Oh man. I've been meaning to read this series for years. I read the first book a couple years back, and I didn't like it then, but I generally like to finish the series I start, no matter how arduous. So a while ago, I decided to start reading it again, rereading the first book. It's a contentious series, to be sure, with some people saying it's their favorite, while others....not so much.
Where do I place? Well...let me put it like this. There is nothing I'd like better for this series than to gain an TV adaptation. Because there is some seriously cool stuff in here. There is always going to be special place in my heart for big, huge epic-y epics of epicness just because I love the sheer scale of these sorts of things. But putting aside all the magic hubub, there is cool characterization at play here. You have the trinity of heroes that are each going on their own unique paths, with a trio of heroine's playing politics at the major magical power center of the world, and you have a net of interesting characters inbetween. There are some people that say no TV show can can have the budget to do the magic of the series, which I have no idea about because I've seen some shows do pretty cool stuff with a cheap budget, but even if it's true...so what? Plenty of good TV shows haven't had the budget to do what they want, and even if they did, the old ones no longer look great due to the magic of time. But they still work because they can engage the audience, and at the end of the day, that's all you really need.
And a TV show's greatest asset will be that it can rewrite the scenes to have the characters act more rationally, more charmingly, and more I-dont-want-to-strangle-these-stupid-idiots-necks-ly. As I've said, there's stuff to like in WoT. There is also LOTS of stuff to dislike, such as nearly the entire cast.
Look, I hate the complaint "They're annoying" when applied to story characters. Unless you work to structure context around what is the problem, it's just a whine. And, frankly, it's applied disproportionately to female characters, so it makes me even more weary to use it. But it's the only real word that fits describing the cast as a whole. They're just a bunch of belligerent, bitchy putzes. Everything is a reason to berate, complain, insult, scold, and outrage at. The reasons always depend on the character, but almost every one is hard to suffer for it. The women, on average, seem to express it more than the men, but every time we step into a male's head, we see them quietly resenting this or that, and some, you could argue, are justified, but they eventually just blend together in a storm of bitchiness. So...yes, they're annoying. All of them. Jesus H. Light Christ, I cannot emphasize how annoying they all are.
The Characters
Okay, so as far as plot thread's go, I'm not the hugest fan of any of WoT's holy trinity. Perrin was my favorite as of Book 1, but the promise he showed as being the one halfway reasonable guy quickly went down the drain as he actually started his story. Rand has an actual reason for wanting to resist his destiny, but I have no idea why he spends three books bitching about his ability to talk to wolves even after he finds out it's not connected to the Dark One's powers. He's presented as thoughtful, but he's just contrarian more often than not. Rand is much like this. He basically has to be dragged into being the dragon kicking and screaming and...it just gets tiring. I know that being a male channeler kinda sucks and all, but I grew less and less sympathetic since he spends the whole time trying to avoid the problem rather than fix it. It's only as of book 3 that he decides "Okay, I'm just gonna go and end it all for now", but he's absent for literally more than 90% of the book. And then there's Mat....
Okay, with him, I went in with certain expectations, because I think he's my most hated character. He spent the entirety of book 1 becoming evil because he's a fucking moron that stole the obviously evil artifact and kept it on him so long that it's now killing him. Then in book 2, he was better because he was atleast trying not to be a complete fucktard and then at the end, actually did something really clever and cool and blew the Horn that won the battle. It's probably my favorite moment of the series so far, as I just genuinely didn't think that it would go down like that, and it lead to something really epic. Then I was told that Book 3 is where Mat starts to really get good, from the moment he wakes up. Keep in mind, he was in a coma up until now when the Aes Sedai healed him. And the first think he thinks when he wakes up? Of course he bitches about his friends being stupid. And then he thinks to steal the ruby of the dagger that make him evil/sick again, saying he intended to give it to his neighbors with the hopes that it would drive them to the same depravity it drove him. This fucking cunt...And then he has to be persuaded into doing a favor for the 3 women that saved him, and then he resents it when things actually start to get hard in making good on that favor. Like, I know he's not as evil as I'm making him out here (And I know this because the book specifically goes out of it's way to tell me how he's all mushy underneath his annoying exterior)...but honestly, fuck this kid. Though I think I understand atleast why he's the popular choice. Of the 3 protagonists, he's the only one who doesn't really drag his feet. Which isn't to say he doesn't complain, because god knows he does, with far less justification, but he seems eager to take pleasure where he can. Rand bitches endlessly about being the second coming of Christ, Perrin bitchest endlessly about being able to talk to wolves. Mat gets supernatural luck, and he goes "Fuck yeah! Hand me the money!"
