel a lot more of an ensemble cast; which is how it ends as well. The first time reading through we are 'plot light' in the middle section as we (at the time correctly) assume where is Rand - we need the plot, wait is that all we get this book?
I was 'lucky' in that I read the first 7/8 very early on, and multiple times before I had to wait for the books to be drip-fed over the next few years; so I had moved away from the 'Rand centric' view I had in the beghinning and was invested more in the secondary characters; so when winter's heart came out I could enjoy all the plotlines equaly. The biggest 'dip' in quality for me only occured with a single book and that was crossroads of twilight where literally *nothing* happened in any of the plotlines; and this was compounded by new spring being written and released during that same 5 year timeframe.
If CoT and WH were merged into a single book and a few things trimmed down the slog on subsequent rereads would barely be noticable. It would still be noticable to first time readers due to the issue with the early book forcing a randcentric viewpoint
Perhaps he was was trying to imitate the WEB Griffon type series novels that follow multiple protagonists through career progression--The Brotherhood of War for example. Those were insanely successful.
In game of Thrones G.R.R.M. kinda split up the narratives in book 4 and 5 too, and many don't like A Feast for Crows. Although thinking about it, it might have been because book 4 mainly had "B-characters", the main cast were mostly missing until the next book.
I was talking about the Game of Thrones book specifically. I haven't watched the TV show and only bothered with the first book.
@@DVSPress the GoT books are actually WORSE than the TV show for most parts, except the last 2 seasons which were just horrible.
Several years ago I started a personal project of editing down books 6,7,8, (LoC thru TPoD) and 9,10,11 (WH thru KoD) into two abridged books, in which form I'd nickname them "Upon the Heights" and "The Shadow Falling". 11 is mostly a return to quality but does drag somewhat in places, 10 is mostly skippable, 9 has a lot of meh going but also some things worthwhile. 6,7,8, all actually good on a readthru, but none of them advance the plot as much as we were expecting back when we were waiting for their release, and the typical things could be trimmed down, without outright discarding much. Broadly, 6-8 focus on Rand's tragically doomed attempt at winning by being a king (and Mori's progress at reining in the Forses), thus the title references the first part of the proverb from which the canon Book 8 takes its title ("Upon the heights, the paths are paved with daggers.") Rand is dejectedly wandering through the second trilogy (and Mori is coming to realize that the Forse losses aren't entirely due to a lack of good coordination for Team Evil -- Team Dragon doesn't depend entirely on the Dragon and has become a serious threat in their own right, which starts Mori's own fatalistic slide into the depression of being still stuck in this no-win scenario, culminating later in his hopeless nihilism while other Forses step up their game to fight it out, most especially Dem who was promised the title of Nae'blis replacing Mori.)
Got distracted by doing other things, as usually happens, but I made good inroads into trimming down LoC, and I think it could be done well.
It really should have ended by book 8, as the publisher projected once, back around the time of 4.
You hit the nail on the head.... When I wrote my own ending to the story.... I consolidated it down to 3 groups Mat & Perrin/Black tower... Egwene/White tower....Rand's issues....
The crossover idea is wild to think of as a WoT revision, I'm imagining what that would have been like. Like reading a Mat book, and in one or two chapters this "crosses over" by having Rand in it, lol, or Egwene and Nynaeve. Who knows, it might have worked.
I confess, I have read the first 7 three times over, I always stall out around there.
Agreed. I just gave up after book five. Even when I was told it gets better, I lost interest and never finished the series.
great idea for a conversation. i re read twot often and most recently as a storywriter trying to learn from mistakes and triumphs
I do agree on your criticism of The Stormlight Archives, despite these books being my favorite Sanderson series.
I have to force myself to slug through Shalan's and Venli's plot, for example. I want to focus on Kaladin and Blackthorn, but the books are all over the place with many characters and subplots I am not interested in.
Edit: by the fourth book, this issue gets worse. At first, we had three protagonists (maybe four, if you count Szeth). By the fourth book, we have like six or seven main characters.
While I think Sanderson is a fantastic writer, it seems like he breaks too many of his main characters just to have a story that results in fixing them by the end of each book. I did actually think Raboniel was an interesting villain in book 4 though.
