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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I'm not familiar with either author's work outside of the WoT series, so I don't think that I can make a fair comparison of their abilities. That said, I can't really agree that with Jordan, "even the unlikable ones feel like real people with real motivations". To start with, for me at least, all the main characters are unlikable, and so are the secondary characters; I don't find any I consider likable until we get to the characters I'd consider tertiary (or beyond). And their motivations are only realistic if they're all idiots. Well, basically, they are all idiots, but still.
Of course, it doesn't help that even by the time of the last couple of books written by Jordan, I was basically just slogging through the series out of a sense that I'd read that far so I needed to see it through. A bit of a sunk costs fallacy, I suppose.
Ok, looking back at what I just typed, I'm being overly harsh. Still, that's an exaggerated but fairly accurate summation of how I feel.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dps
Still, that's an exaggerated but fairly accurate summation of how I feel.
I'm with dps. No aspect of Jordan's writing, worldbuilding or character design impressed me at any stage. I didn't really enjoy any of it. Sanderson has flaws, sure, but at least there were some parts of what he did that were good.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Honestly I mostly remember the majority of the WoT characters as pretty normal fantasy story characters. (Though some a bit more annoying.) Ones I spend much more time reading about than usual so with more characterization than most but I can't say I really get your praise Anteros.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I definitely think Brandon Sanderson had a LOT to learn about writing characters, and that was definitely not one of his strengths in his early works. I haven't read Elantris, but looking at the first Mistborn trilogy and Warbreaker, the worlds and the magic are far more interesting than the people. I think that's definitely a fair criticism.
However, I also think he was aware of that and made efforts to improve. It's still not one of the things he's best at, but the Stormlight Archive, the second Mistborn series, and even the Reckoners books show a marked improvement in characterization over Sanderson's earlier works.
As for his contributions to the Wheel of Time, none of the things people commonly complain about stood out to me at the time I read them (though admittedly it has been awhile).
Spoiler: nothing really specific, but spoilers on the general direction of the series
Show
What I did like about Sanderson's three WoT books is that he got things moving again. It really seemed to me like Jordan had lost control and just kept letting the scope of the story get bigger and bigger. There were so many POV characters that even though these books were closing in on a thousand pages, individual characters' stories often felt like they barely progressed at all.
Brandon Sanderson had to take Jordan's notes for A Memory of Light and make them into three books to finish out the series. Had Jordan lived, I'm not sure he could have done it in five.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Anteros
I'm not very familiar with these characters but given Eddings' reputation I'm going to bet that there's a lot more to both of them than the fact that they're sneaky smooth talking thieves. I'm betting they wouldn't react the exact same to every possible situation, and that their humor and dialogue reads differently despite being smooth talkers. This wouldn't be the case if Sanderson wrote them.
I'm fully aware that all of this is personal opinion.
Yeah they really arent the same. One is a full grown experienced adult with connections and the other is a street rat child. One is a deadly accomplished fighter, even if totally not a front line type, the other is, once again, a child. He can talk tough but I think he kills all of one person in the series and that was a traumatic event. I was more using it as a comparison that being able to boil down characters to a handful of descriptive terms doesnt make them identical. I dont read sandersons work so im not sure just how identical the characters mentioned really are but I figured it was likely that they touch the same group of generic traits you sometimes see in various works which makes them similar but they can still vary fairly well within those tropes.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Velaryon
Spoiler: nothing really specific, but spoilers on the general direction of the series
Show
What I did like about Sanderson's three WoT books is that he got things moving again. It really seemed to me like Jordan had lost control and just kept letting the scope of the story get bigger and bigger. There were so many POV characters that even though these books were closing in on a thousand pages, individual characters' stories often felt like they barely progressed at all.
Brandon Sanderson had to take Jordan's notes for A Memory of Light and make them into three books to finish out the series. Had Jordan lived, I'm not sure he could have done it in five.
Wheel of Time is practically Zeno's Paradox in literary form.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Spoiler
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I'm a little disappointed no one commented on the two genuine spoilers in my list of "obviously fake" spoilers.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Douglas
Spoiler
Show
I'm a little disappointed no one commented on the two genuine spoilers in my list of "obviously fake" spoilers.
Spoiler: Metaspoilers
Show
I kinda felt like, if we mentioned them, it'd make them real somehow? Openly denying them all makes it so AES doesn't get spoiled.
Don't know if other people felt the same...
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
By today's standards, Jordan has a lot of problems. There's some great stuff in there, but you can get similarly great stuff more often now that it's not worth it. While I find the main plot the weakest point of the series, it did pave the way for Martin or Rothfuss to be able to books that aren't the standard hero's journey schlock.
