Quality Discussion Thread

[jjstraka34]

I've come to the conclusion that only thing I really hate about the book is pages 80-400. Once we get to Demandred's entrance in "The Wyld" I think the ship really rights itself and there is quite alot here to like. Which makes it all the more infuriating that those 300+ pages are by far the worst of the series. 

[Centauri25]

I finished yesterday, and here are my thoughts. I found the ending to be underwhelming, but I do not cast that at Mr. Sanderson's feet entirely. We were told from way back when that the ending was already known. In fact, I believe Robert Jordan said he thought of the ending first, then built a world that could lead to that end. But when we got there, the ending was just kinda *there*. I don't see the seed the opened up what started out as an amazing story (books 1-4 or so).

 

I saw some TV show comparisons earlier. Mine would be the show "Lost". Incredible setup, but ultimately it bogged down in the minutia, then foundered under its own weight when it turned out there was no grand surprise.  

 

I don't know if Mr. Sanderson was better or worse. I really struggle to believe that RJ could have finished the same story in three books. There was so much going on, and after reading aMOL, I guess we would have finished then RJ would say 2-3 more books to finish. I don't think he gets from the end of KoD to the end of the series in 2500 pages.

 

BS gave us a lightning quick narrative (a plus), with a lower quality (a negative). But I am left wondering if many of us are down because we simply didn't like the basic plot of the end, and that was RJ all the way.

 

Edit: this is a more succinct way of putting my feelings. I think I was sold a ticket to look in the box, and when I got my peek it was empty. PT Barnum would be proud.

[batcaver]

 

 

Razumikhin - Great post.  Nail on the head.

 

 

 

So everyone was supposed to drop everything in the middle of a war to boohoo over Egwene dying? Egwene barely responded to Gawyn dying, except for using it to make herself angrier and deciding she needed another Warder right then and there, and she was bonded and married to him. Elayne didn't stop and cry over Birgitte, despite being bonded to her. It would've made zero sense to have everyone stop what they were doing so they could lament Egwene's death There were tons of people dying, so there was no time to just stop and grieve. The Shadow wasn't going to give them a time out so everyone could cry over the death of the Amyrlin. Wars don't work that way.

 

Nynaeve cried for her - and for Rand - at the end, as did Perrin. Those two are the ones who have, and will show, emotion. The rest of them, not so much. Especially the Aes Sedai, considering they're trained to show no emotion at all even if one of their family members has his head chopped off right in front of them. Besides, a lot of them didn't even like Egwene...they respected her, thought she made a good Amyrlin, but they didn't like her, and who could blame them for it after she kept screwing them over and manipulating them? Wasn't it good enough that they were planning a funeral for her that was fit for the Creator himself after a low-key "no one cares but Nyn and Perrin" funeral for Rand?

 

 

It certainly wouldn't have been necessary for everyone to drop what they are doing and start crying.   That's ridiculous and if you really felt that you needed more fighting from this book then our views on this series are probably too disparate to bridge.  There are a few creative ways I can think of off of the top of my head that the human aspects of the war could have been better attended to during the fight, not to mention after.  What about some reflections from the wounded or the dieing?  Jordan was fantastic about having characters sort of trail off tangentially in their trains of thought during these kinds of scenes, and through that he'd ground all of the action in the context of the greater narrative. There are a lot of options.  Sanderson definitely does some of his best work with the action stuff, and it seems like his priority in this book was giving us the biggest battle he possibly could.  My problem is that it's not only the last battle, but also the end of the series.  The former was well attended to while the latter was ignored.

 

The main issue is that Egwene was an important character to the reader.  That's the mandate for a proper reverence of her death.  It doesn't necessarily need to come from any specific character, rather it's about imparting the reader with the feeling of being as close to this event as possible.  I'm using Egwene's death since she's the biggest example, but it applied to a lot of other deaths and events as well.

 

 

 

I remember back in book 7 when the gholam ripped nalesean's throat. A secondary character but you felt sad for him because of mat's after thoughts.

 

Brandon doesnt have anything remotely similar to what jordan can convey through death. Maybe it's because jordan was a former soldier and knew what death means to the person affected.

 

"He should have let Nalesean stay in bed. The thought came sadly as he drove the blade home hard, then a second time, a third."

