Quality Discussion Thread

[vexlander]

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.  You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?  Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it.  RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series.  There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did.  In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm.   Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology.  Harriot could have edited either problem btw.  So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently.  That's WOT's legacy.

[jjp]

I don't understand your side of the argument.

[Vambram]

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently.  That's WOT's legacy.

 

Unfortunately, this is an opinion that many share. However, the fact that the last three or four books that RJ wrote were all huge bestsellers tend to indicate that a majority of readers probably disagree with that opinion of the legacy of the WOT.

[capuga]

Overall the book was not bad for being fan-fiction. I'm still avaiting the real one.

I'm sure RJ's ghost is getting right on that. 

[amolcomments]

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.  You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?  Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it.  RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series.  There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did.  In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm.   Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology.  Harriot could have edited either problem btw.  So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently.  That's WOT's legacy.

 

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion 

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words, forget high chant he can barely speak english

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- trivialised by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

[mrhumble1]

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion 

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- out-importanced by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

 

THIS.

 

At least one of the remaining Forsaken besides Moridin (Graendal) knew for sure Rand was at Shayol Ghul, and I am not even counting Lanfear.  Slayer knew he was there too.  Just more proof there was no reason at all for Demandred to think Rand would be at Merrilor.

 

Maybe my brain just didn't want to process this, now it seems clear as day.

 

By the way, why was Shaidar Haran a total non-factor?  Wasn't he built up (over several books) to be the physical embodyment of the DO??

[BFG]

 

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion 

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- out-importanced by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

 

THIS.

 

At least one of the remaining Forsaken besides Moridin (Graendal) knew for sure Rand was at Shayol Ghul, and I am not even counting Lanfear.  Slayer knew he was there too.  Just more proof there was no reason at all for Demandred to think Rand would be at Merrilor.

 

Maybe my brain just didn't want to process this, now it seems clear as day.

 

By the way, why was Shaidar Haran a total non-factor?  Wasn't he built up (over several books) to be the physical embodyment of the DO??

 

I actually don't find it that hard to believe Demandred wasn't aware that Rand wasn't at the Battlefield - Forsaken have consistently been thrown by whether Rand is or isn't LTT (e.g. Lanfear, they've all been thrown by the knowledge he has from LTT), LTT would have been at the Battlefield, without Moiraine Rand would have been, therefore it's a reasonable assumption.  The Shadow wanted Demandred at the battlefield, so wouldn't have told him (or allowed the others to tell him) where Rand was.  Additionally even though Moridin was "in charge" the others were still dreaming of ways to overthrow him, I suspect that most will have been AS-like in obeying the letter and not the spirit of the orders. 

 

The DO no longer needed SH, so disposed of him, he was never more than a vessel for the DO.

[Matthew79]

 

 

 

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did. You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH? Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it. RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series. There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did. In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm. Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology. Harriot could have edited either problem btw. So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently. That's WOT's legacy.

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words, forget high chant he can barely speak english

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- trivialised by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

How was the Fox Head medallion retconned? We knew as early as book 6 that sadin had no effect on it.

[Suttree]

Wow. Did you really just join this community to rail on this topic and other posters with your very first comment. Welcome to DM mate. Where to even start with this?

 

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.

It truly is a sad statement on present day society in which any critique or analysis is labelled "hate". Would love to hear you try and explain that to my old english professors. A realistic critique and discussion of the faults in AMoL =/= hate.

 

You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ...

While you are entirely welcome to your opinion it would be nice if you actually backed it up as many people have done when discussing the issues. How was it better? What did you enjoy? While ranking the books is entirely subjective I find it interesting that you left out TSR which is widely considered the best book in the series. For instance check out fan ratings here:

 

http://www.theoryland.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=7693

 

That in itself shows how different people like different things in their fantasy. If you want to argue Brandon's books were towards the top of the list from a pace(which would be silly given the different places in the story arc) and fan gratification standpoint I would listen to your case. If you are talking plotwork, quality of prose, and structure you really don't have much ground to stand on. That doesn't even begin to touch on the numerous mistakes and timeline issues. While RJ lost his way during that tPoD-WH stretch the quality of writing never suffered and many people enjoy the wider scope. There was always an incredible amount of depth and immersion which seperated it from your average fantasy series. It sounds like you enjoy fast paced, blunt hack-n-slash fantasy where the focus isn't on literary quality. That is fine of course and there is plenty of it out there for you to read, it just was never what the WoT was about.

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have.

A better ending than RJ would have? I don't think even the most ardent Brandon apologist would go that far. That type of fanboi hyperbole doesn't really help the discussion.

 

RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series. There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did.

Far from being just an indication we have concrete proof that he did turn things around. KoD showed he knew exactly where he was going and the pace was equal to that of TGS and ToM. Further the writing was far and away superior to anything we got under Sanderson.

 

In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm.

Guessing you will be interested to know then that Brandon argued against the split and thought things should be wrapped up in one book as well. After these last three books it has become quite evident why. There simply wasn't enough material for three and so we get a huge amount of bloat and filler, with major structural issues to top it off.

 

So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

Who isn't grateful that Brandon stepped in and took a swing at wraping this up? One can be very grateful while pointing out the flaws in the hope that Brandon will continue to grow and evolve as an author. What doesn't help is turning a blind eye to the very real issues and heaping on sychophantic praise. That does a far greater disservice to Brandon's work than a careful study and realistic analysis ever could.

[amolcomments]

 

 

 

 

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did. You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH? Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it. RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series. There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did. In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm. Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology. Harriot could have edited either problem btw. So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently. That's WOT's legacy.

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words, forget high chant he can barely speak english

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- trivialised by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

How was the Fox Head medallion retconned? We knew as early as book 6 that sadin had no effect on it.

