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| Viewing Page 1 of 1 (Total Posts: 6) |
| Author | Comment |
Thomas M. Wagner
Sep 17, 07 - 5:57 AM |
Robert Jordan has died
I wasn't the biggest fan of his work, but it's always sad to hear of someone's passing. Jordan had been fighting a serious illness for a long time. 
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Philip
Oct 3rd, 2007 - 11:00 AM |
Re: Robert Jordan has died & your review of Eye of the world
I appreciate your sentimate on Robert Jordan's death eventhough it was rather short and a little backhanded sentiment. (read your comment again and be objective - even If I didn't like Robert Jordan my self it came off as a little cold.) Regarding the review of the " Eye of the World".....first question I need to ask is: did you read the other eleven books in the series...(I'm guessing not by the way you reviewed it). First don't treat the book as a stand alone title- it was never intended to be from the begiinning. (at least read the first three books) Jordan was VERY methodical in his planning of the story line. Predictions and events & scenery were set up in the first book like the Evil city of "Shadar Logath" and expounded on all throughout the other titles. He didn't just throw it in as a side jaunt as you claimed. I agree with on your criticism that he can be long winded. (a 800 page book could have shrunk to 600 or less by taking out the "flowery parts") BUT we love the flowery parts. He was the best at flowery. For him it worked. That's where Tolkien DID lack at. IT'S actually torture to try and read Tolkien now. Tolkiens scene setup is flat. The dialogue seems forced and the characters for being original don't draw you in. I disagree with your assessment of Jordan's handling of the characters. I have ready many many many many sword & sorcery and high fantasy books in my lifetime and his by far, by very far is the best there is. Rand is not bland - read more of him and you will see. Plus it is not all about him. Jordan's whole theme is to show the interconnectivity of life and how it affects one event to the next. (the butterfly effect) Jordan did have a degree in Physics. So do yourself a favor and read more of his work. I'll think you'll get drawn in more & more with each book you read. No hard feelings. Thanks for listening. May you always find shade. Thanks Philip |
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Symbol
Oct 3rd, 2007 - 1:43 PM |
Re: Robert Jordan has died
What are you talking about? Jordan's characterizations were paper thin, apart from the three central characters and maybe Moiraine and Lan. Of course they didn't get nearly enough screentime since Jordan seemed more interested in wasting time introducing a huge cast of faceless look-alikes that no one cared about two pages later. Let's not even get into tugging of braids and spanking... Jordan's strength was his worldbuilding, which was strong enough to carry me halfway through the series. Everything else started going downhill early on, and AFAICT the latest books did little to arrest the slide. |
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Thomas M. Wagner
Oct 3rd, 2007 - 6:20 PM |
Re: Robert Jordan has died
Thanks for the feedback, Philip. Though I assure you my remark was not meant to be "cold." It's true I'm not a huge Jordan fan, a fact about which I've never minced words, and while I will note his passing with sadness, his dying isn't going to make me a sudden besotted fan. This is a walking-on-eggshells point I had to make in my review of Andre Norton's final novel, Three Hands for Scorpio. Book reviews aren't personal. I will honor a writer in death. But if I don't like their writing, I don't like their writing. It has nothing to do with respecting or disrespecting that writer as a human being. As of this writing, the only other WoT volume I have read is The Great Hunt, which, if you check out my review of it, I do note is an improvement (not a huge one, but still an improvement) upon Eye of the World. Still, even if every other book in the saga were a five-star masterwork, it would not alter my opinion of Eye of the World one iota. I still find the book a rambling exercise in recycling Tolkienian clichés, with little effort expended towards striving for originality, a process Jordan only tentatively began in the second book. One of the great curses of long-running series fiction as it has been practiced and marketed in SF and fantasy is that it has programmed entire generations of readers to think that it's perfectly okay to publish a 700+ page novel in which little to nothing happens other than to set up events for future novels. It may be great world-building. But world-building alone is not storytelling. The best series novels are the ones in which you can jump on at any point in the saga. (Perfect examples: Discworld, Miles Vorkosigan or Harry Dresden.) And whether a book is a stand-alone novel or part of a 20-volume ultramega-epic, each volume ought to function as a satisfying story in its own right. Big deal that Jordan goes on to explain Shadar Logath in some distant future volume. Its role and placement in Eye of the World felt bafflingly out of place and tacked on. I wanted to know more about it right then, not three or four or eight books from now. Intentionally leaving huge lacunae in your narrative so that the whole thing lacks closure on purpose has always struck me more as motivated by a cynical desire to maximize book sales rather than to tell the strongest, tightest, most satisfying story possible. In the worst cases (and I'm not suggesting WoT is a worst case), it can be argued to be not only disrespectful to one's fan base but actually exploitive of them. I'm fully aware that there is a significant fan contingent who eats up Jordan's work, "flowery" bits and all. (Though how borderline-unreadable prose can actually "work" for any writer I'm still unclear on.) They were all New York Times bestsellers, after all. Any reviewer knows that any review he writes, whether positive or negative, will be met with strong disagreement by somebody. Which is why good reviewing is all about honesty and not about pandering to please some target readership. If the new Stephen King or Nora Roberts is a piece of poo, then it's a piece of poo whether 10 people or 10 million people buy it. And it doesn't become a masterpiece solely because it's popular. Reviewers aren't out there to stroke egos, and so obviously, it means we'll run against popular opinion a good portion of the time. Sometimes we'll love a popular work as much as anyone else, but sometimes we won't, and we can't let a work's popularity cause us to be dishonest in our opinions. Once a person has begun lying to himself, he's lost a piece of his character it will be forever hard to get back. I agree Tolkien's writing is often quite flawed. But Tolkien actually had the excuse of more or less inventing the epic fantasy genre in which he was working, flying by the seat of his pants — if Tolkien got a to a part of Lord of the Rings he wasn't happy with, he actually binned the whole manuscript and started over with a page-one rewrite each time! — and making a lot of it up as he went along. While Jordan (and his spiritual cousin Brooks) simply came along later and played in Tolkien's sandbox. I want to see my epic-fantasists moving on from Tolkien, not just reinventing the wheel for the hundredth time. On that score, I'll take Martin or Erikson (all his shortcomings notwithstanding) any old day. Still, yes, I do plan to read the rest of the WoT at some point, maybe even soon. And if I'm proven wrong and there's a work of classic fantasy in there somewhere, I won't hesitate for a nanosecond to shout it from the rooftops right here on this site. And you, Philip my good man, will be able to wag your finger at me and say you told me so. 
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Thomas M. Wagner
Dec 12th, 2007 - 3:44 PM |
Re: Robert Jordan has died
In an interesting development, it has been announced that Elantris and Mistborn author Brandon Sanderson has been tapped to complete the 12th and final WoT novel. Look for extensive Sanderson catch-up here at the site after the new year. |
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Russ Allbery
Dec 16th, 2007 - 2:35 PM |
Re: Robert Jordan has died
The series unfortunately doesn't get much better beyond where you've read. I think it peaked at about the fourth book and then oh good heavens the whining. Jordan does have an interesting background, and I wanted to see more of it. It has some weird quirks, but I could have happily read a whole series about that world had the books been up to it. Unfortunately, the characters got worse and worse. I made it to book eight, IIRC, before I said the deadly eight words ("I don't care what happens to these people") and quit. |
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