The Believer has posted a very thorough and interesting analysis of The Wheel of Time series, its strengths and weaknesses, and the respective merits of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson as authors. This is one of the more intriguing and even-handed takes on the series I've read, even if I disagree with the author in some details (A Crown of Swords is a stronger novel than is usually given credit for in my opinion, whilst the notion that the Mat/Tuon relationship in Knife of Dreams is a triumph of the series is questionable).
Overall, worth a read as we count down the last four weeks before Towers of Midnight is released.
Wow. This guy celebrates everything about The Wheel of Time that I can't stand. What I call turgid, overwrought prose, he calls "verbose but vivid, tendentious but still somehow charming, and threaded throughout with equal parts valor and invention."
ReplyDeleteBut further, he also waxes nostalgic about something that I feel has ruined not only The Wheel of Time, but many another novel series or TV show that jumped the shark:
"...the thrilling rekindling for readers of a long-dormant wish: that the books never end at all. ...better a perpetual present in which Jordan, his characters, and his world live on than a speedy resolution and the subsequent loss of it all."
Things have to end, but if you drag them out, they end up losing all of the meaning with which they were originally infused.
Here is my own assessment of Jordan's writing.
dude, the link is broken.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you wrt Crown of Swords. For mine provided more closure than Lord of Chaos, and plot was still moving at a decent clip.
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