 

You are right of course. The phrase "that had not saved him from a man's channelling" from tfoh is burned into my brain so i forgot about that bit in loc.

 

But the idea that Demandred can't do anything but throw a few rocks, foxhead or not (by the time Lan gets to him he's already fought two guys with the identical gimmick so its not like it caught him by surprise) is extremely irritating. The amount of apologism that goes on for those fights as to why demandred didn't just open a big hole under lan or crush him with lightning or any one of innumerable things he could have done with the power - phrases such as "he didn't want to cheat", "he didn't want to spoil the duel", "wanted to save his strength for rand" completely fall over when he's throwing rocks and about to get killed. He also has to be the worst general in the series, not the best, if he's fighting pointless duels in the middle of the battle. Rand had to learn that lesson at Cairhien. Couladin sure learned it.

[mbuehner]

I agree with most of the above, but there is one issue about Demandreds assumption- he knew Rand didn't have the seals and he did (or his henchman did anyway).  Of course it would have made a LOT more sense if Demandred kept the seals and waited for Rand to come get them. Would have turned his whole arc into something more reasonable- ie, 'I've trumped LTT and forced him to come to me, he will come fight me on ground of my choosing'. It still kinda works, except that he didn't physically have the seals as bait (although I guess there is no reason anybody on the light side would know that, luckily Androl stumbled on them I suppose).

[OneWhoMustBeLeashed]

I think a lot of the negativity is unjustified. It is unprecedented for a series of the caliber of WoT to be taken over and completed by another author 3/4 of the way through. Mr. Sanderson did an amazing job. Maybe it would have been better if RJ had lived to see the series to the conclusion, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Mr. Sanderson did a great job. We are very lucky that Mrs. Jordan and TOR decided to make sure the project was completed. It would have been sad if the heroes had been left halfway through their journey.

 

In terms of comparing Jordan and Sanderson, I think they are both quite good. The New York Times called RJ an American Tolkien. He was definitely a master of world-creation. He wasn't perfect though. His female characters tended to be annoying and very similar to one-another. He also tended to keep expanding the plot to the point that it seemed impossible to bring to a resolution. Anyway, he was a master writer. Sanderson might not quite be at the same level as the master yet, but he is young and already very good. The Gathering Storm in particular was, in my opinion, as good as many of the RJ books. In time, he may develop into the next master of the genre.

[rane008]

I think a lot of the negativity is unjustified. It is unprecedented for a series of the caliber of WoT to be taken over and completed by another author 3/4 of the way through. Mr. Sanderson did an amazing job. Maybe it would have been better if RJ had lived to see the series to the conclusion, but that doesn't take away from the fact that Mr. Sanderson did a great job. We are very lucky that Mrs. Jordan and TOR decided to make sure the project was completed. It would have been sad if the heroes had been left halfway through their journey.

 

In terms of comparing Jordan and Sanderson, I think they are both quite good. The New York Times called RJ an American Tolkien. He was definitely a master of world-creation. He wasn't perfect though. His female characters tended to be annoying and very similar to one-another. He also tended to keep expanding the plot to the point that it seemed impossible to bring to a resolution. Anyway, he was a master writer. Sanderson might not quite be at the same level as the master yet, but he is young and already very good. The Gathering Storm in particular was, in my opinion, as good as many of the RJ books. In time, he may develop into the next master of the genre.

Great...Lucky...Ending...Unjustified...

 

See here's the thing, it's the same refrain.  I feel like I'm on r/WOT over here.  We are clearly justified in critquing BS.  Literary critique is not negativity per se.  Hell, if BS were to read this thread, maybe he could take some pointers from the community who has been diligent about pointing out flaws.  And these were legion.  No subjectivity needed here, AMOL was at best mediocre. 

 

That said, I did enjoy TGS and was excited that BS would complete the series.  Until I read TOM.  And then AMOL.  Now I am say.

 

Psarckaenuey

[vexlander]

Here's a better WOT Legacy analogy for you:

 

Jordan crafted a Ferrari by hand relying heavily on schematic designs of prior car geniuses while adding a few improvements of his own. However he failed to give the Ferrari a sports suspension or adequate brakes (his horrific 2-D female writing) and though the Ferrari ran exceedingly well for a time, it eventually careened off the road into a ditch where it spun its wheels kicking up mud at any onlookers.  Brandon Sanderson's Towing Co. showed up with a tow truck and dutifully hauled the damaged Ferrari out of the ditch, slapped some modern tires on, filled up the tank and barely coaxed it back to the garage where it collapsed for good. 

[Suttree]

@vex

 

You are still ignoring the fact that after the WH-CoT stretch KoD had the car out of the ditch and heading back home. It may not have been back up to full speed, but it certainly didn't need to be coaxed to a garage.

 

In your first post you said Brandon gave us a better ending than RJ would have been capable of and that these books were better than all but three of RJ's, now you are moving the goal posts and saying something different entirely.

[vexlander]

Yah I'm not buying the whole KoD comeback, guess I'll have to go back and look at KoD again but thats not how I remember it.  My point isn't that Sanderson delievered some epic Tolkienesque conclusion.  My point was RJ appeared to be washed up to me at the time and I had no faith that he would deliver a quality ending.  My expecatation based on his work after TFOH was that we'd get a very disappointing mess.  Sanderson's ending was decent.  Obviously not perfect by any stretch but if you jump into a MASSIVE WORLD which isn't YOUR baby like WOT theres just no way you're getting everything right.

 

On another note I find it hilarious that half the people who hate Sanderson's ending complain that it was "bloated" and the other half complain that it felt "rushed."  Yikes guys. The series had like 10 million characters.  You really wanted a personallized death/action scene for every "Bashere" or "Narishima" -type character in the series?  Maybe 10-20 more 1v1 swordfights with some slow motion "Nooooooooooes" would have done the job lol. 

