My thought is that they should plan to shoot the first three books. That part of the series is relatively tight and contained: the cast of characters hasn’t ridiculously exploded, character development is limited to a few core characters and the supposed primary antagonist is defeated (it’s not until later that the antagonists could largely could come back unless killed by super special magick, which is part of why things got so out of hand).
Sure there remains more work for our protagonists to do, but it would be a fine place to leave off. I note that most people who gave up did so well after the first three books, so we should go by the old adage: leave them wanting more. I mean, there’s always work left to be done, so let it end there… people who want to find out more can read the rest of the books. And if demand is high enough, then maybe Netflix could consider ordering another 12 seasons
I did say I was in my mid teens when reading WoT, didn’t I? So yes, I was rather new to fantasy at the time. Still, WoT is by far the worst I’ve seen both before and after. Never read any Piers Anthony - I guess I was lucky I never did until I became at least moderately conscious of my own tastes. I think I got a similar(-ish) vibe from Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, but I dropped that rather quickly. Can’t remember how far I got in WoT before moving on - probably caught up at book 11 and then just never picked it up afterwards, looking at the publishing timeline. Guess I got derailed by the Malazan book of the fallen at that point.
Well, I guess things might have changed after I quit reading the series (or just not played out in the manner that the earlier books worked very hard at hinting towards) and my memory is no doubt spotty 15-20 years later, but the overall impression it left me with was still very “white straight male saviour of the world who pretty much every young woman within reach unaccountably falls for”. Even if that changed towards the end, and even with two of them leaving for their own purposes it still reads far, far too much as a pretty bland wish-fulfillment fantasy.
That seems like a very generous reading to me. I can kind of understand fighting against magic being somehow something only women can do is kind of anti-sexist, but only in an incredibly simplistic manner (that also has the potential to distract readers from considering how sexism is propagated and upheld by actual people today, rather than some vague bad events in the past). I mean, constructing your universe around vaguely mythologized quasi-biological sex differences is by itself setting yourself up for trouble unless you’re extremely careful and well planned in how it’s handled. And, while my memory is no doubt severly off given the time since I read this and my age at the time, I still can’t see that this was handled well.
Visually stunning. Never pictured Emond’s Field so pretty, and what an amazing inn. I agree that the story could be improved by editing. Hope they tighten up the right spots.
Oddly, many of the parts centring on the “main” character are amongst the most dull, though often with climatic endings.
I read lots of Joe Abercrombie - So WoT’s unsympathetic characters appear delightful in comparison.
There are a lot of negative Nellies on here - but when you think about it, its a perfect story for Amazon to film - it’s PG-13 at worst, it will ace the Bechdel test, and it’s new (kinda) to TV/Movie audiences.
That might be because you seem to be missing huge chunks of the plot:
Both men and women can use magic, but the Dark One poisoned the “well” of magic for men. It turns out only men and women using magic together can clear out the poison and defeat the Dark One. So it’s not only anti-sexist, but unifying in it’s message.
That would also be fantastic, but harder to get greenlit.
Yeah, I had to mentally retcon my image of the Two Rivers once it was revealed that it was originally Manetheren from a muddy, slightly hilly place to more of a picturesque Swiss resort area…
All the news on it is late 2019. There is then a quote from Moorcock (unsourced) on several sites " Michael Moorcock reports: ‘Heard today that some companies are turning down Elric project because it reminds them too much of GOT and The Witcher . A pretty irony. So much for “homages”…’ (23 May)"
Seems to link to here Ansible® 395, June 2020
And I think it must be taken from multiverse.org though I haven’t found it there. Will keep looking.
That’s sort of my point - that magic is bound up in some pretty unhealthy (imo) views of sexuality. In order to make everything in her life work, Nynaeve needed to learn to submit. Even at the time, it felt to me like the message was “*itch needs to chill out, just get laid already.”
It’s a shame to me, because the story is huge and epic, but the recurring themes of submission without consent (or even outright slavery) ruin the telling of the story. I’m a bit surprised that a studio would touch it with a 10-foot pole. That they have makes me certain that they’re going to change things.
Let’s not forget that the Seanchan win. That alone puts the story deeply into “unsatisfying” territory for me. I mean, I get it, sometimes history is messy, but why even write that story?
It’s worse than that. Magic not only knows your sex - apparently, your sex is etched on your soul because one of the male fallen is reborn as a woman but still channels the male Source. It’s all kinds of ducked up
I’m quite aware of that being the main plot, but you’re missing the point: making that the central premise of your fantasy universe, especially while also handling this in a rather ham-fisted way, in itself propagates sexism. How? The entire foundation of the main plot is gender essentialism. Or I guess we should say sex essentialism, as it seems to be down to biology. The pivotal point of this all is built on the presupposition of magic knowing and caring about … your chromosomes and various dangly bits? Yeah, sorry, that is not anti-sexist whatsoever. That is plain-faced gender-essentialist sexism. Period.
