I did it!

Apparently, he’s promised that the next book will the the final one, mostly due to the reason you mentioned. I would imagine that somewhere he has a wordfile with about 300 lines, each of them an unfinished storyline, and he’s checking them off as he writes.

The nice thing for you, moving so slowly and being somewhat behind, is that when you finally do get to book 11, likely 12 will be out and you can just go on to it.

I hate to disappoint but what you heard is true. The story slows to a crawl. Random sub characters get thrown all over the place. The main characters just keep doing the same things over and over. It almost made me give up on the whole series. Unfortuantly for me I can’t just leave a story. The amylodosis is a factor for sure though. If he had the time I’m sure the series wouldn’t have turned so dull because there is so much more he could write about. It’s not over yet so there is still hope!

Better man than me, I couldn’t even make it through the first book.

http://raccaldin36.livejournal.com/1007365.html

I’ve bought most of the books; the ones I didn’t came briefly out of the library. I buy them mostly because I can’t finish them in the bookstore.

I read 1 to 6 and halfway through 7 during a two-week holiday because I liked “New Spring” (the novella which was published in some collection, not the full novel which I also have but which already suffers of the overkill syndrome). Then I caught myself looking for at least one of the main characters to die horribly … and threw the whole set out. I’ve read through Winston Churchill’s 21 volume WWII history and didn’t skip a page, but Mr. Rigney has me beaten … *deep bow*

“I sat down and figured out how long it would take me to write all of the books I currently have in mind, without adding anything new and without trying rush anything. The figure I came up with was thirty years. Now, I’m fifty-seven, so anyone my age hoping for another thirty years is asking for a fair bit, but I don’t care. That is my minimum goal. I am going to finish those books, all of them, and that is that.”

Hmm. Makes me glad I gave up at book 3 this summer.

Give up, give up now. I can vouch for the fact that the books slow to the most monumentally lethargic crawl. Whatever the latest book is (11?), I’ve given up on it. It’s just too slow. I stuck with Jordan all the way, but I just can’t go on.

I loved the series initially, I think up until book 4 or 5. The pacing becomes more and more unbearable after that. Practically nothing happens for whole chapters. You could honestly skip a couple of the books and you’d be in almost the same place, plot wise, as you were before.

I was slightly terrified Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series was heading the same way - the protagonist Richard is STILL dicking around book 7 or so unable to utilise any of the skills he was on the brink of learning at the end of book 2. Goodkind may be pulling back from the brink, with his latest offering, however. Good thing too, he almost lost me.

Why do authors do this? It drives me nuts. I don’t read heroic fantasy for its literary worth, I want a goddamned snappy plot. I’m happy to buy 10 books, just as long as SOMETHING HAPPENS.

UGH! Sword of truth does the same damn thing! In EVERY BOOK the two main characters find a way to got sperated and they both go on this emo trip about how sucky life is, until they meet up again! Then there is a book where they just show up at the end and say “hey maybe she can touch it?”

Where did all the good fantasy stories go?

As others have mentioned, Wheel of Time books 6-10 crawl slowly, plot-wise. Somehow I made it through them on momentum or something, but I didn’t finish the last few chapters of book 10. Book 11, however, picks up the pace and quickly, like BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!, chapter after chapter, resolves long-standing plot lines in a fairly satisfying way. Book 12 will be the end, or so Jordan claims. No matter how long it has to be.

Books 5-10 could be condensed into, say, two novels of Jordan’s usual size and be far more readable. That won’t happen, but a real option is to catch up with the story on Wikipedia for the books in the 5-10 range you missed, then read books 11 and 12 (when it’s done).

Don’t even get me started on Goodkind. I gave that up on, I think, the fourth volume. I think it was the same one Kyle mentioned — it was about a young boy and girl down in some city never mentioned before. The series main protagonists don’t even show until the very end. I finished it and swore off ever reading another.