 

Also I love the guy that blames Sanderson for the following:

- The Demandred / importance of Shara twist

- The DO being "the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever"

- Fain's disappointing ending

 

Woah there champ, those are some pretty basic elements of the broad WOT story there... you really think RJ wasn't behind EVERY SINGLE ONE of those elements?  You think Sanderson was left to insert the blank on what Demandred had been doing / his and Shara's role in the Last Battle?  You think RJ left the Rand / DO confrontation elements up to Sanderson to decide how they'd fight? (Lets be real, if he left it to Sanderson's perogative, we'd probably have had EPIC SWORD FIGHT # 1734.)  Same issue for Fain?  Really, so your position is that RJ had absoluetly no direction over where major elements of his about-to-be-concluded epic were going?

 

BTW you won't catch me "appologizing" for the Triple-Sword fight mess.  Sanderson clearly was trying to give the fans some sort of Gawyn/Galad closure and overextended badly. Legit mistake there, certainly deserving of criticism.  Lots of this other stuff and the general conclusion that AMOL was a failure to be blamed on Sanderson: overblown bitching.

[Suttree]

To be clear I think both extremes in this discussion go overboard. Brandon had a VERY difficult task in stepping in to try and wrap things up and everyone should be grateful he took a swing. That said, we know he is capable of much better work and I don't think it is unfair to hold him to a higher standard. He did some things well but the end result was far too uneven. He was almost universally praised(in retrospect unrealistically so) after TGS and then things went downhill from there. At the end of the day I hope he learns from this project and continues to grow as an author in his own Stormlight Archive. Despite my issues with his work I think it was far better to get a real author who had creative control as Brandon did. With the amount of material he had to create due to how incomplete the notes were there is no possible way a ghost writer could have stepped in to finish things.

 

The main problem I have is so many of these issues seem to have relatively simple solutions and yes much of that is on the editing team as well. I really don't understand why this project was so rushed, I don't understand why plot decisions were made based on deadlines as opposed to what was best for the story, and I don't understand why more time wasn't taken to address mistakes, timeline and polish. In short there are so many questions about the way this whole thing was handled, those questions go far beyond the problems people have with Brandon's writing.

[vexlander]

^ Now thats a post I can agree with.  There was plenty of discussion about the IRL time gap b/w KOD and TGS and Harriot / the Pub's desire to get a book out to keep the series' presense alive in peoples minds.  I'm sure they were all deluged with letters / emails to the effect of "I only have XXX number of years/months to live, and I just want to see an ending in my lifetime."  No doubt those pressures existed.  But I agree that I wish the final book had been more carefully vetted. GRRM once described his editing process as "sweating" his book - going through it word by word and ripping out every unneccessary word.  Buffing up the little things.  I agree that AMOL could have used a bit more of that kind of TLC.

[NitroS]

 

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.  You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?  Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it.  RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series.  There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did.  In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm.   Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology.  Harriot could have edited either problem btw.  So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently.  That's WOT's legacy.

 

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion 

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words, forget high chant he can barely speak english

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- trivialised by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

 

 

 

ill copy my post about demandred from another thread

 

 

 

Why do you all think that Demandred was stupid in thinking Lews Therin being at the Last battle at Merrilor.

 

Look at it from Demandreds POV. He thinks hes the greatest general,

swordsman, chaneller etc and that his age is far superior to the current

one.

 

- You hear that Lews Therin had been fighting on all 3 battle fronts previously.

- You see a General which is matching you neck for neck

- You see a assassin come at you with a weave only known to those of

the age of Legends, given that Lews Therin is the only one working for

the light you assume he is there.

- You see a swordsman matching you

- Their is no way for Demandred to know Rand is at Shayoul Ghoul with

time dialation and no prior warning due to him having the knife

terangreal blocking him from being sensed by the DO.

- His hatred for Rand i wouldnt care about the DO winning or losing

if the guy that took my one true love, mocked me when he beat me at

everything i did and achieved more then me and lived in his shadow my

whole life.

 

With the above points and his arrogance it would seem logical Lews Therin was there.

 

Then we have the people complaining how Demandred dieing. I would

like to hear how other people wish for demandred to be defeated. Rand is

out of the question since hes fighting the DO/moridin. You explain a

way for someone to overpower Demandred who is in a full circle of 72,

holding the most powerful sa arngreal in existence and the most

knowledge of any channeler left in the world and the most powerful

channeler individually outside Rand. The only person that could come

close was egwene with soras fluted wand with another circle of 72 but

still would probably not have the skill or the power to win. The only

logical way to win was to have demandreds arrogance in swordplay vs Lan i

dont get why people complain so much about this. Demandred exceeded

anything i could have hoped for and was really impressed how his

character was used, i do wish that we could have just seen a encounter

or conversation between lews therin and Demandred but im happy how it

was outputted. I mean the majority of people including Terez was fixed

on Demandred being Roedran, really? you feel let down when we get

something as cool as Shara when the major theory was that he controlled

murandy and his power was going to be a backdoor into the lights

lands......

Also would like to add the reason why demandred couldnt do much with the power is RJ setting up channelers to be too strong compared to normal men. If you just had the channelers dominating the battle field it would have taken away from all the armies that joined to fight who lacked channelers. Example of this is Dumais wells dedicated soldiers and Ashaman with only months of training with the one power with a small number of 100 were able to decimate 1000s of shaido in seconds. If you kept this pattern for the last battle demandred would have solod the lights forces with that much power considering the damage rand could do solo vs trolloc armies.

 

Perrin vs Slayer has always been similar to that and i found it more entertaining then the battles with slayer in the beginning of the series. What were you expecting to happen between the 2 considering what has happened in the past?