Meanwhile, Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne are...well, epic fail. In the first book, they didn't have much to do, but in the second and third, they're get 1 job and they just fuck it up somehow or another. The second book was especially bad, with how they go "Lets go help Rand!" Only to captured by an obviously evil Aes Sedai and then have to send the rest of the book getting out of that. The next one, they were supposed to hunt down the evil Aes Sedai, and they eventually do, but it sucks how they get captured by them the moment they enter the city, and then only turn the tables because the evil ones made the brain meltingly stupid mistake of not searching them. For all that though, I think I like these girls storylines most because, even more than Mat, they move forward with their plots in a deliberate manner. Nynaeve is the one I'm most surprised at liking. She's the single most beligerant woman I've ever encountered in fiction, but frankly, if I was stuck in this world, I'd hate everyone on some level as well. As opposed to Egwene, who simply drives me crazy. The last few books have just been rebelling against Nynaeve for literally no reason except....well, teenage rebellion and authority issues. This, atleast, I can't say is unrealistic, but holy crap, this woman saved your ass from slavery, and the first response she has for Nyneave after that in the next book is passive aggressiveness. And Elayne....she's just kinda there.
The Writing
Okay, the actual writing is just bad. It's bloated, repetitious, dialogue sounds extremely unnatural, it repeats itself unnecessary, it's often a lot less clever than it thinks it is, there's a lot of filler, and it keeps saying the same thing over and over. No matter how many times it was spoken, "The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel wills" is never something that sounds meaningful, especially when it's followed by an explanation of that phrase, that basically always comes down to "Sometimes we know whats gonna happen, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we can change what will happen, sometimes we can't."
I don't know if Jordan was being paid by the word or something, but the amount of text that's simply unnecessary could probably take off 50 pages per book at least. For example, here is Egwene wondering what the Black Ajah are doing: "Where are they? What do they want in the Heart? None but the Dragon— none but Rand— can touch Callandor, so what do they want? What? What?" Basically, the same question asked 4 times. It's something that's already been discussed before plenty of times, and her wondering about it AGAIN adds nothing. If there was a need to establish that she was thinking about them before going to sleep, it could have been done in one, maybe 2 sentences. Another example is Rand waking up: "...Rand woke the others just at daybreak. The sun yet hid below the horizon, but there was light enough to see." Yes, Rand, that IS what daybreak is, when the sun is just starting to get over the horizon.
Look, I know, okay? These seem like small, tiny extreneous details that virtually every book has. Except this happens almost every page, almost every paragraph. I'm no minimalist, okay? Sometimes, you include something just because it helps set the mood a bit better, or maybe describes the environment, or maybe just because it sounds too nice to exclude. I understand that and am fine with a bit of bloat, especially when it ultimately serves to make the story feel more 'real', something harder to do with minimalist text. One of my favorite series of all time is ASoIaF. But WoT goes well and beyond 'a bit of bloat'. There is so often a bunch of text dedicated to telling you information you already know, or might be interesting worldbuilding but is ultimately unnecessary at that point in time, or is actually completely worthless. If there is a TV show, having someone rewrite the scenes to make it go more smoothly will be the biggest contribution that can be made to the story.
And what scares me the most? This is supposed to be the part of the series that's 'tightly written'. Everyone says so, that it's whats ahead that's when the editor just seemed to fall asleep at the wheel and let Jordan run wild. I am actually fearful for what is ahead if what I'm reading now is Jordan at his most restrained.
Boys and Girls and the World
Eh...okay, so this is a series that STRONGLY believes in the gender binary. It has it's magic system designed around it, it has every character in the world believe in it....and I'm someone who simply doesn't buy into this at all in RL. Still, it's a fascinating idea, if magic affected one gender differently than another, and that bleeds into the worldbuilding of how our gender stereotypes would be turned on it's head if all of a sudden it was women who held power while men were the weaker sex due to that. And, credit where it's due, there are a lot of books that like to claim they give women an equal but seperate role in their world to men without actually doing so. Here, they have women in high political positions in just about every corner of the world. While sexism is alive and well, it now targets women as much as men. WoT, while definitely not perfect in this regard, does it better than most, even if I am philosophically opposed to that idea at all.
