Literature Wheel of Time

MagicPenguin

One Thousand Club
Kind of a long shot, but I was just wondering if anyone here knows of and/or has read in part or in whole Robert Jordan's massive Wheel of Time fantasy novel series. I'm a huge, huge fan myself and it was recently announced that Amazon is going to make a TV show out of it in the next few years, so I thought I'd see if there was anyone to be excited about it with kicking around.
 
I haven't read all the books, but I know this cycle and I read the first two books and "New Spring" which is a prequel.
I would like to continue reading at some point, but I don't own any more books yet ^^ As soon as I get the next one I'll continue. (I'm one of those maniacs who still prefer reading paper books rather than e-books T__T but maybe I should just give in and get e-books...)

Oh, TV show sounds exciting, I would like to watch that!
 
Ooooh, you stopped after the first two, but the third is where it starts to really get good, in my opinion. You should definitely jump back in when you get the chance, e-book or paperback (I hear the audiobook is really well done too, if that's your thing!). New Spring was great as well. Apparently, there were supposed to be two other prequel novels, but Robert Jordan sadly passed before he had a chance to write them. I know one of them was supposed to be about what Tam al'Thor did before the events of the main story, but I don't know about the other. Very sadly, we will never know.

I'm excited for the TV show as well. I feel like there are a lot of ways it can be done wrong, but the guy who's in charge of writing it, Rafe Judkins, is the same who wrote Agents of SHIELD and some other high profile shows, so it seems like he knows what he's doing. He has also made it clear he's a huge fan of the books via twitter; every wednesday, he gives a little tidbit about the very early stages of the show's production, calling it "WotWednesday." Honestly, it feels like every Wednesday is Christmas come early for me, even if he's not really divulging anything too big as yet.
 
Ah, yes, I felt like things were about to get going. So I really would like to continue.

I'm not into audiobooks, sadly, I prefer to read. But if it's good I may give it a try.

Hmm, I should check that, sounds promising! I'll definitely watch the show when it's released.
 
Yeah, the third book, The Dragon Reborn, is unique in that it barely features anything from the PoV of the main, central protagonist from the first two books and every book afterward. It focuses instead on what the other characters are doing from their PoVs, some of whom are being featured for the first time (Mat's first chapters are in this one, and boy is he a lot of fun). The consequence is that the world of the story really starts opening up from the third book onward, everybody kind of off exploring different aspects of the world and meeting different people. You start getting more interesting explanations for the magic system and more examples of its varied uses, you begin to get a closer look at some of the bad guys pulling strings from behind the scenes (other than Ba'alzamon), and you start to see the main cast begin to grow from the kids they were in the first two book into the more experienced adult roles that they will eventually have later on down the line.

Yeah, lots of fun. You're in for a treat.
 
It's always interesting to follow the characters when they develop, especially if it happens over a period of time and not just a big timeskip.
 
Well, it's a 14 book series of 10,000+ pages total, so there's plenty of time for them to develop with no timeskips necessary. For better or worse. Ahaha.
 
Haha true. It's a large series. It doesn't really scare me because I know it's good and it falls into the type of books I like.
 
A lot of long series fall off the later it gets into the series. *cough*Sword of Truth*cough* I always felt it should have stopped around Book5.
So it can always be hit or miss. I'm usually wary of very long series, especially if it's something I don't know much about.

Some books are also more interesting than others as far as I'm concerned, but I had a friend who was a super fan of WoT and got me hooked XD
 
I'm a bit of a superfan myself, so I think WoT is great the whole way through.

A lot of people, though, say that books 1-6 are amazing, but 7-11 are bloated and too slowly paced. I can see where they're coming from because a lot of those books have plot lines that don't pay off until much later in books 12-14 and long scenes that seem to have too much filler unrelated to those plots. I can imagine this would be especially frustrating if you were a fan at the time those books came out and you had to wait the long years for the next one to find out what happened next. I feel much the same way with A Song of Ice and Fire at present; still waiting on Winds of Winter to see what happens to Jon Snow.

Since I started reading it after it was all already completed, though, the pacing doesn't really bother me as much. I love the whole thing to pieces, later novels and all.
 
Makes sense. Some plot lines just get a long exposition. Hard to say if it's good or bad, depends on how invested you are in the story or characters ^^
 

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