 

Of all your complaints about shayol ghul its thoms vocabulary? the sisters couldnt channel and attack him for 2 obvious reasons, 1 hes a warder of moiraine which would have alerted her and 2 the massive amount of channeling occuring inside. If you were sneaking into a cave full of a gang with machine guns, rifles and bazookas and your equipped with a hand gun would you try to sneak in with a disguise or shoot the guard warning everyone inside your coming? I found the Greandal vs avienda scene and fight their to be entertaining.

 

im pretty sure if we just had the agelmer compulsion plot revealed and then the other 3 happen off screen everyone would have yelled cop out. Would you prefer to just pop at every battlefront saying oh the general is a dark friend he tried to sacrifice our armies? and not have any plot there?

 

You complain about nothing but trollocs int he battles and then you complain that the sharans were there too? which one dont you want?

 

I agree with you on the seanchan they were completely lacking but also you have to take in mind they had a much smaller army then everyone thinks, Fortuona hadnt secured her rule so the bulk of her armies were still in seanchan just like the bulk of sharan armies were still in Shara.

 

The endless trolloc fights is what brandon and team jordan were aiming for they said they aimed for you to feel as exhausted of the battle as the characters felt after reading them and i think they achieved this well. RJ set up this with the lack of interesting shadowspawn.

 

I agree androl had too much screen time, i think the black tower part of him was fine and the dragonmount gateway but after that should have shifted all focus to logain, the seals being found by androl were too much.

 

Rand vs DO agree was boring and uninteresting i agree.

 

Padan Fain had his limelight in the earlier part of the series and was merely built up due to fandom. He just popped up in the early series stabbed some people every so often and then left and the twist with mat being immune and killing him fit.

 

The Main arguments i have is the useless death of shadar haran could have had fain kill him and weaken the DO to add something which was a strong fan theory. Lack of Ashaman should have had equal numbers to the Aes sedai at the last battle. Lack of Wiseones and windfinders. All the windfinders did was use the bowl of winds? I didnt mind rand not having a one power duel cause we had so many throughout the series. But moridin being alive for centuries and collecting ter angreal angreal etc and we dont see a hint of any of them. Lack of use of white tower tearangreal. No siuan moiraine reunion and lack of more major deaths and lastly lack of Cadsuane and her tearangreal in the last battle.

[NitroS]

To be clear I think both extremes in this discussion go overboard. Brandon had a VERY difficult task in stepping in to try and wrap things up and everyone should be grateful he took a swing. That said, we know he is capable of much better work and I don't think it is unfair to hold him to a higher standard. He did some things well but the end result was far too uneven. He was almost universally praised(in retrospect unrealistically so) after TGS and then things went downhill from there. At the end of the day I hope he learns from this project and continues to grow as an author in his own Stormlight Archive. Despite my issues with his work I think it was far better to get a real author who had creative control as Brandon did. With the amount of material he had to create due to how incomplete the notes were there is no possible way a ghost writer could have stepped in to finish things.

 

The main problem I have is so many of these issues seem to have relatively simple solutions and yes much of that is on the editing team as well. I really don't understand why this project was so rushed, I don't understand why plot decisions were made based on deadlines as opposed to what was best for the story, and I don't understand why more time wasn't taken to address mistakes, timeline and polish. In short there are so many questions about the way this whole thing was handled, those questions go far beyond the problems people have with Brandon's writing.

i was under the impression that TOR was rushing Brandon cause he had contracts of other books to keep a deadline too.

[ZorValachan]

Suttree, on 11 Feb 2013 - 11:47, said:

Guessing you will be interested to know then that Brandon argued against the split and thought things should be wrapped up in one book as well. After these last three books it has become quite evident why. There simply wasn't enough material for three and so we get a huge amount of bloat and filler, with major structural issues to top it off.

 

I would like to know where this information is, because by reading his blog, it seemed completely opposite.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/splitting-amol

 

Quotes from that blog:

 

"To get this into one book, I'd need to railroad the story from climax to climax. I'd have to ignore a lot of the smaller characters�and even some aspects of the larger characters. I just couldn't justify that. It wouldn't do the story justice. I cringed to consider what I would have to cut or ignore.

 

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps readers would have preferred a single, condensed volume so that they at least knew what happened. But I just couldn't do it. The Wheel of Time deserved better.

 

This was not an easy choice. I knew it would anger some readers. I knew it would take a lot of time, and I would end up dedicating a great deal more of my life (and my family's life) to the Wheel of Time than I'd initially anticipated. At the very least, I was contemplating writing a book three to four times the length of the initial contract�essentially, doing four times the work for the exact same pay."

 

and further down

 

"Well, that was the first hint I had that this might be three books instead of two. I started to lobby Harriet subtly, pointing out that previous Wheel of Time books had been 380k, and perhaps that would be a good length for each Volume of AMOL, if it was cut. I also indicated that I felt it would be really nice to keep volumes of the book published close together if, indeed, the book had to be split."

 

I am just curious if there is a statement somewhere that he was fighting against the split, because everything in that blog entry seemed to be him fighting for the split. Not trying to be argumentative just wanting to know and to explain where I am coming from. Thanks!

[NitroS]

Suttree, on 11 Feb 2013 - 11:47, said:

Guessing you will be interested to know then that Brandon argued against the split and thought things should be wrapped up in one book as well. After these last three books it has become quite evident why. There simply wasn't enough material for three and so we get a huge amount of bloat and filler, with major structural issues to top it off.

 

 

I would like to know where this information is, because by reading his blog, it seemed completely opposite.

http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/56/splitting-amol

 

Quotes from that blog:

 

"To get this into one book, I'd need to railroad the story from climax to climax. I'd have to ignore a lot of the smaller characters�and even some aspects of the larger characters. I just couldn't justify that. It wouldn't do the story justice. I cringed to consider what I would have to cut or ignore.

