Quality Discussion Thread

[Occams whiskey bottle]

If anyone has read any of the new Bourne or Godfather books, then you will notice how differently those worlds changed from how the original authors wrote them. People have to give Sanderson enough credit that he at least tried to stay true to RJ's vision, and in many cases he largely succeeded. Sanderson's books are not perfect books, but they are vastly better than could have been reasonably expected. Nevertheless,I enjoyed them and I think it had a very satisfying, though I wish Harriet would have let Bela live as it seems obvious that RJ intended Rand to ride off on her...

[szilard]

I have read all of RJs books at least three times since his death

That's the spirit!

 

I kind of wish BS and TJ would come out and tell us which bits were written by RJ, which plot points were his, etc.

Jordan's involvement: in TGS: 5%, in TOM: 3%, AMOL:0%

[Ozhammer]

Finished AMOL not too long ago, after much trepidation about reading it.

 

Completely agree with the sentiment about not re-reading the books written by BS. Fair play to him, its an extremely tough situation to be in, and fans demended and ending, so the good thing there is closure I guess. But I did not enjoy any element to his storytelling.

 

I found some of his character development cartoonish, to the point major characters almost became caricatures of themselves, or their outlooks were changed so that they appeared foreign to what we had grown up reading. The WOT series is certainly no stranger to "padding" (indeed, I belive RJs later books were fleshed out excessively) but I found large plot "twists" in the last 3 books to be largely irrelevent.

 

Im sure Sanderson has some talent as an author (who has had some success with various series written pre WOT novels) but I now have no inclination to read any of them. As I said, it was a tough gig, and extremely difficult to step into someone elses imagination into a world they completely created and had their own, unrevealed stories about/ endings/ plot twists, especially when its a much loved series. I just didnt enjoy it though.

[Tommar]

It is my belief that most (not all) of the plot points in the last 3 books were accurate, I do have issues like many people with how these plot points were developed and the way and the quality of how they were resolved.

 

I initially was extremely upset after reading the last book, after reading the series for 17 years, it was not what I was hoping for. In reflection though, my expectations were unrealistic given that RJ passed on. I am thankful for BS to finishing the series, however I do take his work as second level Canon.

 

While most of the major plot points are accurate I do re-imagine the path to those plot points and the specifics of how they were resolved in my own mind as a fan. In this way I can reslove the story to my satisfaction and move on, knowing that my version is not Team Jordan approved but is still a valid possibility had things not turned out the way they did.

[Flipsaken]

 

 

The most striking thing about the Sanderson books for me is that I don't think I'll ever read them again. I have read all of RJs books at least three times since his death, but I've only read TGS twice and TOM once and I struggled to even finish AMoL. I know I'll re-read the series up to KoD again, but I just can't see me reading the last three. I just can't see them as cannon. It would have been far better to have left the series as it was than to finish it this way.

I feel the same.  I think they really do read like fanfiction.  relatively good for fanfiction, but definitely still fanfiction.  I kind of wish BS and TJ would come out and tell us which bits were written by RJ, which plot points were his, etc.  I can understand why they don't, and it might not be quite fair to BS to do so, but I would prefer to know which scenes are cannon, and which I can re-imagine if I'm unsatisfied with.

 

 

Of course it wouldn't be fair to BS. Any time something is revealed to be by BS, it gets picked apart.endlessly and not always rationally.

As soon as something people have been picking apart is revealed to be written by RJ, suddenly it's not longer talked/bitched about.

There's a real bias happening, far too often an irrational one at that. Not from everyone but from some the louder ones to be sure.

 

Not to get me wrong though, I have no doubt it would have been written better by RJ himself but I was more than satisfied with BS. Not great by any means but he certainly didn't ruin the series for me like he has seemingly done for some.

 

All I can say for sure is that given a choice between reading Books 8, 9 and 10 or 12, 13 and 14...the latter would win every time.

 

My gripe isn't really about the quality of BS's writing, although that certainly was part of it. I would certainly not try to differenciate between what was BS and what was RJ. My problem I think is the whole package. BS stated clearly that he would not try to copy RJ's style of writing and don't have a gripe with that, but I did expect him to deliver the characters and plot with same the depth I was accustomed to and as the books progressed that depth decreased rapidly. AMoL was a very shallow book and ToM was a mess. TGS was ok, but I would pick WH, CoT and KoD over any of them any day. They may have had their flaws, especially CoT, but they had heart and that was missing from the BS books. They had the occassional section of good work, but they were surounded by oceans of unrecognisable characters and background. Much of this I lay at the door of TJ who should have been correcting that.

