Robert Jordan died.

[amplify]

swingdoc, at least Tolkien had the dignity not to actually publish any of that crap. (Silmarillion excepted from crap, parts of it anyway)

[Duke]

WoT was originally a trilogy when it was bought, and then when the initial books were popular it turned into a 5 book series. When that was popular, they gave him free reign. They also let him have his wife be his editor (which explains the bloat). I remember that book 6 was the first one where people were like: "Oh, well that was just a set-up for book 7." Anyhow, looking back I do see that the Asmodean thing is what saved book 5 from being seen as sucking. People were too involved with arguing about who killed him to judge the book on its own merits.

In a way, I'm happy that it got bloated. Not because it made the story better, but because we got more of a chance to get inside RJ's mind.

<geek>I'm happy that he wasn't balefired out of the pattern, as the books were a good contribution to the genre - whatever anyone may think of them. </geek>

[swingdoc]

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swingdoc, at least Tolkien had the dignity not to actually publish any of that crap. (Silmarillion excepted from crap, parts of it anyway)

[/ QUOTE ]

It had nothing to do with dignity. His family (normally the first readers of anything new) and publishers kept his desire to share more firmly in check. I'll try to find the article and book where I first read this.

[fuzzwonder]

goodkind is very much a poor mans robert jordan with regards to sword of truth. i would lump both these authors with the dragonlance books.

[asofel]

quick note to say anyone who recommends George RR Martin should check out Steven Erikson. The writing is more adult like, its not about good vs evil as often as bad vs other bad. There's more magic than Martin which I like as well, but not too much...the series is also excellent and i'm 6 books in or so...

[Falc]

I would have loved to read more about Jordan's world, like from the ages before the books take place, when the Aes'sedais were more powerful etc. Call me nerd but the world he created is very facinating and intriguing.

But even if he lived I doubt we would see that kind of books for a long time (ever) because after he finished the last book he had lots of ideas for a new series, Infinity of Heaven.

[C-Dog]

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@ Goodkind fans

Really??! These books are so poorly written it's unbelievable that they were actually published in this form. Although to be fair to the editors, they would have had to have re-written practically every sentence to fix Goodkind's hamfisted juvenile writing.


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They entertained me, sorry you are so smart that the "poor" writing didn't work for you. At least you can know that you understand good writing better than millions of people. That should help you sleep at night.

[StevieG]

Swingdoc, Space Ace,

If, as an author, you start resurrecting bad guys to keep obstacles in the way of your epic character, you have probably sacrificed your vision for greed.

And this was definitely supposed to be a trilogy.

For anyone who has not read Jordan please just pretend it is a trilogy and read 1-3.

[gumpzilla]

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If, as an author, you start resurrecting bad guys to keep obstacles in the way of your epic character, you have probably sacrificed your vision for greed.

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Haha, yep. That pissed me off quite a bit. Also, if he can resurrect whoever he feels like, couldn't he have had a slightly larger army than just those 13?

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For anyone who has not read Jordan please just pretend it is a trilogy and read 1-3.

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I actually thought 4 was quite solid - though I hadn't read Dune yet, and in retrospect the Aiel seem like such a total ripoff of the Fremen, the Rhuidean stuff was still pretty cool - and I don't remember disliking 5. 6 was where I thought it really started to go off the rails, and then 7 and 8 were worthless and completely unmemorable. Doesn't one of them end with an aside about Egwene's camp going to clear out the White Tower, and then several books later it's clear that that never actually happened? What the hell? (EDIT: I did eventually read book 9, and had the thought "Wow, he made something significant happen for the first time in 2000 pages! Sweet!" but it was not enough for me to have any interest in continuing from there.)

[SBR]

I think you guys are wrong about him getting off track for money. I think its pretty clear the lack of an editor and goals that were too ambitious were his problem. Almost every fantasy series ends up being longer than it was originally intended to be (i.e. A song of fire and ice was originally going to be a trilogy as well). Without a good editor and a really clear focus its pretty easy for writers to become "trapped" in their world.

Books 1-3 were really great stuff and books 4-6 were still pretty good. Unfortunately it all goes wrong from 7-9 and I never even bothered to look at 10.