Really, where *are* the good epic fantasy novels nowadays? I miss them.

There’s George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire epic, which some acclaim and I enjoyed well enough … until when midway through the third book I realized that he had the Jordan problem too, in his own way. Instead of dragging in the regular characters to do the same thing over and over, he kills them off, which is kinda refreshing in a sick way, but rather than tightening up the story thereby (which I hoped for), he adds *new* viewpoint characters to make up for the loss.

Aside from that, Martin chooses to move all the characters towards the middle grey ground, morally. Thus the reader starts to like the villains more (they ain’t ALL bad), and the “good guys” less (their ugly, unpleasant aspects come out), as the story progresses. Unfortunately, by the middle of the third book I realized that I no longer cared for any of the characters. There weren’t any good villains nor sympathetic heroes. All became a mush of grey. Sure, that’s “realistic”, but I’m not reading fantasy for a reprise of real-life “realism”.

It’s pretty hard to slog through a huge novel when you no longer care a bit what happens to any of the characters, when the prospect of a main character getting killed off only brings forth mild regret, if that.

I like the books, but I hate reading them.

…Yeah, that just sounds dumb. What I mean is, it’s a good story, only spread out too thinly after the first books. Also, he keeps planting subtle or not so subtle hints and seeds that you expect to, at any moment, turn the entire story around and keep it interesting, but after a while they just pile up in your mind and die.

I’ve read up to book 11, I think. Made it through that one just because I couldn’t sleep for worrying about what was going to happen to Matt. (If that was his name. The weasel of the trio.) Wossname, the main main character (Rand I think? Something like that) is, at this point an extremely boring character, and the only thing he has going for him is some trouble with women.

If I ever were to get a chance to speak to Robert Jordan, I’d beg him to read the books through and pick up all the loose threads that he seems to have dropped along the way.

Matt, you’re absolutely right.

I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling a sense of malaise about the current big fantasy series. I used to love reading this stuff. Raymond E. Feist’s Riftwar Saga is brilliant from start to finish, and I loved David Eddings in my younger days (although it doesn’t really stand up to re-reading, tbh). I always though David Gemmel didn’t quite stand up to the greats of the genre, but at least he kept things moving.

The latest sword of truth novel is the first in a few books that has any real progress, but even this could be a false dawn. It’s as though Goodkind specialises in the literary version of the famous ‘Galactic Reset’ button so reminiscent of Star Trek episodes - make sure you leave the universe just as you found it, eh Terry? I mean:

- Kahlan and Richard have been separated for most of the series. I wouldn’t mind so much, because they’re both interesting characters in their own right, but they do mope a lot.

- The Imperial Order has been on the verge of crushing them for at least 4 books now.

- Richard has remained in his state of ‘uncontrolled’ power since it was revealed he was a wizard, in book 2.

- Also, Goodkind has this terrible habit of posing extremely detailed explanations for magical happenings, in this sort of pseudo-scientific meta-physics style language. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I understand the importance of internal consistancy and all, but it’s really starting to grate.

- He’s also getting very heavy on the moralising. It’s clear there’s meant to be some sort of theme along the lines of non-appeasement of evil, but the over-slow dawning of this gem of wisdom has (again) been going on for books and books…

/rant over

I actually read all the books, some are boring but it is interesting to see the way the prophecies in the book play out. I must say that you have to be a real hardcore reader to get through the second half of the series without giving up.

Actually, I think that someone with a lot of free time on their hands should sit down and edit out all the meaningless crap out of Jordan’s books, and release the condenced 5000 page version on the internet. It could even be a wiki project.

I’ve read all the current books of the Wheel of Time series. 1-9 were a snap for me, honestly, with number 6 standing out with its bloody ending and number 9’s… well, interesting finish.

Then I got number 10. I realise he probably needed to fix up a bunch of storylines, but damn, that book is a drag. I can’t think of one memorable thing whatsoever he did in that book.