Another ReRead Topic!

[Caelan Arendor]

On 11/21/2025 at 5:59 PM, Starla Yilmaz said:

Think of it as a blessing.  You can reread your favorites like it's the first time over and over! What I would give to reread some of Agatha Christie's novels without knowing whodidit.

Thank you very much for your comforting words. The one positive aspect of ageing as one’s memory fades is that, after a while, one no longer even notices it oneself. Isn’t that wonderful? Only those around us then still have to cope with our creeping foolishness — truly their problem!

[Caelan Arendor]

🥲

[Starla Yilmaz]

Almost two hundred pages into The Shadow Rising, and Rand just tried to save the unnamed little girl's life with Callandor. I have been waiting for this scene! For some reason, I thought it happened at the end of TDR and have been really confused/impatient to get here. I love it for many reasons (including how it makes me tear up). It's a very important reminder that, despite all of their power, people who can use the One Power are still powerless over death, just like the rest of us.

[Kalessin]

I'm getting into Yet Another Re-Read, and am enjoying it. 

[Starla Yilmaz]

I think I am starting to see the problem that happens in the later books…it was in the opening chapter of The Shadow Rising. I didn’t meantion earlier because I didn’t know how to puzzle it out, if that makes sense. The obvious thing is we wind up with too many POVs and it’s like he loses track of whose story this is, but each scene and chapter needs to have conflict (conflict being defined as an obstacle to what the character wants). Robert Jordan gets away with it a bit in the earlier books with worldbuilding stuff, but the opening chapter in this book made me ask “Is this needed?” once or twice. My hypothesis is this will get worse as time goes on and is why certain POVs are a struggle to get through.

 

If not, well, it’s just more evidence that my MA in Writing is worth about the same as frame it sits in.

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

I think for me (though I admit I've not thought about this a lot so maybe I'm being a bit hasty) but the issue often is not that each story arc needs an obstacle, it is more that the story due to its scale (or Jordan's preference perhaps) resists overcoming the obstacles so the arcs seem to often hit dead ends when they come up against something that cannot be solved until the last battle or is an important story element like the machinations of a particular forsaken, for example. 

 

Like for example how Couladin is fairly quickly dealt with but the Shaido linger for quite some time as they are needed for the general plot of chaos being wrought across the Westlands. Or how some nations continue through rebellion/forsaken control/Rand-skepticism for so long, because if Rand too quickly gets their support the story runs out of obstacles for the main narrative. 

[Starla Yilmaz]

Pure spoilers ahead, although without how long the books have been out, uh, no apologies here.

 

Light burn me if I didn't start crying at the final battle of Two Rivers! I think the only thing I remembered out of this book was Nyneave getting the best of Moghedien. Now THAT scene was a joy to reread. Everything else is a mix of the usual fuzzy half-remembered plot points, but not the details (The White Tower schism happening and Siun getting stilled, but not how it was with Min, Laras, AND Gawyn's help that they escaped).

 

How Robert Jordan handled revealing Lanfear's birth name is the perfect example of how to reveal information without it being an info dump. It's also such a nice detail that Lews Therin is reincarnated as a descendant of someone who served Lanfear before she bored into the Dark One's prison. That was definitely a detail my friend and I missed when we were young teens. I think what I'm noticing now is that Lews Therin clearly did care for her, which is an interesting perspective I never considered before. I always had it fixed in my mind that it was more of an obsessive stalker situation, not him stepping away because he genuinely had feelings for her, and she just cared about his power and how it could elevate her/them.

[Starla Yilmaz]

Maybe a third of the way through FoH and surprised at how I remember everything except Rand in this one lol. The things I did remember I didn't realize were all in this book, though. Like I thought we didn't join the circus until later, but I guess it makes sense because there are loads of things that I know are going to happen, and I only read through book 10 all those years ago. And I am looking forward to circus shenanigans. I remember finding them fun.

 

It's funny how it's like I had some pieces to a thousand-piece puzzle, but no idea that I was missing so many of them. And I am loving this world (and Rand surprisingly). I want to stay here with him and Nyneave forever. It's easy to say that now I guess...

[Starla Yilmaz]

Finished!

 

Why was I thinking that Egwene was the one who figured out how to make ter'angreal, not Elayne? That was a fun surprise lol. I also couldn't remember how Nyneave had captured Moghedien, so that whole scene was me going "ohssmegohfudgeOHDAAAAM". Luckily, my husband was taking a shower, so I didn't have to attempt to explain anything.

[Starla Yilmaz]

Just started Lord of Chaos. Honestly, I don't want to see Rand in a box, so I squeezed in two books before cracking LoC open. Just read through the Prologue and...60 pages? For a prologue? Pick one POV and call it a Prologue, the rest can have proper chapters or something. And some condensing/cutting/editing. Yes, some details are necessary to create suspense, like Sevanna having the cube, but did we really need Demandred in Shayol Ghul and then a meeting with the other Forsaken with Demandred telling them his orders from Shayol Ghul? Those two scenes could easily have been turned into one.

 

This is actually something I see happen to a lot of writers with long series (**cough Dresden Files**). Their first book gets lots of editing while it's being shopped around, then it gets picked up. Great! Now you don't have the same amount of time to spend on developmental editing, which is fine, overediting is a thing, but then the series becomes POPULAR. Suddenly, you need to pump books out as fast as you can because $$$, so what falls by the wayside? Editing, and you get lots of issues that would have been ironed out if there had been just another developmental round.

 

 

[HeavyHalfMoonBlade]

Actually, according to Jordan the publisher picked up his pitch for a story that would be five-six books and he was given six and told if it was five he could just write something else for the sixth. Because "he liked the way [Jordan] writes". 

 

Not that I disagree that editing could very well be a lower priority as books progress and the story gets more locked in and the power of the author increases. Didn't Rowling sack her editors? Maybe that is just a malicious rumour I heard. 

[Starla Yilmaz]

Rowling fired her first agent, but I haven't heard anything about editors. She wouldn't have had the power to do so anyway because they are/were employees of the publishing house.

 

I will say that there is a give-and-take relationship with an editor. My tarot deck originally had a different name, but the publisher wanted to change it. Initially, they wanted something with the word 'healing' in it, which I strongly opposed. We went back and forth for a while before marketing (not me) decided it would be called The Butterfly Wisdom Tarot. When we were doing edits for the guidebook, they told me there were certain sections that needed to be rewritten, and because I had pushed back so hard on the title, I didn't have much of a choice but to do the rewrites since I would like to publish a follow up title with them and I don't want the team to think I'm a difficult author to work with or anything like that. (Good news, my editor said she did like working with me and hopes she can work on my next project).

 

However, if I were JK Rowling's level...Then I could have just said "nope, it's perfect," and they would have gone to print since they know it would sell a bajillion copies.

 

I know RJ's eventual wife was his at-home editor for a long time,  but I can only imagine how sticky that could get after a while. And, of course, the speed pressure/issue of needing to get the books out as quickly as possible...it's not surprising and a shame.