The Wheel of Time

Given that the series as a whole could stand some serious editing, I think a tv series is an excellent opportunity. A good adaptation has the advantage of tightening the focus. Let's hope that's what we get.

Bwah.

Expect me to be that person who complains if a single character is omitted or composited, a single scene is significantly changed, etc.

The Wheel of Time is like an opera- it hits every note and doesn't miss any of it's beats, and it has flaws but the lack of editing isn't one of them. It's always felt realistic, whole.

I'm happy you feel that way.

It's a delicate balance. Adapt too closely and you risk ending up with a pacing that might work for books, but doesn't work for literature.

Adapt too loosely and you end up with whatever the fuck Game of Thrones has been since season 4.

......*has nightmare visions about an entire season adapting Crossroads of Twilight.

There is such a thing as a lower bound in quality. Probably.

Eh. The Wire got better with subsequent seasons. It's not a hard rule that TV series have to progressively suck more with each season.

It's taking a while but I'm halfway through the series.

I have a giant love/hate relationship with this series.

On the plus side, I love the overall story - almost every part of the plot itself, most if not all the world building, the fantasy systems like the one power and the wolf dream/dream world, the fantasy elements like the angreal and darkspawn and ogier, and more than a few of the characters.

On the negative side, Jordan doesn't seem to understand the 'show don't tell' rule as he launches into pages-long inner monologues that intricately details what is going through that character's head (instead of letting us work it from what they do), the series got into serious pacing issues at times, he seems to think that 'strong women' means 'obnoxious, arrogant, insufferable know-it-alls who think that men are basically clueless and will disdain their attempts to solve whatever problem is at hand, even if they solve said problem - because they could have done it better, obviously'. This is a problem for me when we get to the parts of the book that's mostly Aes Sedai or just mostly Elayne/Nynaeve/Egwene. Aviendha is alright though, I think she did it less...

Anyway, yeah. Those are me thoughts.

By all reports, Jordan did himself consider what many other people might find obnoxious and arrogant women to be strong. Putting it another way, we may feel they're obnoxious and arrogant (and most readers do, apparently); Jordan just thought they were fiery and strong willed (kinda like when the cook at the White Tower gives Min a makeover to make her look like a flirty nitwit; Min thinks such girls are irritating birdbrains, but the cook thinks of them as "lively"). One might expect an editor to rein him in on this, but his editor was his wife (and given that he thought she was fiery and strong willed might explain a few things). I personally don't see how being contrary and irritable equates with strong, but there you go. To each his or her own.

It's a bit more understandable with the Aes Sedai, which is an extremely powerful gender-specific organization that has a long tradition of mostly getting it's own way. The fact that, lacking male channeller, they're out of balance is one of the points of the series. They've descended largely to maintaining the status quo. They're faults stem from being hide-bound, philosphically isolated (they literally live in an ivory tower), and being mostly unchallenged as to their authority. The situation among the Aiel (where the Wise Ones live among the people, marry, have children, and do not in fact run things all by themselves), and among the Sea Folk (the Wind Finders) is also supposed to present an important contrast.

The wolf-dream and the dream world started to wear on me after awhile. As did a lot of the action with Elayne or the Aes Sedai in the later books, when there were pages and pages of scenes that were all sniffs and raised eyebrows and dress straightening.

edited 17th Jul '16 12:55:52 PM by Robbery

Much as I hate to say it, the girls are largely the reason I stopped reading the series around book... five, maybe six? There was an entire book that was pretty much just them.

Something that made it worse for me is that they clearly found each other obnoxious as well, which meant that 'stubborn and arrogant' gained the bedfellows of 'self-centered and lacking in self-awareness'. Not to mention that I was never able to to properly discern how so many different systems of training that focus on humbling students still leads to arrogant masters.

I liked quite a few girls at the beginning, especially Nynaeve(Because I rather agreed with her that the guys had essentially been kidnapped and weren't being treated fairly). They just kind of wore on me after a few books.

Nynaeve I'm a lot more willing to forgive that sort of behavior from because it's established very early on that this is her characterization and the narrative knows that they're character flaws. It's summed up in that great bit from her POV narration about how she wants to take a stout stick and thwack the Village Council until they realize that violence doesn't fix things. She's arrogant, short-tempered, and incredibly un-self-aware, and I love her for it. It combines with her positive traits like compassion and sense of duty to make a rounded character. Cadsuane, by contrast, I couldn't stand until the Sanderson books when the narrative made it clear that yes, her overbearingness is a bad thing rather than just her being very forcefully right at people.