 

 

Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps readers would have preferred a single, condensed volume so that they at least knew what happened. But I just couldn't do it. The Wheel of Time deserved better.

 

 

This was not an easy choice. I knew it would anger some readers. I knew it would take a lot of time, and I would end up dedicating a great deal more of my life (and my family's life) to the Wheel of Time than I'd initially anticipated. At the very least, I was contemplating writing a book three to four times the length of the initial contract�essentially, doing four times the work for the exact same pay."

 

and further down

 

"Well, that was the first hint I had that this might be three books instead of two. I started to lobby Harriet subtly, pointing out that previous Wheel of Time books had been 380k, and perhaps that would be a good length for each Volume of AMOL, if it was cut. I also indicated that I felt it would be really nice to keep volumes of the book published close together if, indeed, the book had to be split."

 

I am just curious if there is a statement somewhere that he was fighting against the split, because everything in that blog entry seemed to be him fighting for the split. Not trying to be argumentative just wanting to know and to explain where I am coming from. Thanks!

in the beginning he wanted it to be 1 book as he said robert jordan always said it would be 1 book so he wanted it to be but in the end the owner of TOR jsut said he would have told robert jordan the same thing and that its just not feasible to publish a book that big.

[BFG]

Suttree said

 

That in itself shows how different people like different things in their fantasy. If you want to argue Brandon's books were towards the top of the list from a pace(which would be silly given the different places in the story arc) and fan gratification standpoint I would listen to your case. If you are talking plotwork, quality of prose, and structure you really don't have much ground to stand on. That doesn't even begin to touch on the numerous mistakes and timeline issues. While RJ lost his way during that tPoD-WH stretch the quality of writing never suffered and many people enjoy the wider scope. There was always an incredible amount of depth and immersion which seperated it from your average fantasy series. It sounds like you enjoy fast paced, blunt hack-n-slash fantasy where the focus isn't on literary quality. That is fine of course and there is plenty of it out there for you to read, it just was never what the WoT was about.

 

 

Actually I don't think it's silly to argue that the pace in the latter books (starting with the end of KoD) are better than say CoT.  This is because of the position the story is in, so it's not something that can necessarily be used as praise for BS, but it is a strength in the books, independent of the author.   

 

 

You are right of course. The phrase "that had not saved him from a man's channelling" from tfoh is burned into my brain so i forgot about that bit in loc.

 

But the idea that Demandred can't do anything but throw a few rocks, foxhead or not (by the time Lan gets to him he's already fought two guys with the identical gimmick so its not like it caught him by surprise) is extremely irritating. The amount of apologism that goes on for those fights as to why demandred didn't just open a big hole under lan or crush him with lightning or any one of innumerable things he could have done with the power - phrases such as "he didn't want to cheat", "he didn't want to spoil the duel", "wanted to save his strength for rand" completely fall over when he's throwing rocks and about to get killed. He also has to be the worst general in the series, not the best, if he's fighting pointless duels in the middle of the battle. Rand had to learn that lesson at Cairhien. Couladin sure learned it.

 

 

I'm pretty sure that Gawyn only had the rings and not the medallion - NitroS has an excellent point about this being another point in favor of Rand being at the Battlefield (at least from the info Demandred has).  Nonetheless, by the time Lan gets there he has fought Galad under the same circumstances, so has had time to think about it.

[amolcomments]

 

 

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.  You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?  Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

 

Sanderson wasn't perfect but its so mindless that some of you can't accept that he gave WOT a better ending than RJ would have (Or any of you wannabe literary critics). Yes, thats the truth. Deal with it.  RJ completely lost his touch or his inspiration or whatever he had that helped him start a great fantasy series.  There was NO indication that he was suddenly going to turn the mess around and wrap it up with the relative quality that Sanderson did.  In fact, in RJ's mind he was wrapping things up in 1 book... I'm sure that book would have been great /sarcasm.   Yah instead you have to deal with Sanderson not remembering the exact number of millions of troops the light had and Sanderson's use of modern terminology.  Harriot could have edited either problem btw.  So stop complaining, thank the man, and enjoy the conclusion.

 

By fantasy standards the series started great, became unreadable in the middle and ended decently.  That's WOT's legacy.

 

Your opinion: Sanderson gave a better ending than RJ would have.

 

My opinion: AMOL was garbage and the worst of Sanderson's contributions to the series. Let's chuck writing arguments out the window since people can't seem to understand the difference between taste (subjective) and quality (objective).

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

- why do random black ajah know rand is at shayol ghul when one of the chosen doesn't, also why can't a single one spare 2 minutes to tell demandred given everyone's travelling like its going out of fashion 

- has circle of 72 and sa'angreal and does crap all with it

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

- passing retconned male immune foxhead around each swordsmen so they can all have a go at demandred was like reading a season of dragonball z in print

- darth vaderesque rock throwing is the best demandred can manage with ridiculous amount of power, if rand put up that kind of show fighting nonchannelers he'd have been dead by book 4

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

 

Perrin vs Slayer

- matrix style cartoon fight that takes up huge chunk of book while simultaneously being completely meaningless

 

Shayol Ghul

- massive amounts of rubbish nothing fight happening there, innumerable wasted elements including red veils and darkhounds

- thom composing horrible epic with vocab of about 10 words, forget high chant he can barely speak english

- random aes sedai trying to walk past thom to get stabbed in the back instead of just incinerating him

 

Generals

- having to read same general compulsion subplot four times, shoot me

 

Army of Shadow

- trivialised by sharans - this is the last battle the ultimate fight between light and shadow and the most important force on the evil side isn't the shadow

 

Seanchan

- do crap all in last battle except stand around and annoy me

- Knotai

 

Last Battle

- trollocs boiling out of the blight, cities overrun, vast armies, nope, bunch of trollocs at field of merrilor is it

- about 80% of book is identical fight against numerbeless trollocs with protaganist's names changed, meaningless babble with nothing at stake

 

Androl

- superhero who does everything except fight shai'tan

- logain gets completely sidelined, along with all my favourite ashaman like flinn and narishma

 

Black Tower

- in which nothing happens except the ocean's 11 rescue

 

Rand vs Dark one

- DO is the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever

- worst Rand vs. anyone fight in whole series

- the pattern fight and worlds that might has been written at least 3 times before in this series and better every time

 

Padan Fain

- appears out of nowhere and dies instantly

- add Taim in there since he was another character with books-long build up completely wasted

 

God I'd have to read it again to list everything wrong with AMOL. I waited 15 years to read it and I'll never read it again.

