Does anybody actually enjoy these books? (Spoilers)

[elric01]

Or do you just use them as sleep aids? The first five books were okay then after that they suck beyond anything I have ever read. Nothing happens for thousands of pages. Why did his editors or agent not tell him to just get on with it and finish the D*&$ things!

 

[CaptainCatfish]

Or do you just use them as sleep aids? The first five books were okay then after that they suck beyond anything I have ever read. Nothing happens for thousands of pages. Why did his editors or agent not tell him to just get on with it and finish the D*&$ things!

I am glad to see that I am not the only one that found the series on a crash course...of course, I still haven't been able to finish reading book 2! Yet there are so many...I figured I must be missing something.

 

[woodsman]

I liked em especially 1-3 and then onto 6, yeah they slow up a lot but I didn't mind too much, I mean it's not great but you battle on through.
Personally I thought crossroads of Twiglight was starting to pick up again and was really looking forward to some closure in A Meaning Of Light, however who knows now.

Whatever floats your boat I guess, the fact that there re several forums devoted solely to WoT indicates many people really do rate them. Take a look at dragonmount.com........

 

[murphy]

Yes, I do enjoy these books. As soon as the last one comes out (consider my fingers crossed tightly), I intend to do a reread of all 12 books. As woodsman said, whatever floats your boat. If you don't like them, there are a lot of books out there that you probably will like.

 

[Talysia]

I agree with Woody and Murphy - I do like the books, although I can see why people would lose faith, patience and whatnot with them.

 

[the_faery_queen]

no. i don't think i enjoyed them, not after book 4. i think i read them on principle but in the end i gave up (book 10)

 

[Sephiroth]

I enjoyed the first seven without qualification. The last four have been a bit disappointing, though, and especially the last two. I don't understand why they suddenly became shorter after book seven. The only one of the four that really felt 'finished' to me was book nine, and that's mainly because it has such a good ending.

I'll still finish the series, though, and I'll probably read all of them again before book twelve comes out; while I have some complaints, I still love the stories (and the characters) enough to forgive these flaws.

 

[NyneaveSedai]

Or do you just use them as sleep aids? The first five books were okay then after that they suck beyond anything I have ever read. Nothing happens for thousands of pages. Why did his editors or agent not tell him to just get on with it and finish the D*&$ things!

I can't understand why you can say that you didn't enjoy them, you read them all! Surely after you read one or two you didn't like you'd stop, to read them all and then say you didn't like them doesn't make sense. There must have been something about them that kept you turning the pages.

 

[elric01]

I can't understand why you can say that you didn't enjoy them, you read them all! Surely after you read one or two you didn't like you'd stop, to read them all and then say you didn't like them doesn't make sense. There must have been something about them that kept you turning the pages.

Someone gave me all 11 books and I liked the first 5 but then after that they really went down hill. By that time I had so much reading already invested I had to keep going because I kept hoping they would get better. If I could have just read a Cliff Note summary and found out what happened I would have preferred to do that but as far as I know there is no such thing. As has been stated before in this thread "whatever floats your boat". If others enjoy them then that is great for them. I personally prefer Raymond Feist, Michael Moorcock or Terry Brooks and if you have never read George Stewarts "Earth Abides" I suggest you read it. It is the book Stephen King read that inspired him to write The Stand. Good reading everybody!

 

[Werthead]

Books 1-7 are solid epic fantasy, although they probably make more of an impact if you read them when younger (I read those books when I was 17) or before other, superior writers (like Martin, Erikson, Kay and Bakker). Books 8 and 10 suck to high heaven. 9 is merely weak by comparison. 11 was okay, but is ridiculously overrated. Whilst he resolves a lot of plotlines he does is in a very contrvied and unconvincing manner.

 

[Giovanna Clairval]

I read them all, all the darped eleven. I was captivated by the first four, and then I kept reading for the following reasons:

1) wanted to know how the various stories would end;
2) the characters grew on me (although RJ didn’t understand much about the feminine psyche), and I liked the way RJ handled the POVs;
3) in spite of the manifest incompetence of the line-editor, the writing was lulling, with all those dresses, and details, and actions (for the first novels); it made for great evasion!
4) a few passages and swirls of imagination were remarkable indeed, not the whole, though. At some time, I thought RJ was just paying off his stables full of Arabian horses, or a mansion overhanging the ocean or whatnot.

Too, too long, but those great passages, and the characters, and the wealth of details… I did enjoy the read, while my rational mind snorted, and Rubescant, my kind sword, was wagging her hilt and wanted to slash a sentence here, a sentence there…

I hope they publish the last one. They must!