 

was more affecting than anything in MOL

 

Nalesean is a perfect example.  Jordan gave you the majestic battle scene and the intimate humanity of the characters.  Sanderson usually focuses on depicting the battle with an overdose of grandeur and spectacle. 

[MarkDiLillo]

Like I said, when I think of WoT now I think of this:

 

http://www.theworld.org/wp-content/uploads/Jesus-PaintingNEW.jpg

[ozimandias]

To me, whether Jordan could have finished the series in one, two or three books is totally beside the point.  The point is the quality of the story, and that's equally true for Sanderson.  I'd have loved the same split to three books from Jordan as long as they were good.  In fact I'd have preferred it, since I feel that the end of the series and the last battle deserve as much attention to detail as we got in books like WH and COT when very little was happening.  I'd agree with Suttree that KOD was moving things back in the right direction.  We'll never know whether that would have redirected the whole course of the series, but if it had then I say the more books the better so long as he got on writing them seriously again.  But he got sick and that's spilled milk now.

 

The more time that passes, I'm finding I feel less and less satisfied with the ending.  The fight ended well enough, but I feel cheated by what came after.  The fight was all there was.  I don't know whether the responsibility lies with Joradn, Sanderson or Team Jordan.  Probably all of them.  I feel like I read a book that was missing the final chapter.  If I just read WoT for big battle scenes then I guess I'd be pretty well glutted.  But the middle books did nothing if not train me to look at these characters with a microscope.  They made me slow down with the pace of the story and get into the details of their lives.  I wanted a huge scale for the last battle, but it really needed to be grounded in a strong depiction of what a war this huge is doing to the individuals in it, given their personalities, given their histories, given their relationships, etc.  I feel that if Sanderson knew he was going to have to end with a 17 page epilogue that provided the most minimal possible post-battle information on these characters then he should have been giving us more of that along the way.  The death toll in a few hundred pages here was more than in the rest of the series combined by far.  If I'm going to really feel that as a reader, then I need character's doing more than "Egwene's dead?  Uh oh.  Well, I better not think about that."  And that was a lot considering how little attention was paid to some characters dieing.  Maybe he thought that a cold delivery like that would have a greater affect on the reader, but it just made it seem like a travesty to me.

I personally felt the ending was perfect.  There are no real endings (except Rand's)- the last battle happened and then it ends.  A new age begins.  The characters that live on undoubtedly start new stories - that is a given.  Any tidy wrapping up of each story line to me would be a disappointment.  I personally thought it was well written - and my own curiosity about the characters is allowed to fill in gaps, as it should be.  No final book in a series has ever satisfied me as much - so many authors try to wrap everything in a tidy little bow.  It is fitting to me that in a world we never got to fully explore even over the course of 14 books, we would not get a tidy summation.

 

As for issues of writing style/word usage that broke some people out of their immersion - I didn't experience it to be honest.  I can certainly look back and say wow this was said too much or that was said too much - but I was looking to enjoy this book and so I did.  RJ had his own favorite words and phrases, but I managed to look past those too.  It would be very hard for me to read anyone if I let the overuse of a few words bother me... 

[npally]

Like others have said, while reading AMoL I never felt immersed in the world, which for me is one of the strengths of the series.

[Suttree]

As for issues of writing style/word usage that broke some people out of their immersion - I didn't experience it to be honest.  I can certainly look back and say wow this was said too much or that was said too much - but I was looking to enjoy this book and so I did.  RJ had his own favorite words and phrases, but I managed to look past those too.  It would be very hard for me to read anyone if I let the overuse of a few words bother me... 

That isn't really the point though Ozi. It's not overuse of a few words(although that does happen all too often) but more so all the modern language that doesn't fit and a good amount of breaking the 4th wall. Jordan never had issues with immersion, in fact that was one of the strongest aspects of this series and why people can re-read these books so many times. You seem to suggest that this specific critique happens in all literature across the board and that certainly is not the case.

[Hack n Slash]

 

As for issues of writing style/word usage that broke some people out of their immersion - I didn't experience it to be honest.  I can certainly look back and say wow this was said too much or that was said too much - but I was looking to enjoy this book and so I did.  RJ had his own favorite words and phrases, but I managed to look past those too.  It would be very hard for me to read anyone if I let the overuse of a few words bother me... 

