is the "wheel of time" series worth reading?

[Muffinator]

It picks up really fast. I bought the first book and finished the 14th within a month and a half. Its worth it.

You...y-you.........h-............w-wh..........

[Deleted]

Explicit sex scenes are for jerkoff material. I've never read an explicit sex scene in genre fiction that wasn't totally cringe-inducing. So, basically, yes.

Rand al'Thor's sex life is a relatively major plot point in WoT. He has three lovers and fathers children with one of them. A great deal of time is devoted to the emotional and, yes, sexual tension his relationships entail. In no way would the book be more mature or adult if I got a lurid description of him blowing his load. You have confused pornography for literature somehow.

It's incredibly immature to assume that explicit sex scenes are only for pornography, or must always be primarily for titillation. Sex is a very important part of human interactions, especially for the guy who has three girlfriends or wives or whatever. It's by no means necessary of course, but it helps in fleshing out character relationships.

Out of curiosity (as I've never finished the series), how does the whole three girlfriends thing go eventually? Are they all okay with it? Do they have foursomes?

[Deleted]

Drinking game! Every time Nynaeve pulls her braid, take a shot!

*one hour later*

Uh 911? I need an ambulansh, I think I have alcohol poishoning . . .

Please… I'll take the braid-tugging, skirt-smoothing and ear-boxing over the stupid swordfights any day of the week and twice on Bel Tine. Five minutes of 'cat crosses the courtyard' and 'the moon rises over the lakes' and blablabla before someone drops dead. Super!

[Deleted]

Many times an epic series like Wheel of Time starts slowly. Before long they gain steam and really get moving though. Keep reading and by the end you'll have enjoyed one of the most revered set of books out there.

Wheel of Time hardly gains steam. It gets exponentially slower after the third book. I've been told it speeds up again after book 7, but a series which takes 7000 pages to speed up is no good.

[lakisa]

if you got bored and gave up in first book than don't bother with it, i loved first 3-4 books after it... it was horrible story basicly stopped moving for like next 3 books and lot of silly stuff like girls thinking about dresses and other stuff dunno why fantasy writers always fail after third book.

[Fuiking]

Personally, it is my favorite series of all time. I would absolutely recommend it. The best part about the series, by far, is the way it is structured. Details were planned out 10-15 years in advance. Every book has multiple prophecies mentioned in them, and figuring out what they mean alongside (and often before) the characters themselves is a great joy. One of the visions mentioned early in book 1 is not fulfilled until the final chapter of book 14. Others are fulfilled throughout the series (the "twice and twice shall he be marked" prophecy being an example of one fulfilled in the first half of the series).

The thing I appreciate more than anything else in a story is the plot itself, and the plot in Wheel of Time is the best there is.

However, it definitely isn't flawless. Books 8-10 drag on far too long, and many people I've talked to turned away from the series around that point. If you can get through them though, I think you will greatly appreciate the final three books (12-14) and book 11 isn't bad.

The biggest issues I've seen people have with the series besides the erratic pacing later on are:

• The beginning of the first book (first 7-8 chapters or so) is basically standard village life stuff. The setting is so thoroughly established before the action begins that some people actually get turned off before it starts. Once it starts though, it really doesn't stop, it's basically non-stop madness until the end of the book, and most people enjoy Book 1 (that I've talked to) after they finish it.
• The author is very, very descriptive. For some people, this is a plus. For others, they will be irritated that the author continues to tell them the roof of the inn the characters are staying in has yellow clay tiles (and other minor details).
• The first handful of female characters in the story are pretty heavily flawed characters. Since they're protangists, you will see/hear of them a lot, and some people get very bothered by their constant flaws (braid-pulling, I'm talking about you).
• The primary protagonist becomes incredibly powerful early in the series, and the majority of the conflict he faces later on is internal conflict. (Hence some comments that he is "acting like a pussy".) He literally has the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I find his perspective to be understandable, but others do not.

