Re: Robert Jordan has passed away

On 2007-09-17, Sean O'Hara <seanohara@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> In the Year of the Golden Pig, the Great and Powerful Will in New
> Haven declared:
>> And he probably wrote as fast as he
>> could, just lost the race, that's all.
>> 
>
> He may have, but he certainly didn't tell the story as fast as he
> could. The last few books are the Platonic ideal of bloat -- 10
> pages of plot advancement out of every 800.

After a long break, I recently got around to reading the last/latest
installements "Crossroads of Twilight" and "Knife of Dreams", and was
going to post about the experience under the subject "Wheel of Time
might have stopped sucking".

CoT is typical WoT with glacier pace. At one point I counted 138 pages
describing 24 hours in one characters life. It had subplots that I simply
couldn't see having any relevance to the final battle. It had the usual
lack of communication; in one scene two characters, who are supposed to
be one the same side, are discussing a major event. The first character
has the wrong idea about the event, and the other character knows it, but
doesn't share what she know.

KoD is a totally different story. From page one, it's clear that Jordan
had realized that he only had one more book to finish the story, so he
clearly picked up his space. The storytelling is different, with
flashbacks of the *highlights* of what the characters have been done for
the last couple of weeks, instead of endless passages about dresses and
tea. Many subplots are actually resolved(!) and some minor characters
who've had way to much screen time are dealt with with no coming back.
I did notice that the poster child for irrelevant subplots, was finished
off in a few pages, with almost no payoff for the pages used in previous
volumes.

The result however, is one of the best books of the series, and until
today, I was actually looking forward to the final volume (unlike my
earlier apathy).

After fini****ng KoD I failed to resist the temptation to read the prequel
"New Spring". It's ok, but now with Jordan's passing, it does feel like a
waste of time. The first half of the book is about Moiraine and Siuan
Sanche's
final days as Accepted and gives a good look at Tower life. The second
part is about the first meeting of Moiraine and Lan. As a bonus, this
part explains how Malkier (the land of Lan) could disappear [1]. I had
hoped to read something about Tam al'thor, but he doesn't feature in the
book.


[1] The male population had lost their will to live.