There's some interesting sections that stand out on their own: The "I win again Lews Therin" passages or the Aes Sedai Accepted tests for example. They cover a lot of interesting what if, provide backstory or new information to us and up the stakes of the narrative well in just a few pages each.
We all read for different reasons. If getting too much non-authoritative information is a problem, you're going to look at the series as ridiculously bloated. I like such, but think RJ took it way too far, even after 11 books there's plenty of basic what can channeling do questions remaining (with at least half the main characters being magic users who talk/think about the magic all the time). Guy had a real genius for writing something that looks like it tells you what you want to know that doesn't.
Like I've said before, for these and a bunch of other reasons, I find the writing of the Sanderson offerings in the series lacking. Talk about bloat there, you can probably cut half without losing anything important, even though some of it is fan service of course.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
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You could make that argument, but I can't see myself ever agreeing with it. Jordan writes real people, places you inside their head, and lets you watch as they naturally grow as a person. Even the unlikable ones feel like real people with real motivations.
Sanderson writes shallow tropes with quirky personalities that don't grow very realistically at all. It can be entertaining, but once you realize that most of his characters are the same person it quickly loses its charm. At least he did this in his earlier books. He might have evolved as a writer since I've read his work, but it would have to be a ridiculous improvement before you could even compare his characters to Jordan. He's basically this generation's Salvatore. He writes shallow pulpy fantasy that's entertaining enough, but the only truly interesting bits are the settings themselves.
Jordan has in 10 books not managed to beat the diversity or growth presented in the first 3 Stormlight books. But i can hear its not possible to discuss this with you, since you have not actually read any noteworthy Sanderson books. It would be like discussion WoT with someone that has only read the Eye of the World.
Quote:
I'm not very familiar with these characters but given Eddings' reputation I'm going to bet that there's a lot more to both of them than the fact that they're sneaky smooth talking thieves. I'm betting they wouldn't react the exact same to every possible situation, and that their humor and dialogue reads differently despite being smooth talkers. This wouldn't be the case if Sanderson wrote them.
I call rubbish on that. Even when we are presented with an older character reappering in a newer book (because the majority of them are connected), then its often easy to miss because they have changed.
With a sufficiently large amount of books then its of course impossible to avoid shared traits to a certain degree. But everyone has their own motivation, and personal point of view.
Spoiler
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As for the 3 main characters, then i am going to tell you with an absolute straight face that there isnt a bigger difference than then one found between them in say book 1 and 7. Sanderson actually saved Perrin, made him likeable again.
While Mat honestly remained Mat in my eyes.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
LokeyITP
By today's standards, Jordan has a lot of problems. There's some great stuff in there, but you can get similarly great stuff more often now that it's not worth it. While I find the main plot the weakest point of the series, it did pave the way for Martin or Rothfuss to be able to books that aren't the standard hero's journey schlock.
Really can't agree with that. I read Rothfuss' two books and found them interesting enough, but there's nothing particularly new there, and I never got past book 1 of GoT. That was years ago, and I've never felt any desire to go back to either author. By contrast, I've read through Wheel of Time several times. Jordan does several things much, much better than either Martin or Rothfuss.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lord_khaine
Jordan has in 10 books not managed to beat the diversity or growth presented in the first 3 Stormlight books. But i can hear its not possible to discuss this with you, since you have not actually read any noteworthy Sanderson books. It would be like discussion WoT with someone that has only read the Eye of the World.
I mean, I read the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, Elantris, and all of his WoT books before I decided he wasn't a very good writer. That's 8 books. It's not like I didn't give him a fair shake. Should I just keep buying his books forever on the chance they improve one day?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lord_khaine
Spoiler
Show
As for the 3 main characters, then i am going to tell you with an absolute straight face that there isnt a bigger difference than then one found between them in say book 1 and 7. Sanderson actually saved Perrin, made him likeable again.
While Mat honestly remained Mat in my eyes.
Spoiler
Show
He saved Perrin by completely changing his character. He turned Rand into some sort of Jesus analogue where we barely ever see inside his head because we're too busy learning about Androl, and he turned Mat from a rogue into a clown.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
I mean, I read the Mistborn trilogy, Warbreaker, Elantris, and all of his WoT books before I decided he wasn't a very good writer. That's 8 books. It's not like I didn't give him a fair shake. Should I just keep buying his books forever on the chance they improve one day?
Well thats his earliest 5 books, and the serie he completed for someone else. That is more or less the same as trying to discuss the WoT writing with someone who have just read Eye of the World.