 

Much has been made of the RJ contributions to the BS books, but I don't feel that much of the heralded RJ work is up to his normal standard and this is most likely because they would only be draft sections of work, not polished by multiple revisions. In fact I felt that the section in the Tower at the end of ToM was his poorest work in the series. I mean that by quality of characterisation and ploting as I hated the sections of Faile in the Shado camp and much of the rebel Aes Sadi plot but could not fault the quality of writing.

 

So in the end it seemed to me that BS was completing the WoT as an author who didn't really understand the world or characters he was writting about and in the end he didn't even seem to care. However he seems to have been hindered by lack of proper editorial support and the overblown nature of the actual real work that RJ left behind. The world BS wrote, I didn't recognise as WoT and much as I tried I couldn't convince myself it was. The ending provided no satisfaction for me.

[Maleshub]

My first reaction to reading AMoL was more negative than positive. I felt quite a few bumps during that quick reading, driven by the euphoria of wanting to reach the end. But two more readings since then have tempered my negativity towards the book. I think it is much better written than initially perceived. Not perfect ... then again, none of the other WoT books were perfect either! 

 

Really appreciate finishing the series and giving us an ending with hints to the future. Hopefully the encyclopedia will be come out soon, and shed light on more stuff. 

[iwascauthoned]

Posting here since this seems to be the latest thread with a discussion on the quality of BS's work.  I have read most of his other books, and the same thing stands out:  he writes like he's writing a current best-seller - short, staccato sentences, lots of single word sentences and italics for dramatic effect, his language embarrassingly full of current American colloquialisms.   E.g., the use of the word "ridiculous" to mean "a lot" - as in "Egwene had received a ridiculous number of beatings", a farmer referring to a lightning strike "on his property", and innumerable other examples.  He did a lot of that in Mistborn and Stormlight as well.  I didn't expect that the writing style would be the same, but then, nor did I expect that we'd be transitioning to a whole 'nother class of writing, one that has me cringing as I read.  Oh, well - I AM glad that someone finished the series ... would have sucked big time, otherwise.

 

So, in the end, you're left with a good story, but none of the beautiful language that characterized Jordan's work ("She stood there giving him one of those looks women carry in their belt pouches" had me rolling with laughter, and admiring the turn of phrase at the same time)

[Emily Jarrold]

'Crackbrain' was a word that threw me off...

But let me first be unfair: I recently reread the Hobbit, and aMoL is not Tolkin. WOT had something Tolkin had not, with the unique characters and so on, but Tolkin had the end right. The end is important in all things. aMoL just finished. No closure.

The book was good, great even, but on the last 20 or so pages you felt that the writing crew was exhausted. You felt that the writing crew was under timing pressure, that there was not time to put this project away for a year and then edit it again. If you don't hold a professorship you probably cannot spent 5 years working on a single book in order to survive - but you can feel the difference. It is the difference between a great work of fantasy (like Hobbit, LoTR, many WoT books), and a normal, entertaining read (which is still leagues away and better than anything Nicholls or Hohlbein have written).

It should have finished for the main characters with a climactic scene, or a flowing-out scene... Rand and Mat had horrible last scenes. Birgitte had a good one, as did Cadsuane.

I agree, there was that bit when Thom is musing for the right words to use to describe the last bit of Tarmon Gaidon, and i was thrown as if physically from the story, as I pict8ured the writer just typing exactly what was going on for him in his head, ah, blood and ashes, I can't think of a good enough word for this, it's too big a moment for a word, right, I'll write about the story teller trying to think of the right way of phrasing it. I also would have loved a more flowing conclusion, with slightly more info about the characters and what becomes of the main ones, at least tell me about Elayne birthing and naming her babes, a couple pf paragraphs about what began just after the last battle, how many kids does Perrin have with Faile? What about Lan and Nyneave etc The list would be pretty long and I'm just being greedy,I guess. I didn't want it to end.

