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Wheel Of Time

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The Wrath

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Just wondering if anyone has read these books. I've considered starting the series, but have heard that after Robert Jordan realized what a cash cow he had going, he started milking it for all it's worth, slowing the series down to a boring crawl. I finally finished Lord of the Rings, and I wouldn't mind reading more of the genre, so I'm just wondering if this is a good route to go.

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Not worth it. Maybe after he finishes the series, but not until then.

If you like sword and sorcery fantasy, which is the genre that LotR really springboarded, I recommend you try:

The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragon Wing, Elven Star, Fire Sea, Serpent Mage, The Hand of Chaos, Into the Labyrinth, The Seventh Gate

Their Dragonlance stuff is fairly good, too, and the Starshield books aren't bad. Steer clear of anything Margaret Weis writes on her own, it is saturated with Christianity. Even the stuff they write together has heavy-duty sacrificial motifs, but the characters and other oddities are thoroughly engaging.

Fortress Series by C.J. Cherryh

Fortress in the Eye of time, Fortress of Eagles, Fortress of Owls, Fortress of Dragons

C.J. Cherryh can be a little surreal, but the complex political manueverings in her books are positively mind-bending and highly enjoyable.

A number of books by Stephen Brust

The Phoenix Guards, Five Hundred Years After, The Paths of the Dead, The Lord of Castle Black, Sethra Lavode

Jhereg, Dragon, Phoenix, Orca, Athyra, Taltos, Issola, Yendi (may be one in there I missed, and these are not in order)

Brokedown Palace

To Reign in Hell

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy by Tad Williams

This is an interesting one, albeit long.

Also check out the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. I'd have more for you, but my books don't live with me any more so I can't just look at my shelves. I miss them sometimes.

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I've only read "Eye of the World" and "The Great Hunt". I did not find the series to be engaging such as other series like Sword of Truth.

If you want GOOD fantasy check out George R. R. Martin's series, "A Song of Ice and Fire". It has a medieval theme with different "Houses" striving for power.

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Well, at the moment, I plan on reading some H.G. Wells. I'm going to read The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, and maybe The Island of Dr. Moreau. I read The Time Machine a few months ago and loved it. Maybe I'll try a new fantasy series after that.

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Why would it be worth it after he finishes the series.

Because then you'll know what you're in for and you can make an informed decision on whether you want to wade through ten, twelve, fifteen (who knows?) 900+ page books. <_<

The first one was slow starting out, but it would have been GREAT as a stand-alone story. Robert Jordan has clearly let his desire to write some sort of epic SERIES destroy any artistic merit that he might have produced in so doing, though. I'm a capitalist, but stretching your books out to make a cheap buck is just wrong.

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I used to be a fan of the WOT series, indeed I got as far as book eight before I stopped reading the series.

I realised one day that the WOT series is too much 'fantasy for fantasy's sake'. It is basically one big drama in a fantasy setting. I got sick of the fact that most of the time it seems more like a soap opera than a fantasy series!

After thinking about it for a while, I realised that there was little real art to the series. There seems to be little theme or underlaying message to his work, and the few too be found are not all that compelling or well delivered. I have alot of better stuff to read than fantasy for the sake of adventure, at the comprimise of depth.

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Yeah, and the sixth one, and every book SINCE the sixth one, was ALSO supposed to be the last.  Who believes that any more?

Not me, I too have long been dubious about such claims. It is a shame Jordan seems to think quantity equates to quality....

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I agree that it's basically a fantasy soap opera. Especially the side quests involving the women which run along the lines of:

"Nynaeve tugged at her braid and wondered why men were such idiotic brainless fools who were so stubborn and full of rotten bladders that they'd rather sit and burn to death than ask for a bucket of water, the stupid cow udders of moronitude"

Unless Mr Jordan lives to be 230 he'll die long before the series is even close to completion. :)

Edited by Jingles
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I really liked the beginning of the series, but I think it really lost focues around book 7. I also thought it got increasingly ridiculous. It started to feel like two sides each with almost infinite power battling each other, and it started to feel pretty silly to me.

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I agree that it's basically a fantasy soap opera. Especially the side quests involving the women which run along the lines of:

"Nynaeve tugged at her braid and wondered why men were such idiotic brainless fools who were so stubborn and full of rotten bladders that they'd rather sit and burn to death than ask for a bucket of water, the stupid cow udders of moronitude"

Unless Mr Jordan lives to be 230 he'll die long before the series is even close to completion. <_<

The really annoying thing though is that the series does not really have what I consider to be much of a theme. Neither do any of the books really.

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  • 1 month later...
Wheel of Time really slowed down around books 7 and 8 (A Crown of Swords and A Path of Daggers)

However, 9 and 10 are great - Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight.

Give it another chance!

Ok, I will grant you that 9 was abit better than some of the earlier books (I have not read 10 and I dont intend to), it still really does not have any real theme. So why would I bother?

I think that about 7 and 8 part of Jordans mind was struggling with his style, that it was trying to tell him "this stuff is actually pretty meaningless"

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I don't read much fantasy anymore, but an obvious choice for fans of the Genre is Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind, which is almost explicitly Objectivist in nature. I've only read that book, so I can't comment on the other books in the Sword of Truth series, but that one is golden.

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I don't read much fantasy anymore, but an obvious choice for fans of the Genre is Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind, which is almost explicitly Objectivist in nature. I've only read that book, so I can't comment on the other books in the Sword of Truth series, but that one is golden.

Of course! Faith of the Fallen is brillant, and as good a non-Rand fiction read as I can think of. The other bnoks re not quite on the same level, but brillant all the same. You should definetely read them as soon as you can, you will not regret it.

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  • 4 months later...

I've read part 1 to 10 and must say i'm utterly bored up with the series.

Part 1 was boring enough to get through, but all the other parts thereafter don't add much spice to the whole story.

After reading all 10 parts you can tell exactly what everyone is wearing when going formal, casual and or on holiday. I can tell the names of most farmers in each country and there wives names and I know what clothes they prefer to wear during some national festivity.

I know the names of indescrbitive characters who perform guard duties and what their emotional state is during the day.

But I can't tell you, if my life depended on it, what the story is actually about and where all of this is going to other than the fact that the last battle is comming somewhere in the future. Probably when Jordan's bank account is fat enough.

I wish that Robert Jordan would look more to the writing skills of Weiss and Hickman, they master the act of writing fantasy stories far better. They can conjure of a fluid, spectacular and gripping story like it's nothing.

Just read the Dragonlance series as a testimony to their skills.

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