Wheel of Time - is it finished or is it finished?

[Grey_Wolf]

Since I've recently bought the tenth book an answer to the above question would be appreciated.

[Comic Book Guy]

I'm on the fifth book, awesome series. Some long passing chapters and characters ( all the women) are boring though.

[Daisy Baggins]

I'm also on the fifth book. I've read that there will be several more books. I can't remember exactly how many, but I think that it will be 13 in all. I've also read that he will be writing prequels which take place before book one.

[brownjenkins]

i'll try to avoid spoilers, but overall...

i was very dissapointed by the latest installment... the first seven were great, but the last three have started to feel like a long-running soap opera (lots of character, little plot)... in the latest many new characters are introduced... very little of any of the ongoing loose-ends are even touched upon, and frankly, the story goes practically nowhere... there are some interesting scenes for true fans and i still find Jordan enjoyable to read... but go into it with low expectations if you don't want to be disappointed

i've made a promise to myself that i won't buy another of his books till it's done (which is currently known to be at least two more)... though i probably won't live up to it

[Lief Erikson]

You know, fans tend to disagree a lot upon where "The Wheel of Time" lost its flare, or even if it has. I guess it depends a lot on taste.

I'm just really looking forward to the major climaxes. They'll be coming somewhere in the future, and they will be awesome when they do. Robert Jordan always was a great writer of action scenes. There is a huge amount of potential.

If there are only two or three books left to the series, then I'm really looking forward to the future ones. They should contain quite a lot.

[brownjenkins]

i have to agree that i am still looking forward to the future of the series... it still ranks close to the top on my list of favorites

i just feel that in the last 3-4 books jordan could have shaved about 500 or so pages and not really effected the story or atmosphere much at all (eventhough there are also many excellent parts to the more recent books)... i don't feel the same about the first seven

i also loved the sense of mystery and intertwined possibilities earlier in the series... there seems to be less of that lately, and many longstanding enigmas have not even been touched upon in quite a long time... i have a fear that they either will never be really be answered, or they'll be quickly wrapped-up in some left-field sort of way (i.e. it was character X who you never met before that was behind it all)

hope i'm wrong

[Comic Book Guy]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
Robert Jordan always was a great writer of action scenes.

You really think so? From what I've read so far I've found myself rather irritated at his fighting scenes and battles. Rand's various sword fights are terrible, I appreciate that Jordan like anybody else may not have much knowledge on swordfighting and such, but creating lists of metaphors to which the reader has no idea of the meaning behind them is plain stupid.

[brownjenkins]

he's mixed on the fight scene thing too... don't know where you are so i won't give too much detail, but there is a series of chapters dealing with Perrin's defense of a town that i think is some of the best stuff he's written

on the other hand... there are times when he falls into the "okay let's talk about everthing that leads up to a battle, and then jump to the character reflecting on things after it's over" which has always bugged me... i've always been a fan of experiencing to whole thing as it unfolds

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by Comic Book Guy
You really think so? From what I've read so far I've found myself rather irritated at his fighting scenes and battles. Rand's various sword fights are terrible, I appreciate that Jordan like anybody else may not have much knowledge on swordfighting and such,

Very amusing it is, actually, that you should say that to me. I know how to swordfight .

Originally posted by Comic Book Guy
but creating lists of metaphors to which the reader has no idea of the meaning behind them is plain stupid.

(Shrugs) Well. I didn't mind the lists of metaphors at all. Robert Jordan does more than one kind of battle. There's One Power battles, sword to sword duels, among many types. I personally feel they've all been well written, so far.

Other aspects of Robert Jordan's writing I do have trouble with. The women for example, and even the men, to some extent.

Originally posted by brownjenkins
i just feel that in the last 3-4 books jordan could have shaved about 500 or so pages and not really effected the story or atmosphere much at all (eventhough there are also many excellent parts to the more recent books)... i don't feel the same about the first seven

(Sighs) You know what, I think I probably agree with you. Shaving off 500 pages wouldn't hurt at all.

Originally posted by brownjenkins
i also loved the sense of mystery and intertwined possibilities earlier in the series... there seems to be less of that lately, and many longstanding enigmas have not even been touched upon in quite a long time... i have a fear that they either will never be really be answered, or they'll be quickly wrapped-up in some left-field sort of way (i.e. it was character X who you never met before that was behind it all)

I doubt that it'll be character X that was behind it all.

Quite a few of the Forsaken have been sort of in the background for quite a long time, now. I think we should learn a lot more new things about all of them, very soon. Otherwise they'll just stay as backdrop. For quite a while now, Forsaken have been being bumped off one after another at the ends of the books. We haven't seen much of quite a few of them, though. I kind of hope they won't be wrapped up in a left-field way. There are some enemies that I'm not so worried that'll happen with. I'm quite sure we'll see a cool show down with the gholam, and with that other jerk that looks like Lan and was wandering around the Dream World.