(example perhaps slightly exagerated)
Likely enough to give you an idea about if you like his writing style or not. And its also fair if you dont like it. But i dont considder it enough to actually be able to judge his ability as a writer.
Also surprised though. I read Elantris myself, and though it a really good book. I also though every relevant character in there was well developed. Certainly enough to make the comparison with Salvator unfair.
Spoiler
Show
Well yes, that was also what it took to save Perrin. I used to skim though his chapters.
Rand as a savior where meanwhile a direction that had been hinted by for a little while, and i did not think it was an unatural direction. I certainly think its unfair to blame Androl for the limited about of time we get inside Rands head. Sanderson took over quite a mess of plot threat that had to be resolved, and we still had a decent amount of Rand.
As for Mat, no, no clowning. He was a rogue before and were still a rogue in the last 3 books. Just one that had at least partly accepted his responsibility.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lord_khaine
Well thats his earliest 5 books, and the serie he completed for someone else. That is more or less the same as trying to discuss the WoT writing with someone who have just read Eye of the World.
(example perhaps slightly exagerated)
Likely enough to give you an idea about if you like his writing style or not. And its also fair if you dont like it. But i dont considder it enough to actually be able to judge his ability as a writer.
Also surprised though. I read Elantris myself, and though it a really good book. I also though every relevant character in there was well developed. Certainly enough to make the comparison with Salvator unfair.
Spoiler
Show
Well yes, that was also what it took to save Perrin. I used to skim though his chapters.
Rand as a savior where meanwhile a direction that had been hinted by for a little while, and i did not think it was an unatural direction. I certainly think its unfair to blame Androl for the limited about of time we get inside Rands head. Sanderson took over quite a mess of plot threat that had to be resolved, and we still had a decent amount of Rand.
As for Mat, no, no clowning. He was a rogue before and were still a rogue in the last 3 books. Just one that had at least partly accepted his responsibility.
I liked salvatore. At least some of his stuff. Was a huge fan of the cleric quintet series and also enjoyed the first, i dunno, 12 or 15 books dealing with drizzt before it got too repetitive for me. Very much so young adult level books though. Another author I sometimes confuse with him is raymond feist. I LOVED his magician series and the ever growing timeline as generations passed in universe. I stopped reading after the talon of the silver hawk trilogy. It started too lose me by then.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Chapter 28: A Way Out
Mat's just finishing a light post-breakfast food pile when Team Magikarp comes through his door, all sickly sweet and smiling. Well, Mat isn't too experienced with women but his daddy is, and he told Mat that if three women are smiling at you then you'd best run for the hills. Especially when one of them is Nynaeve. He's naturally suspicious, but Nynaeve assures him that just because they're clearly here to manipulate him into doing a favor for them doesn't mean they don't care about his well being.
They try multiple forms of persuasion on him. Elayne appeals to his sense of Andorian patriotism, which of course he doesn't have. The Two Rivers is part of Andor pretty much only by technicality. Egwene clearly thought that a pretty smile would do the trick, and Nynaeve is... Nynaeve. Of course the only way to get Mat's help is to buy him off, so in addition to the letter to Morgase they give him the letter they got from the Amyrlin meant only to be used as a last resort that declares that they are official business of the Amyrlin Seat. Siuan is going to be so happy she put her trust in them. Well that letter is Mat's ticket off the island so he accepts their proposal. All he needs to do now is gamble for money, and if that magic dice cup is where I think it is, this is going to be fun night.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Douglas
Spoiler
Show
I'm a little disappointed no one commented on the two genuine spoilers in my list of "obviously fake" spoilers.
I noticed, and saw what you did there, I just forgot to make the obligatory winky faces comment. :smallwink:
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
An Enemy Spy
Chapter 28: A Way Out
Mat's just finishing a light post-breakfast food pile when Team Magikarp comes through his door, all sickly sweet and smiling. Well, Mat isn't too experienced with women but his daddy is, and he told Mat that if three women are smiling at you then you'd best run for the hills. Especially when one of them is Nynaeve. He's naturally suspicious, but Nynaeve assures him that just because they're clearly here to manipulate him into doing a favor for them doesn't mean they don't care about his well being.
They try multiple forms of persuasion on him. Elayne appeals to his sense of Andorian patriotism, which of course he doesn't have. The Two Rivers is part of Andor pretty much only by technicality. Egwene clearly thought that a pretty smile would do the trick, and Nynaeve is... Nynaeve. Of course the only way to get Mat's help is to buy him off, so in addition to the letter to Morgase they give him the letter they got from the Amyrlin meant only to be used as a last resort that declares that they are official business of the Amyrlin Seat. Siuan is going to be so happy she put her trust in them. Well that letter is Mat's ticket off the island so he accepts their proposal. All he needs to do now is gamble for money, and if that magic dice cup is where I think it is, this is going to be fun night.
