Why are we so hooked on this one?

[mdnyttokr]

Why does this story, more than any other franchise or series, hold such fascination for us? Those of us who have read the entire series four, five, even ten times or more from TEotW Prologue to ToM Epiclogue, dwelling on every small detail, making predictions, casting the movie, etc.... we know that the uninitiated are really missing out on something special.

 

This brings me to the first of two questions I'd like to throw out.

 

1. Why THIS series? In your opinion, what makes WoT better or more memorable than other famous franchises? Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, heck I even remeber the Chronicles of Prydain. What 'nerve' does WoT strike within us that inspires such devotion?

 

2. How do you go about convincing someone to start reading it? I have one friend that's an avid reader, but is turned off by the cover art (of all things), and my wife says fantasy isn't her genre, but she LOVES vampire romance novels (god, that's become it's own genre now. scary). But how can you convince someone to give it an honest try?

 

My answer to number 2, but the way, is that I tell them that they should just commit to 100 pages. If they aren't interested after that, then give it up. But I also tell them that everyone I've turned on to the series kept reading. But, it still won't work on my wife.

[dovien]

Answering number one would take more time and eloquence than I posess.

Number two though I can make a suggestion on; I tell people stories. Tell them about cool characters or events that happen or even just quotes from the characters.

[Senexx]

It's like virtual reality. We see so far into the characters, we understand their motivation and morality. It is like a glimpse into our own lives. Other fantasies are clear cut good and evil.

[nophone]

Why does this story, more than any other franchise or series, hold such fascination for us? Those of us who have read the entire series four, five, even ten times or more from TEotW Prologue to ToM Epiclogue, dwelling on every small detail, making predictions, casting the movie, etc.... we know that the uninitiated are really missing out on something special.

 

This brings me to the first of two questions I'd like to throw out.

 

1. Why THIS series? In your opinion, what makes WoT better or more memorable than other famous franchises? Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, heck I even remeber the Chronicles of Prydain. What 'nerve' does WoT strike within us that inspires such devotion?

 

2. How do you go about convincing someone to start reading it? I have one friend that's an avid reader, but is turned off by the cover art (of all things), and my wife says fantasy isn't her genre, but she LOVES vampire romance novels (god, that's become it's own genre now. scary). But how can you convince someone to give it an honest try?

 

My answer to number 2, but the way, is that I tell them that they should just commit to 100 pages. If they aren't interested after that, then give it up. But I also tell them that everyone I've turned on to the series kept reading. But, it still won't work on my wife.

 

i was told the same thing when i first started them like 10 years ago. haha! "just getthrough the first 100pages dude, it get's pretty good after that"

[Carrie]

For #1, I agree with what Senexx said. The world and characters are so vast and 3 dimensional, that I feel like I am really apart of the series. Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Moiraine, and even the Forsaken; they feel like real people and I have been able to see their lives play out. They feel like family and friends, and Randland feels like my second home.

 

Another thing I love about WoT is the scope that R.J. went to in planting little hints and foreshadowing. One of my favourite things to do is theorize and try to figure out what is going to happen, who is who, etc... WoT is the very best series for this kind of thing. The theories and predictions are pretty much unending.

 

In regards to #2, I try all kinds of things. For one thing I talk about WoT ALL THE TIME. Seriously, I don't care if they know what I am talking about or not, but I make sure everybody knows it is the best series out there (IMO). I am on Goodreads.com every day and most people in groups I am in know how much I love the series. I have actually just got a couple people right now on GR to start tEotW, and I have a couple others interested and saying they will. I also know one person that stopped at PoD and I convinced her to finish. So some of my crazy obsessiveness is paying off on GoodReads.

 

I also bribe people to read it, lol. My best friend and I read mostly the same books. We used to go to the Potter and Twilight midnight releases and we would read the books together. We still read books together all the time, but for some reason she is intimidated by the size and scope of WoT. There is a series she really wants me to read, it is a trilogy. I told her I would read it if she reads the first two WoT books. That seems an even trade for me. It drives me nuts that she doesn't read it since we love swapping and discussing theories together.

