10-25-2022, 10:24 AM
So. Volume one and 1/3 to 1/2 of the second volume of the twelfth book of the The Wheel of Time series down and either 1) Sanderson is a better writer than Jordan -- something I hate to admit; or 2) Jordan's widow/book editor started doing her job. Kind of.
Possibility 2 first: One of the things that annoyed me throughout the series was Jordan's incessant, let's call them writing tricks of dramatic irony. I don't care about [X] in the least. Well, barely at all, if at that. Now, that other person cares about it overly much to the point of obsession, but not me. Two, three times in a book is humorous. Every major character doing it two three times in a book is annoying. Every major character doing it two, three times in every book through eleven books of a of a twelve book series? That's an editor not doing her job.
1) I'm not all that big a fan of Sanderson as a world-builder. We all know the adage, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My corollary is, "Any fantasy that is overly codified may as well be sci-fi." And that's Brandon Sanderson's oeuvre. But the man can tell a story. Kind of.
Kind of: So there are four major story threads and several minor ones by this point. Two of the major threads are Rand and Perrin. And one of the minor threads is Queen Morgase, who is a subthread of Perrin. So by the end of volume 1 of book 12 (I refused to call the Sanderson-written works books 12-14. They are volumes 1-3 of book 12) we learn of the resolution to the Morgase sub-thread in the Rand thread, but in volume 2, the Perrin thread hasn't reached that point yet. So we have the other major three threads continuing on, interspersed with jumps back in time to the Perrin thread where the Morgase sub-thread has yet to come the resolution we already know, thus stripping the sub-thread as well as the Perrin thread of any real tension. Bad choice in story-telling and a bad choice in editing.
Also: Olver has got to be my most despised character in the entire series.
Possibility 2 first: One of the things that annoyed me throughout the series was Jordan's incessant, let's call them writing tricks of dramatic irony. I don't care about [X] in the least. Well, barely at all, if at that. Now, that other person cares about it overly much to the point of obsession, but not me. Two, three times in a book is humorous. Every major character doing it two three times in a book is annoying. Every major character doing it two, three times in every book through eleven books of a of a twelve book series? That's an editor not doing her job.
1) I'm not all that big a fan of Sanderson as a world-builder. We all know the adage, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My corollary is, "Any fantasy that is overly codified may as well be sci-fi." And that's Brandon Sanderson's oeuvre. But the man can tell a story. Kind of.
Kind of: So there are four major story threads and several minor ones by this point. Two of the major threads are Rand and Perrin. And one of the minor threads is Queen Morgase, who is a subthread of Perrin. So by the end of volume 1 of book 12 (I refused to call the Sanderson-written works books 12-14. They are volumes 1-3 of book 12) we learn of the resolution to the Morgase sub-thread in the Rand thread, but in volume 2, the Perrin thread hasn't reached that point yet. So we have the other major three threads continuing on, interspersed with jumps back in time to the Perrin thread where the Morgase sub-thread has yet to come the resolution we already know, thus stripping the sub-thread as well as the Perrin thread of any real tension. Bad choice in story-telling and a bad choice in editing.
Also: Olver has got to be my most despised character in the entire series.
Getting me free admission into gaming conventions for a decade