That isn't really the point though Ozi. It's not overuse of a few words(although that does happen all too often) but more so all the modern language that doesn't fit and a good amount of breaking the 4th wall. Jordan never had issues with immersion, in fact that was one of the strongest aspects of this series and why people can re-read these books so many times. You seem to suggest that this specific critique happens in all literature across the board and that certainly is not the case.

As you say, that was one of the strongest aspects of Robert Jordan's writing. An attempt by Brandon Sanderson to copy his style would have been doomed to failure, because he would never be able to write as well copying Robert Jordan's style of writing as he could writing in his own style. Writing in his own style while doing his best to maintain the character of the story and character's was the best way to do this.  

[Suttree]

 

 

As for issues of writing style/word usage that broke some people out of their immersion - I didn't experience it to be honest.  I can certainly look back and say wow this was said too much or that was said too much - but I was looking to enjoy this book and so I did.  RJ had his own favorite words and phrases, but I managed to look past those too.  It would be very hard for me to read anyone if I let the overuse of a few words bother me... 

That isn't really the point though Ozi. It's not overuse of a few words(although that does happen all too often) but more so all the modern language that doesn't fit and a good amount of breaking the 4th wall. Jordan never had issues with immersion, in fact that was one of the strongest aspects of this series and why people can re-read these books so many times. You seem to suggest that this specific critique happens in all literature across the board and that certainly is not the case.

As you say, that was one of the strongest aspects of Robert Jordan's writing. An attempt by Brandon Sanderson to copy his style would have been doomed to failure, because he would never be able to write as well copying Robert Jordan's style of writing as he could writing in his own style. Writing in his own style while doing his best to maintain the character of the story and character's was the best way to do this.  

If done well Sanderson writing in his own style should not take away from immersion in the slightest. There is a huge difference between not copying RJ's "voice" and over using modern language while frequently breaking the 4th wall. To be clear there were some things that BS did very well over these last three books. The results were far too uneven however and unfortunately it's hard for me to get past many of the faults. 

[jjstraka34]

Sanderson is, one would imagine, a smart man, so I still have trouble understanding how he could have thought it acceptable to have Mat, when Egwene realizes he's married to Tuon come up with a joke like "Hey Egwene, how is the White Tower?? Still......white I guess." Anyone whose read the series even ONE time would know that is never something someone in this world would say (not even Mat), and every time he throws something like that in, it rips you out of whatever he might have been doing well at that particular time (and that Egwene/Tuon scene was working pretty damn well actually). 

 

It's the same type of question I have about how Steven Spielberg could have possibly allowed George Lucas to talk him into the plot for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". 

[flinn]

Sanderson is, one would imagine, a smart man, so I still have trouble understanding how he could have thought it acceptable to have Mat, when Egwene realizes he's married to Tuon come up with a joke like "Hey Egwene, how is the White Tower?? Still......white I guess." Anyone whose read the series even ONE time would know that is never something someone in this world would say (not even Mat), and every time he throws something like that in, it rips you out of whatever he might have been doing well at that particular time (and that Egwene/Tuon scene was working pretty damn well actually). 

 

It's the same type of question I have about how Steven Spielberg could have possibly allowed George Lucas to talk him into the plot for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". 

 Yes, he really did turn Mat into a clown. 

[Suttree]

 

Sanderson is, one would imagine, a smart man, so I still have trouble understanding how he could have thought it acceptable to have Mat, when Egwene realizes he's married to Tuon come up with a joke like "Hey Egwene, how is the White Tower?? Still......white I guess." Anyone whose read the series even ONE time would know that is never something someone in this world would say (not even Mat), and every time he throws something like that in, it rips you out of whatever he might have been doing well at that particular time (and that Egwene/Tuon scene was working pretty damn well actually). 

 

It's the same type of question I have about how Steven Spielberg could have possibly allowed George Lucas to talk him into the plot for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull". 

 Yes, he really did turn Mat into a clown. 

Brandon

I didn't understand Mat. I tried so hard to make him funny, I wrote the HIM out of him.

[MarkDiLillo]

Am I the only one who thought Mat was more or less fine in this book?  Minus a couple bumpy spots and some gratuitous use of bloody/flaming, Mat was fine.  At the same time, he was all action in this book so there wasn't much room for it to go bad.

[Geldon]

I think Brandon Sanderson has done an absolutley amazing job with the 3 books he co-authored.

