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i agree with the comments on the female characters - they get annoying and the whole (seemingly) 'womens power' feel to their characters puts me off at times. hell most times. Moiraine was the only cool female character.
Rand I've totally lost interest in - he's a jerk and a boring character (looky here at mister all powerful...yippee) - and I find mat to be the coolest character in the book overall - as does everyone else I'm sure.
Anyway going to crack it open right now - so here I go.
Is it fantasy?
Yup, it's epic fantasy of the worst possible kind. It never ends.
heh - admittedly Robert Jordan could cut alot of stuff out - most of which I'd say all of book 8 and some of book 7 .... another one of jordan's weak points is his tendency to have tons and tons and tons of minor characters enter the story with names that are quite hard to remember (and place a imagined face to) when reading. He should've taken a page from Tolkien and learned to only include the names of ppl when absolutely neccessary - not just throw them around like sunday football.
TOO MANY CHARACTERS!!! :angry:
Tolkien and Martin are both far superior to Jordan... but I am stangely drawn to the WoT world.
ºTracer
Wait...the whole 'women power' thing never ends in his books? It's one thing for a female role to be cool and independent (like Min or Moraine), but the whole 'men are idiots/fools/et al' characterization is a pain.
Rand was a really 'heroic' type in the first book. More and more he's turning into this guy who's being so cold and analytical about everything and nothing.
I'm only on Fires of Heaven or something like that...
You're coming near the best part of the series. Yes, hero, what you're saying is everyones complaint with the books. Robert Jordan doesn't know women at all... and it shows terribly in his writing. It wouldn't be so obvious if he just didn't write about them so much... SO MUCH!!
Heh...if you've read any of Jordan's Conan books, you may think differenlty. Even though his Conan books are just about the male-equivalent to women's romance novels ('cept his are all violence and buxom wenches), Jordan at least knows what guys like about women.
It seems like he may be overcompensating in WoT series; I don't think even women would find his female characters particularly likeable.
I'm sure most women would not identify with any of the female characters in the book actually...Jordan is just that far off the mark. Hero, you are coming at some of the best parts in the series and it'll be sweet once you get to it but to be honest the whole women's power thing never really stops. And I agree its not very agreeable to read a series where men are insulted on every other page and treated like a lesser species... sometimes I think that Jordan is really a woman in disguise (awful disguise yeah).
Rand only gets worse and worse throughout books 7-begginning half of 9...but the end of book 9 gives me hope for book 10 in that Rand might turn out better than I'd thought. Book 8 I beleive has a long ass section focusing on just the women's problems... fucking 200 pages I believe... it makes you sigh for relief when they finally talk about something else.
Ok- have just read the prolouge of book 10 - again he goes on with the lots of characters (not like I was expecting his style to suddenly change, but its difficult to adjust to after having just read the lord of the rings trilogy) - the prolouge goes on for 80 pages! WTF... just call it a chapter then!
Looks like I will be heading to Waldens on my lunch break to get this for my wife. I couldn't take it past book 7, it just got boring.
Oh, I must add that the Terry Goodkind "Sword of Truth" books are some of the worst books I have ever read. I wish I had a dime for every time he uses the same damn metaphors OVER & OVER. You are bound to read the words "raptor's gaze" & "his cloak seemed to move with a life of its own" about 95 times per book. The plots are the equivalent of a bad action movie, one implausible coincidence after another.
Give me Tolkien or George R.R, Martin any day for regular fantasy.
Tracer, Have you ever read the Books of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe? They are honesly the best Fantasy I have ever read. You will not be dissapointed.
JM