Yeah, i dont remember the specifics but even i recall just how badly those idiots on team magikarp acted with this. Iirc, nyneave was trying to be sweetness and light but had an awful time avoiding showing how ticked off she was getting, right? They tried to claim he owed them, or tried to sweet talk him, and basically treated him kinda badly the whole time. And probably convinced themselves it was all matts fault things didnt go well afterwards knowing these lunatics.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
An Enemy Spy
...All he needs to do now is gamble for money, and if that magic dice cup is where I think it is, this is going to be fun night.
Spoiler
Show
You know it is rather amusing when AES is calling what will happen next, but for the wrong reasons. :smallbiggrin:
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I don't think they had to give the permission slip to Mat to buy him off. He just has no way off the island without it. He would have gone anyway, after lots of grumbling.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Anteros
I don't think they had to give the permission slip to Mat to buy him off. He just has no way off the island without it. He would have gone anyway, after lots of grumbling.
Probably, but iirc, they handled the entire situation badly. Like instead of just saying "Hey matt, we could use your help and we have a way to get you out of here" They decided to play games right off the bat. Its a respect thing.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Traab
Probably, but iirc, they handled the entire situation badly. Like instead of just saying "Hey matt, we could use your help and we have a way to get you out of here" They decided to play games right off the bat. Its a respect thing.
So you're saying they're being perfect Aes Sedai then? :smallamused:
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Yep-
If you forget that many actual Aes Sedai, while being jzst as manipulative and needlessly superior, DO have some Inkling about what they`re doing.
So they got the procedure already, just need the experience. ^^
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I bet since Spoiler
Show
they tend to hide every skill they learn from each other, (not sure if thats come up yet, so spoiled just in case)
These poor girls havent even graduated from villager level manipulations yet. No wonder they flub it so badly.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Velaryon
Spoiler: nothing really specific, but spoilers on the general direction of the series
Show
What I did like about Sanderson's three WoT books is that he got things moving again. It really seemed to me like Jordan had lost control and just kept letting the scope of the story get bigger and bigger. There were so many POV characters that even though these books were closing in on a thousand pages, individual characters' stories often felt like they barely progressed at all.
Brandon Sanderson had to take Jordan's notes for A Memory of Light and make them into three books to finish out the series. Had Jordan lived, I'm not sure he could have done it in five.
Spoiler
Show
Actually, there were things that I thought Sanderson tied up too quickly. There were a lot of characters that, it seemed to me, he didn't know how their stories were supposed to end, so he just killed them off quickly, more-or-less "offscreen". Don't get me wrong; I wanted things to finally be wrapped up, but it seemed like some of the characters' arcs just ended abruptly.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Spoiler
Show
The problem was Jordan had left enough plot hooks to easily last another 6 books. To wrap things up in a reasonable number of books some things had to be cut short. There was a limited amount of space for the plot hooks.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Re: Eddings
I've read most of his works, an enjoyed most of them, but he is super mega ultra formulaic and repetitious with not only his plots, but characters too. I was barely able to finish The Dreamers set of books, everything in them was, oh this is such and such with a different name, or that was so and so getting up to their usual shenanigans and so on. Eddings is kinda like the MCU of fantasy, light, fluffy and predictable with little to no ground breaking going on most of the time.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I used to read a lot of Eddings while younger, but i guess what initially drove me away was that i thought there were a lot of hypocrasy in his books (though not as bad as Goodkin).
But i think this topic were already debated in Thread I or II.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
I don't always mind formulaic. Someone like Gemmell writes formulaic plots with shallow fantasy tropes for characters, but it just works for me. Part of that is probably nostalgia since he basically introduced me to fantasy, but some writers formulas are simply better than others.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Quote:
Originally Posted by
lord_khaine
I used to read a lot of Eddings while younger, but i guess what initially drove me away was that i thought there were a lot of hypocrasy in his books (though not as bad as Goodkin).
But i think this topic were already debated in Thread I or II.
Not as bad as Goodkind is a very low bar to clear.
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Re: An Enemy Spy Reads The Wheel of Time III: Something's Fishy in the White Tower
Actually, I like Eddings Belgariad/Malloreaon as a classic "Heroes Journey" and his Elenium/Tamuli Books as an also classical "Lower Level Fantasy with some Depth" (Not counting later Tamuli regardin Low Fantasy^^).
Are they Masterpieces? Nope. But they are well written, fit" their themes, and have good humour.
His later BOoks though....got really really kicked in the QUality department...