 

 

 

ill copy my post about demandred from another thread

 

 

 

>>Why do you all think that Demandred was stupid in thinking Lews Therin being at the Last battle at Merrilor.

 

Look at it from Demandreds POV. He thinks hes the greatest general,

swordsman, chaneller etc and that his age is far superior to the current

one.

 

- You hear that Lews Therin had been fighting on all 3 battle fronts previously.

- You see a General which is matching you neck for neck

- You see a assassin come at you with a weave only known to those of

the age of Legends, given that Lews Therin is the only one working for

the light you assume he is there.

- You see a swordsman matching you

- Their is no way for Demandred to know Rand is at Shayoul Ghoul with

time dialation and no prior warning due to him having the knife

terangreal blocking him from being sensed by the DO.

- His hatred for Rand i wouldnt care about the DO winning or losing

if the guy that took my one true love, mocked me when he beat me at

everything i did and achieved more then me and lived in his shadow my

whole life.

 

With the above points and his arrogance it would seem logical Lews Therin was there.

 

Then we have the people complaining how Demandred dieing. I would

like to hear how other people wish for demandred to be defeated. Rand is

out of the question since hes fighting the DO/moridin. You explain a

way for someone to overpower Demandred who is in a full circle of 72,

holding the most powerful sa arngreal in existence and the most

knowledge of any channeler left in the world and the most powerful

channeler individually outside Rand. The only person that could come

close was egwene with soras fluted wand with another circle of 72 but

still would probably not have the skill or the power to win. The only

logical way to win was to have demandreds arrogance in swordplay vs Lan i

dont get why people complain so much about this. Demandred exceeded

anything i could have hoped for and was really impressed how his

character was used, i do wish that we could have just seen a encounter

or conversation between lews therin and Demandred but im happy how it

was outputted. I mean the majority of people including Terez was fixed

on Demandred being Roedran, really? you feel let down when we get

something as cool as Shara when the major theory was that he controlled

murandy and his power was going to be a backdoor into the lights

lands......

Also would like to add the reason why demandred couldnt do much with the power is RJ setting up channelers to be too strong compared to normal men. If you just had the channelers dominating the battle field it would have taken away from all the armies that joined to fight who lacked channelers. Example of this is Dumais wells dedicated soldiers and Ashaman with only months of training with the one power with a small number of 100 were able to decimate 1000s of shaido in seconds. If you kept this pattern for the last battle demandred would have solod the lights forces with that much power considering the damage rand could do solo vs trolloc armies.

 

Perrin vs Slayer has always been similar to that and i found it more entertaining then the battles with slayer in the beginning of the series. What were you expecting to happen between the 2 considering what has happened in the past?

 

Of all your complaints about shayol ghul its thoms vocabulary? the sisters couldnt channel and attack him for 2 obvious reasons, 1 hes a warder of moiraine which would have alerted her and 2 the massive amount of channeling occuring inside. If you were sneaking into a cave full of a gang with machine guns, rifles and bazookas and your equipped with a hand gun would you try to sneak in with a disguise or shoot the guard warning everyone inside your coming? I found the Greandal vs avienda scene and fight their to be entertaining.

 

im pretty sure if we just had the agelmer compulsion plot revealed and then the other 3 happen off screen everyone would have yelled cop out. Would you prefer to just pop at every battlefront saying oh the general is a dark friend he tried to sacrifice our armies? and not have any plot there?

 

You complain about nothing but trollocs int he battles and then you complain that the sharans were there too? which one dont you want?

 

I agree with you on the seanchan they were completely lacking but also you have to take in mind they had a much smaller army then everyone thinks, Fortuona hadnt secured her rule so the bulk of her armies were still in seanchan just like the bulk of sharan armies were still in Shara.

 

The endless trolloc fights is what brandon and team jordan were aiming for they said they aimed for you to feel as exhausted of the battle as the characters felt after reading them and i think they achieved this well. RJ set up this with the lack of interesting shadowspawn.

 

I agree androl had too much screen time, i think the black tower part of him was fine and the dragonmount gateway but after that should have shifted all focus to logain, the seals being found by androl were too much.

 

Rand vs DO agree was boring and uninteresting i agree.

 

Padan Fain had his limelight in the earlier part of the series and was merely built up due to fandom. He just popped up in the early series stabbed some people every so often and then left and the twist with mat being immune and killing him fit.

 

The Main arguments i have is the useless death of shadar haran could have had fain kill him and weaken the DO to add something which was a strong fan theory. Lack of Ashaman should have had equal numbers to the Aes sedai at the last battle. Lack of Wiseones and windfinders. All the windfinders did was use the bowl of winds? I didnt mind rand not having a one power duel cause we had so many throughout the series. But moridin being alive for centuries and collecting ter angreal angreal etc and we dont see a hint of any of them. Lack of use of white tower tearangreal. No siuan moiraine reunion and lack of more major deaths and lastly lack of Cadsuane and her tearangreal in the last battle.

