The thing I think Sanderson has taken the most liberty with

[Al Jenn Mael]

The timeline is moving to fast. I wasn't completely on board for three books... however now I agree and think instead this should have been done in 5 books. They're good books but I feel like we're missing a lot of depth and it feels rushed.

[AutomatedTeller]

Really, the only thing I haven't liked was the very short shrift made of Rand's move from the dark side to the light side in TGS. As it's basically the thing that determines who's going to win, and it's been built up all book, it seemed... I dunno. Anticlimactic. Heck, Perrin WATCHING it was more interesting than Rand doing his "love is all there is" bit.

[Bob T Dwarf]

The timeline is moving to fast. I wasn't completely on board for three books... however now I agree and think instead this should have been done in 5 books. They're good books but I feel like we're missing a lot of depth and it feels rushed.

 

It only seems rushed because Jordan dragged his feet so badly, refusing to let his characters mature for ten books. He drove two readers away for every one he retained with his insistence on keeping everybody infants.

 

Jordan kept adding side characters and tertiary plots so that he was always six books away from finishing.

 

Then, once he got sick, he fooled himself into believing he could wrap things up in one more book.

 

Sanderson signed on for that one book. When he ( and TOR ) saw how much ground there was to cover, that got expanded to three volumes. However rushed everything feels to anybody, think how much more rushed it would be if TOR had limited him to just that one book.

[Jon Paul]

I did seem a little Dues ex Machina to me. I was on the fence of the tGS "Did she of didn't she die" debate and what happened is about what I thought would be if Grendal had lived. And you're right about the "no bird tweeting" example. There was no indication whatsoever before or after the fact that she survived. There were always those type of clues before so that 4 books later you would say, "wait a minute" go back and look at what in hindsight was a glaring message saying, "what you thought happened didn't happen."

 

It was just plum left out.

 

To be fair, you need to stop viewing them as two separate books. This is not the case, they're one book and so Brandon has to be given some liberty in the area of foreshadowing and chapter-layout.

[smileyman]

The timeline is moving to fast. I wasn't completely on board for three books... however now I agree and think instead this should have been done in 5 books. They're good books but I feel like we're missing a lot of depth and it feels rushed.

 

It only seems rushed because Jordan dragged his feet so badly, refusing to let his characters mature for ten books. He drove two readers away for every one he retained with his insistence on keeping everybody infants.

 

Jordan kept adding side characters and tertiary plots so that he was always six books away from finishing.

 

Then, once he got sick, he fooled himself into believing he could wrap things up in one more book.

 

Sanderson signed on for that one book. When he ( and TOR ) saw how much ground there was to cover, that got expanded to three volumes. However rushed everything feels to anybody, think how much more rushed it would be if TOR had limited him to just that one book.

 

Jordan actually moved things quickly for the first 4, maybe 5 books. It wasn't until after Fires of Heaven that things slowed down so much. Just think about how much happened in The Shadow Rising for example.

[Fains nose]

what he has really taken liberty with is he has all the characters saying "bloody ashes". hes just invented a knew saying and thats wrong, its blood and bloody ashes!!

[gec231]

We got an amazing series from RJ that wasn't going to closed in 1 book. BS has done an amazing job in producing 2 of the best books in the series. None of the frustrations in the last two books are as close as those in the previous 3.

[Evoke]

Wtf is with everything being Hale!?

[mossman87]

Do my eyes deceive me or are people actually complaining about character development? Progress in people? One of the greatest criticisms of characters I have ever heard from readers is that the characters do not talk to each other.. well now they are. And with only one book to go, it's somehow wrong for them to be doing so?

 

I actually always appreciated the tight-lipped nature of many of the WoT characters. It feels more true to how those types of people behave; RJ was a master at getting across the thoughts and feelings of his characters in a non-verbal way; if you're human and you understand emotion you don't really need every little emo spelled out for you. For instance, Talmanes. If you have half a brain, you can see he was actually a character with a sense of humor, which he kept to himself. There were a couple of things he said in RJs day that had Mat wondering about him. That's just the way he was. BS had to spell it out for everybody to the point where he starts acting like a flirty girl with Mat, thus caricaturing the nature of his character.