 

Having said that, I actually thought BS did an amazing job, and enjoyed his use of more modern language in most cases, some conversations between the main characters became funnier and more entertaining, the language a bit sassier and more smart mouthed, and this added yet another layer to all of the characters for me. THey were sometimes a bit old fashioned and stiff before, in my opinion, but I am only 25, so to me RJ 's way of phrasing some things is a couple of generations up from me, with occasional moments of sounding like my Nana. He is still my favourite author of all time, with the best and most comprehensive imagination ever to be spilled out onto paper, I am in no way trying to be mean about him.

 

Does anyone share my opinion or were most people annoyed when BS took over? I do think that RJ would have fleshed out the close a bit more than BS did, a shame none of the team thought so, I wanted a teeny but of 'happily ever after' just for the immediate future of the main cast after all that struggle and torment and effort to save the world. I'm just left feeling so damn curious.

[Emily Jarrold]

 

'Crackbrain' was a word that threw me off...

But let me first be unfair: I recently reread the Hobbit, and aMoL is not Tolkin. WOT had something Tolkin had not, with the unique characters and so on, but Tolkin had the end right. The end is important in all things. aMoL just finished. No closure.

The book was good, great even, but on the last 20 or so pages you felt that the writing crew was exhausted. You felt that the writing crew was under timing pressure, that there was not time to put this project away for a year and then edit it again. If you don't hold a professorship you probably cannot spent 5 years working on a single book in order to survive - but you can feel the difference. It is the difference between a great work of fantasy (like Hobbit, LoTR, many WoT books), and a normal, entertaining read (which is still leagues away and better than anything Nicholls or Hohlbein have written).

It should have finished for the main characters with a climactic scene, or a flowing-out scene... Rand and Mat had horrible last scenes. Birgitte had a good one, as did Cadsuane.

I agree, there was that bit when Thom is musing for the right words to use to describe the last bit of Tarmon Gaidon, and i was thrown as if physically from the story, as I pict8ured the writer just typing exactly what was going on for him in his head, ah, blood and ashes, I can't think of a good enough word for this, it's too big a moment for a word, right, I'll write about the story teller trying to think of the right way of phrasing it. I also would have loved a more flowing conclusion, with slightly more info about the characters and what becomes of the main ones, at least tell me about Elayne birthing and naming her babes, a couple pf paragraphs about what began just after the last battle, how many kids does Perrin have with Faile? What about Lan and Nyneave etc The list would be pretty long and I'm just being greedy,I guess. I didn't want it to end.

 

Having said that, I actually thought BS did an amazing job, and enjoyed his use of more modern language in most cases, some conversations between the main characters became funnier and more entertaining, the language a bit sassier and more smart mouthed, and this added yet another layer to all of the characters for me. THey were sometimes a bit old fashioned and stiff before, in my opinion, but I am only 25, so to me RJ 's way of phrasing some things is a couple of generations up from me, with occasional moments of sounding like my Nana. He is still my favourite author of all time, with the best and most comprehensive imagination ever to be spilled out onto paper, I am in no way trying to be mean about him.

 

Does anyone share my opinion or were most people annoyed when BS took over? I do think that RJ would have fleshed out the close a bit more than BS did, a shame none of the team thought so, I wanted a teeny but of 'happily ever after' just for the immediate future of the main cast after all that struggle and torment and effort to save the world. I'm just left feeling so damn curious.

 

Just to note, I did really enjoy RJ's style of writing too and I know what iwascauthoned (above) means about the beauty of his use of language, but I also found it a refreshing change to have some of the chattier bits of the story's language brought up to date, and I am a non American stickler for grammar and spelling mistakes. Although there were a few spelling mistakes and errors in the BS books, and the print rubs off the page very easily too. So, I suppose I like both in different ways, still wanted a more detailed ending though x

[Emily Jarrold]

 

no longer come around simply because they're sick of the excessive BS bashing and/or relentless battering they themselves receive if they even hint at finding the last books enjoyable....Kinda like you're trying to do to me right now after I presented the way I feel.

