So I finally finished "The Wheel of Time" 20 years after I started it.
For those who don't know, The Wheel of Time is a massive fantasy epic spanning 14 large books and almost 12,000 pages that started with The Eye of the World back in 1990. It was started by Robert Jordan, who passed away in 2005, and finished by Brandon Sanderson early this year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time
I started the series probably around 1993 and loved the first several books. However, the books got bigger and the action slowed down after books 4 and 5 and I think Jordan kind of lost control of the series. Around 1998, I picked up A Game of Thrones and was hooked by its more mature storytelling and the fact that it didn't follow the typical fantasy cliches. I stopped reading the Wheel of Time at that time as well, with book 8, a Path of Daggers. It was also then that I got married, divorced, then remarried a few years later, then became a father and also changed jobs a few times.
By the time I was able to look into reading for myself again, I heard that Robert Jordan had passed away, leaving the series unfinished. His widow, who was also his editor, later chose Brandon Sanderson (of the Mistborn Trilogy) to finish the series using Jordan's notes and outline for the ending. When he was ill, Jordan did tell his wife to have the series finished.
Early this year, after finishing my third time through A Song of Ice & Fire, I heard that Sanderson had put out the final book in the series, so decided to pick up the series again. So I'd remember everything, I started over at the beginning, with The Eye of the World and plowed through the entire series. It was good to read it all together, as some storylines I disliked became more interesting when you read everything back to back to back: Egwene's storyline comes to mind. It was still a slog to get through the middle books, but Sanderson's final three books move the action along much quicker, and the finale A Memory of Light is almost non-stop action. A very good ending to the series, even though I don't think Sanderson is as gifted with the description of the characters and the world as Jordan (and, I'd catch a few more modern terms slipped in there that I couldn't imagine Jordan using.)
I got a bit misty-eyed at the end, despite the finale feeling a bit rushed, despite the 900 pages.
It's no A Song of Ice & Fire or Lord of the Rings, but The Wheel of Time is certainly a grand epic fantasy. And, while I'd rate A Song of Ice and Fire R in terms of maturity level, The Wheel of Time is more PG and a lot of the female characters seemed kind of one dimensional.
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at the beginning of the year, I was hoping for news about Winds of Winter by the time I was done with WoT. No luck.
I think Jordan is gifted at world building and description, as well as the feel of some of the major battles, but the writing about interpersonal relationships were quite lacking, especially when dealing with the opposite sex - all of a sudden, boy X and girl Y were in love. A lot of the female characters are kind of cardboard cutouts as well, and there was nary a mention of a gay character until the final few books and that was in passing (Character A: "Queen so-and-so hopes to marry Lord Whats-his-name, but that will never happen." Character B: "Why not?" Characer A: "Because everybody knows Lord Whats-His-Name prefers men."
As I said above, George R.R. Martin's writing is Rated R, while Jordan is Rated PG. Where Jordan is writing about how Nynaeve thinks its outrageous that the barmaid's dress is showing her ankles, Martin is writing about how the Mountain visited an inn, raped the innkeeper's daughter in exchange for silver piece, then demanded change afterwards.