 

It just goes to show, no matter who wrote AMoL, some of us were going to be disgruntled with a new writer and others just want all the spoilers. There are two types of WoT fans, those of us who love the answer RAFO and wish Jordan had lived to make it a 20 book series, and those who don't. It's all good, I just need an outlet to vent my frustrations, is all.

 

If you watch the Hour with BS at Jordancon '10, he says sometime in the future the three books will be re-written by Team Jordan to fully have RJ's voice. He said he's just the person getting it to us in a timely fashion until that happens. I thought that was interesting and haven't heard it talked about before.

[Duskfire]

People have to realise as well that Sanderson has his own career to think about. I doubt he would have wanted to expand everything to five books and be writing it for the next 7+ years. Sure some things do feel rushed, but for one, we dont know whether thats RJ or BS, purely because when you have been reading about a plotline for a decade or so and it gets resolved in two chapters, it is naturally going to feel rushed when in reality it may not actually be.

 

In general, I cant abide criticism of BS. Sure he has faults in his writing style, and he is different to RJ, but I just cant critise someone who has basically gone out of their way - and potentially put his own career on hold for a couple of years - to bring a conclusion to the series. And there is no better author out there that TOR could have gotten hold of. This series could simply not have finished at all, or we got a not so great author who decided to expand the series out even further for the wrong reasons.

 

And like it or not, Sanderson has breathed new life into the series. We all love RJ and WoT, but there were many many people who were sick of the details, the slow progress, the annoying traits of the characters, etc. Sanderson has done away with that to a huge degree. I know many old WoT fans who are now re-reading the series because of the good feedback that BS has gotten.

[Lobes604]

People have to realise as well that Sanderson has his own career to think about. I doubt he would have wanted to expand everything to five books and be writing it for the next 7+ years. Sure some things do feel rushed, but for one, we dont know whether thats RJ or BS, purely because when you have been reading about a plotline for a decade or so and it gets resolved in two chapters, it is naturally going to feel rushed when in reality it may not actually be.

 

In general, I cant abide criticism of BS. Sure he has faults in his writing style, and he is different to RJ, but I just cant critise someone who has basically gone out of their way - and potentially put his own career on hold for a couple of years - to bring a conclusion to the series. And there is no better author out there that TOR could have gotten hold of. This series could simply not have finished at all, or we got a not so great author who decided to expand the series out even further for the wrong reasons.

 

And like it or not, Sanderson has breathed new life into the series. We all love RJ and WoT, but there were many many people who were sick of the details, the slow progress, the annoying traits of the characters, etc. Sanderson has done away with that to a huge degree. I know many old WoT fans who are now re-reading the series because of the good feedback that BS has gotten.

 

I just wanted to say iv'e been coming on this site for years and its the first time ive said anything and i just wanted to say that what buddy says here is bang on the money , I think BS has taken this ENOURMOUS undertaking with the respect and love that as fans we couldnt of asked for better ..... HE'S NO RJ but i think given the circumstances of how the real world works we as fans got a pretty good deal in getting BS ...... and sorry for the post being not very articulate but to the point

[grolm]

Brandon is finishing the series because he is a fan like us, but it's also a very SHREWD career move on his part. How many WoT fans who would never have picked up a BS novel will now go grab one or more of them to read. He discusses this in some of his blog posts on his website. While he never blatantly states it, he wouldn't have agreed to finish the series if he was forced to totally sacrifice his own career. Will it delay some of his own writing? Absolutely. But getting an inner look at RJ's thinking behind the planning of WOT? Priceless for a growing author. What better way to learn from a master.

 

I am a bit annoyed by the modern venacular creeping in, but some of that is a result of how a younger author like BS thinks and speaks in the real world vs the more mature voice of Robert Jordan.

 

The one line that I found funny, but annoying was Mat's comment on pg 492 that the gholam might not be dead, but it was close enough for Crown contract. Too close to "close enough for government work" for me not to immediately think that, and one thing I loved about this series was how isolated the characters were from our world in their thoughts and mannerisms. There are other places where this happens, but this one really stood out for me.