@@otomicans6580 agreed on your first point. Can't say much about Raboniel as I am in the middle of The Rhythm of War right now.
Sanderson is a great writer, but he is not flawless, by any stretch. I think too many readers are too awestruck to see it, though.
Man this doesn't make me feel good about my chances of finishing. I'm stuck on Oathbringer and have been for years. I have read tWOK and WOR twice through but always peter out on the 3rd book
Yup, Brandon Sanderson repeating some of the same problems. It was very apparent in oathbringer. Slow.
@@FelineElaj I find that Sanderson is following a little in Jordan’s boots - that the endings are the heaviest parts and the rest of the book is just building up to that. Instead of having an interesting and gripping journey all the way through, we’re subject to intense worldbuilding and general backstory filling instead.
TWoK and WoR weren’t so bad, but Oathbringer felt very reminiscent of Jordan’s tendency to make his books back end heavy.
Every book except Crossroads of Twilight has at least one major plot point resolved, which is the only book I didn't like.
The splitting up of the characters didn't bother me. I enjoyed watching what was happening in the other places in the world and seeing how it affected the larger part of the story.
My opinion is that the books would have felt more meaningful if they each had more focus on one plotline rather than being so spread out among all the characters and subplots. I'm not going to chart it out but it certainly felt like the first 5 or so books had many more significant events than the middle ones, but you're right most of them do at least give you one big point per book.
I always wondered if Robert Jordan's illness was starting to take its toll on him and interfered with his writing while working on the middle books. I didn't have the sense that he knew where he wanted things to go.
Agree with ya. I stopped reading around book 10. Couldn’t take it any more. I also hated that every female character was the most annoying kind of feminist
Lol. I noted the same thing! In fact, when I first read Eye of the World, I assumed “Robert Jordan” was a pseudonym, and the real author was indeed a woman.
I have just finished book 4. Is it worth carrying on? I dont want to waste my time if its not worth it. Any suggestions?
Never got into this series. Will keep trying. Maybe one day it will click.
The idea of putting the characters' stories in separate books does make sense, but I agree it wouldn't work out.
George R.R. Martin only focused on certain characters in A Feast for Crows and it was the worst received book in the series.
Yeah, it felt almost like punishment to read from about Crown of Swords until around Knife of Dreams.
I'm wondering if you've read Will Wight's Elder Empire series? It's two trilogies that cover them same period of time, but from the perspectives two different protagonists who occasionally cross paths (and swords). I thought it worked brilliantly, though I did end up hating one of the characters.
I thought the books were all amazing up to 7. That's where things started getting to be a little bit hard to get through in places.
Book 7 is ok, but definitely started the downward trend. Book 8 isn't the worst, but suffers since Mat isn't in it. Pretty sure he meant books 8, 9, and 10 when he said 7, 8, and 9.. Nine and ten were certainly the worst nooks of the series.
Yeah amen, I got so bored reading those never ending anecdotes and simply stopped. Another problem was that everything seemed to get epic'er and evil'er ad nauseum.
My favorite finished Fantasy series tied with Malazan.
I hated the slog the first time I read the books (as they were released), before it was known as the slog. Waiting for the books to come out and then getting 3 books in a row of meh was so disheartening. Thankfully Knife of Dreams to the end are top notch fantasy writing with one of the most satisfying endings imo.
I’m on my 3rd re read. It’s not as bad when you power through.
This reread I have done books 1-6. Break and read another book/series. Books 7-10. Break. Books 11-14 + a new spring.
Also not as bad when you’ve read the whole story once.
One series that kinda did this was ASOIF. Going from Storm of Swords to Feast of Crows felt like deja vu to me lol.
Shadow Rising is Dune 1 tier quality, and then there's crossroads, ooof
Honestly? I had trouble with book 1. It had a lot of good but man oh man did it take its sweet time.
I said the same thing to my mum discussing The Wheal of Time.
Should have been "The Wheal: Book of X."
But I also don't mind, probably because I am listening to it in piecemeal.
