I am still plowing away at Fires of Heaven during my commute. I am still having mixed feelings about it. As I have considered and refined my complaints about Jordan's style and WoT in general, I have finally latched on to my major peeve against both - Jordan is willing to sacrifice the integrity (insert believability or realism or whatever term you use for when a fictional character does something that rings false and lame for some purpose of the author) in order to make repeated and repetitive man/woman jokes. Characters that should be extremely compelling drop into the droning voice of a old joke, one that Jordan never ever seems to grow weary of. I'd offer to cite examples, but if you can't open a WoT book and see what I mean in five pages or less I'll give you a nickel. You'd have to come get it from me though, because I'm just not going to buy a stamp to send you a nickel. Assuming you can even find a five page stretch in 15,000 that he probably has written for this. That is issue one.
Issue two is this - too many chiefs and not enough Indians. In the world of WoT, everyone who grows older seems to keep amassing knowledge and power whether queens or chambermaids. I recognize that this is a fantasy story, but fantasy or not most people don't shed their sheepness no matter how old they get. Their situations get more pitiful as they are shoved or dragged by the people that are really like every other character in WoT. People don't bow to cranky older people, generally. I'd say Martin does a far better job of showing what happens when more than one person thinks they are in charge, and it isn't ganging up on youngsters. I consider it another attack on the back bone of good fiction - characterization.
R.
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I think both of those comments are very astute. I really wish I could articulate my reasons for liking the series in the first place. Because I really did like it a lot.
I agree--you make some good points.
I still think that the biggest reason most of us have gotten tired of the series is not that he's *so* bad as a writer, but that it's just gone on so long. The wonder of a new world and a dramatic storyline can hide writing faults for one book, or three, or even five, but when repeated for too long, those faults begin to glare.
I guess you've been listening to the book--does hearing it bring out some of those character-voice problems more than reading it? Or is it just the fact that you've had some time to digest the book and think about Jordan's style along the way?
I completely agree with both of your comments. I remember actually enjoying Jordan's feminist slant on things at first, but you're right - it gets really old after several books.
And your second issue is, in my opinion, the very reason that he will never finish the series - and the reason I quit reading Jordan. He falls in love with all his characters and can't just let them be sidenotes. I remember spending several books trying to figure out which characters I needed to remember and which I could forget. Then I realized that if Jordan mentions a character, you can guarantee they will come up later, perhaps several books later. I refuse to devote that much of my brain space to random fantasy characters.
It would be interesting to listen to Jordan. I have listened to a few audiobooks that I have also read, and it seems to me that the experience is quite different. I quit reading Crichton books after listening to one. When I read I tend to gloss over some of the more colorful words, but in audio form you don't have that option. After being assaulted by every last f-bomb in State of Fear and realizing that it's his favorite word, I can't bring myself to read his stuff anymore. The narrators also tend to put their own slant on characters through their inflection while reading. The last difference that I've noticed is that I tend to re-read passages for clarity, or just if I enjoy them when reading, but that's harder to do with audio.
daeruin - I'm sure it was the depth of the world, its history, and the interesting characters that first appealled to you. And then Jordan started to let it slip or whatever he did to lose control of his avalanche of story and it became less believable and enjoyable.
Ing - I think the length of the story may well be the problem. To fill his massive volumes he has had to add characters (which he seems to have tried to make more interesting by making his core characters more flat and less compelling) and so his repetive tendencies seem more apparent as the series goes on.
Listening to Jordan has been an interesting experience. One of the things it has taught me about myself is that when reading fantasy/sci-fi, I memorize word shapes without bothering to look at author's pronunciation guides. I know that now after listening to weird names and only after listening to enough context to figure out who the charactor, place, or peoples are can I match the pronunciation with the word in my mind. Weird I know. Another thing that it does is brings the repetitiveness to the forefront. Jordan uses many phrases again and again just in Fires of Heaven. I bet if I had the whole series on a word processor and searched for some of his phrases it would be sickening how often he does it. It makes me think of workshops were people tear each other apart for having the same expression twice in a story - and here is Jordan regurgitating himself onto the best-sellers lists.
Karl - In the first book or two, I also thought that WoT had a feminist slant, but I have decided that I think it is actually misogynistic. I base this on the following:
- even core female characters are medling, hypocritical, and wrong most of the time. It seems counter-productive to start citing because I might never get this posted for the lenghth of time it takes.
- the male characters, though he does lamely play on male stereotypes often, are handled differently. They are glamorized, like Matt's love of drinking and gambling, where the women are just painted as absurd. If you look at the way the Tower in Exile is run, with the men all working practically and the women all kvetching about proper respect and the like, it does not paint a pretty picture. Not one that I would claim if I were a feminist.
I don't know if I need to clarify my second issue or not, but it has more to do with the endless string of people naturally in charge. For instance, with the Wise Ones it is not unusual to say that Bear (however that is spelled) could make some dig a hole with their teeth by merely looking at them, but so-and-so made her look tame or some other lame comparison. Conceivable and beleivable once or twice, but not when applied to EVERY SINGLE Wise One or Aes Sedai that comes along, all united in their in-chargeness exept when they are maliciously trying to destroy one another behind each others backs. And there is another notch for my misogyny argument - the men seem to have order and place while every woman in the story is in charge, or thinks she is or should be. Min being the exception as far as I can tell.
I do know how to go on. Thank you for your comments.
R.
I think that's a pretty good evaluation of the things that have been putting us off Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.
It's sad to see something with such impressive promise ruined by poor execution and authorial overindulgence.
I hate Jordan's women. All they do is whine and plot and walk around folding their arms under their breasts...We know that women have breasts, RJ, you don't need to remind us every page.
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