 

I also hate that Rand is not always the Dragon Reborn in some references now. More than once other characters have thought of or spoken of him as the Dragon. That should not be happening.

 

Some of the characters becoming more reasonable may well just be ta'veren effects as Rand, Mat, and Perrin's natures force others to cooperate. Sure it feels rushed because of the glacial pace of character development RJ was following in the middle books. But he also kept adding layers of complexity to his world that deepened the reality of Randland.

 

Mat is still off from prior novels to me, but that is as much his traits being more obvious. BS doesn't have RJ's subtle touch for character development, but who does?

Elayne doesn't drive me nuts. She's just very blonde!

Egwene working to stop the Dragon Reborn? She is the insane one, though I sense that Rand expects her to oppose him and will make it work the way he wants. BS has her pretty much the same as RJ, and he does a solid job with Aviehenda. She reads the same. So does Lan.

 

 

Brandon has to speed things up to tie up all those plot lines and resolve the conflicts, and in a trilogy, not 10 more books.

[Morsker]

RJ was just holding out on us. He could make characters act reasonable when he wanted to; it just makes stories boring. He let Moiraine be reasonable in FoH, but only because she was about to die and he didn't have to worry about leaving a reasonable Moiraine around long-term. Egwene started making AS reasonable in KoD. It's not like RJ couldn't do this; it just wasn't appropriate until the end.

 

I think what we're supposed to see in Olver and Aviendha's descendants is yet more people being unreasonable and screwing everything up. So even when the main characters are pulling together for TG, there's another outlet in the series to still have people be unreasonable. And of course Verin totally botched her letter to Mat.

[CUBAREY]

I think tht the problem that many people have with the emos of many of the characters has to do with the material that was left to SB and the need to actually finish the series.

 

RJ left pretty detailed notes and outlines SB had to transform that into actual writing that advanced the plot in a reasonable rate (and is still taking 3 books of 800+ pages to finish the series). RJ always talked about finishing the series quickly (remember the series was first pitched to TOR as a trilogy) but always found himself writng more and more when he actually sat down to write. RJ would not have shown the inner workings of the characters in the way SB has and their character development would have been much nore subtle. But it would have taken a lot more time and writing to acomplish it that way. While I would have loved the series to continue for another 10 books it is rather unreasonble to expect SB to spend 10 years to finish someone else's series. Even so by the time the last book is published he will have devoted much of 5 years to finishing the series. What other author would have done that?

[Mercer]

For instance, Talmanes. If you have half a brain, you can see he was actually a character with a sense of humor, which he kept to himself. There were a couple of things he said in RJs day that had Mat wondering about him. That's just the way he was. BS had to spell it out for everybody to the point where he starts acting like a flirty girl with Mat, thus caricaturing the nature of his character.

I actually think that RJ would not have made them more loquacious, had he never gotten sick. That whole "I'm gonna stuff everything into one book, no matter if it has to be published on bible thin paper!" thing was the act of a man wanting to finish his work in the time allotted. I believe had he not been sick, he'd have kept plugging away, adding books wherever he saw fit to do so. I guarantee you this would have been at least a 16-18 book series. To which, of course, most people groan to think about. As for me, as excited as I am to find out how it all ends, once I put down AMoL in March 2012, I'm going to be deeply, profoundly sad that there will be no more books.

I dig what you're saying. I think some people are trying very hard to make it seem as if reading Sanderson isn't so different from reading Jordan (and that isn't an insult, simply a comment on how adaptable people are). The styles and methods of the two are ridiculously different, and it shows...and to say I wasn't a little disappointed while reading ToM would be to lie. Characters unburden themselves with regularity, comedy/anger/tension is acted out with much less subtlety, deus ex machina is evident in some cases. I lost count of how many characters professed love for another. It's a jarring, very blunt contrast with Jordan's writing.