 

 

i'm glad i finally get to argue with people about AMOL since i can't even post on r/wot since just get downvoted to oblivion if i say i didn't like it. sorry the responses aren't in order.

 

my problem with all the demandred explanations is i don't find them new or insightful, its just the same mental knot twisting i keep reading to justify why he is the only bad guy in the entire world who doesn't know rand is at shayol ghul. my argument is simple, which i have never seen addressed - this is the Last Battle, the Dragon goes to Shayol Ghul at the Last Battle, that is where everyone in the world knows he will be at the Last Battle, he is not going to be anywhere else. also why doesn't he ever go hmm, maybe i'll just pop over to SG just to have a quick check up to see if rand's headed over there? or send one of my innumerable channelers to do it? or taim?

 

i also don't understand why because channellers are too powerful you're happy that the best solution is to just inexplicably make them useless because there is no obvious solution occurs to you to deal with the problem. the war of power lasted ten years, we've known forever that it was gonna be dreadlords, black ajah, whatever forsaken were left standing vs. aes sedai, asha'man, windfinders, wise ones etc... so clearly jordan would have had to have a plan which did not make it into AMOL about how he was going to address this which would not have involved vanishing huge chunks of them and making the rest completely toothless.

 

my point about the fights with the trollocs is not the trollocs themselves - its that the fights with them are the same fight repeated over and over and pass for a lot of the book's content. i wasn't exhausted, i was bored. and what i found more egregious was all that repitition was at the expense of major plot points which are breezed over or just ignored, such the meeting at merrilor upon which supposedly the fate of the world hinged, but which is completely glossed over. i had no stake in it since most of those fights were just numberless extras getting offed. my problem with the sharans was that the ultimate battle between good and evil was sidelined by the not-so ultimate battle between good, evil, and these other guys who subbed in when it turned out evil has been bluffing about its numbers since the breaking.

 

i don't follow why you're saying that not repeating the compulsion subplot at each location would have been a cop-out. everyone figures it out at the same time, takes the same action. repeating the same storyline 4 times is not plot. would you enjoy a movie where one party told the audience who the killer was, then five minutes later you had an identical scene where a different party tells the audience who the killer is, then again, then again once more, and on top of that its dressed up like the denouement each time?  

 

your explanations for why the black ajah didn't kill thom is in similar vein to your demandred points - making excuses for things that make no sense. starting with the basic - these black ajah know thom is moiraine's warder how? demandred doesn't even know that rand is at shayol ghul but the black ajah know moiraine is inside shayol ghul with rand? or are they just smarter than demandred? if there is so much channelling going on inside why would you try and sneak in by yourself in the first place, knowingly bringing your knife to said bazooka fight?

 

my issue with the perrin vs slayer fight - again my point is not the nature of the fight itself - its that the clash is way too long, hugely repetitive and spans big chunks of the book. shorter, as a climatic finale it has meaning. he's not going to kill slayer at the midpoint of the book is he?

 

again, padan fain - my issue is not the death, its how its executed in the book. mat kills him - fine, nice bit of symmetry. he appears, does nothing, and dies a page later - not fine.

[Mr Ares]

lol reading some of the comments here ... So much hate for the job Sanderson did.  You guys realize that the last 3 books were better than any of the RJ books other than TEOTW, TGH and TFOH?  Think about that... RJ dumped out a massive story, drove it into the ground (I don't think ANYONE is here to defend the disaster that the last decade of RJ writing turned out to be) and Sanderson swooped in, provided 3 entertaining books while pulling out of the nosedive the series was in ... and all some of you can say is "I can't wait to get to the RJ part" ... lol are you kidding? What part is that? Where Nanaeve sniffs a dozen times and yanks her braid off?

You do realise that your immensely subjective assessment of which books were good isn't even one shared by the majority of fans? As already pointed out, TSR is the book that most frequently topped best book polls. Brandon did fairly well on these books, given the circumstances, but he was out of his depth and it shows. RJ's books were not without their problems, but BS was not the saviour of a train wreck of a series. RJ did turn things around. He was on course to finish well. The split into multiple books has caused a lot of problems - the Two Tams being a notable one, but far from the only one. AMoL had too little content for its length. Sanderson is not an untalented man, but he doesn't write as well as RJ, and I would take RJ, even with all his flaws, over BS - CoT was a deeply flawed work, but don't try and pretend that Sanderson's books are not equally flawed.

 

Here's all my issues, just the ones that I can think of

 

Demandred:

- exhibits cartoon supervillain intelligence, constantly yelling across the battlefield like retard instead of nuking vast chunks of army with ease

- thinking rand is at FOM instead of shayol ghul....why? bunch of weak reasons ooh the other general is amazing, no one can be as awesome a general as lews therin, blah blah blah...bottom line the Dragon is at shayol ghul at the last battle. the prophecy is "his blood on the rocks of shayol ghul" not "his blood on some random field in the middle of nowhere"

Rand has to go to SG at some point, yes, but that doesn't mean he is there right now. Yes, there was some poor reasoning, and there were changes to Demandred's character that went unexplained, but it is not a ridiculous assumption that Rand could fight Demandred before he goes to SG (especially if Demandred is unaware of the time dilation). Oh, and Demandred did kill thousands of people at a time. Doesn't that qualify as "nuking vast chunks with ease"?

- fighting 3 duels with progressively better swordsmen to settle who is the best swordfighter question is young adult level fan gratification

It's also something already settled, so I doubt that's why Brandon did it.

- getting killed by nonchanneler = worst forsaken death ever

Worse than Balthamel being killed by a Nym? Or Aginor getting killed by Aginor?

