The wheel of time

Well i started listening to these 8 years ago whilst on a contract job, that paid amazingly well, yet was dull as dish water and quite easy. So this morning i finally finished listening to last book in the series.

Its quite possibly the greatest audio book (series) i have ever listened to such amazing series and great narration. Especially when you think it took 20+ years to complete and the author passed away and the final books were written from notes he left.

Quite moved by, so letting you all know

A series I plan to read at some point!

I really enjoyed reading them, quite old school in lots of ways, which is no bad thing.

Great series but it does loss its way in middle a bit imo Picks up again at the end so worth a read if you haven't and you are into epic fantasy series.

Jordan dying was the best thing to happen to the series, i enjoyed the first 2 books but the rest got very slow and boring.
The books were much better when Sanderson took over.

I thought that the earlier ones were excellent, and liked the pacing of them - it let you really understand the intricacies of what was going on. That said, the increase in pace towards the end, when Sanderson took over, was welcome.

I really disliked Sanderson's writing though, it seemed quite juvenile and lacked Jordans's subtleties. I also felt that it ended really rather abruptly. A more full epilogue would have been appreciated.

Yes, Robert Jordan was a better writer in my opinion. You could truly tell his style was a much more complex and nuanced style then Sanderson's. You could tell Mr Jordan had truly seen war first-hand (tour of Vietnam) in his work, the chaos, the damage. whereas, Sanderson's style reminds me of a person writing about things he has never experienced.

On a positive note I am grateful Brandon Sanderson worked hard at the books with what he had and finally finished the series. One day, I may even try one of his own works.

By the way the last chapter (few pages) were written by Jordan about twenty years ago, he knew his ending before the finish, true genius/storyteller.

I agree with deadite. It's harsh but Sanderson joining was the best thing that could have happened. Jordan was getting so lost in the middle books and the pace was just sooooo slow. Sanderson brought new life to the series and is a better writer imo.

I started reading them but struggled with book 5 I think it was , and gave up
would loved it to have been shorter and it maybe would have held my attention
the first few were brilliant. I did hear it picked up latyer on though

Good series, really lost its way around book 8 imo. Picked up again with RJ's passing (Sanderson did an acceptable job I suppose but I havent felt the need to read any of his own novels) but as an ending to a journey it felt very rushed and far to much was left hanging. Needs another trilogy for me to wrap up all the loose threads.

Just came across this pilot episode for a wheel of time tv series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYIEN1vIg

Bit of a rubbish pilot but i wouldn't mind seeing it done properly. Apparently this was thrown together and aired in the middle of the night just so they could extend having the rights to it.

I can't even imagine how bad a tv show would be. They'd have to have the balls to do some pretty extensive changes imo to make it work.

NexusK said:

Just came across this pilot episode for a wheel of time tv series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYIEN1vIg

Bit of a rubbish pilot but i wouldn't mind seeing it done properly. Apparently this was thrown together and aired in the middle of the night just so they could extend having the rights to it.

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Yeah, now there's a lawsuit between the producers and RJ's widow and editor.

Seeing as they made that pilot in about a week or two, it could be worse. But not a lot worse.

Unless large swathes of the story were cut out of it, and it largely featured the main characters, then I don't see how it could be immediately transferred to film.

I remember some very strange attitudes about women in those books - spankings, braid tugging, literally every significant female character was the same cold and aloof motherly type. I thought the bad guys in book 2 were the best fantasy bad guys I've read, I gave up reading when they became less bad.

NexusK said:

Just came across this pilot episode for a wheel of time tv series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvNYIEN1vIg

Bit of a rubbish pilot but i wouldn't mind seeing it done properly. Apparently this was thrown together and aired in the middle of the night just so they could extend having the rights to it.

Click to expand...

I was reading about that when it aired, basically it was a desperate attempt to fill a contractual clause that required the rights holder to get it on TV before a set date for them to be able to renew the contract.
So they made it in about a week, without informing anyone, booked a paid for slot on a channel that did "infomercials" and showed it. It's about as cynical a way to do it as possible, but potentially enough to let them renew the rights under the original fee arrangement.

As toshj says there is now a potential lawsuit in the offing, as the way they did it may not actually meet the requirements, and if the original contract stated anything about a TV/film adaptation requiring the author's representative being informed (let alone given any sort of option for script approval) they failed in it.

Werewolf said:

As toshj says there is now a potential lawsuit in the offing, as the way they did it may not actually meet the requirements, and if the original contract stated anything about a TV/film adaptation requiring the author's representative being informed (let alone given any sort of option for script approval) they failed in it.

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I think one of the concerns is that RJ's widow did actually know that they had something planned, as she'd met with Red Eagle Entertainment last year, but it isn't apparent that she knew it was going to be released or had even been made. She then claimed to have not known what was going on and indicated that she was (understandably) unimpressed, and as a result she may have breached their contract. All very messy and completely unnecessary.

I'd love to see The Eye of the World made in to a TV series or movie. That book would translate fine and is a decent story in its own right. Beyond that, I'm not sure. There's no way anyone is going to do a faithful conversion of the entire series. It would get boring and overly complicated in the middle, resulting in the project being scrapped. The only way the entire series is making it to screen is if it's gutted, with the main story becoming the focus.

The first 3 or 4 books are by far the best, followed by the last 2 which completely revitalised the series imo. I agree with the above Jordan passing away was by far the best thing that could've happened to the series as it had started to drag slightly.

Strangely though some of my favourite ever chapters are in books 8-10 as Mat becomes such a good character. But the rest of the books are just a chore generally. I remember it was so bad on subsequent readings I would skip entire chapters sometimes (God Egwene is a boring character)

manic111 said:

I thought that the earlier ones were excellent, and liked the pacing of them - it let you really understand the intricacies of what was going on. That said, the increase in pace towards the end, when Sanderson took over, was welcome.

I really disliked Sanderson's writing though, it seemed quite juvenile and lacked Jordans's subtleties. I also felt that it ended really rather abruptly. A more full epilogue would have been appreciated.

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This.

Jordan has lost the plot by the end but Sanderson is very much a paint by numbers author and he really misses the subtelty that the series had throughout.

It was a good/bad ending from the perspective of Sanderson finishing it off.

Ref the ending itself I didn't enjoy it personally. I thought the battle lingered in the wrong areas and skipped past the good, the Rand/Dark One battle was a huge anti climax and the ending itself (I won't say what as I don't want to spoil) I found rather lame. That's just my opinion though as I know a few who enjoyed the ending.

Can't understand the criticism of Sanderson. His books are superb, and his current series (Stormlight Archive) has been even better than WoT imo so far.

WoT had some good moments but it's relationship scenes were weird as **** and the filler books in the middle were just terrible.