 

I have read the series three times, and I think Mr. Jordan would be very proud of Mr.Sanderson. I am sure Harriett is. To finish another author's lifelong work is an almost impossible task. Mr. Jordan was his own person, as is Mr. Sanderson. While Mr. Sanderson can try to emulate Mr. Jordans voice, he is NOT Robert Jordan. That said, I do believe he provided us with the next best thing.

 

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to both Harriet and Mr. Sanderson for undertaking the completion of the Wheel of Time. I am extremely grateful that Mr. Jordan had a change of heart and allowed his amazing story to be completed by another author.

 

Major congratulations to Brandon Sanderson for scaling Dragonmount.

[Bluedust9]

The main issue with the gateways, aside from the fact that Sanderson went way overboard devising new ways to use them that really stretched credibility (Bryne using one as a security camera, and Androl using mini ones to free Logain) is that they allowed Rand to bounce around the world like he was in a damn pin- ball machine for the first half of the book. There are at least 3 scenes of him making cameos on Elayne's front on Caemlyn and every one of them is the exactly the same.

 

Oh, and if you need a good nights sleep, we recommend you take gateway 5 to Mayene, where Berelain has opened up a bed and breakfast for the duration of the novel. The more you think about some of this stuff the stupider it seems.

 

To be honest I wondered for years why people didn't try better uses for gateways. It's actually stupider that it took this long. Nothing about how they used them violated the books at all.

[Bluedust9]

Look, RJ and BS simply cheated and broke the rules regarding the OP and Gateways. The OP (one power) is OP (overpowered), and Gateways completely invalidate real-world conventional strategy. Demandred should have been able to vaporize the Allied Forces in about 10 minutes, and the Dreadlords should have been able to organize vast circles and just teleport around the world balefiring cities undefended by channelers of the Light. On the other hand, Androl backed by circles should have been able to wash away entire Trolloc armies by linking Gateways to the ocean. Gateways give a general instant transportation, instant communication, instant resupply, and full knowledge of the battlefield. This leads not to Napoleonic or WW2-type warfare, but to modern-style Shock&Awe.

 

Here's what the LB could have been, given established WoT rules:

- To separate regular forces from the channelers, the authors could have used Steddings. What's to stop Aviendha from sauntering into one of the many ter'angreal stashes, and exclaiming: "OMG! I have found a Stedding generator!" And then Elayne could have said: "OMG ORLY? I shall make copies of these generators right now!" And then the good guys plant Steddings at a few choke points such as Tairen's Gap, and let the non-channeler super-heroes such as Gawyn, Galad, Lan, the generals, Tam, etc etc wave their swords about with gusto against bazillions of hungry Trollocs. Aludra's artillery would have translated to a real advantage for the Light in such circumstances. As it is, the cannons were just cumbersome mechanical quasi-channelers.

- Meanwhile, the channelers of both sides would organize in large circles lead by majors such as Eg, Nyn, Avi, Cadsuane, Siuane, Moiraine, Logain, etc on the Light's side, and the various Forsaken/ major Dreadlords on the Shadow's side. The forces of the Shadow would want to cause as much damage and destruction as possible, and the forces of the Light would try to protect the major cities of Randland. OP duels galore, cities destroyed, action, whatever you want. Constant teleportation, endless repositioning, strikes at supply dumps, millions of dead Trollocs, and so on.

- A parallel battle could have been set-up in T'A'R, between the Wise Ones/ Perrin/ the wolves, and dreamwalking Dreadlords/ Slayer.

- This could have gone on for the last two books, to give us a true sense of WAR, rather than the mild sense of battle (which is not nearly the same as war) we got from the ~500 page conflict of MoL.

- Instead of boring charges, we could have gotten some more accurate figures in regard to army sizes, supplies, wounded, etc. I realize this is nerdyness for armchair generals, but then, doesn't it beat swordporn?

 

That's what I imagine given WoT's canonical rules. But RJ and BS broke the rules and gave us a Minas Tirith/ Austerlitz with a giant deathrobot and duels written on the level of fan-fiction. Well, Minas Tirith and Austerlitz are both classics, and some fan-fiction isn't that bad - but we could have used something better...

 

Ugh I hate fan fiction.

[Agitel]

Am I the only one who thought Mat was more or less fine in this book?  Minus a couple bumpy spots and some gratuitous use of bloody/flaming, Mat was fine.  At the same time, he was all action in this book so there wasn't much room for it to go bad.