Critique ≠ bashing. There were a small handfull of trolls who took it into bashing but the vast majority of us have offered a reasoned critique and thanked Brandon for his work. Not sure why you are trying to present some revisionist history but let's look at what I said about the book for instance:

 

Suttree, on 16 Jan 2013 - 9:53 PM, said:

There were some solid sections and it's obvious Brandon worked on getting better at foreshadowing and adding some depth... I know some have complained about the ending but it was perfectly in line with what Jordan has told us all along. By the time we reached the final moments things just felt right to me and as Brandon said years ago I was deeply "satisfied" with the ending. It is with great sadness that I look back and wish that Mr. Jordan himself could have given us his version of this story he started so long ago. He was the Creator and I can only imagine the increased amount of "goosebump" moments like "Cup of Sleep" or Nynaeve gathering the Malkieri in KoD that we would gotten had he done so. That said I would like to profoundly thank Brandon Sanderson and Team Jordan for stepping up to the plate and finishing this story for us. We all owe them a debt of gratitude and great thanks for doing so.

Now just because I thought the above does not mean I am going to pull punches for the issues that presented themselves. Those issues jump out even more so on subsequent re-reads. Btw it's not just Brandon when people discuss some of the issues. Team Jordan and how rushed the books were get called out as well.

 

thank you for reminding me of the Cup of Sleep and the Malkieri, i got goosebumps all over again, and well said for the rest

[Mr Ares]

 

'Crackbrain' was a word that threw me off...

But let me first be unfair: I recently reread the Hobbit, and aMoL is not Tolkin. WOT had something Tolkin had not, with the unique characters and so on, but Tolkin had the end right. The end is important in all things. aMoL just finished. No closure.

The book was good, great even, but on the last 20 or so pages you felt that the writing crew was exhausted. You felt that the writing crew was under timing pressure, that there was not time to put this project away for a year and then edit it again. If you don't hold a professorship you probably cannot spent 5 years working on a single book in order to survive - but you can feel the difference. It is the difference between a great work of fantasy (like Hobbit, LoTR, many WoT books), and a normal, entertaining read (which is still leagues away and better than anything Nicholls or Hohlbein have written).

It should have finished for the main characters with a climactic scene, or a flowing-out scene... Rand and Mat had horrible last scenes. Birgitte had a good one, as did Cadsuane.

I agree, there was that bit when Thom is musing for the right words to use to describe the last bit of Tarmon Gaidon, and i was thrown as if physically from the story, as I pictured the writer just typing exactly what was going on for him in his head, ah, blood and ashes, I can't think of a good enough word for this, it's too big a moment for a word, right, I'll write about the story teller trying to think of the right way of phrasing it. I also would have loved a more flowing conclusion, with slightly more info about the characters and what becomes of the main ones, at least tell me about Elayne birthing and naming her babes, a couple pf paragraphs about what began just after the last battle, how many kids does Perrin have with Faile? What about Lan and Nyneave etc The list would be pretty long and I'm just being greedy,I guess. I didn't want it to end.

 

For me, the big problem with the Thom scene was that it wasn't describing the Brandon writing process - rather than work to find the best word, the perfect phrasing, he just threw down some words, went back and tidied them up, and then called it done.

 

Having said that, I actually thought BS did an amazing job, and enjoyed his use of more modern language in most cases, some conversations between the main characters became funnier and more entertaining, the language a bit sassier and more smart mouthed, and this added yet another layer to all of the characters for me. THey were sometimes a bit old fashioned and stiff before, in my opinion, but I am only 25, so to me RJ 's way of phrasing some things is a couple of generations up from me, with occasional moments of sounding like my Nana. He is still my favourite author of all time, with the best and most comprehensive imagination ever to be spilled out onto paper, I am in no way trying to be mean about him.

The problem with that is that changing how the characters sound after so many books is jarring. There is a similar example in the series Malazan Book of the Fallen, where characters spend the fist six books using exclusively curses native to their world - Togg's Teats, Beru fend, and so on - but then in book seven onwards, the word f**k is used (he uses it without asterisks, of course - bloody PG 13 rules on this site stop you using all the fun words. Well, except hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia). People picked up on it and were annoyed, in a way they wouldn't have been had the characters simply said f**k from the beginning. I would prefer it if the characters in WoT sounded like characters in WoT, not like characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Does anyone share my opinion or were most people annoyed when BS took over? I do think that RJ would have fleshed out the close a bit more than BS did, a shame none of the team thought so, I wanted a teeny but of 'happily ever after' just for the immediate future of the main cast after all that struggle and torment and effort to save the world. I'm just left feeling so damn curious.

