The Wheel of Time, or WoT for short, is a great book series. Although its characters seem stereotypical, they do have some variability in them once the series gets kicking. The plot is, at least in its genre's scale, extremely complicated, or at least complicated enough to spawn at least dozens of active chatboards debating over theories.

Robert Jordan's (RJ for short) writing style is characterized by habit of writing long descriptions of irrelevant things, such as objects found in street, houses, people, in the middle of sentence. His stories also repeat some stereotypes about men and women all the time. Almost all women (maybe excluding Min) suffer from Feminine Nasal Syndrome.

As a comparison between WoT and other fantasy:

WoT's gender stereotypes remind me of David Eddings' books, but WoT has plot too, unlike Eddings' stuff. And more character to characters, IMO.

WoT began as adventure fantasy, being a pretty much of The Lord of the Rings -ripoff, but it has evolved into political fantasy, which has alienated fans of traditional fantasy, generating loads of flame in the lines of 'he should have quit after first 3 books'. On the other hand, the books after the 3 are those that have given WoT its reputation of complex plot with many seemingly meaningless sidenotes being quite meaningful.

People called Aiel have had a quite significant role in WoT in books after the first three, and they resemble quite a bit Fremen, according to some.

See also:


By the way, unlike you might think from below writeups, not everyone considers the seemingly unending WoT a bad thing. Call me a milk cow if you want, but I have actually enjoyed all the books, and my main gripe is that the later books are just too short. Figures.


Women in The Wheel of Time:

Just like review quoted on back cover of The Wheel of Time, about The Wheel of Time (linking twice is always so amusing) said, women have stronger role in WoT than, for example, in The Lord of the Rings. Robert Jordan has been quoted to say, "All male characters in WoT are based on sides of my personality, and female characters on my wife's personalities." This can be believed to some extent, for if the women have differences and there are more than one basic types, all share some common things, which RJ presents as if they were part of some international women's language (see Feminine Nasal Disorder). RJ has been called stereotypical for this, but many also find this amusing and it is the part of why I, for one, enjoy WoT.

List of more or less significant women characters in WoT:

Just like everyone else, I was sucked into the throes of obsession when I read The Eye of the World. Like any avid fantasy reader, I learned all the names, all the places, all the language, all the acronyms. I jumped into the next four books, excited that there was so much more, more, more!

When I got to the middle of the series, however, I realized that more is more than enough. There is a certain value to having a certain mystery permanently surrounding interesting characters, and if we're stuck with their every thought, every movement, every boring day spent in subtle political manipulation, they become boring. The most exciting part of characters in novels is the part we don't know yet.

I consider myself an average to fast reader, yet I spent an entire summer trying to read The Fires of Heaven. A page a week, a chapter a month. God, I was so bored. I noticed how much the Aes Sedai were like the Fremen. I wondered why I was reading this long, drawn out soap opera instead of Dune.

I really admire fantasy novelists who keep an entire unique world contained within one book. Try Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Don't get me wrong, I thought the Wheel of Time was great when it began, but starting at The Fires of Heaven, it reminded me of the later seasons of Friends....("And Ross said WHAT to Rachel? Oh my god, I thought he was still going out with Sara!")

Robert Jordan started writing a extremely good Fantasy trilogy with deep themes and an epic scope, however somewhere along the line he broke with the expectations of the genre, realised that he was being paid by the word, and money was better than critical acclaim or self-respect.

Here we have a hero with a quest just crying out for satisfying, climactic resolution, but we get an Achilles and the tortoise race in which each successive book merely halves the distance to the finish line. Dramatic tension needs to be resolved in a reasonable time frame, damn it!

The further you get into The Wheel of Time, the more it drags out, the more irrelevant digressions occur, and the less you get any kind of closure.

I would have considered this a great book if it had finished in three or even four volumes, but as it is I got frustrated and gave up after five volumes, with no end in sight.1

If Robert Jordan is really a good writer, then can't he even finish one book and then just write a different one? Stephen King doesn't spend his entire career writing just one unfinished mega-book, does he? Heck no, he knows how to tell a story. Which includes ending it.

