Will Robert Jordan Die before he finished wheel of time series?

[Stewart]

I see the Wheel Of Time novels when I'm out browsing the stores.

What Stewart is not mentioning, perhaps due to lack of experience with this series, is the fact that these are very LONG books..each and every one of them.

I know. But why? Really: why?

 

[Midnight]

Jordan Roberts Wheel of Time series is long and tiring to read. I agree wtih abecedarian, his books are LONG. Its hard to keep track of events happening in each book. Like abecedarian said, you wouldn't know whats book #13 have to do with book #2. Unless you are devoted to reading the whole series in reading order for a long time, don't start the series.

 

[Mathius]

I almost posted something along these lines when this thread first started, but I got interrupted and forgot to come back. I totally agree with Stewart. I have a few series that I read because I feel I owe it to myself to see how the story ends. Everytime a book comes out, I wish and wish that it will be the last one, but it never is. I've heard many people comment that they just wish WOT would end so that they can stop reading with a sense of closure, but that Jordan just keeps adding plot lines and dragging it out more and more.

You make some good points here, but the problem is, those additional side plots are here now. You can't unwrite them. Some of them panned out into something interesting, some of them didn't, but they are there now.

To finish the series without wrapping them all up is the opposite of the pace we saw before. There were only one, maybe two books in the series that just kind of flowed along without anything meaningful in them. In other words, maybe one book in the series that I didn't think had a point.

To go through, giving extreme detail to each character, situation, etc. like he had, and then rush the last two books into publishing wouldn't upset me, if in fact I thought he could get everything finished, but he's said all along that there are going to be things left "undone" in this series, and that bothers me.

Don't worry though. When he finishes the series there could be dozens of additional sideplots and new characters added on in spinoff novels. Look at Anne McAffrey and the Dragonriders of Pern. I loved those books as a teen, and I read them all over the course of a summer. Then, she ran out of the original story, but kept adding on additional novels about people in different time frames, dolphins, etc. I just stopped reading them midway through and I'll never read another. It just go SO boring.

<shrug> This is hit or miss. The good authors can nail it, the bad ones can't. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the Dragonlance series based on a D&D campaign they were playing, and the characters became very much loved by fans.

But when she killed most of them off and tried to write "second generations", speaking of their children and some new characters, they weren't as well recieved.

Now she's going back to write prequels.

I don't think we'll see RJ go back to this series unless something monumental happens with his health.

He's already signed on to write another book series, something that starts out with a shipwreck.

It's cruel, but I don't know if he'll live long enough to go back and write another WoT book.

I don't see Stewart as criticizing books he hasn't read, rather commenting on the practice of writing never ending series. I also don't think his comment that he hasn't read something because it is fantasy is "disparaging". If I had made a comment along the lines of "I don't like fantasy, so I haven't read it", nobody would have gotten upset with me.

I would have. It's the very equivalent of being an internet troll. You won't take the time to read the book, but you'll criticize it? How can you even know anything about it?

How does someone not read 1 of the 12 books, and say that you don't think the 12 books could possibly all be necessary.

Stewart is a tad more blunt than the rest of us tend to be. It is just his thing. He does, however, have the responsibility of browsing the threads in this forum. All moderators should be reading threads, even those they aren't interested in. It helps us to keep SPAM and other abuse under control.

That doesn't give him a free pass to start bashing things that he freely admitted he hasn't read.

Either way, sell us on the series! Maybe I'll go out and read one if it sounds good. I know my grandfather loved those books, but he died a few years ago. He tried to get my dad and I to start it (back in High School when I was into fantasy), but neither of us ever did.

Well, I don't know about Stewarts comment about "I've mentioned in earlier postings that I find fantasy a cop out - but that's for a different discussion" I suppose I'll have to go back and look up his old posts (which will probably be an exercise in self control based on what I've seen him post so far).

I can only think that he must mean that fantasy allows authors to use things like "magic" or making up their own designs on things like physics and chemistry, etc. meaning that they can take a short cut instead of doing real research. If he means something else, then I just don't know.

Personally I enjoy fantasy, because to be quite honest, I don't find real life all that interesting. I'm quite dissatisfied with my own life, and fantasy allows me to escape that to some place that is totally unrelated to my own daily drudge.

And I for one can't fathom these people who complain that the books are too long?

I absolutely LOVE to read a good book. I have read and re-read WoT with each new book that comes out. I'll re-read the entire series before a new book comes out to refresh things.

I'll skim through certain areas after I've read the book once, but the first time I read it, I have never found anything in his books that I have felt was so inadequate as far as a story goes that I cannot read it and feel the need to skip over it.

I would much rather read a 1000 page above average book than read a phenomenal 300 page book that is over and done with too quickly, leaving me looking for something else to read.

