Wheel of Time Final Volume Chapter 1 Released To the Web

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IMAGE(http://www.tor.com/images/stories/blogs/12_05/Memory-of-Light_WoT_Michael-Whelan.jpg)

Tor released the first chapter of the final volume of the Wheel of Time to the web.

I'm 30, I started reading these books literally half my life ago. I'll be a little sad to see them come to a close, but it will be awesome to finally get to the conclusion of it all. Curious how many GWJ'ers follow this closely/are excted about the conclusion?

I'm still reading the series purely out of stubborn determination at this point. The wheels started spinning hard around book seven but I'm going to stick it out to see the end. Sanderson has done a good job moving the ball forward at least.

Certis wrote:

I'm still reading the series purely out of stubborn determination at this point. The wheels started spinning hard around book seven but I'm going to stick it out to see the end. Sanderson has done a good job moving the ball forward at least.

I actually re-read the entire series last year thinking that it was complete. I got to the end of the last book and didn't stop cussing for about a week.

Sanderson has been OK. Some of the characters I think he gave some pretty dramatic changes to (Mat, for example is a little less believable than in RJ's narrative). Certainly, it is better than not having the story told at all. I thought the last two books (basically volume 1 and 2 of the final book) were quite good.

I read them all as they came out, so I am super excited to see the story brought to its conclusion. I have a long commute to work, and over the last few months I started listening to the books again on Audible as a refresher. I'm on book 9 now, so almost back to current. I had hoped to be finished by the time the physical copies hit the shelves. I guess that might not happen.

Certis wrote:

I'm still reading the series purely out of stubborn determination at this point. The wheels started spinning hard around book seven but I'm going to stick it out to see the end. Sanderson has done a good job moving the ball forward at least.

I totally agree. I kind of regret all the money I have spent on the books, as from like book seven until Sanderson came in, they are just offensively bad, and I can't see myself ever reading them again. Note that until book 8 I re-read the series each time a new book came out. Sanderson saved the series in my opinion.

Maybe in another 10 years I will find them in a box and pick them up again, but wow the last 5 books needed more editing.

I gave up on them ages ago but would read a summary of them just to see what happened.

For folks who re do the series... do you start wtih the prequel book from Jordan?

ranalin wrote:

For folks who re do the series... do you start wtih the prequel book from Jordan?

Not before Eye of the World. It makes a nice connection with the end of Fires of Heaven, though.

edosan wrote:

I gave up on them ages ago but would read a summary of them just to see what happened.

Ditto, I should have stopped at the end of Lord of Chaos "Wave of earth and fire *whoom!*, but I tried to cling on for the next 2 books.. Never made it back in.

Would love a spoilery recap of the major plot points, once it's all over..

Wait, these are finally coming to an end? I gave up on this series years ago (Path of Daggers) but I would really like to continue/finish this series to see what happens.

Probably means starting from scratch though. :S Man that's a lot of paper to flip through.

The Perrin / Faile arc completely burned me out on the series, but I'm interested in hearing how things sort out. Now that this thread has me thinking about it, I guess I'll check the wiki.

Yeah, I got through it until Winter's Heart or thereabouts and then gave up. I'll be quite interested in reading the wiki page a month or two after this book is out though.

complexmath wrote:

The Perrin / Faile arc completely burned me out on the series, but I'm interested in hearing how things sort out. Now that this thread has me thinking about it, I guess I'll check the wiki.

My life became a lot easier when I decided I could skip every chapter with Perrin and co.

I was going to re-read them all when the final book was published, but I think I'll pick up where I left off (Crossroads of Twilight). These books meant a lot to me when I was younger, so I want to see them through to the end, but I don't really have the time or patience to re-read them all.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I was going to re-read them all when the final book was published, but I think I'll pick up where I left off (Crossroads of Twilight). These books meant a lot to me when I was younger, so I want to see them through to the end, but I don't really have the time or patience to re-read them all.

I love this series, big time. Skip Crossroads of Twilight.

Johnvanjim wrote:
edosan wrote:

I gave up on them ages ago but would read a summary of them just to see what happened.

Ditto, I should have stopped at the end of Lord of Chaos "Wave of earth and fire *whoom!*, but I tried to cling on for the next 2 books.. Never made it back in.

Would love a spoilery recap of the major plot points, once it's all over..

Spoiler:

All but a very few of the women have big chests and tug their braids in anger.

Wait, what's that you say? Other things happened? Could have fooled me.

Oh, I too am still hanging on. I feel like Sanderson could have written the series better overall; part of me wishes for such a thing, but it'll never happen.

Sanderson's stuff has been great and has turned the series around for me. Will be nice to finally bring it to a close. Just wish they'd hurry up and get on with a proper e-book release.

Can anyone compare the Wheel of Time series to other series that I have read? A Song of Ice and Fire? The Malazan History? The Black Company Vietnam style?

Is it well written? Or well conceived? Or full of great descriptions of food? Or interesting in its conception of Magic? What's the pull that should get me interested?