 

That's pretty much how I felt.

[Bluedust9]

I'm actually surprised that stedding generator idea didn't make it into the book, since it's only marginally more ridiculous than some of the stuff that got on.

 

The problem is that gateways became the solution to EVERYTHING, and while in way that makes sense since everyone can now use them, it's also a tempting, and frankly, lazy plot device that only served to quicken a already asinine pace even further.

 

DING DING DING. It makes sense, so they did it! How many times have you seen that in this series?

 

"Look guys, sure they did the thing that makes sense, but it was bad and lazy. Even though if it makes sense it can't actually be a lazy plot device since it actually makes sense.." ah shit what am I even doing, go hog wild with your fantasies.

[Thrasymachus]

What bugged me about the gateways is that their use was too inconsistent. Hi Androl, you can make a gateway to the inside of an active volcano, killing tens of thousands of Shadowspawn at once? That's awesome, and good job saving Elayne's butt with it outside Cairhein. Wtf are you doing running around trying to spy on dreadlords at Merrilor instead of spraying lava all over the bad guys?

[Aeo Sedai]

 

I'm actually surprised that stedding generator idea didn't make it into the book, since it's only marginally more ridiculous than some of the stuff that got on.

 

The problem is that gateways became the solution to EVERYTHING, and while in way that makes sense since everyone can now use them, it's also a tempting, and frankly, lazy plot device that only served to quicken a already asinine pace even further.

 

DING DING DING. It makes sense, so they did it! How many times have you seen that in this series?

 

"Look guys, sure they did the thing that makes sense, but it was bad and lazy. Even though if it makes sense it can't actually be a lazy plot device since it actually makes sense.." ah shit what am I even doing, go hog wild with your fantasies.

 

 

I suppose the problem is that for most of this series the AS in general spent most of their time acting like idiots. 

 

So, in general, the fact that they were using the OP in ways that make sense within the framework of the magic system RJ created, means that they were extremely out of character!

 

In other words: RJ never really established the sorts of barriers and restrictions that might otherwise have prevented the abuse of gateways we saw in the BS WoT books. The only restriction and barriers in the WoT books when it came to the OP was the AS's ignorance and unwillingness to experiment or try new things. Granted, it's been implied that some of these discovers couldn't have been discovered until the next age came around, but still. 

[Bluedust9]

Guys its OK.  Brandon thinks he did a GREAT job - excuse me, he doesn't think he did a great job...he KNOWS he did a great job - and everyone who disagrees with him hasn't a clue.  Writing is ALL ART and therefor it is all subjective opinion as to whether or not he did a good job!!!!

 

Like 50% of the posts in this thread are from you, we get it already, damn.

[Mario Cole]

Like I said, when I think of WoT now I think of this:

 

http://www.theworld.org/wp-content/uploads/Jesus-PaintingNEW.jpg

 

Well I will agree with you that the original was pretty spotty and not much of a work of art to begin with.

[Trevor Wilson]

Have to agree with the gateways... the logical thing would have been to form a massive circle and dump half the volcano onto the dark army

 

But- it would have been a short fight ;)

[Mario Cole]

Well they did balefire weaves out of existence so maybe they could anticipate that tactic.

[Andrej]

Indeed. I would add that the many character "revivals" removed some value from the ending. Faile, Galad, Lan... all these people seemingly "died". Then they were shown to be alive again. Its kind of cheapened the end a little. For a cataclysmic, world-ending battle, the body count among the major characters was less than it could have been. In fact, I felt that Perrin's character arc, in particular, was ill served with Faile's return, and Faile's own heroism given a less fitting end.

 

Think about it: Isn't "was last seen riding away to divert thousands of Trollocs from getting their hands on the Horn" so much more evocative of the desperation of this battle than "was last seen having survived a Trolloc charge with a broken leg"?

I couldn't agree more. Although when I had read these portions initially it made me sad considering the kind of 'bond' you form with these characters through the series I felt that their 'death' scenes were valiant and the type of thing you would expect mankind to do in an all-out battle for survival. The fact that they didn't die, however, somehow surviving I felt was pretty cheap. Lan went out like the BA he was, he had earned that death after single handedly taking down a Forsaken that had already defeated two of the world's best swordsman prior to that.