Mathius

 

[Mathius]

You can add Anne Rice there as another case in point. Five novels about vampires, completing the story of one vampire's life. But two of those were unnecessary (The Queen Of The Damned and The Tale Of The Body Thief) and then she went on with New vampire chronicles, effectively doing the same thing over and over again but with different lives.

I completely disagree about "two of those" being unnecessary. What story IS necessary for starters? But Queen of the Damned and Tale of the Body Thief were necessary for me as a reader.

Both gave depth to Lestat who has become the most revered of all her characters. The events of Queen of the Damned were critical in explaining how he received the bulk of his advanced vampiric powers. Also it gave a lot of background to the story IIRC.

Tale of the Body Thief could perhaps be unnecessary, but it served its purpose in that it was a new story, taking on a completely different direction from her original books.

It revealed a completely different power, unlike Lestats previous abilities, which were just enhancements of the original demon. In a way it was essential to Anne Rices development as a storyteller, because she began to go in different areas, such as in Ramses the Damned, Violin (which I admit I did not like, nor finish), and Servant of the Bones. Later she wrote Taltos, and chose, unlike a lot of authors would, to allow her characters from these different settings to interact with each other in a later novel.

As for the New Vampire chronicles, I agree, several of them were horrible. Pandora comes to mind, and there was another one where Marius told his story that was basically a collection of elements from Pandora, Armand, and the original 4 novels.

I also found Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt to be a horrible story, and the authors comments at the end reveal some very bizarre (in my opinion) behavioral aspects and beliefs of the author.

But you also have to understand that Rice used her books as an outlet for some of her own personal issues, such as her questions of faith. She began life as a catholic, then turned away from god, only to return to the catholic church later in life.

Some of her books, such as Christ the Lord, and Memnoch the Devil, are direct results of her trying to put into words her questions as to her own religions journey.

I for one am agnostic, but still, I thought Memnoch the Devil, at least, was entertaining.

I see the Wheel Of Time novels when I'm out browsing the stores. There's also the books of forum favourite, Terry Goodkind. And there's George R.R. Martin's bricks. Aside from the law that all fantasy series must now be forty books long, is there also a requirement for them to be around one thousand pages each? Although I wasn't a fan of it, I'll say one thing for Perdido Street Station and China Mieville: at least he managed to tell the story in one book (and have no bloody elves in it!) before moving on to write a new novel set in the same world but completely unrelated. I've got the Martin novel A Game Of Thrones at home - I'm tempted to read it one day to find out for myself whether it's just a massive tangling of worthless subplots.[/QUOTE]

I can't speak for some of those, but if you want an example of an author who puts out some books that you would question as to whether or not they are necessary, then Terry Goodkind is your man.

He has quietly put out 11 books now (I say quietly, because while I've heard everyone speak of how big WoT is, I hardly hear a peep out of anyone regarding Goodkind) and they seem to be hit or miss.

Soul of the Fire read almost like porn. Goodkind has an extremely dark and possibly perverted nature in his writing. A lot of his books have not only offended people, but incited religious groups to ban the reading of them.

If you can get passed these things I'd say the core of his story, perhaps 8 of his 12 (maybe more, I'd have to actually go back and critique each one) were highly entertaining. Some of them were fantastic.

But some of them were not, and were really unnecessary and I have often questioned where this series is going to end, and how.

Mathius

 

[-Carlos-]

Will Robert Jordan Die before he finished wheel of time series?

That's the same question Stephen King fans asked regarding the Dark Tower series. King's near death experience with a vehicle brought on those concerns. The author rushed through the final novels of the series just in case the end came early. Go figure.

 

[AceWCP]

Try reading the books over again whether you know for sure something wasnt covered or not cause theres a chance you may have missed it. I read the books and so does a friend and her dad and she told me that hes read the books 3-4 times each and every time he discovers something new that he had missed reading the books previous times. now i think 3-4 times might be a little drastic but a second time never hurts expecially if you really enjoy the books.

i havnt even read 11 yet but I sure hope he is able to finish the last in the series, or at least what is supposed to be the last...

 

[Self]

I'm with you Mathius - to me commenting on a book you haven't read can be likened to people who speak just to hear the sound of their own voice. And for another moderater to justify it because of his status...sometimes its better to be silent and have people think you are a fool than to open your mouth and confirm it as the old saying goes.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, it is better however to have knowledge of your subject matter before giving it.

 

[Stewart]

And for another moderater to justify it because of his status...

That never happened. It has nothing to do with status and all to do with knowing me and my posting style on this forum for however many years.

And let's not forget, I've not said the books are crap, although I am dismissive of them. But all I've really asked is whether more than one book is necessary to tell a story or is it a case of dragging the same world along on an adventure,where the author can't scythe his own ideas to complete something but just feels he has to follow every loose end rather than objectively edit them out.