 

In terms of comparing Jordan and Sanderson, I think they are both quite good. The New York Times called RJ an American Tolkien. He was definitely a master of world-creation. He wasn't perfect though. His female characters tended to be annoying and very similar to one-another. He also tended to keep expanding the plot to the point that it seemed impossible to bring to a resolution. Anyway, he was a master writer. Sanderson might not quite be at the same level as the master yet, but he is young and already very good. The Gathering Storm in particular was, in my opinion, as good as many of the RJ books. In time, he may develop into the next master of the genre.

Maybe it's my unforgiving nature, by I do not give Sanderson a pass either for his youth or his relative inexperience. Other authors have produced works with better prose as their first published work. In time? Maybe, one day, Brandon will be as good of an author as Michael Swanwick, Gene Wolfe, China Mieville, R. Scott Bakker, George R.R. Martin and Daniel Abraham are right now. Hell, Scott Lynch is younger, had his first book published later and is already better. Why isn't Brandon that good now?

 

On another note I find it hilarious that half the people who hate Sanderson's ending complain that it was "bloated" and the other half complain that it felt "rushed."  Yikes guys. The series had like 10 million characters.  You really wanted a personallized death/action scene for every "Bashere" or "Narishima" -type character in the series?  Maybe 10-20 more 1v1 swordfights with some slow motion "Nooooooooooes" would have done the job lol.

What an absurd position to take. Firstly, a work can be both rushed and bloated - some elements were one, some were the other. Lots more one on one swordfights is not a suggestion that fixes the problem, nor is a death scene for every character. But you need to give people a bit more than "oh, so and so is dead." "Oh dear". That sort of thing can rob deaths of their potential impact.

Also I love the guy that blames Sanderson for the following:

- The Demandred / importance of Shara twist

- The DO being "the most ineffectual, useless ultimate evil ever"

- Fain's disappointing ending

 

Woah there champ, those are some pretty basic elements of the broad WOT story there... you really think RJ wasn't behind EVERY SINGLE ONE of those elements?  You think Sanderson was left to insert the blank on what Demandred had been doing / his and Shara's role in the Last Battle?  You think RJ left the Rand / DO confrontation elements up to Sanderson to decide how they'd fight? (Lets be real, if he left it to Sanderson's perogative, we'd probably have had EPIC SWORD FIGHT # 1734.)  Same issue for Fain?  Really, so your position is that RJ had absoluetly no direction over where major elements of his about-to-be-concluded epic were going?

Was the problem in the concept or the execution? That's what you have to ask yourself. Was Shara a good idea handled badly, a bad idea handled well, a good idea handled well, or a bad idea handled badly? Same with Fain and the fight against Shai'tan, and plenty of other ideas. Look at Cadsuane breaking Semi in TGS - it was in the notes that it was done via a spanking, but she goes from a single spanking session to eating food off the floor right away. The concept couldn't be changed without going against RJ's wishes, but the execution could be. Fain's end might not be something that can be changed, but more time could have been devoted to it, and it would have come across as so rushed. Shara could have been a potent force without taking over to the extent it did. Brandon was the guy who took the ideas RJ left and made them a reality - and some of those ideas were done justice, others were not.

 

Also would like to add the reason why demandred couldnt do much with the power is RJ setting up channelers to be too strong compared to normal men. If you just had the channelers dominating the battle field it would have taken away from all the armies that joined to fight who lacked channelers. Example of this is Dumais wells dedicated soldiers and Ashaman with only months of training with the one power with a small number of 100 were able to decimate 1000s of shaido in seconds. If you kept this pattern for the last battle demandred would have solod the lights forces with that much power considering the damage rand could do solo vs trolloc armies.

Not very compelling - while channelers are powerful, if they are too busy dealing with the enemy channeling forces then there is plenty for the ordinary soldiers to do. It did not require either the toning down of the OP or huge numbers of channelers and regular soldiers being forgotten because they were inconvenient to the plot.

 

Of all your complaints about shayol ghul its thoms vocabulary? the sisters couldnt channel and attack him for 2 obvious reasons, 1 hes a warder of moiraine which would have alerted her and 2 the massive amount of channeling occuring inside. If you were sneaking into a cave full of a gang with machine guns, rifles and bazookas and your equipped with a hand gun would you try to sneak in with a disguise or shoot the guard warning everyone inside your coming? I found the Greandal vs avienda scene and fight their to be entertaining.

If they knew that he was a Warder, then they would know the benefits killing him would provide, as it could help take Moiraine out of the fight. If they were unaware, then it makes no sense to not kill him, as long as you do so in a way that doesn't draw attention.

 

im pretty sure if we just had the agelmer compulsion plot revealed and then the other 3 happen off screen everyone would have yelled cop out. Would you prefer to just pop at every battlefront saying oh the general is a dark friend he tried to sacrifice our armies? and not have any plot there?

There is a middle ground. Showing the same thing four times over is pointless. Yes, there was a variation at the end, with Ituralde, but it was too little. More subtlety could have helped, but it was too heavy handed to be truly effective.

 

You complain about nothing but trollocs in the battles and then you complain that the sharans were there too? which one dont you want?

Not mutually exclusive - the Sharans were a distraction from the Light v Shadow conflict, and the Shadow had more forces than just Trollocs. With Darkfriends, Dreadlord and the possibility of more kinds of Shadowspawn, you're presenting a false dichotomy of either Sharans or Trollocs.

 

 

The endless trolloc fights is what brandon and team jordan were aiming for they said they aimed for you to feel as exhausted of the battle as the characters felt after reading them and i think they achieved this well. RJ set up this with the lack of interesting shadowspawn.

So their intention was to bore the reader with endless repetition?

 

 

Padan Fain had his limelight in the earlier part of the series and was merely built up due to fandom. He just popped up in the early series stabbed some people every so often and then left and the twist with mat being immune and killing him fit.

Sanderson set him up with a cliffhanger at the end of ToM. Not RJ, not fans, BS did that. And then he had Fain not appear until the end and then die almost immediately.