The biggest problem with this is that it feeds into part of what makes the characters so annoying. When men and men interact, it's one thing, and same thing with women and women. But when men and women interact, each one is representative of the whole of their gender. Egwene can't just be angry at Rand for being stupid, she's angry at ALL men for being stupid, because Rand is just like any other man. Similarly, Mat can't be a selfish ingrate by saying Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne are manipulating him, it's ALL women who are like this. It's so ridiculous and frustrating to watch, because if these numbskulls can't see anyone as individuals, then any complaints they have about the person they're talking to are moot and they're just being angry for no reason.
The gender power dynamic stuff aside, I've also got questions about the religion. I mean, everyone seems to uniformly believe in the Light and the Creator and the Dark One (who are both oddly male, given how much the series bases itself in the philosophy that there is a male and female half to everything), yet there aren't any priests, scripts, churches or anything that I recall. I actually looked this up, and Jordan apparently said something about how proofs of religion are apparent in this universe, so anyone questioning them would be looked upon as odd. But I don't feel they really are. The proofs they have are 1. That there is a magical power that only females seem to be able to use without consequence for self harm 2. that saying the Dark One's name causes bad shit to happen. Other than that, all you have are histories that everyone themselves says are dubious and uncertainly translated, something everyone is atleast vaguely aware of even in back water, isolated villages like Two Rivers that are supposed to be cut off from the rest of the world. Even the Aiel who have been stuck in the wastelands for their own time. So, without any kind of organization maintaining this kind of belief system, I'm not sure how people know about the Light, the Creator or anything. Shaitan could just as easily be a curse word that works as a magical mechanism rather than a malicious being who goes where he hears his name.
But otherwise, WoT has a pretty interesting world, even if it could be delivered better narratively speaking. Prophecies and destined chosen ones are tropes that are looked less kindly on these days, but the reason they have power is that they are a promise that whatever is going to happen is going to be world changing, and that's one element of epic fantasy that I like.
I was gonna write more, but I've written enough. I won't be reading Books 4, 5, and 6 immediately. I have a few other books I want to read before getting back to this series. But that's where I'm at as of now.
Where do I place? Well...let me put it like this. There is nothing I'd like better for this series than to gain an TV adaptation. Because there is some seriously cool stuff in here. There is always going to be special place in my heart for big, huge epic-y epics of epicness just because I love the sheer scale of these sorts of things. But putting aside all the magic hubub, there is cool characterization at play here. You have the trinity of heroes that are each going on their own unique paths, with a trio of heroine's playing politics at the major magical power center of the world, and you have a net of interesting characters inbetween. There are some people that say no TV show can can have the budget to do the magic of the series, which I have no idea about because I've seen some shows do pretty cool stuff with a cheap budget, but even if it's true...so what? Plenty of good TV shows haven't had the budget to do what they want, and even if they did, the old ones no longer look great due to the magic of time. But they still work because they can engage the audience, and at the end of the day, that's all you really need.
And a TV show's greatest asset will be that it can rewrite the scenes to have the characters act more rationally, more charmingly, and more I-dont-want-to-strangle-these-stupid-idiots-necks-ly. As I've said, there's stuff to like in WoT. There is also LOTS of stuff to dislike, such as nearly the entire cast.
Look, I hate the complaint "They're annoying" when applied to story characters. Unless you work to structure context around what is the problem, it's just a whine. And, frankly, it's applied disproportionately to female characters, so it makes me even more weary to use it. But it's the only real word that fits describing the cast as a whole. They're just a bunch of belligerent, bitchy putzes. Everything is a reason to berate, complain, insult, scold, and outrage at. The reasons always depend on the character, but almost every one is hard to suffer for it. The women, on average, seem to express it more than the men, but every time we step into a male's head, we see them quietly resenting this or that, and some, you could argue, are justified, but they eventually just blend together in a storm of bitchiness. So...yes, they're annoying. All of them. Jesus H. Light Christ, I cannot emphasize how annoying they all are.