Robert Jordan should be taken out and shot for his crimes against his own integrity.

Update: Robert Jordan died on September 16, 2007. Knowing that he was not long in this world, Robert Jordan tried to bring the series to a close in 12 volumes. He failed. The twelfth and final volume is incomplete, and the plan is for it to be published posthumously from his notes and dictated outlines. Brandon Sanderson be the author to finish it.


1) Myrkabah claims that It doesn't get any better by book ten.

Nekojin says: Robert Jordan has stated publicly in interviews that he has no intention of bringing The Wheel of time to a close as long as the series is popular. So is he going to do it when nobody cares? He writes for money so don't count on it happening at all.

pi pointed put that Stephen King was writing that mega-book Dark Tower thing. True, but that's not what made him famous, and is hardly the only thing he has done. Hey, he's even finished it now. What else, if anything, has Robert Jordan written? Is he even capable of doing so?


Yes, this is an opinion. In this it is no different from the rest of the writeups here. It is my opinion, I am proud of it, and I have reasons for it, which I hope that you now understand now even if you do not agree with them.

The Wheel of Time PC game

Created by Legend Entertainment Company, Published and Distributed by GT Interactive Software Corp. in 1998.
this game received a Teen rating by ESRB and a General rating by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Requirements:
Note:These requirements are contradicted by the game manual in some cases. ( see 'Problems'

Minimum-

  1. CPU: Pentium 200
  2. Memory: 32 MB
  3. Available HD Space; 500mb
  4. Distribution Media Drive: CD-Rom
  5. Audio System:Windows 9X Compatible Sound Card
  6. Video System: PCI Local Bus Video Card
  7. O/S: Windows 9X
  8. Network and Internet Play: TCP/IP
Recommended-
  1. CPU: Pentium II 233
  2. Memory: 64 MB
  3. Available HD Space; 500mb
  4. Distribution Media Drive: CD-Rom
  5. Audio System:Windows 9X Compatible Sound Card
  6. Video System: 3D Accelerator
  7. O/S: Windows 9X
  8. Network and Internet Play: TCP/IP
Outline:
The Wheel of Time is marketed as a 'First person action/Strategy' game, with graphics is based upon an extended/enhanced version of the Unreal 3D Engine, but with a lot higher strain on system resources.

The storyline takes place within the same world as the book series, but is set 100yrs prior to the events of The Eye of the World ( iirc ). because of this, the game can be played without having read the books, and without spoiling them for any future reader.

Features:
As far as first person shooters go, this one ranks up there.
Use over 20 ( more like 40 ) artifacts to use for offense, defense or puzzle solving.
Be a part of a decent, well -written storyline.
Create the defenses of your own citadel.
Take your fight online with 3 multiplayer game types.
Play with 'state-of-the-art' graphics and environmental effects.
And fight have a variety of enemies, each with its own weaknesses, strengths and individuality.

If it was just a first person shooter, it would be well worth the $20 or so that you would pay for it these days, and with the advances in the home PC, the strain on your resources would be negligible for anyone with a middle-range machine.

Bonus:
The best part about this game is only available to those that have read the series by Robert Jordan from which this game is derived. If you have followed the characters through the world, then you know the horrors that await within the game, and with the exceptional music and sound effects, creeping through the streets of say.. Shadar Logoth.. is a truly nerve-wracking experience.

Mashadar Awaits...

Problems:
There are a few problems with the game however. A few points that should be made clear before anyone goes and purchases this game.

Inside the game manual, inside the sealed box, on Page 44,45, it states...

"This game uses MP3 music playback. While the music adds a lot to the game experience, it also imposes a 5% CPU hit and consumes eight megabytes of memory. Simply put, music saps performance. Turn music off on any system with less than 128mb of RAM. It is also advisable to keep music off for machines with lower end CPUs ( anything under a PII/300).

This goes against the recommended system requirement of 64mb of RAM and if they had even mentioned the music score on the box, they would most likely be in trouble, but they didn't mentioned it, and the game can be played without the music.