 

Thankfully, I had no trouble getting my husband to read the series. He has been reading it for about 12 years, only a couple years behind myself. While he loves the series and says it's his favourite, he isn't crazy obsessed like I am. He hasn't even read TGS or ToM. He says if he doesn't read them, the series won't end. He teases me by saying he will never read the last book. Arggggg, it drives me crazy!

[trashbird1240]

1. Why THIS series? In your opinion, what makes WoT better or more memorable than other famous franchises? Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, heck I even remeber the Chronicles of Prydain. What 'nerve' does WoT strike within us that inspires such devotion?

 

There are many, many things that I have come to love about Robert Jordan's writing in the Wheel of Time series. However, the thing that hooked me right away was the human quality of the characters. After I finished The Eye of the World, I simply could not get into reading a different novel because I really, really wanted to know what would happen to Nynaeve. Probably the only series that comes close is the Hitchhiker series from Douglas Adams, but with that one I mainly just wanted to read more silly stuff. I didn't really care about the characters.

 

I read the first few pages of The Eye of the World and returned it to the library, and then one evening I just had to go buy the paperback. It was a weird feeling.

 

2. How do you go about convincing someone to start reading it? I have one friend that's an avid reader, but is turned off by the cover art (of all things), and my wife says fantasy isn't her genre, but she LOVES vampire romance novels (god, that's become it's own genre now. scary). But how can you convince someone to give it an honest try?

 

I don't. I have told people what I like about it, but I don't think I will every convince anybody. They just so rarely care about the same things that I do.

[username13]

Disown your wife.... vampire romance novels, for crying out loud....

[Nooska]

I think one of the reasons is the same as why I wonder at the comments that say that there is no time to introduce sharans during ToM and AMoL.

ToM is estimated 350k words, and is considered too short to introduce a culture we have some knowledge of.

In comparison;

LOTR (all 3 books)is only 454k words - and 2 installments of 350k (or 700k total) is considered too short to introduce a culture we know exist and already have a lot of (indirect) information on.

 

The scale of the books, and the required detail, is simply immense. It is an epic work in all sense of the word. The series up to and including KoD is at 3 million, 304 thousand words, I believe tGS was 330k words, and around 700k for the last 2 installments, for a total of 4m334k words, or about 10 times longer than LOTR.

[Durinax]

I think its because not all arcs have definate endings, if you want you could investigate into it and try to figure out how arcs end. it is very much like real life where things are not definate and you dont really know everything.

 

for me its like investigating ancient myth and learning about cultures so different than mine

[Colonel_Sanders]

You can get books without the cover art. I for one don't like it either but most of the books I own have a black cover with the snake biting its tail and a wagon wheel. It is a different coloured wheel/snake each time.

 

Not sure if they are available in US though?

[cap10kirk]

I love the series because the whole WOT universe is so damn rich and full. RJ is, for lack of a better word, THE MAN. The world and everything in it is filled with so much history. This series is a masterpiece. However, I would not recommend this series to everyone. Many of the qualities that make this series great, actually turns a lot of people off. I think that's a good thing. I enjoy the differences in people.

[LazyMonk]

I think I say why WoT draws so much interest above other books. It's the people.

Lots of excellent authors describe amazing and detailed worlds. you can find greatly detailed cities, landscapes, countries, continents and whole worlds.

RJ's mastery is in the multitude of character POVs. I don't know any other book that holds this insane amount of named characters and goes into the private POV of so many of them.

Another reason is the multitude of unexpected plot twists. again, much more than most books. I can remember myself more than once staring at the book and thinking "this can't be happening!".

Yet another reason are the seemingly minor details that resurface later in the books. those encourage people re-read back and find what was it about.

 

Of course, there are many other reasons, those were just the first that came to mind.

[helis4life]

A couple of reasons I really enjoy this series

 

1. Rand/Mat/Perrin. I can relate to all of them and empathize with the situations they find themselves in. Rand is beyond awesome now

 

2. Good vs Evil plot. Fairly common among stories but never seems to get old. A reluctant savior who accepts his fate to save the world even though it will cost him his life. Epic

 

3. True Source. This type of magic wielding is the most unique Ive read.

 

4. The level of detail that has gone in to the world, the people, the places, the events would have been such a mammoth task

[OptimusPrime]

It's like virtual reality. We see so far into the characters, we understand their motivation and morality. It is like a glimpse into our own lives. Other fantasies are clear cut good and evil.