The Characters
Okay, so as far as plot thread's go, I'm not the hugest fan of any of WoT's holy trinity. Perrin was my favorite as of Book 1, but the promise he showed as being the one halfway reasonable guy quickly went down the drain as he actually started his story. Rand has an actual reason for wanting to resist his destiny, but I have no idea why he spends three books bitching about his ability to talk to wolves even after he finds out it's not connected to the Dark One's powers. He's presented as thoughtful, but he's just contrarian more often than not. Rand is much like this. He basically has to be dragged into being the dragon kicking and screaming and...it just gets tiring. I know that being a male channeler kinda sucks and all, but I grew less and less sympathetic since he spends the whole time trying to avoid the problem rather than fix it. It's only as of book 3 that he decides "Okay, I'm just gonna go and end it all for now", but he's absent for literally more than 90% of the book. And then there's Mat....
Okay, with him, I went in with certain expectations, because I think he's my most hated character. He spent the entirety of book 1 becoming evil because he's a fucking moron that stole the obviously evil artifact and kept it on him so long that it's now killing him. Then in book 2, he was better because he was atleast trying not to be a complete fucktard and then at the end, actually did something really clever and cool and blew the Horn that won the battle. It's probably my favorite moment of the series so far, as I just genuinely didn't think that it would go down like that, and it lead to something really epic. Then I was told that Book 3 is where Mat starts to really get good, from the moment he wakes up. Keep in mind, he was in a coma up until now when the Aes Sedai healed him. And the first think he thinks when he wakes up? Of course he bitches about his friends being stupid. And then he thinks to steal the ruby of the dagger that make him evil/sick again, saying he intended to give it to his neighbors with the hopes that it would drive them to the same depravity it drove him. This fucking cunt...And then he has to be persuaded into doing a favor for the 3 women that saved him, and then he resents it when things actually start to get hard in making good on that favor. Like, I know he's not as evil as I'm making him out here (And I know this because the book specifically goes out of it's way to tell me how he's all mushy underneath his annoying exterior)...but honestly, fuck this kid. Though I think I understand atleast why he's the popular choice. Of the 3 protagonists, he's the only one who doesn't really drag his feet. Which isn't to say he doesn't complain, because god knows he does, with far less justification, but he seems eager to take pleasure where he can. Rand bitches endlessly about being the second coming of Christ, Perrin bitchest endlessly about being able to talk to wolves. Mat gets supernatural luck, and he goes "Fuck yeah! Hand me the money!"
Meanwhile, Nynaeve, Egwene and Elayne are...well, epic fail. In the first book, they didn't have much to do, but in the second and third, they're get 1 job and they just fuck it up somehow or another. The second book was especially bad, with how they go "Lets go help Rand!" Only to captured by an obviously evil Aes Sedai and then have to send the rest of the book getting out of that. The next one, they were supposed to hunt down the evil Aes Sedai, and they eventually do, but it sucks how they get captured by them the moment they enter the city, and then only turn the tables because the evil ones made the brain meltingly stupid mistake of not searching them. For all that though, I think I like these girls storylines most because, even more than Mat, they move forward with their plots in a deliberate manner. Nynaeve is the one I'm most surprised at liking. She's the single most beligerant woman I've ever encountered in fiction, but frankly, if I was stuck in this world, I'd hate everyone on some level as well. As opposed to Egwene, who simply drives me crazy. The last few books have just been rebelling against Nynaeve for literally no reason except....well, teenage rebellion and authority issues. This, atleast, I can't say is unrealistic, but holy crap, this woman saved your ass from slavery, and the first response she has for Nyneave after that in the next book is passive aggressiveness. And Elayne....she's just kinda there.
The Writing
Okay, the actual writing is just bad. It's bloated, repetitious, dialogue sounds extremely unnatural, it repeats itself unnecessary, it's often a lot less clever than it thinks it is, there's a lot of filler, and it keeps saying the same thing over and over. No matter how many times it was spoken, "The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel wills" is never something that sounds meaningful, especially when it's followed by an explanation of that phrase, that basically always comes down to "Sometimes we know whats gonna happen, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we can change what will happen, sometimes we can't."
I don't know if Jordan was being paid by the word or something, but the amount of text that's simply unnecessary could probably take off 50 pages per book at least. For example, here is Egwene wondering what the Black Ajah are doing: "Where are they? What do they want in the Heart? None but the Dragon— none but Rand— can touch Callandor, so what do they want? What? What?" Basically, the same question asked 4 times. It's something that's already been discussed before plenty of times, and her wondering about it AGAIN adds nothing. If there was a need to establish that she was thinking about them before going to sleep, it could have been done in one, maybe 2 sentences. Another example is Rand waking up: "...Rand woke the others just at daybreak. The sun yet hid below the horizon, but there was light enough to see." Yes, Rand, that IS what daybreak is, when the sun is just starting to get over the horizon.