Most people weren't annoyed when he took over. When he took over, his work was unfamiliar to most of us, but we were glad we had someone to finish it. We were annoyed when the books were split into three (to the point when debate on the subject got banned here for a period of several months, in order to let people cool down). TGS was well received, despite a few quibbles. ToM was not as well received - it was between that and AMoL that people really started to voice complaints in earnest about how BS and TJ were doing things.

[Emily Jarrold]

 

 

'Crackbrain' was a word that threw me off...

But let me first be unfair: I recently reread the Hobbit, and aMoL is not Tolkin. WOT had something Tolkin had not, with the unique characters and so on, but Tolkin had the end right. The end is important in all things. aMoL just finished. No closure.

The book was good, great even, but on the last 20 or so pages you felt that the writing crew was exhausted. You felt that the writing crew was under timing pressure, that there was not time to put this project away for a year and then edit it again. If you don't hold a professorship you probably cannot spent 5 years working on a single book in order to survive - but you can feel the difference. It is the difference between a great work of fantasy (like Hobbit, LoTR, many WoT books), and a normal, entertaining read (which is still leagues away and better than anything Nicholls or Hohlbein have written).

It should have finished for the main characters with a climactic scene, or a flowing-out scene... Rand and Mat had horrible last scenes. Birgitte had a good one, as did Cadsuane.

I agree, there was that bit when Thom is musing for the right words to use to describe the last bit of Tarmon Gaidon, and i was thrown as if physically from the story, as I pictured the writer just typing exactly what was going on for him in his head, ah, blood and ashes, I can't think of a good enough word for this, it's too big a moment for a word, right, I'll write about the story teller trying to think of the right way of phrasing it. I also would have loved a more flowing conclusion, with slightly more info about the characters and what becomes of the main ones, at least tell me about Elayne birthing and naming her babes, a couple pf paragraphs about what began just after the last battle, how many kids does Perrin have with Faile? What about Lan and Nyneave etc The list would be pretty long and I'm just being greedy,I guess. I didn't want it to end.

 

For me, the big problem with the Thom scene was that it wasn't describing the Brandon writing process - rather than work to find the best word, the perfect phrasing, he just threw down some words, went back and tidied them up, and then called it done.

 

Having said that, I actually thought BS did an amazing job, and enjoyed his use of more modern language in most cases, some conversations between the main characters became funnier and more entertaining, the language a bit sassier and more smart mouthed, and this added yet another layer to all of the characters for me. THey were sometimes a bit old fashioned and stiff before, in my opinion, but I am only 25, so to me RJ 's way of phrasing some things is a couple of generations up from me, with occasional moments of sounding like my Nana. He is still my favourite author of all time, with the best and most comprehensive imagination ever to be spilled out onto paper, I am in no way trying to be mean about him.

The problem with that is that changing how the characters sound after so many books is jarring. There is a similar example in the series Malazan Book of the Fallen, where characters spend the fist six books using exclusively curses native to their world - Togg's Teats, Beru fend, and so on - but then in book seven onwards, the word f**k is used (he uses it without asterisks, of course - bloody PG 13 rules on this site stop you using all the fun words. Well, except hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia). People picked up on it and were annoyed, in a way they wouldn't have been had the characters simply said f**k from the beginning. I would prefer it if the characters in WoT sounded like characters in WoT, not like characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Does anyone share my opinion or were most people annoyed when BS took over? I do think that RJ would have fleshed out the close a bit more than BS did, a shame none of the team thought so, I wanted a teeny but of 'happily ever after' just for the immediate future of the main cast after all that struggle and torment and effort to save the world. I'm just left feeling so damn curious.

Most people weren't annoyed when he took over. When he took over, his work was unfamiliar to most of us, but we were glad we had someone to finish it. We were annoyed when the books were split into three (to the point when debate on the subject got banned here for a period of several months, in order to let people cool down). TGS was well received, despite a few quibbles. ToM was not as well received - it was between that and AMoL that people really started to voice complaints in earnest about how BS and TJ were doing things.

 

Hee hee! What does hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia mean??? best word I've never heard of. I guess I just love the story so so much that I embraced a lot of the differences in style and got on with it in my excitement to find out what happens. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the Thom scene lacking a bit, and I read in earlier posts that others also didn't like some of how the battle was written, so much going on so fast that a bit of re-reading had to be done to follow it properly.