 

I agree with this 100%

 

In Wheel of Time, peope make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Thus, almost every character is believable. In other books you often get a this+this=that thing that is spelt out for the characters, but in Wheel of Time their PoV is everything, you dont just learn what a character thinks, you learn WHY they think it.

 

It also feels like RJ had pretty much everything covered. Coincedence becomes a worldbuilding element in these books. Ta'veren says it all. How on EARTH he came up with it I dont know, but the whole Ta'veren-Pattern-balefire erasing threads and time thing is just awesome.

 

One more thing. Dragon vs Nae'blis. That is all.

[Jon Paul]

I really don't know. I've read ASOIAF and Malazan and enjoyed them but neither could hold me like tWoT has. I'm just..hooked .

[Jblaylock]

The reasons WOT does it for me, where other books fail:

 

(All of this is strictly my opinion, and I'm not claiming it as fact or as "the case" for everyone)

 

The charecters have more personality. LOTR and other fantasy novels have what I like to call "cookie-cutter-charecters." All the knights are the same, all the elves are the same, all the dwarves are the same, all the men (regardles of nationality or allegiance) have the same goals and are willing to aid each other without question for the greater good, and everyone is so damn trusting and naive. In WOT, nobody trusts anybody. Nobody wants to help anybody, unless they can see a way it will help themself. It's realistic in that sense. They don't all believe the same thing. They don't all have the same opinions. That makes them real, to me. And it makes the story more captivating because it puts you constantly on the edge of your seat wondering if so and so will end up understanding and helping so and so or betraying them, or simply staying out of it due to ignorance, etc etc etc. It's not predictable.

 

The dialog is more realistic and readable. There is no, "I am come hence to rival thee and test thy manhood against the will of blah blah blah... lest ye be not man enough to come hither and blah blah blah" like LOTR or other fantasy novels. Rather, the charecters talk the way I'd talk, and that enables me to feel the emotion behind what's said and get a climpse into the speaker's personality.

 

The story is one that would take a long time to tell, and it has been a long time in telling. There is no "Four Hobbits left the shire, within a year one of them joined the horse riders and fought bravely in a big war against orcs and such, another joined the castle men as a night and fought bravely to defend the keep, and the last two split off to mount doom to challange the dark one himself." That's unrealistic. Hell. Rand, Matt, and Perrin tried to slip out the back door, so to speak, to avoid the "duty" from the get go, and tried again and again, until it was clear that their taveren nature would not allow it. Even still, the fought stubornly and only slowly developed their skills. They didn't rush off to join some king and pledge themselves to him a few second after meeting him, like Pippin with Denethor (steward in that case, not king) and then suddenly start fighting ocrs with a sword, and killing them, nonetheless. No, in WOT, they developed over time. A lot of time. And a lot of experiences. And they're still developing. Still learning. What they have learned is explained instead of just expected to be accepted without question as to how.

 

The "magic" is not magic, but is sound and reasonable. It's explained almost from a scientific perspective, making it more believable. And it is not unbeatable. That makes it more realistic, and thus more enjoyable, to me.

[mb]

I am not really "devoted" to Wheel of Time. I also read (and am reading) other books/series.

Interested might better fit my feeling toward Wheel of Time. I am on my second time through.

What makes me interested in Wheel of Time? Part might be the good intentions Light-sided characters seem to have. Another part might be that the series starts similar to another series I like (Lord of the Rings).

 

I do not try to get others to read this series; nor anything else I read. I just let them read if they want to.

[Mulk]

I'm hooked because of my pathological need to hear the end of the story I've started and because it's a beautiful world he has painted. Never really tried to drag anyone into reading it outside of my spouse, and I did that with little snippets of things that made me laugh or moved me. She'd ask and I'd read a bit. It piqued her interest enough to start reading on her own.