The first book has a few strangely unique and interesting concepts and depictions of things, and is worth a read.
With a lot of books like this I sort of consider them “period pieces” which allows me to overlook some of the more hokey, ancient-white-author passages.
The series took over 18 months of my life. Worth it? I think so.
That said, I certainly didn’t ascribe any real-world political bent to it. It’s escapist fantasy, let it be what it is.
Isn't it nice to be a white man and never have your rights in danger?
How nice for you that you can enjoy objectively sexists stories because you give zero fucks about how those stories reinforce harmful sexist ideas and behaviors.
We need a nation wide strike and march day for Medicare for all. If you believe in this, stay home from work if possible and join a nation wide protest to demand Medicare for all and end the strangle hold the for profit insurance companies have on us.
I got like 8 books into the series as a kid, and while I enjoyed the writing and storytelling at that point in life, I remember getting bored and dropping the series because it seemed like all that was really happening was the protagonists and villains just getting more powerful ad infinitum...
It got better towards the end. I would say this though. Book 1 could probably do with a rewrite as there are elements within that world that he abandoned in the later books.
You're entitled to like reading what you like reading, but I think having a story be like 10,000 pages long needs to result in more satisfaction than I was getting from them at the point I gave up
I began reading his books, but I lost interest. My impression, I felt a spinning, in his telling a tale. It lost relevance and became hollow, losing my interest. I didn't know about his point of view, but this does make sense.
I like Wheel of Time. It isn't for everyone and that's OK, but there's a grandeur in the scope of what it covers and how beautifully some character arcs fall to the depths of despair and then rise again
They're really cool if you see yourself in a petulant blonde boy who all the baddies want to fuck/marry/kill 💀 otherwise imo they are mid (I SAID WHAT I SAID)
I liked the series but holy shit was it longer than it needed to be. The last three books (written by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan died) give us a glimpse into a universe where editing was involved in this process. Things move so much quicker!
This was awhile ago so I may be mistaken but the ending of book seven had one of the main characters have a roof fall in on him. In book eight they never even got to it at all. I just did the metal table flip and said no more. I can see spankings elsewhere
There are, perhaps, several good stories in there, that could have been teased from the mess and made into good stories through liberal applications of editorial oversight.
We'll never know if he would have got around to ending the story. Sanderson did a good job of that, I think, separating the lovestruck women into their own destinies.
i know some insist that monarchism and obsession with bloodlines in fantasy is "just tropes" and that it has no bearing on the author's beliefs, but it does seem to happen a lot more than you'd expect by pure chance
The best thing I can say is that it was okay fantasy.
The worst thing I can say about it is that it had no message (for lack of a better word) that gave it meaning or depth and the entire story line ended with a big ol' "meh".
I've read better series/books though, by far.
It's a shame, because I think he is trying to do something interesting with gender, but he's doing it from the perspective of a man who grew up in the 50s.
Yes, I think that's fair. Certain specific choices and characters almost get somewhere but how they function in the terms of the narrative and world tend to undo that interest
Boys need to take the source and force it to their will like a battle, girls need to embrace the source and open themselves to it like a flower. But maybe even more annoying is how often women be tugging at their braids
I tried to read that many years ago and put it down. Just couldn’t get into it. It started off incredibly bleak. I didn’t know about his politics though.
You can love a book and dislike the author’s politics. Some of the best SciFi novels I’ve ever read is by Dan Simmons, who is far out there on the right/Tea Party/MAGA scale. That being said, I stopped the Wheel of Time after book 3, as I found it increasingly boring.
It's hard to read The Wheel of Time with any seriousness if you're at all feministically inclined.
It's sooooo clearly #MenWritingWomen
Also a huge male power fantasy of putting most women in their places while tokenizing some as long as they fall in line with the main male character's agenda.
The books are horrible, but the way he wrote himself into a corner by refusing to ever drop a single ancillary character from the narrative and then died without resolving the plot is one of the funniest things a genre fic author has ever done
I’ve long said that if he had just taken a quarter of his ideas and written a trilogy, and then another third of his ideas and written a pentology, he would have completed two series before he died. And they’d probably be better. Instead he tried to make everything into one story and it’s a mess.
That is probably true, but it’s impossible to imagine a version of Robert Jordan with that level of discipline and self-awareness - he’d be a different guy entirely
i found it entertaining in a "here's a deeply sexist guy trying to write a feminist message" way but you have to slog thru so much that i couldn't recommend it to anyone
He had one personality for women: petty vindictive cows who want to show more flesh off when in the presence of the bloke they fancy. If you ignore that, it's a really good story.
Not an attack, just genuine curiosity - did you also not read LotR, as Tolkien was a monarchist too and actually made it an important part of a trilogy (and had a beef with C.S. Lewis about politics)?
He was a true wordsmith. I guess that it’s all just describing people and things as a way to tell a story.
I did not know about the other things(?)
Have you read Dune by Frank Herbert? Similar style with characters who you can delve into.
Comments
With a lot of books like this I sort of consider them “period pieces” which allows me to overlook some of the more hokey, ancient-white-author passages.
But I enjoyed the 1st book.
That said, I certainly didn’t ascribe any real-world political bent to it. It’s escapist fantasy, let it be what it is.
How nice for you that you can enjoy objectively sexists stories because you give zero fucks about how those stories reinforce harmful sexist ideas and behaviors.
There are so many truly amazing books to read.
Why waste time slogging through really long-winded sexism when you don't have to?
The best thing I can say is that it was okay fantasy.
The worst thing I can say about it is that it had no message (for lack of a better word) that gave it meaning or depth and the entire story line ended with a big ol' "meh".
I've read better series/books though, by far.
If it's not for you, scroll on by. Just scroll on by.
It's sooooo clearly #MenWritingWomen
Also a huge male power fantasy of putting most women in their places while tokenizing some as long as they fall in line with the main male character's agenda.
I’m thinking of a different series aren’t I?
I did not know about the other things(?)
Have you read Dune by Frank Herbert? Similar style with characters who you can delve into.