 

More than anything though I'm really pleased to have found this forum, it is a joy to discuss my favourite story with others who share my obsession, and have read to the end, whether they liked it or not, as although I have managed to get my boyfriend to read them (after 3 years of going on about it) he is only halfway through FoH, and soo many bits are still off limit for me to talk about. Halfway through tEotW he asked if Moiraine is good or evil, and I had to just tell him to keep reading and find out, then a bit later in the series he said, 'So, what's with Verin Sedai? Is she good or bad? She seems well dodgy but then helps the girls out loads, and I don't buy her innatentive/distracted act one bit, something's going on there' and I just had to tell him that that particular plotline is a long one, and to persevere. 

 

I am very wary of him hearing all the complaints about the last book, as I don't want him to be put off, it is still the most amazing tale, and I am very glad to have read them all, even if some things could have been done differently towards the end. So it's great to be able to freely chat on here about it and get other peoples opinions on stuff, Thank you for your input x

[Mr Ares]

Hee hee! What does hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia mean??? best word I've never heard of.

It means a fear of long words.

[avernite]

 

The problem with that is that changing how the characters sound after so many books is jarring. There is a similar example in the series Malazan Book of the Fallen, where characters spend the fist six books using exclusively curses native to their world - Togg's Teats, Beru fend, and so on - but then in book seven onwards, the word f**k is used (he uses it without asterisks, of course - bloody PG 13 rules on this site stop you using all the fun words. Well, except hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliaphobia). People picked up on it and were annoyed, in a way they wouldn't have been had the characters simply said f**k from the beginning. I would prefer it if the characters in WoT sounded like characters in WoT, not like characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Well, that explains my lack of BS annoyance pre-AMoL: I didn't notice that change either ;)

 

In TOM only Egwene annoyed me, in AMoL a lot more did by feeling off (or wrong, see the numbers discussion). Plus I finally had to conclude I despise non-Greek views of time's progression.

[David Marin Manzanares]

Hello,

I finished AMoL yesterday here in my country it published the 12 of September so is very soon for me to do a correct valuation of AMoL, in my mind is very fresh the fellings but  all of you can imagine the avidity reading the final after 20 years, many things are pending in a second and calmer read.But I have read many many times the other books and from my point of view AMol is an excellent close to WOT, with nuances ( is correct this word? umm), I´ll explain my sensations:

 1. In AMoL the events happen with a breakneck speed, is required to closed all the plots, to be honest I think it was necessary 3 books more to give the same rythm that history had at that moment.So RJ=BS at this point.

2. BS took a huge history unfinished with only a 50% written or notes .... and thanks to his efforts all of us have a complete work and a great work, yes we can see differences betwen this two excellent writers but BS holds the type and in my humble opinion revitalize the saga, can you imagine that tremendous and unrecognized work?

3. Rand doesn´t die at the end.. oeoeooeoe, please after all the suffering of this boy, read, no better, see him go to see the world happy and without the weight of a mountain in his back, happy and smoking a pipe, well, is a nice end for me at least.

4. I don´t like the deah of Egwene,this poor girl  fighting for have a strong white tower....it´s a pity.

    I don´t like the death of Siuan and Gareth the evolution of their relantionship to finish dying  in a tent  without a great battle.

    I don´t like that the book finish a few hours later the victory over DO, why after all this years and all this books we can not know what happens to Mat and Seanchan,Perrin,Nynaeve,Lan....with more detail?

would if amazing the last scene a few mounths after the battle, see the three guys at an inn...

There are my very first impressions,yes I know there are many details, I´ll check them and debate with you in next post

[Leopoled Boothe]

Do you remember way back in 2006 when Robert Jordan announced that the he was working on the 12th and final book in The Wheel of Time Series?  At the time he stated that that for the story to be completed in one volume it would have to be a rather massive book but that the rest of the story could only be told as one coherent novel.  He went on to say that it could be done as one coherent novel and one incoherent novel or as two incoherent novels.  As we all know RJ passed away before he could complete this final volume and TOR and/or Team Jordan decided to split the final book into three volumes.  And just as RJ said only one coherent novel was produced among them.

 

Now this it not to say that I didn't enjoy the content of all three books, but I do think that two of them suffered from the the division and would have worked better as part of a larger work.  First we got The Gathering Storm, the one coherent novel.  In order to make this a coherent novel and keep it to what TOR considered to be a reasonable length Brandon Sanderson had to focus on only two characters Rand and Egwene, and while he did an admirable job of advancing their arcs the unfortunate side effect was the it left the other characters story lines way behind those of the two afformentioned characters.  