Note: The MP3 files can be moved to the hard drive for a smoother ride

Finis:
A great game for anyone who wants more to a game than Quake 3 or it's clones provide. Ideal for a fan of Rovert Jordan's 'Wheel of Time'.

The Wheel of Time series is almost on par with the level of writing seen in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (which is the pinnacle of Fantasy, matched perhaps by only Tolkien). The books are very immersing, plunging you deep into a world finely crafted by Jordan. This series is quite amazing really. The characters are described amazingly and after the first book you feel as if you have known them your entire life. Infact you might even attempt to channel next time someone frightens you : ).

Jordan only made two eroneous descisions while working on this series:
  • Describing irrelevant items to what seems a near religion. I love the way he paints characters with depth, but there is no need to tell a character's life story when you are only going to see that person once during the entire series.
  • The series should have been closed by book nine if not before. Some sort of closure should have been provided. Robert Jordan needs to provide closure and end the series or close this chapter of the series, in books seven, eight, and nine very little actually happens in the story, most of those books seem to just follow rabbit trails.


If Jordan's next two books manage to close the series then Jordan's second error in judgement will have been made easier to accept, if it isn't ended Jordan needs to be beaten with a chair and forced to end it.
The series is definetly worth reading, if you can afford all of the books.

The wheel of time, a series of fantasy books by Robert Jordan,

I’m amazed writers haven’t complained about this guy and his books yet… If you’ve read, either Terry Goodkind’s books (The sword of truth series) or "The Lord Of The Rings," you will know what I’m talking about.
I read on the internet about someone who thought Terry Goodkind should be beaten with a bag of doorknobs (That in itself I find pretty weird…), when obviously it should be Jordan who should get a good beating.

To show some of the similarities on which I base all of this.
Robert obviously copied these from Tolkien, even Jordan fans can’t deny that:

http://www.members.tripod.com/~wotiscrap/comp.html

The one big difference between Tolkien and Robert Jordan is that Tolkien knew how to tell a story. Tolkien told his story in 4 books (including the hobbit. Not counting the Silmarillion). Jordan has now written, how many books? About 12… Tolkien could have done so too, he had more than enough material for that. Sadly, Robert Jordan made one more mistake (sigh...). After seeing the success of his first books, he saw that money could be made by just continuing to write sequels.
Result: Commercial shit.

Now what makes these books so popular?

Well, he has created a good fantasy world. And it also has an epic quality when you read it. It's a bit cliché, which I consider a good thing.
If you have not read Tolkien or Terry Goodkind, these books will be pretty good. If you have read Tolkien and Goodkind though, Jordan’s mistakes will not go unnoticed.


Frustrating parts

The following is my personal opinion (though I suppose the previous was my personal opinion too...):
He made his main character (Rand) much too strong and powerful. Rand is the dragon reborn, the most powerful person in the world. Yet he wrote a lot about the other characters adventures. When I stopped to think about it, I realized those adventures were pretty stupid and unnecessary (and very boring).
For example: Matt and Perrin went on their own adventures, struggling to destroy “the forces of darkness”. This was confusing, why would Rand send his “non-magical friends” on a mission to destroy an army? When he, the most powerful person on earth, could easily teleport himself (and a few of his apprentices), to that location, then blast the enemy to pieces, and teleport back home (and it would only take him several minutes to do all that).
So I came to the conclusion that, either Rand is a very lazy guy, or Robert Jordan just wanted to add a few hundred extra pages to his books…
Yet I can see that he had no choice. There would be no story if Rand just went around, solving everyone's problems. And that is just the complication, Rand is too strong (which, as I have said, has a big effect on the whole story, as it results in several long boring books).

I can understand why a person would like these books (or at least the first books). I thought them great too, at first. But if you have read Tolkien and Terry Goodkind, and have then read Jordan’s books critically, you just have to admit that it cannot be compared to the great fantasy authors of our time. It’s basically just copy and paste work. And the small parts that were his own contributions (like the dialogues) are mostly very superficial.

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