Look, I know, okay? These seem like small, tiny extreneous details that virtually every book has. Except this happens almost every page, almost every paragraph. I'm no minimalist, okay? Sometimes, you include something just because it helps set the mood a bit better, or maybe describes the environment, or maybe just because it sounds too nice to exclude. I understand that and am fine with a bit of bloat, especially when it ultimately serves to make the story feel more 'real', something harder to do with minimalist text. One of my favorite series of all time is ASoIaF. But WoT goes well and beyond 'a bit of bloat'. There is so often a bunch of text dedicated to telling you information you already know, or might be interesting worldbuilding but is ultimately unnecessary at that point in time, or is actually completely worthless. If there is a TV show, having someone rewrite the scenes to make it go more smoothly will be the biggest contribution that can be made to the story.
And what scares me the most? This is supposed to be the part of the series that's 'tightly written'. Everyone says so, that it's whats ahead that's when the editor just seemed to fall asleep at the wheel and let Jordan run wild. I am actually fearful for what is ahead if what I'm reading now is Jordan at his most restrained.
Boys and Girls and the World
Eh...okay, so this is a series that STRONGLY believes in the gender binary. It has it's magic system designed around it, it has every character in the world believe in it....and I'm someone who simply doesn't buy into this at all in RL. Still, it's a fascinating idea, if magic affected one gender differently than another, and that bleeds into the worldbuilding of how our gender stereotypes would be turned on it's head if all of a sudden it was women who held power while men were the weaker sex due to that. And, credit where it's due, there are a lot of books that like to claim they give women an equal but seperate role in their world to men without actually doing so. Here, they have women in high political positions in just about every corner of the world. While sexism is alive and well, it now targets women as much as men. WoT, while definitely not perfect in this regard, does it better than most, even if I am philosophically opposed to that idea at all.
The biggest problem with this is that it feeds into part of what makes the characters so annoying. When men and men interact, it's one thing, and same thing with women and women. But when men and women interact, each one is representative of the whole of their gender. Egwene can't just be angry at Rand for being stupid, she's angry at ALL men for being stupid, because Rand is just like any other man. Similarly, Mat can't be a selfish ingrate by saying Egwene, Nynaeve, and Elayne are manipulating him, it's ALL women who are like this. It's so ridiculous and frustrating to watch, because if these numbskulls can't see anyone as individuals, then any complaints they have about the person they're talking to are moot and they're just being angry for no reason.
The gender power dynamic stuff aside, I've also got questions about the religion. I mean, everyone seems to uniformly believe in the Light and the Creator and the Dark One (who are both oddly male, given how much the series bases itself in the philosophy that there is a male and female half to everything), yet there aren't any priests, scripts, churches or anything that I recall. I actually looked this up, and Jordan apparently said something about how proofs of religion are apparent in this universe, so anyone questioning them would be looked upon as odd. But I don't feel they really are. The proofs they have are 1. That there is a magical power that only females seem to be able to use without consequence for self harm 2. that saying the Dark One's name causes bad shit to happen. Other than that, all you have are histories that everyone themselves says are dubious and uncertainly translated, something everyone is atleast vaguely aware of even in back water, isolated villages like Two Rivers that are supposed to be cut off from the rest of the world. Even the Aiel who have been stuck in the wastelands for their own time. So, without any kind of organization maintaining this kind of belief system, I'm not sure how people know about the Light, the Creator or anything. Shaitan could just as easily be a curse word that works as a magical mechanism rather than a malicious being who goes where he hears his name.
But otherwise, WoT has a pretty interesting world, even if it could be delivered better narratively speaking. Prophecies and destined chosen ones are tropes that are looked less kindly on these days, but the reason they have power is that they are a promise that whatever is going to happen is going to be world changing, and that's one element of epic fantasy that I like.
I was gonna write more, but I've written enough. I won't be reading Books 4, 5, and 6 immediately. I have a few other books I want to read before getting back to this series. But that's where I'm at as of now.
