I'm roughly half way through the Wheel of Time

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Poll of the Day » I'm roughly half way through the Wheel of Time
I love this series so much but those damn Aes Sedai are so annoying. They are self righteous idiots with their head so far up their asses that they make things worse than the actual villains. It's like they want Rand to fail and the Dark One to win, even outside the Black Ajah. That's probably because they had 3,000 years with no one putting them in their place. I'm not sure how they managed to maintain so much power when they constantly shoot themselves in the foot. Even Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve make stupid decisions regarding Rand and Mat, which they should know better given their history with them. As soon as Rand pulled Callandor from the Stone they should have started following him. Elaida is a fool and so are the Salidar Aes Sedai, the smartest thing they did was making Egwene the Amyrlin, and it wasn't because they were smart, they lucked into a smart decision. They are presented as these wise, old wizard types early but clearly that's just a lie everyone believes.

Anyways, my favorite character started as Rand but over the books Perrin has become my favorite, and Mat is right there with him. All 3 Ta'veren are great characters.
Muscles
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You're right about the part where you should just give up.

Or start skipping books, read online summaries, and then come back in for the last couple books as the finale.

7-11 is pretty much soul-killing.

And yes, the Aes Sedai are self-righteous bitches. That's never going to change. The one moment of hope the earlier books give you that they might actually have to face the consequences of their actions and cut that shit out never really pays off. They're pretty much arrogant egotistical harridans right up to the very end, who never really get any comeuppance for their BS... barring a few exceptions.

What makes it worse is that the non-Aes Sedai female characters at the start of the story who become Aes Sedai all pick up those same traits as they go. Which makes it harder to sympathize with them when they're being stupid.

There is one Aes Sedai who has her head screwed on straight. Though I won't spoil who, or how her storyline plays out.


Mat's the best character. He's basically the stereotypical rogue character if they didn't realize how damned charming they were, and wanted absolutely nothing to do with adventure but kept getting sucked into it anyway.
"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family
I have only read the first book, birthday gift from my brother many years ago. He did however have the man himself sign it at a fan event.

Pics or it didn't happen, I know. Have at you.
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A gentleman will walk, but never run
I just got to the point in A Crown of Swords where Egwene sent Lan to Ebou Dar to be with Nynaeve, which was pretty satisfying, but we'll see where it goes from there.

And I like a lot of characters, even besides the 3 ta'veren you have Min, Aviendha, Loial, Amys, Lan, among others. And I like the Aiel as a whole, they have such a cool culture and aren't bitches like most of the wetlanders.
Muscles
Chicago Bears | Chicago Blackhawks | Chicago Bulls | Chicago Cubs | NIU Huskies
Some meth head looking lady tried to get me into this series at a bookstore once. She was like "I don't even like fantasy that's how good it is"

Never touched those books.
had most of these books at one point. thinking about getting them again, or just borrowing from the library when I can
we are who we are. who we meet in life, adds to the journey
fettster777 posted...
Some meth head looking lady tried to get me into this series at a bookstore once. She was like "I don't even like fantasy that's how good it is"

Never touched those books.
You are probably better off for it. Started off with great world building but he definitely hit a point where he was just dragging it out by introducing new characters and plotlines.
house of leaves is hard
*flops*
rjsilverthorn posted...
You are probably better off for it. Started off with great world building but he definitely hit a point where he was just dragging it out by introducing new characters and plotlines.

"Holy shit, I am making so much money on these books. I'd better pad them out as long as I can so the gravy train never ends!"

It's basically the George RR Martin model, where a planned trilogy became five, then became seven. the more books you can squeeze out, the more money you make. Just keep adding characters and never get to the actual payoff. And then you die before finishing it.

The main difference is that Robert Jordan managed to turn his original "trilogy" into 14 books (and arranged for someone else to finish it after he was dead). Whereas George RR Martin never has to finish his because he tricked HBO into paying him metric shit-tons of money for the brand, which works out for him since he hates both the series and fans.

The only way we ever see A Song of Ice and Fire get completed is if Martin goes bankrupt and suddenly needs cash. He'll spontaneously find his crippling writer's block dry up PDQ and get a manuscript out pronto. Sadly, the odds of that happening are slim. Because he has made so goddamn much money off of it.

Though neither of them hold a candle to Piers Anthony when it comes to spinning straw into gold from what was originally mean to be a trilogy. The Xanth "trilogy" is currently somewhere around 48 books.
"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family
ParanoidObsessive posted...
Though neither of them hold a candle to Piers Anthony when it comes to spinning straw into gold from what was originally mean to be a trilogy. The Xanth "trilogy" is currently somewhere around 48 books.
It has been over 30 years since I read any of those, but I remember them being more like Discworld, a series of somewhat interconnected but largely standalone stories in a shared setting. That being said, there is a reason I haven't read one in thirty years, even back then it was fairly obvious that he was milking the concept and scraping the bottom of the idea barrel.
Awesome, another Perrin fan!
Archgoat posted...
Awesome, another Perrin fan!
What really made me love him was when he went back to the two rivers and saved them all from the massive hordes of trollocs out of pure determination and then told the white cloaks to fuck off. It was pure badassery and he was humble throughout it.
Muscles
Chicago Bears | Chicago Blackhawks | Chicago Bulls | Chicago Cubs | NIU Huskies
Post #13 was unavailable or deleted.
rjsilverthorn posted...
It has been over 30 years since I read any of those, but I remember them being more like Discworld, a series of somewhat interconnected but largely standalone stories in a shared setting.

Oh, it's definitely that. But Anthony himself always described the first 9 books as a trilogy, and the "second trilogy" started with book 10 and never ended.

I was at least partly being factitious, but also going by the fact that "trilogy" doesn't always mean "one story told over multiple books" as much as it can also mean "three separate but interconnected stories".

Could probably throw the Hitchhiker's Guide into that as well. Douglas Adams always used to describe it as an "ever-increasingly inaccurate trilogy". But he only managed 5 books and a short story before he died. So he's an amateur.
"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family
ParanoidObsessive posted...
Could probably throw the Hitchhiker's Guide into that as well. Douglas Adams always used to describe it as an "ever-increasingly inaccurate trilogy". But he only managed 5 books and a short story before he died. So he's an amateur.
Yeah, Douglas Adams played into it.
Poll of the Day » I'm roughly half way through the Wheel of Time