The magic is pretty interesting. It's a well conceived, cool setting. It's pacing is good in the first few books (especially book 1) but it drags horribly from Book 4 to about Book 10 (yikes!). There is way too much flavour text. Often, at the start of a new volume, Jordan goes out of his way to reintroduce aspects of the setting which have already been drilled into you in every previous volume. I don't know if this is just to allow us to re familiarise ourselves after a long break between volumes or allow new readers to pick up the series from any volume (god help us). But it really hurts the series when you try to read the books consecutively.

Sanderson's excellent wrap up revalidates the series in my opinion but, if you decide to start reading it, I can't guarantee that you'll make it past the middle volumes.

Edit: to compare to Song of Ice and Fire, I felt a similar drag in volume 4 of that series.

The story, magic system, and world are very interesting, and it starts out well written. As it goes on Jordon spends more an less time advancing the story, and more time making it even more complicated. There get to be so many characters and they're spread over the world so much that a 600-900 page book doesn't spend too much time with any one group, which is frustrating when one of the characters you like barely gets mentioned. A lot of the characters have very shallow and juvenile views about whichever gender is opposite of theirs, so there's a lot of "Men are stupid and need to be tricked into making the right decisions" and "Women are stupid and should just do what I tell them to." Lots of braid tugging, dress fidgeting, and sulking. This is more noticeable when you read it all in one go (like I did) than if you take a break between books. If you're going to start, don't read the prequel first. It doesn't do well as an introduction to the series, and (I imagine) would spoil some of the first several books. I'd recommend reading it in the published order (1-10, prequel, 11-14). I'd still recommend reading it, as I think the story/world is worth it. My complaints are more along the lines of a warning for what to expect, not a warning to not read it.

Also note that as you get to the end of Jordan's parts in the series, everyone, especially Rand, gets very, very emo. Sanderson, manages to turn it around and bring some happiness in the last part.

You can, as was mentioned above, skip any of the chapters where the main character is a male who is not Rand or, near the end of the 13th book, with Lan. The parts of the books with the 3 female Aes Sedai characters should be read, as they actually do an almost decent job of advancing the plot somewhat and not meandering too far.

Wow, end of an era... a very long era. I'll have to grab this when it's out here, and I'll probably read the whole series through again. The only problem with that is it sets about a years worth of reading in advance, and I already have so much to read... maybe I'll interleave some lighter books between them as I go, although that will make it take even longer.

I truly think it's better trying to read them one after the other with minimal delay if possible, it's just so hard to keep track of things otherwise. I even appreciated book 10 more doing it that way, although it was still a bit of a slog.

Jordan peaked about Book 4, but then the story got away from him. If he'd stopped at maybe, I dunno, six or seven, it would have been fine, but when I finished book 8 or so, and realized that I'd just gone through about a thousand pages where nothing important happened, well, I bagged it on that series.

Sanderson has a great deal of talent, and I've enjoyed his other stuff a lot, so if anyone can wrap up that mess, he should be able to. But it shouldn't have needed it, and no way am I going to sink all that money into all those books to catch up.

It is worth it even if you just read a plot synopsis to catch up. Heck, even Jordan's final book was finally starting to pick up the pace a bit.

i think that Jordan suffered from the weight of his own success. The first couple of books were so interesting, and sold so well, that no editor had the balls to say "this entire book can be cut."

mudbunny wrote:

You can, as was mentioned above, skip any of the chapters where the main character is a male who is not Rand

Interesting concept. I'm a completionist when it comes to reading, so I imagine I would give up before I consented to skip whole chapters.

Montalban wrote:
mudbunny wrote:

You can, as was mentioned above, skip any of the chapters where the main character is a male who is not Rand

Interesting concept. I'm a completionist when it comes to reading, so I imagine I would give up before I consented to skip whole chapters.

The sad thing is there are a couple of great series buried within this one massive series.

Rand.
Perrin.
Aes Sedai.

Matt can be ignored or relegated to tertiary character status.

Then there is the story about Lan that is just screaming to be told.

I found Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaveve to all be super irritating. Of course, under Sanderson's reign they have improved markedly :).

I loved this series, and I loved hearing the detail he put into even the useless chapters where he was going on at length about minutiae. My problem was moreso that he kept adding mysteries and sudden twists that made much of what you were reading not make sense. So much of what was going on plot-wise was 'off camera' in the series that it was fun to sort through the clues for what was happening, much like the TV show Lost. But like Lost, eventually you realize there's just a lot of writer's bloat going on and no plausible way to bring it all back together. And unlike Lost, you have to wait several years between seasons. Even with all my love for these characters and their world, I have to admit that Books 4/5 were the high point, books 6/7 were mostly useless but ended fantastically, and then trailed off to I think 10 was the last book I read.

Edit: I would like to finish the series, and ideally would like to reread everything to get there, but not sure where either would fit in my schedule at this point.

mudbunny wrote:

Matt can be ignored or relegated to tertiary character status.

You shut your mouth, and shut it hard.

[I'll admit that by your criteria, he is not as 'main character' worthy as the others you mentioned. But dammit he's my favourite the way it's written up until Jordan completely started ignoring him near the end of what I've read.]

Oh, this is the exact same reason why I stopped reading A Song of Ice and Fire, because Robinson is just milking the series for cash, he's not trying to finish it anymore, or even particularly stay on track.

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