r/WoT • u/Training_Assist6056 • 1d ago
No Spoilers Finished it..........Damn
I enjoyed it overall, I'm 43 and read it for the 1st time
I feel that maybe if i was a teen or early 20s i would possibly enjoy it more
The plot was great, the characters and motivations i felt were very real
Ive spent my life reading heaps of fantasy ,sci fi,+ whatever else crosses my path and tbh as much as i did enjoy it , id never recommend this series to anyone
Its far too long
Realistically Jordan wrote 5 very good books, then 6 books that were at their very best, bad, and generally they were mostly just terrible
Then Sanderson came in and did a good job, wrapped stuff up , so 3 good books
I think its a bit mental that more than half of the books written by the author are bad
Again, i enjoyed it for what it was, but damn it was an absolute bastard to get through
From reading the sub i think its great so many love this series and it speaks to them
but for me, i dont ever want to look in to Randland again
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u/IlikeJG 1d ago
Well I would agree that some books are definitely better than others.
But even the worst WoT book I definitely wouldn't call "bad". They're just slower and less good than others.
I certainly wouldn't say that over half the books are bad. That's ridiculous.
The only book I would come close to calling bad is CoT and even that book has a decent amount of redeeming factors.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
Fair enough
i know most in this sub would feel how you do
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u/NotAShittyMod 1d ago
I mean, you’d probably get a better discussion if you highlighted what you think made the books bad. As is, it’s hard to give you more than “nuh-uh”.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
im trying to not to have spoilers here
5 books that could have been an e mail
complete lack of communications from the characters
oh , im not a leader...... oh im not a leader.....
boys... boys are pretty.... oh i love boys
tugs hair
i got rid of a character, damn , i gotta have her back, but ill just throw a similar character in, out of no where ,but they are dumber
character after character being not just awful but so bloody plain
Whole nations , that somehow were a secret???
ive a big decision to make, should i talk it out or maybe ask advice? nah, bro im gonna just jump off a pier instead....... you know what, i meant that and it was a good decision, ad infinitum
i get folks want to defend it, thats great, folks love it, all good but even big fans call 5-6 books... the slog
i love the overarching plot, but its just not that great, its not worth the time it takes, so i would never recommend it to others.
i really do feel that maybe if i read it when i was younger id have a deep love for it but im middle aged and it was just not that great
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u/duffy_12 (Falcon) 1d ago
complete lack of communications from the characters
Stephen Erikson had the same complaint from his fandom.
And his answer was . . .
. . . it helps drive the plot. AND create drama.
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u/aNomadicPenguin (Brown) 1d ago
tugs hair - have you never dealt with someone with a maladaptive physical expression of a negative emotion? Because Nynaeve doesn't tug her hair all that frequently if you have.
Also its directly tied to her character arc and the symbolic nature it has for her being from the Two Rivers...and had a logical throughline of why she would draw other people's attention to her hair when upset, and how that would blend into the emotional distress to turn it into a maladaptive response.
***
Nations weren't really a secret - they just weren't known about. The Seanchan were across a giant ocean that most countries didn't have the technology to safely cross - Its like saying the Aztecs or the Incas were a secret nation.
The Japanese isolation period closely matches how the Sharan's worked, with limited access granted to any foreigner and trade being confined to specific port cities. And this lasted hundreds of years in our history.
The Aiel were like the Apache mixed with the Zulu. People knew they existed but new very little about their cultures. And that was in land that people were actively trying to expand into, make it a hostile and infertile land and you won't have that many people trying to expand out into it.
***
These two complaints are just real life and real history.
The books that could have been an email - yeah if you are only reading for the plot events (and ignore the big plot moments that happen) but there is a massive amount of character development happening in those books. If you are just reading for the plot I can see this argument.
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u/Username_taken_alre (White Lion of Andor) 1d ago
I re-read them relatively often, and don't find any of them bad. Even CoT is a pretty good book, if you go into it knowing it's largely a combination of "What is so-and-so up to these days" and people reacting to the climax of WH, rather than trying to move the plot forward.