 

[SevenWritez]

My whole take on the fantasy genre is that it is a set-up of a story to take you from one world into another, thus, an adventure of sorts. To go beyond one book gives you something to look forward to, a world that you came to love, and one that you know you will re-enter in time.

Now, that's fine, but from what I've heard about this whole "side-plot," bullshit, the author of WoT is just trying to cash in.

The Bartimaeus Trilogy was a great fantasy series, both witty, charming, and ultimately satisfying (it could have ended at one if it wanted), and for that I wanted to come back for more. Now, if that tale dragged on for eleven books? What in the Christ's name of hell is that?

I'm just trying to give a brief not-too-thought-out (then again, none of my posts make much sense anyway, I don't think), answer to Stewart's question--why so damn long?

I want to know that myself, when there are already gems of fantasy stories out there that have proven you can do it in as little as three.

But, then again, for me the fantasy genre is already quite stale. Someone needs to come along and be...I don't know...original. The Dark Tower by Stephen King did that for me, thank you God, but I don't know why 90% of writers in that field think it necessary to throw in Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, and oh, let us not forget...their own made up language. That's always the funniest part.

 

[Hanman]

When I first saw the header for this piece my intention was to come and say something a bit witty about him dying. But of course if he actually is ill then it would have been in very bad taste, so I won’t. I will however say that I am not a fan of his books. He drags his stories out far too long, several books to long in some cases. For me the death of Douglas Adams was hard and for that matter David Gemel as well. So if you’re a fan of Robert Jordan, then I hope he survives.

 

[oregonjade]

It's real this time guys... he's gone. I'm shocked...
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from his blog, from Wilson, dated 2:45 pm yesterday Sept. 15, 2007
(Edited to add, I grabbed this from my Bloglines... the Dragonmount site is down at the moment, probably absolutely overwhelmed... which is why I've given other references that are up)

Sometimes even when you’ve fought your best….

By Wilson on Robert Jordan's Blog

It is with great sadness that I tell you that the Dragon is gone. RJ left us today at 2:45 PM. He fought a valiant fight against this most horrid disease. In the end, he left peacefully and in no pain. In the years he had fought this, he taught me much about living and about facing death. He never waivered in his faith, nor questioned our God’s timing. I could not possibly be more proud of anyone. I am eternally grateful for the time that I had with him on this earth and look forward to our reunion, though as I told him this afternoon, not yet. I love you bubba.

Our beloved Harriet was at his side through the entire fight and to the end. The last words from his mouth were to tell her that he loved her.

Thank each and everyone of you for your prayers and support through this ordeal. He knew you were there. Harriet reminded him today that she was very proud of the many lives he had touched through his work. We’ve all felt the love that you’ve been sending my brother/cousin. Please keep it coming as our Harriet could use the support.

Jason will be posting funeral arrangements.

My sincerest thanks.

Peace and Light be with each of you,

Wilson
Brother/Cousin
4th of 3

To Catalyst: Never, never loose faith. RJ did not. Harriet hasn’t. I haven’t. Going through what we have, our faith is only strengthened. Besides, if God didn’t exist, we would have never had Jim. We did. God does. Remember my Brother/Cousin, my friend, think of him fondly and glorify God’s name.

Editor’s Note:
The entire staff of Dragonmount.com would like to extend its most deepest sympathies to Robert Jordan’s family. He touched all of our lives in some way and we wish him the rest and peace he deserves. We will be posting information in the near future about where you can send condolences. Please check the News Section for these updates.
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and from the Making Light blog last night:

Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney), 1948-2007
Posted by Patrick at 10:42 PM * 70 comments

He was a good guy. He and Mike Ford considered one another “blood brothers,” and he spoke at Mike’s memorial in Minneapolis last fall, even though the effort of simply standing up was obviously a strain. He was a doer of quiet kindnesses, which counts for a very great deal.

Our thoughts are with his wife Harriet McDougal, the rest of the family, and everyone else who loved him.
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From Locuis online, dated Sept. 16th, 2007:

Death: Robert Jordan

Fantasy writer Robert Jordan, born 1948, died today, September 16, 2007, at the age of 58. Jordan was the pen-name of James Oliver Rigney, Jr. He was author of the bestselling Wheel of Time series that began in 1990 with The Eye of the World and continued 11 volumes through Knife of Dreams in 2005, plus prequel volume New Spring (2004). A twelfth volume, A Memory of Light, remains uncomplete. Before that series Jordan wrote the Michael Fallon historical romance trilogy and seven Conan novels, from Conan the Invincible (1982) through Conan the Victorious (1984).

 

[claybugg]

Horrible news. He was one of my favorite authors. He was probably the writer that got me into reading obsessively. I'm very sad. =(