 

This isn't unexpected, and I enjoyed ToM as I did TGS. Sanderson does an admirable job, he's a talented writer. I just don't think we (by which I mean the folks who could have read 5 more books of slow-paced, tight-lipped WoT) need to hold back on expressing this stuff...it does no disservice to Sanderson.

[bubbers]

characters are definitly not more reasonable.

 

perrin is only just formally accepting his role, to himself, as he only accepted it when facing a problem before. so theres no major change

 

morgase has been with perrin for how many books now? so the time when perrin met galad and gwayn, would be the time they'd both stop hating rand, and the timing of those encounters makes sense, as perrin was delayed with shaido and the prophet for 5 books. Now that he's free, unless RJ or BS to decided to throw another problem at perrin keeping him from returning, he'd of course return to everyone else and they'd learn morgwase is alive. Also, of course galad would accept perrin, as his mother was there to ease him right into accepting him.

 

Mat was actually doing better, right up until the moment he married tuon. Now, after going to the ToG, he's just about back to that point again.

 

Rand was getting more mature, but also more callous. He was developing as a leader for the better, but not as the dragon for the better, as the dragon is tied to the land. He'd never reached a point of being too unreasonable, but he'd on very small occassions acted with less dignity than he needed to have, when being pushed by AS. Then he did his dragonmount thing and now the light is girding his mind/soul.

 

From here you can see that all these male characters are not acting out of character, they're doing what RJ laid the groundwork for. The only thing you could complain about is the speed, either slow or fast, but that isn't determined by BS, that's determined by the target number of books needed to finish.

 

The female characters are all the same as well. Egwene and elayne, still dumbasses and pretty much terrible people, no changes. Nynaeve and min, both have been changing for several books now, not just in BS's books. Cadsuane, still a controlling biotch, but still formidable, no changes there. Aviendah, still all about the aiel and honor, no changes there.

 

The only character things that seemed wrong to me was mat. in TGS he just kinda jumped from his luck just being something he was ok with, and it coming in waves varying from good to beyond amazing, right to "i can turn it off and on at will" with no in between whatsoever. Neither BS or RJ built anything in there where mat even speculated on wether he could learn to control his luck. The scene where he was talking about breaking their hearts was there to show that he's still trying to look at chicks but justifying it in his mind. But it still came off wrong for mat. The badger, the sweet buns, and the letter came off perfect though. absolutely mat and the letter he wrote was funny as hell.

 

The biggest problems was the language BS used, as other people have said. A huge example is that the two books BS wrote, everyone would just say "channelrs". Where I'm not sure any in RJ's books said that. Things like that were all over the place.

 

Of course the writing style was different, but the pace determines so much of that. Overall, no biggie, BS did a good enough job telling someone elses story.

[messiestobjects]

 

If you watch the Hour with BS at Jordancon '10, he says sometime in the future the three books will be re-written by Team Jordan to fully have RJ's voice. He said he's just the person getting it to us in a timely fashion until that happens. I thought that was interesting and haven't heard it talked about before.

 

That's awesome! I haven't heard that anywhere else, and that seems like huge news to me. I'd like to see that in print somewhere.

[messiestobjects]

 

I dig what you're saying. I think some people are trying very hard to make it seem as if reading Sanderson isn't so different from reading Jordan (and that isn't an insult, simply a comment on how adaptable people are). The styles and methods of the two are ridiculously different, and it shows...and to say I wasn't a little disappointed while reading ToM would be to lie. Characters unburden themselves with regularity, comedy/anger/tension is acted out with much less subtlety, deus ex machina is evident in some cases. I lost count of how many characters professed love for another. It's a jarring, very blunt contrast with Jordan's writing.

 

This isn't unexpected, and I enjoyed ToM as I did TGS. Sanderson does an admirable job, he's a talented writer. I just don't think we (by which I mean the folks who could have read 5 more books of slow-paced, tight-lipped WoT) need to hold back on expressing this stuff...it does no disservice to Sanderson.