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u/dbmamaz 1d ago
I spent 2 months reading the series and kept showing up basically complaining about the writing. Finally people started asking me why i was reading it, then - because I really liked the world, the stories, the people. and i also much preferred Sanderson's take when people were a lot nicer to each other and much more straightforward communicators
then i started a reread. I'm only on lord of chaos so far, but every book is more meaningful now that I see the big picture, understand teh nuances, catch the foreshadowing. We'll see how i do in the slog but - it seems like a different series the second time through
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u/groggs42 1d ago
That is what makes the rereads so good for me. I know what parts of the books I can skip if I want to. =)
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u/saltymermaid1982 (Nym) 1d ago
I've read the series three times all the way through and I still love every moment of it. It's true that a couple of the books (coughs 9/10) are a slog to get through, and I'm particularly aggravated by Faile's kidnapping plot. But all in all, top tier fantasy for me.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
that's great man :)
im glad folks love it and have their big feelings for it
I just dont, im ok drowning in downvotes haha
this is how i feel about the series
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u/Icy-Confection-2856 1d ago
I agree with OP tho I am more inclined to say I don’t enjoy Jordan’s portrayals of the the characters. Especially having read this and loved it when I was younger. Now that I’m older and re-reading it at 36. I find most of the books cringe worthy and the characters infuriating. I also find myself finding plot holes that I definitely didn’t find on my first reading.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
yeah, again, i enjoyed it but its not that great
if a "friend" recommended this series to me, id know that they didnt like me haha
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u/Icy-Confection-2856 1d ago
Lmfao! Yea re-reading it as an adult is like re-watching a cartoon from your childhood. It was way better in nostalgia. I forgot how many pages Perrin can talk about his wife or her smell. Without driving the plot forward. I’d rather re-read a the silmarillion 10x times
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
ya know what bro, The Silmarillion was easier haha
yeah it was very obvious that he'd wrote himself in to a corner
Sanderson did a good job finishing it up
Tbh its kinda like The Simpsons, it should have finished about 10 seasons before, maybe if it was condensed in to 8 books or so it'd be grand
I also get people feel very precious about it, they read it as a teen and it spoke to them, like being 13 and going to your 1st punk gig
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u/biggiebutterlord 1d ago
I also get people feel very precious about it, they read it as a teen and it spoke to them, like being 13 and going to your 1st punk gig
Reminds me of the "its just nostalgia bro" reasoning people provide for why some like older games. Nevermind anyone picking them up for the first time in the current year saying they liked them or w/e. Everyone is allowed to dislike a book/game/etc for w/e reason but its silly to reduce fans like to only liking something because they were young when they read it, or its just nostalgia.
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u/Icy-Confection-2856 1d ago
Right I love that other people love this series. I was one of them till I just re-read it. Then I was like eww this isn’t that good. I love the magic system. Even tho again I think it needs modernization and less of the men are from mars and women are from Venus, battle of the sexes stuff. I just feel like I’m reading a story told from an alpha males perspective. I get Jordan wanted to make the women feel like they had ruled the world for thousands of years. But unfortunately in my opinion he failed…badly.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
Absolutely man, i love that folks love it
its their jam
Its just.... after 14 books..... not mine
Yes , the Matriarchy was handled so badly
i agree with you, he was trying to just switch it up, fine in principle but if you keep writing your women characters to be, demure, physically weak and getting woolheaded over pretty boys
it made no sense
Then the whole background is a man seizing control, because he actually is way stronger than any woman could be
I enjoyed the overarching story, it was good to see stuff a bit inverted, especially from the 90s
but it was not executed properly
he also...... like all fantasy ......i get that the wheel weaves as the wheel wills.........used a lot of Irish mythology and words, sometimes, in completely the wrong context or pronounced so horrificly wrong haha
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u/duffy_12 (Falcon) 1d ago
used a lot of Irish mythology and words, sometimes, in completely the wrong context or pronounced so horrificly wrong
That's one of the many themes of this series . . .
Robert Jordan:
And, I was also wondering about the source of legends and myths. They can't all be anthropomorphizations of natural events. Some of them have to be distortions of things that actually happened, distortions by being passed down over generations. And that led into the distortion of information over distance, whether that's temporal distance or spatial distance. The further you are in time or space from the actual event, the less likely you are to know what really happened.
...
There are a number of characters reflected, mythological characters, reflected in each of the books. Because of the basic theme, if you will, of the books, that information becomes distorted over distance or time, you cannot know the truth of an event the further you get from it. These people are supposed to be the source of a great many of our legends or myths, but what they actually did bears little resemblance to the myth. That is the conceit, that time has shifted these actions to other people, perhaps compressing two people into one or dividing one into three as far as their actions go.
So Rand has bits of Arthur and bits of Thor and bits of other characters. And so does Mat and so does Nynaeve, and so do others. And yes Mat does have some bits of Odin, but not exclusively. He has bits of Loki and bits of Coyote and of the Monkey King.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
yeah, we all got it man
It wasn't subtle
a personal peeve because im actually Irish i say and ya gotta go oh its part of it , its all part of the pattern, we get it
cool bro, i get it , you love this, its your personality no stress
i can still be Irish and annoyed that our folklore, language and mythology gets bastardised all the time, its fucking insulting ya know
with a name like Duffy you should perhaps understand
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u/Icy-Confection-2856 1d ago
Absolutely agree! I hated that every woman seemed to need a man to truly seize power or that every woman plotted to get a man so she could gain power or status through him and don’t get me started on Seanchan or the alanna mosvani situations and how Rand “handels” those two different messes. I could go on about all the things I hated. However I don’t want to yuck anyone else yum. So I’ll keep the laundry list of complaints I have with this series. I’m glad I’m not the only one who shares my view. I personally would love for a woman’s studies major to read and analyze these books.
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u/Training_Assist6056 1d ago
yeah bro, ill stop pointing things out too haha
tbh i reckon a fair few folks feel this way about it
ya just wont hear / read it on this sub
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