On a more general note, I wanna point out that despite the issues with many of the more prominent and powerful female characters in the series, Jordan's actually good about variety in his female characters. They're major characters, minor characters, warriors, magic-users, thieves, sailors, innkeepers, heroes, cowards, fools, and just generally run the gamut of human experience. Granted, part of that's because the books have six brazillion characters with their own unique backstories, but still. There's a lot of insufferable Aes Sedai types, but there's also people like Min and Birgitte and Egeanin and Berelain and Moghedian and Semirhage and Graendal.

edited 18th Jul '16 12:53:17 AM by rikalous

Even among the Aes Sedai they run the gamut from Moiraine and Elaida to Verin to Cadsuane in terms of temperament, appearance, attitude and goals, even as they think they're working towards the same end.

My main problem with the "strong" women in WOT was that the narrative was sort of indecisive about whether they were meant to be irritating busybodies who needed to get over themselves, well-meaning people whose only problem was that they were raised in a system that put them on a pedestal above everyone else, or genuinely right and the men should listen to them.

The worst for me, by far, was Cadsuane, who even other Aes Sedai are in awe of, who proceeds to come extremely close to fucking everything up because, despite all her supposed genius, she has one tactic (bullying people into doing what she wants) and when it doesn't work, her response is to try again but harder, despite the fact that this is very obviously the opposite of helping when it comes to Rand.

And then in the epilogue, she becomes the Amyrlin Seat. Because after all of the reforming Egwene did, what the Aes Sedai REALLY need is to put a bastion of the old guard back in charge in order to lead them into a new age. Sigh.

I did enjoy Rand's new self-assurance towards the end, and when he, surprisingly gently, reminded Cadsuane that, in every way that mattered to an Aes Sedai, he totally curb-stomped her. It really seemed to throw her for a loop, dealing with someone she couldn't bully or intimidate.

I kinda like that the Aes Sedai went right back to the old ways. Power isn't so easily reformed, and the Aes Sedai were among the most powerful of that old age.

Oh, and lest I forget, Tam al'Thor. "I know a bully when I see one."

Cadsuane is one of my least favorite characters in like, all of fiction. I understand that she gets kinda sorta maybe un-validated in the later books (still haven't started TGS), but so far, she's a ratification of everything that I loathe about Aes Sedai.

Gotta give credit where it's due. Jordan managed to write Rand telling Cadsuane to fuck right the hell off and make it come off as a bad thing. The threat was pretty badass, though.

Anyway, TGS is pretty great so far (about 40% in). It's had more plot progression than the past three books put together. I'm also happy to announce that Cadsuane has been dethroned from the position of Worst Character by Gawyn. Round of applause, everyone!

I have several friends who really, really like this series, comparing it favorably to Tolkien.

I made the effort, but finally stopped reading it when I read through the prologue of Book 10 and couldn't remember who half the characters were or why I should be in any way concerned about what they were doing. I understand that even fans of the series admit that Book 10 is a hard slog in which not much happens.

My opinion of the series as a whole is that it would have been better if there were only 4 books rather than 14. Mr. Jordan really, really needed an editor. I like many of the general ideas, but the prose is uninteresting and the characters are often just a name or a little flat. You can overlook those flaws in a shorter work, as long as the plot is interesting and moves along at a good clip, but Mr. Jordan chose to indulge himself instead.

Maybe some day I'll try to pick it up again so I can get to the books by Bandon Sanderson, who is an author I have a high opinion of; who writes snappy dialogue and good action scenes, and who knows how to move a plot along.

If it's any consolation, I'm at book 12 right now and it's fantastic. The plot moved more in the first third than for the past three books. I'll gush more when I finish it — so far, suffice to say I absolutely love the writing of Rand's character.

Jordan had an editor. Unfortunately, she was also his wife.

The problem with remembering who everyone was and why you should care was particularly felt by those of us who read the series as it came out., The series could have stood a lot (and by a lot I mean a ton) of trimming. Some of the chapters with Elayne, while she's doing the political thing, are all sharp looks and raised eyebrows and sniffs and dress adjusting. Pages and pages of it.

You could cut more than half the cast and not harm the central story at all. Now that someone is apparently trying to adapt it into a tv series, perhaps we'll get a more focused version of the story. When the story gets going, it's great, but there are whole books where very little of real importance happens.

Unfortunately book 12-14's Mat is a dickhead that book 3-11 Mat would have punched in the face for being an asshole with a superiority complex.

I guess you could argue that the books that were the most bloated and plot-inert were also all #1 best sellers, so it didn't really matter that they weren't better edited.