Discussion: Wheel of Time

Are these good books? Are they worth it? Where are they on the scale from Twilight to the Foundation Series?

Which end of that scale do you consider to be the good end, Boris?

I think you know, JJ.

I haven't read Twilight. I recently read Foundation and was pretty disappointed.

Perhaps it's one of those things that made more sense at a certain age. I read Foundation in high school and was obsessed.

I certainly haven't read Twilight. I've only read the first Foundation book, but I found the premise of psychohistory too ludicrous to suspend my disbelief.

Wheel of Time is a saga that is extraordinary in its complexity. The geopolitical considerations of the realm Robert Jordan created, the notions of destiny and fate, and the cyclical chess game between good and evil are marvelous. I found the series compelling for the macro-narrative arc and to understand how the protagonists would evolve in their battle. At 4.4m words - roughly six times the length of Atlas Shrugged or Les Mis or four times the length of the Harry Potter series, the series is unnecessarily long. Like Atlas Shrugged, it could be effectively condensed to half its length. Some of characters are annoying, and too large a fraction of the books is devoted to completely irrelevant personal drama that I usually skim over.

Harry Potter is a surprisingly good comparison for Wheel of Time in that the story is ultimately about a champion of good destined to battle a consummate evil. It's fairly obvious in both cases that good will prevail; it's just a question of how and at what cost. Harry Potter has some mystery aspects and irrelevant teenage drama that plays no bearing on the broader narrative. If you were curious about the path Harry and his comrades would take to defeat Voldemort, I think you will appreciate Wheel of Time for the same reasons I did. Of course, WoT is designed for a more mature audience and treats with more mature themes, and it has complexity of the underlying world more akin to Lord of the Rings. I found that the books didn't really hit their stride until after the conclusion of book 3; books 1 and 2 are weakly fleshed out. Books 12-14 are spectacular.

Two other fantasy series that I've encountered that have vague similarities are Stormlight Archive and The Kingkiller Chronicles. In both cases, I'm not exactly sure what the trajectory of the narratives are; I don't know where we're going. WoT, Harry Potter, and LotR are more obviously focused on a battle between good and evil. Of all five, I found the Kingkiller Chronicles to be the most compelling read, though its geopolitical complexity and the richness of its engineered world are by far the weakest.

If you read the first Foundation book, you got the best part, IMO, although part of what makes it interesting is the time-capsule aspect of the 1940s sci-fi (e.g. the ubiquitous atomic ashtrays). Psychohistory is not the worst of it by far, it's a reasonable notion that Hari Seldon could project general trends, and it's a pity that he dies in the second chapter, though we get to see more of him in the prequels. What annoyed me was the interstellar mind control and such that becomes so prevalent later on (starting with the introduction of The Mule), and the whole thing fizzles out with the disappointing Search for Earth in the later books. When he stuck with the First Foundation, it wasn't so bad.

I haven't read too many series: Foundation, LotR, Harry Potter, GoT (what GRRM has written so far, and I haven't seen any of the TV show, and it's unclear how or whether that will ever wrap up), and an awful fantasy series wrtten by a colleague of my sister-in-law that I got for Christmas presents. Also the Rabbi Small mysteries, which were interesting more for their attempt to explain Judaism to the goyim than for the actual mysteries (hint: the goy always did it). I'm thinking of trying the Culture series, which came to my attention only because Space-X named their landing barges after spaceships from those books. I also considered reading Narnia, but I haven't gotten motivated enough to even start, and although Dune has been highly recommended, I made the mistake of seeing the truly awful movie back around when I was in college, which deflated any interest I might have had.

You can read the Narnia series in about an hour. It's sort of entertaining if you enjoy British culture and getting smacked in the face with Christian allegory.

My personal take based on reading something short story length billed as a prequel to the WoT is that Jordan was competent but by no means inspired. Unless what you really want is a fantasy series of unnecessarily enormous length, you can probably do better.

Not that Asimov was, let alone is, at the cutting edge of the end of the SFF spectrum characterized by greater literary quality as the mainstream perceives literary quality, but he was at least occasionally to often inspired in terms of content.

ETA - holy reading speed, Ian! Reading any given Narnia book with minimally adequate comprehension in one hour would be fast. I hope that's what you mean because if you were being both literal and accurate, someone out there will want to take you apart to see how you tick.

I was being somewhat hyperbolic to convey dismissiveness.

I figured you had taken the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course, and then used those skills to read the Evelyn Wood manual again multiple times, thereby achieving super powers.