 

 

I agree. That guy who said he can't abide people being critical of Sanderson is A) Sort of Republican-like and B) Just doesn't understand that the frustration someone like me feels at encountering such bald differences from the RJ books needs a space to vent. Hence the title of this thread. As you say it does no disservice to Sanderson. That guy was right, BS has taken 5 years out of his career to finish someone else's work and that's cool of him, but I've been reading this series for 20 years and have the right to critique whomever I need to.

[Chriswot]

Ahhhhh. Mr. Brandon Sanderson. We owe you a great debt. Nobody will ever have any reasonable argument to the contrary. That being said, can you please please please please revert the bloody ashes to blood and ashes, or the more elaborate Blood and Bloody Ashes? oh and stop saying tempest so much :( It's a word that just seemed to irk me and stuck out to me. I know you're quite fond of it as Im half way through reading the way of kings. In ToM you seemed overfond of it. As for any of the other complaints or critics, they hold no accord in my mind. Thank you very much for undertaking this vast vast work. We are all happy to see it coming to an end. Now strap yourself to your keyboard and dont stop writing!! I want AMoL in 2 months time! :(

[TheTuninator]

 

If you watch the Hour with BS at Jordancon '10, he says sometime in the future the three books will be re-written by Team Jordan to fully have RJ's voice. He said he's just the person getting it to us in a timely fashion until that happens. I thought that was interesting and haven't heard it talked about before.

 

That's awesome! I haven't heard that anywhere else, and that seems like huge news to me. I'd like to see that in print somewhere.

 

Say what? That'd be pretty cool, actually. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

[Mercer]

That seems a little unlikely. They're going to re-write existing novels, attempting to mimic Jordan's style? Uuuh, what?

[mossman87]

If you watch the Hour with BS at Jordancon '10, he says sometime in the future the three books will be re-written by Team Jordan to fully have RJ's voice. He said he's just the person getting it to us in a timely fashion until that happens. I thought that was interesting and haven't heard it talked about before.

 

That's awesome! I haven't heard that anywhere else, and that seems like huge news to me. I'd like to see that in print somewhere.

 

Say what? That'd be pretty cool, actually. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

About 1:20 in.

[TheTuninator]

If you watch the Hour with BS at Jordancon '10, he says sometime in the future the three books will be re-written by Team Jordan to fully have RJ's voice. He said he's just the person getting it to us in a timely fashion until that happens. I thought that was interesting and haven't heard it talked about before.

 

That's awesome! I haven't heard that anywhere else, and that seems like huge news to me. I'd like to see that in print somewhere.

 

Say what? That'd be pretty cool, actually. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

 

About 1:20 in.

 

You sure about that? It sounded like he was making a big allegory to reading them in the afterlife to me. Kinda confusing.

[jwillis7]

Hard to see IMO, when Cadsuane got noticeably unreasonable in TGS, and Elayne is stupider than ever before in TOM.

yea but at least someone finally said "listen idiot just because your babies are born fine does not mean you will be when they are born" this was always a big problem with me that no one ever said it to her

[Mr. Micawber]

RJ is the pen-name of a man who took several government-financed extended working trips in a certain humid, sub-equatorial area particularly well-known to Americans of a certain age, along with a number of Australians and South Koreans. And he spent a great deal of that time strapped to a side-mounted M60 in a rotary wing aircraft. Flying out of bases which also handled one of the most nasty and time-delayed poisons ever created by modern science - and everyone knew it was flaming poison.

 

And of course observing fellow aviators - albeit of the fixed wing variety - bomb the *jungles of Southeast Asia* back to, as the quaint term went, the Stone Age. Possibly the *least* effective method of warfare in history.

 

And doing all of this to prop up one of the most corrupt and, indeed, worthless puppet governments in the modern era. Against a foe that wasn't particularly close to its superpower backer, and which was flaming *invaded* by its own *ideological ally* mere months after winning its final campaign.

 

Do you really think, after experiencing all of this, that Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is going to involve reasonable people?

 

Ever?

 

Sanderson's demonstrating a pretty good knack for showing the characters being forced kicking and screaming into cooperation so that an immediate, existential crisis can be addressed. But I'm pretty damn sure that this state of events ain't going to last forever.