 

[Sephiroth]

Werthead, I feel the same way about many of the resolutions in book eleven, I was a bit surprised by the good reaction it received.

Giovanna, I agree with all of that.

 

[Green]

If I could have just read a Cliff Note summary and found out what happened I would have preferred to do that but as far as I know there is no such thing.

Wiki has everything, ever.

 

[Rosemary]

I'm another WOT fan! I've enjoyed all of the books, although now and again I have felt as if Rand needed a good shaking, to get on with it...

 

[murphy]

I'm another WOT fan! I've enjoyed all of the books, although now and again I have felt as if Rand needed a good shaking, to get on with it...

Maybe by the time Cadsuane (sp?) and his three wives get after him, he will.

 

[VannThurhart]

I don't know, I love them. I love them dearly, and I don't really know why. For the most part, I get lost in them, I truly do. I don't read a book, I envision it. When I read I find myself forgetting that I'm looking at words, forgetting I'm laying on a bed with a book in my hands thick enough to teach me japanese. I find myself in the world. I see everything, I see the armies charge, I watch a queen escape her castle through dark corridors, I feel the awesome power wielded by the Forsaken and see the seasons shift. For me, a book is more than words on pages. It is a movie with more special effects and acting than Lord of the Rings, or the Matrix. Only stories like these truly bring me to a world like this, and it's amazing to get lost inside a world where your job isn't the only thing ahead of you besides more school. I feel priveleged to be thrown into a world with such detail as Jordan's, just as I felt when I read the Lord of the Rings series, or the countless other series my dad has on the shelves here. I've even found myself lost in the books my dad wrote, and in ringworld. The only other thing that makes me feel awed like this is D&D, when you have a good party and a DM skilled at weaving a story as you go.

Wow, sorry for the long rant, but it's nice to actually get my feelings on books out. My friends don't have the desire to read, so I don't talk about it, ever.

 

[Talysia]

Don't worry about the long rant. We love that kind of thing here!

I think I know what you mean about a book being more than words on a page. A good story can really draw the reader in, away from reality, and I've been lost in a book on so many occasions I've stopped counting. With Jordan, the amount of detail in the world he created is one of the things that can either draw people in or put them off completely, and that's one of the reasons people are so polarized towards the WoT.

With your love of books and reading, I think you'll fit in very well here!

 

[C Of K]

Yes, you'll fit just fine, as Talysia says. And we do like to read, just look in the "What Aja would you be?" thread.

For me, the best thing about Jordan's story has always been the concepts that he strung together. He really started with something that was close to perfect. WoT took me out of my fascination with scifi. I'm a big Star Wars fan, but the WoT books were just so much more than any Star Wars novel could ever be.

I have read better fantasy than WoT by now, but nothing with better concepts.

 

[Pyan]

There seems to be a consensus - first six books OK, then a rapid drop-off in quality....
Perhaps now I know there is an end in sight, I'll try again.

 

[The Curious Orange]

I must admit I still enjoy them, but they do vary in quality. I actually like some of the more recent ones. Although they are painfully slow to advance the plot, some of the actual writing is quite beautiful. While the earlier books were, by and large, better, it wasn't all plain sailing. I found some of them a little rushed, particularly Book 3, The Dragon Reborn. An awful lot seemed to happen in the last chapter - enough for a book in it's own right. While I accept that 300 pages of Elayne taking a bath pushes things too far the other way, when RJ hits a happy medium he really does it in style. The Shadow Rising remains the highpoint of the series for me. If only he'd written something like that since...

I found Crown of Swords weak. The Ebou Dar / Bowl of Winds plot was cheap and served no purpose other than to extend the series. The Shadar Logoth ending was rushed and tacked on. To me, this remains the most disappointing of the series to date.

I loved Path of Daggers - so much happens in that book - Rand suffers his first major setback, Elayne realises her responsibilities to Andor - it's one of the best in the series, and I've never been able to figure out the hate that it seems to attract. I guess it might be because it's all character stuff rather than big battles against Foresaken.

Winter's Heart was alright, but the rot had set in. Apart from the one "big event" precious little happens. I think this was also the point when I ceased to care if Perrin found Faile or not.

Crossroads of Twilight was awful at every level. Truly, truly dire. 800 pages in which not one single thing happens, not one character advances any further than they were at the end of the previous book. You have to read it to believe it possible.

I also agree that Knife of Dreams resolved too much, too quickly. Why drag some of these plotlines out for so many books just to end them in a few lines?

So what do we expect to see first? Book 12 or the next GRRM?