 

Next came Towers of Midnight wherein Sanderson was faced with the challenge of catching the other characters arcs up to those of Rand and Egwene while also advancing Rand and Egwene to the point where they needed to be at the beginning of TG.  While I did for the most part enjoy the content of ToM, the out of sync storylines could be a  jarring and even though I knew that certain storylines were occurring at different times it still had some negative effects on the flow of the narrative.  Certain characters, particulary Tam, seemed to be in two places at once and to the casual reader who does not follow WoT news of visit sights like Dragonmount I would imagine this must have been somewhat confusing.  Many of the pacing problems would have been avoided if TGS and ToM could have been written as one volume with all the story lines kept in sync.

 

Then came A Memory of Light which has often been criticized for its lack of character development and excessive "battle porn" and honestly I really can't argue.  This was also an unfortunate side effect of the split because at this point all the necessary character development had been done in the previous two books and therefore all that was left was to tell the story of the last battle itself.  Now since the beginning of the series we had been promised an epic Last Battle and I did want a detailed account of this battle and AMoL did deliver.  Again, I really had few problems with the actual content of AMoL, however, as a stand alone novel it fell flat due to the lack of character development and would have worked much better as the last few chapters of a larger novel.

 

Do I blame Brandon Sanderson for these problems?  Absolutely not.  Remember that Sanderson was the new guy in Team Jordan and as a less well established author did not have the pull with TOR that Robert Jordan had.  Therefore, despite being given a lot to creative control over the story content in a lot of instances he had to do as he was told and as I understand it the decision to split up the final volume of WoT was not his.  Once this decision had been made we really could not expect him to get even two or much less three coherent novels out of the remaining story as RJ, himself, had said it could not be done.

[Nolder]

Good post.

I'd say I agree with the majority of it.

The only part I'm iffy on is that you (and others of course) criticize AMOL for lack of character development.

If you take the Wheel of Time as a whole work, the time for character dev was over. This was the big battle, the pay off.

Most works get a few chapters or maybe even the second half of a book to do this. The Wheel of Time got an entire book to play with this climax and it needed every page to wrap up what it could. Remember it's not meant to be read as Book 14. It's meant to be read as Book 12 Part 3.

[Suttree]

The Wheel of Time got an entire book to play with this climax and it needed every page to wrap up what it could.

 

Yet there was far too much bloat and filler. Don't think anyone would argue that space was used wisely in AMoL.

[Barid Bel Medar]

Moved to Quality discussion thread. No need for a separate thread on this. 

[Mr Ares]

Good post.

I'd say I agree with the majority of it.

The only part I'm iffy on is that you (and others of course) criticize AMOL for lack of character development.

If you take the Wheel of Time as a whole work, the time for character dev was over. This was the big battle, the pay off.

Most works get a few chapters or maybe even the second half of a book to do this. The Wheel of Time got an entire book to play with this climax and it needed every page to wrap up what it could. Remember it's not meant to be read as Book 14. It's meant to be read as Book 12 Part 3.

I don't think the time for character development is ever over. It's not really the time for starting new character arcs, more for bringing the existing ones to a conclusion, but that's still character development. And it is meant to be read as book 14, that's part of the problem. They tried to give us a book, 12, 13 and 14 rather than a book 12 parts 1, 2 and possibly 3. As for needing every page, aside form the many they wasted, longer books exist. They could have used more pages in all three books if they really felt they needed to.

[Hayward1979]

If anyone actually believes that even a 1,000-page final book 12 from RJ would have been satisfactory, then they really were not paying attention to the series up to that point. Any argument that the series could have been properly wrapped up in one book cannot be taken seriously.

[Suttree]

 

Any argument that the series could have been properly wrapped up in one book cannot be taken seriously.

 

There have been many detailed arguments for how the book could have been wrapped up in one book split into two volumes. It's clear given both author's views on the topic and the amount of filler in the last three books that it would have been the proper course of action.

 

Now in almost all of your posts I've seen you attack others views and make various unsupported claims. It really is time for you to start backing up your statements with evidence for why you feel that way.

[Quadrillium]

If anyone actually believes that even a 1,000-page final book 12 from RJ would have been satisfactory, then they really were not paying attention to the series up to that point. Any argument that the series could have been properly wrapped up in one book cannot be taken seriously.

