Thanks for the recommendations gang, I'll take a gander!

So, after completing the wheel of time series I find myself needing to fill the void it left before my first re-reading. Does anyone have any fantasy series recommendations? Is Earthsea worth reading? Any other older series in the same vein? My only stipulation is that they cannot be LitRPGs or video-game adjacent. That stuff is just too immersion breaking and cringey for me.

Whelp. I stand corrected. Horrifically corrected.

You almost had me until I remembered that gateways could be opened horizontally somewhere in the air, invalidating the clogging argument. How much is Brandon Sanderson paying you? ;P /sarcasm

The authors never actually cover the reproductive habits of the shadowspawn or their relevant anatomy from what I remember. It was mentioned that most if not all types of them were created by one of the Forsaken. Perhaps they have no true sex. Perhaps they crawl out of pits of mud, blood, muck, and filth after some ritual is done. Maybe even huck a few corpses in for good measure. That is kind of in line with how I picture them. That would also cover the wolves' term for them.

I finished my first read-through recently. Obviously, there is a gaping hollowness to finishing a series this large, but I was planning on it and saved the prequel to read as a way to wean off of it. Even accounting for that and giving it a bunch of time to sink in, I found several aspects of the ending left me wanting. Wrapping my thoughts/rant in a spoiler below, but how did you all feel about the end? I'm sure there's more that I've already forgotten at this point, but I had to dump this somewhere lol.

I think that is a fair point. I believe they were attempting to forshadow that viewpoint as they were rather heavy handed with Perrin's Wolf Dream experiences impacting how he tried to interact in the real world and then remembering he wasn't in the Dream I.E. Trying to shift, trying to teleport things into his hands, etc.

I know it would largely invalidate a lot of what the character was about, but I was hoping that she would've been healed by Nynaeve and return as a user of the One power in some capacity.

Yeah, but with gateways killing shadowspawn that pass though already and the edges cutting through everything, isn't the close-reopen cycle pointless? I thought of one I was sad that they didn't use as well: Got a bunch of shadowspan coming down a canyon, open a wall to wall gateway with ingress and egress only millimeters apart. Functionally useless as a gateway and meaningless to normal folk but 100% death to shadowspan that pass through. I did finally finish the series, and I wish they went a little more into the dual-bonding. When Rand and Nynaeve cleansed the taint, it was mentioned that since the two halves can never touch he essentially crafted saidar into a pipe which then could compress saidine and essentially boost the "pressure" of it. Nope. None of that. You get semi-telepathy and some shared casting capability while in a circle. I mean, that is cool and all, but there was room for gestalt kind of thing with the power itself.

Ah, straight from the man himself. That works for me. My mind is blown. I have never known someone that felt sour and bitter were even close on the flavor spectrum. I learned something today.

While reading through the series the first time, I noticed that characters will sometimes refer to something sour as tasting bitter. That seemed like a weird arbitrary choice, but I thought maybe there was some interesting real-world history on that (like the color orange and such), but a quick search didn't seem to turn up anything. Gang, I humbly ask: What's up with that? (Also, the Peaches being poison is weird. I think people used to think tomatoes were poison so I gave it a pass, but if anyone has more details on that it'd be appreciated)

Is this woosh or spicy irony that I am not clever enough to get?

What color do the Seanchan Deathwatch guard wear? I seem to have forgotten...

One thing that amuses me to no end in this series is how the Aes Sedai can twist the truth to essentially render that part of the oaths null and void. Give me some more examples of extreme truth twisting for fun! In example: "I was fired for gross misconduct." On a resume could become: "After receiving recognition from the Human Resources department I was promoted to Customer, notably among our most profitable positions."

When a pair of the rebel sisters were killed by a forsaken, I believe they mentioned that it appeared that the forsaken just wove a bubble around their heads and allowed them to suffocate. It irked me that something so simple was identified as being used, so they were clearly aware of it, but then in the ensuing battle with the Seanchan they don't use the same trick. I mean, bubbling a Raken or To'Raken's head seems a more efficient use than spraying gouts of flame all over the place. Rand had booby-trapped the ways in Shayol Ghul fairly cleverly, allowing trollocs to pass through and then later perish. When Rand was defending the manor (I think it was a manor, fighting alongside Logain) and utilized gateways as a weapon against the trollocs, it was clever in a fashion. On the other hand gateways opening and closing like slicing jaws of doom seemes wasted. Yes, they will slice through anything, but with the fact that shadowspawn simply die when passing through a gate it seemed it would be easiers to just weave a standing/stable gateway and sweep it through swathes of shadowspawn like a shop-vac of justice. Also, I haven't quite finished the books yet, but I'm kind of surprised that with Ashaman and Sisters bonding eachother, nobody has mentioned trying a dual bond yet. In example, an Ashaman could bond a sister as a warder, and then that sister could bond him as a warder in turn. We don't see any real detriment to bonding warders, it doesn't seem to tax the Aes Sedai in any way, and it seems to boost the warder's physical abilities. I imagine that dual-bonding between opposite sexed OP users would be a net positive and closest you could get to a unification of the halves of the OP. I'm sure it would be weird mentally with bonds and all, but it may have been a fun concept. Maybe it is still coming though...