First of all I want to thank you for articulating yourself to amazingly without a single spoiler . That was impressive . You made me realize after reading eye of the world maybe the series isn’t for me and it’s sad because I’d love to see Rand in his prime . But I can’t go through more than 1 book of filler . Maybe song of ice and fire is best for me because GOT quickly became my favorite
I'm on book 9 and I hate the series so much. But I'm invested and there are some REALLY great characters. Sadly they are outnumbered 60 to 1 by boring or detestable characters.
I am determined! to finish this epic slog! I read the first book and listened to books 2-4 via Audible and it's been enjoyable, but yes a slog and confusing several times throughout. I have started book 5 in paperback
I'm currently working through book 9, so I'm in the slog. Not my first time. These days, it may take a reader a few weeks to a couple months to make it through these middle books. Ironically, that's almost real time with the story (book 9 mentions events from book 7 having occurred a month or two in the past).
When I was younger, the publication time between books 6 and 10 was a decade of my life waiting for the plot to advance significantly. It was painful and I forgot all the details between each book, especially all the nuance with minor characters. Reading it now isn't so bad. And each book ends with a MAJOR event.
These books are a jumbled mess in part because all the main characters are in their own messes. No one's plans have gone well following the events of book 6. The world is sorting itself out and that takes time and patience. And all the minor factions that have barely affected the plot in several books are coming into their own narratives and colliding into the major factions and plots. I agree these are all books in the third act of a four act structure (Asian kishotenketsu), which serves as a diversion from the major plot.
Sounds like Malazan series, only there it was done from the book 1. Later I found out they are actually world building books for Erikson's tabletop system. 🤨 Wish someone had told me that before I wasted time on 3 books hoping it would get better. It doesn't. 😖
** SPOILERS**
Crown of Swords certainly slows down the pacing. I mean months would go by in and between books up until Crown of Swords. but I wouldn't add it to the slog. The character changes were too big at that point to add it to the slog.
Another youtuber explains the slog as the Expansion novels. Most best faith argument, and honestly better for trying to sell the series to others to try.
But the slowness did provide some great moments though I found. Like how big the cleansing of Saidin was to the whole world and how depending on which side (Wetlanders vs. Seanchan) they all thought the other side had a magical nuke. That was fun as hell to read.
Or Rand's deepening madness, Perrin's deepening rage, and even Mat showing how much of an anti-hero he truly was.
I'm in the middle of an audiobook re-read, and honestly, I think it's better heard than read. (Metaphor coming) It's like how Shakespeare's plays are meant to be watched... in a play. They don't really read all too well. Wheel of Time has that similar quality. To me at least.
A intriguing and delicious entree.
A main dish with too many flavours, ingredients and they gave you too much.
A nice dessert but they rushed you to finish and you were already full
I came here because these were my feelings exactly struggling to get through the fires of heaven. Too many people. Too many locations. Too much explanation Ive heard before in the previous books.
I found audio books help with the issue. Not sure why, but hearing them vs reading them helps the “going no where “ feeling
Sounds to me like Jordan stretched his series out way too long to the point that the middle stuff is the literature equivalent of anime filler that just exists to pad it out past its limit. Bloated cast too.
FYI I've never read the series, don't have time or interest to do so, that's just my impression of it.
Reading one character from beginning to end would be an interesting thing to try.
The one issue I had was with Rand, he kept focusing on Rand's impending doom. That he would be a total nut case. That old after while.
I've now read the books or listened to the audiobooks somewhere over 40 times, I can tell you why those books were a slog for me. Perrin and Faile. Even while waiting for each new book to be published, there was a build up of her rescue, only to once again not get it. Everything surrounding that got old. It was dragged out to the point Perrin and Faile were on a different timeline then everyone else. I believe it was 2 months or so, behind the rest of the characters. Now, I sometimes gloss over swathes about Perrin and Faile and find I barely even miss them. Perrin's angst about his place in things versus his angst just over Faile is just hard to read. The best part of that entire episode was Galad's change of heart about Perrin at the end of it.
I’m currently doing a re-read for the first time since the books came out and I’m surprised at how good the first two books are. There’s a heist! There’s all kinds of interesting and weird scenes! I’m dreading books 7-10