Exactly. KoD was certainly more fast-paced than CoD, but it was a pretty slow book in its own right, just like everything that came after LoC/ACoS. Plenty of sitting around, arms-beneath-the-breast-folding, overly detailed descriptions of the scenery, and everything else that pertains specifically to later WoT books. Virtually every other scene consisted of characters reiterating things we already know, and not terribly important things - such as Mat complaining about being half-married to Tuon for the nth time, Rand saying how uncomfortable it is to wear the Crown of Swords, Cadsuane phaw-ing at "that fool boy", Lan moping about lost Malkier, etc. How exactly does one expect to transition from this more than leisurely pace to a final installment that goes through the beginning, middle and end of the entire Last Battle, and gives a proper conclusion to multitudes of major, medium, and minor plotlines and hundreds of characters?

 

the book could have been wrapped up in one book split into two volumes

That's two books.

[Suttree]

One book split into two volumes. All without the bloat, artificial filler needed to catch up timelines, and structural issues due to the 3 book split.

Dom had a solid breakdown earlier in thread touching on this.

 

The way Brandon split the material totally undermined what RJ had in mind, with the four main stories becoming dark and bugged down together, piling up to great effect on the reader, the Shadow advancing and the Light totally stuck, in the ropes. Perrin's story and Mat's story, told after the reader knew the "knot" was split open by Rand's epiphany lost much interest and purpose. The whole thing read as "they're making time before Merrilor". That Moiraine might be needed in relation to Rand's darkness stopped working as the red herring it was intended to be (to hide the fact Mat's not coming to Merrilor either, possibly). Aviendha's vision stopped making much sense... Having the epiphany happen in TGS was bad enough (ideally the book wouldn't have been split, but the next best thing to stay closer to the intended dramatic effect was to end it on the Seanchan attack and Rand vanishing from Tear...) , but Brandon made it worse by opening TOM with the announcement of Merrilor and in a month. Again that was done to match the timelines Brandon had desynchronized, and to leave room for pretty useless (and even detrimental) Egwene episodes.

RJ's midbook, prior to Merrilor was to pack one hell of a punch. The built up frustration lead to an explosion...The Shadow invaded the Borderlands, Rand vanished after nearly killing his father...Egwene, just released, paid for Rand's failure at Falme and got attacked by the Seanchan, Perrin was about to face a stupid trial and wouldn't be there for Rand (another red herring, but foreshadowed), Mat destroyed the gholam and left for Ghenji, the expedition made bleaker by Birgitte's last minute revelation she found no way out and died in there. Egwene reunited the Tower, destroyed the BA but Mesaana remained and would strike soon.Then the avalanche... Mat in Ghenji, Elayne rising to the Sun Throne, Rand's epiphany, Egwene defeating Mesaana, Perrin witnessing Rand and forging his Hammer, fought to save Galad and his Asha'man able to channel again left for Andor.

A few chapters earlier, we were heading for a wall, the Light finished as the LB started, and suddenly we landed in a wholly different book. Time had run out, Rand was fully aware of the Light's weakeness and determined to put an end to dithering. He left himself but a few days to fix what urgently needed fixing... starting by a visit to Egwene, then the Bordermen, a brief visit to AD...

But painted in his corner, Brandon needed Rand to give Egwene a whole month to do what she had the resources to do in a week. A mere week before he broke the seals. The month is another thing that ended up diluting the little that was left of the feeling of urgency and the drama. Rand feels pulled to the break the seals and move for SG and yet he goes and gives Egwene a month before Merrilor. That's a month of useless side events with Bloodknives and scenes that suddenly turned a side player RJ used sparingly into a main player (Gawyn, of course), a month of Tuon doing nothing, a month of Rand doing not much.

 

KoD had things sped up and pointed towards the finish after the tPoD-CoT slow down. It's a natural transition from that point to an even more increased pace simply based on where things were in the story arc.

[Quadrillium]

One book split into two volumes

That's two books. This may not require each separate book to have its own exposition, outset, progression, climax, and ending, as the second book starts off exactly where the first one had begun, but that's still physically two books, the second one produced a year or even several years after the first one.

 

All without the bloat, artificial filler, [...] and structural issues.

Completely unlike every other book in WoT, you mean?