That male channellers are stronger in Earth and Fire while female channelers are stronger in Air and Water just underscores that this is such blatant cliché sexist nonsense that I’m honestly rather shocked at you even making a claim to this somehow being anti-sexist. As I said: this is an extremely generous reading. Allowing some milquetoast “we all need to come together despite our differences” message to be what you take away from that just demonstrates the massive blind spots present in your reading - and likely in the author’s thoughts as well. It might very well have been well-intentioned, but whoo boy did it fail at that.
This is the kind of inane logic that claims to be anti-sexist when saying stuff like “men and women are equal because they complement each other - women are more sensitive and attentive to emiotions, while men are tougher and more logical”. Which, in case it wasn’t clear, is sexism 101 - explaining complex personality traits affected in huge ways by socialization and upbringing by “it’s your biology”. It’s a cop-out, it’s pseudoscientific BS, and it’s a bad-faith attempt at claiming authority by appealing to “Science” (which, btw, does not support this in any meaningful way) as an external authority legitimizing your reactionary views.
I started reading them a month or so ago, and I’m currently part-way through books six.
I can definitely see where the accusations of ‘slog’ come from. So far, it’s not that there hasn’t been plot going on, but there’s more and more threads and characters being introduced, and it seems to take a long time for anything to actually get resolved because it’s all interconnected. I think even GRRM could have given a few lessons on editing, and avoiding bloat.
Overall I’ve been enjoying it, it’s somewhat generic fantasy, but it has enough of it’s own things going on that I’m enjoying it. The “only women do women’s magic, and only men do men’s magic” thing is a bit of a facepalm in this day and age. I keep waiting for a trans/intersex/non-binary character to pop up who can at least sense both sides of the power or something along those lines, but I guess I’m just being optimistic.
I’ve made it this far though, and it’s not all bad, so I’m going to keep slogging on. I’ve heard enough people speaking highly of it that I’m hoping that there’s some sort of resolution, but this is the longest I think I’ve spent reading a single series and I’m almost getting bored of reading the same thing.
It’s almost like someone mentioned that it’s ham-fisted. Hmmm.
Seriously? Feel free to criticize that as a Fantasy trope and I’ll line up right next to you. The whole genre has that problem. And it’s fair to call that sexist. I think RJ was trying to make an anti-sexist statement, given his blind spots.
Come on! It’s fantasy, not a non-fiction essay. Get over yourself. Yes, RJ was not Octavia Butler or Guy Gavriel Kay. You don’t have to shit all over his work and the people who enjoyed it.
Ah, yes. Intention and form makes you immune from criticism. That’s a healthy approach, sure. Is your work sexist and problematic? No problem, as long as it’s fiction and you meant well. Please listen to yourself. You know what most authors tackling any even remotely serious subject do? RESEARCH. Quite a lot of it. Authors not doing that and relying solely on their own intuitions and experiences is a recipe for … well, not disaster, but certainly a dumpster fire or two. I have zero idea if RJ researched sexism in any way while writing WoT. But that is immaterial. The end result speaks for itself. It is fundamentally problematic in some very significant ways that tie into the main premises for the plot. This could have been interesting, thought-provoking, enlightening, but instead, it’s at best a ham-fisted approach at some vague message of coexistence, and at worst yet another fundamentally sexist fantasy series.
Also, where, exactly, have I “shit all over […] the people who enjoyed” WoT? Please show me a quote. If not, take your projections and straw man arguments elsewhere, please. We all enjoy problematic media. That’s unavoidable. Being critical of it is a good thing. It means we take it seriously, treat it with respect. Ignoring its flaws is disrespectful of both work and author. If you need to ignore crucial aspects of something in order to enjoy it, that is something worth looking into, not something to ignore.
Specifically, you are conflating writing about sexism as writing in a sexist way. Many authors do their world-building to set up all kinds of problems, so that they can address them in the plot.
If we go by your way of thinking here, then authors can’t write about racism without being racist. I’m not OK with that.
Why write anything other than a happy ending? Because some stories don’t deserve a perfect, happy ending. Game of Thrones capitalized on this to great effect, because one thing people really like even more than a happy ending, is a surprising ending. The Seanchan are bad guys, but not the worst guys. It makes it complicated, and also makes you wonder how all the things set in motion pan out with them, with the Princess being married to Mat, with the sul’dam actually being channelers themselves. Their way of structuring their society shows big cracks by the end. It’s far from glorifying slavery.
What stuff was your normal fare then? I am genuinely curious what you could be reading that this is as bad as you’ve seen. In my experience (and I read probably a couple hundred SFF novels when I was young), Jordan is pretty middle of the road for 80’s & 90’s era SFF authors.