But Robert Jordan has created quite a lot of enemies, most of whom haven't been dealt with. I really, really hope there are just three more books. Two seems like it would be too short to wrap up everything that quickly. Three books might work. So I'm really hoping he makes it three books, and cramps them with fascinating events. It's the events that I really care about, in terms of enjoying reading the books.

There are a lot of great things Robert Jordan has done, in his books. He's got a very good overall plot, a very imaginative world, incredible description and skill at developing different kinds of cultures. He has wonderful action scenes and very deep history for his world. The writing style is compelling.

The problems I have with the book are really all involving the characters.

The romances aren't romances at all. They're only lust and sex, no real love. The only thing possibly comparable to love that I've seen is between Faile and Perrin, but I think they'll both end up committing adultery, so they won't be showing true loyalty either. The character development is definitely not nearly sufficient. Rand is the only character that really has held me throughout everything. He grabs my interest completely every time he's in the scene. Most of the others . . . well, suffice it to say that if half of them were killed off in the next book, I would not grieve at all. I would be very startled, but not sad about it having happened. The plot threads right now have bogged down, but that's only a smaller thing to me. The main problems involve the characters.

However, despite the character problems, I really enjoy the book series . Again, I'm just really looking forward to the glorious conclusion!

[Katie of the Golden Wood]

Jordan said there were two more to go....but he also said, a long time ago, Wheel of Time would be a trilogy.

I think the best thing he could do would be to stick to that. If there are only two left, they'll have to be action packed, and maybe then will return to the original quality.

Katie

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by Katie of the Golden Wood
Jordan said there were two more to go....but he also said, a long time ago, Wheel of Time would be a trilogy.

I think the best thing he could do would be to stick to that. If there are only two left, they'll have to be action packed, and maybe then will return to the original quality.

Katie

:-/

I don't quite get how he made that mistake, if he had already finished Book 1. His having thought that at an earlier point seems quite conceivable to me, though. The book that I'm writing was just intended to be the prequel to a couple books I'd already written. I decided to skip out those two books later on because they didn't measure up to the prequel, and the prequel is approaching a thousand pages now.

[Raistlin]

that is cool could you send out a couple of books when/if you get published to vegas markets

[elendili]

New Spring comes out next year and is prequel to the series and take places around the time of the Dragon.

His last few books have contained lots of waffling but i have enjoyed the scenes with Matt and Tuon.

I'm wondering how on earth he's going to wrap up the series in 2 more books i think that's why he's jumped to the prequels.

I am wondering who the Forsaken are now as some have died and come back like Lanfear and some you don't know for sure which were killed in Crossroads of Twilight

Overall i think he's a very good writer and he's one of my fav authors at the moment

[Thorin II]

I enjoy the series, but RJ has definitely milked it for every penny. I wonder if he's afraid to end the series because he'll need to start over and create something new; WOT is a guaranteed paycheck every two years (plus supplemental income).

In general, it's tough to judge the series until it's done. RJ sure goes in a bunch of directions; it's hard to imagine how he'll be able to tie everything together. My hunch is that he won't. I hope I'm wrong, though. In any case, I'm hooked (in part because of a lack of good fantasy writing in the world), so he's got me on board for the rest of the ride.

[Forkbeard]

Wow, I'm impressed. I starting losing interest in the fourth book, made it through the fifth, but just couldn't continue. I'm impressed that some of you are up on the current (10th! YIKES!) installment!

Forkbeard

[IronParrot]

Has Jordan finished writing it? Nope.

Is the series finished anyway? Yep.

You know there's a serious problem when even the hardcore WoT fans lose faith in him and drop Crossroads of Twilight (Book 10) to one-and-a-half stars on Amazon.com. I dropped the series after A Crown of Swords (despite having bought both Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart) and have seen no reason to go back since. Time better spent reading real literature.

I did enjoy some things about it at the outset, but the series has become increasingly ridiculous. Mind you, I got far enough in it that I have every right to make fun of it as much as I want.

Robert Jordan is a good plot designer - I especially like how he weaves political intrigue - but he doesn't write, he rambles.

[ArwenEvenstar]

He does ramble quite a bit. Something that really annoyed me was when i got to the last 100 or so pages of book 5, I decided that it was getting annoying so i returned it to the library. Several months later I decided that I would read book 6, I got to page 95 and I had no clue at all what was happening, so today I paid a trip to the library

[Grey_Wolf]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by IronParrot
Has Jordan finished writing it? Nope.

Is the series finished anyway? Yep.

So one doesn't have to worry about there being any books 11,12 and so on then.

[IronParrot]

So one doesn't have to worry about there being any books 11,12 and so on then.

Oh, there will be, but the readership is definitely beginning to drop off piece by piece. I meant that the series is "finished" in terms of any sense of momentum.

[Grey_Wolf]

Originally posted by IronParrot
Oh, there will be, but the readership is definitely beginning to drop off piece by piece. I meant that the series is "finished" in terms of any sense of momentum.

Well, I am saving the series for a really long read later on. So if there's only two more books to go, I could begin soon.