And the amount of off-hand references.. Mostly from the Forsaken, Rand, Mat and Birgitte are really annoying if you want to know what the f*ck they are/where?

Like the Tourag and Mareesh, Touraeg and marrakesh?

[Lightwysh]

How does it compare pace-wise vs the Dark Tower series? DT is about perfect pace wise IMO, actually the DT series is my favorite series I've ever read. I've tried GoT and it was was bad, slow and clunky. I made it a couple hundred pages into the first book and wanted to punch George RR Martin in the neck, sorry but it's TV only for that series for me.

I hear WoT is good, but pacing is important and I don't care for YA series(I tried some of my kids Paterson series, good pace, horrible story and writing style).

[Deleted]

How does it compare pace-wise vs the Dark Tower series? DT is about perfect pace wise IMO, actually the DT series is my favorite series I've ever read. I've tried GoT and it was was bad, slow and clunky. I made it a couple hundred pages into the first book and wanted to punch George RR Martin in the neck, sorry but it's TV only for that series for me.

I hear WoT is good, but pacing is important and I don't care for YA series(I tried some of my kids Paterson series, good pace, horrible story and writing style).

Wheel of Time is very slow, much slower than GoT (Which in my opinion is fairly fast paced for it's kind).

[Gallahadd]

WoT is great. I read the first 8 or so then got bored and stopped (it gets bogged down in the middle and slows to a crawl.), but when the final book came out I picked the series up again and got all the way to the end only to find out that I'd stopped JUST before it gets good again and the last few books are all awesome, the final book is one of my favourite books of all time.

The characters are great. None of them are perfect, in fact most are pretty infuriating for one reason or another... But as most people in real life are infuriating for one reason or another, this makes them all the more believable and relatable.

Great magic system, which I always think is important in a fantasy series (although nothing beats the Will and the Word ), the token "Sword Master" character type is pretty interesting and a bit more fleshed out than some others.

Overall it's WELL worth the read, but make sure you've set a lot of time aside for it, also make sure you understand it's GOING to get a bit pants in the middle (I'm looking at you Crossroads of Twilight), but I assure you, it's worth powering through till you get to the last few books, which are awesome.

[Deleted]

WoT is great. I read the first 8 or so then got bored and stopped (it gets bogged down in the middle and slows to a crawl.), but when the final book came out I picked the series up again and got all the way to the end only to find out that I'd stopped JUST before it gets good again and the last few books are all awesome, the final book is one of my favourite books of all time.

The characters are great. None of them are perfect, in fact most are pretty infuriating for one reason or another... But as most people in real life are infuriating for one reason or another, this makes them all the more believable and relatable.

Great magic system, which I always think is important in a fantasy series (although nothing beats the Will and the Word ), the token "Sword Master" character type is pretty interesting and a bit more fleshed out than some others.

Overall it's WELL worth the read, but make sure you've set a lot of time aside for it, also make sure you understand it's GOING to get a bit pants in the middle (I'm looking at you Crossroads of Twilight), but I assure you, it's worth powering through till you get to the last few books, which are awesome.

I can understand if you like Wheel of Time, I even liked it a fair amount myself from what I read. But how can you call about series in which several thousand pages are "a bit pants", great overall?

[Graeham]

It's definitely worth it if you're a fan of the genre. It can be pretty slow from time to time but that is something that can be said of pretty much any major novel series that spans multiple books. A lot of the characters boast a fair amount of depth and it can be very gripping. I really should get around to reading it again at some point as I've admittedly forgotten quite a lot of what happened in the earlier books.

[Gallahadd]

I can understand if you like Wheel of Time, I even liked it a fair amount myself from what I read. But how can you call about series in which several thousand pages are "a bit pants", great overall?

Because as an overall series it IS great. When dealing with a series that has a total page count in numbers bigger than are calculable by modern super computers, you CAN'T really take them as individual books, you have to look at the series as a whole.

It's like saying "How can you say Lord of the rings is great, when that chapter where they're at the Entmoot is SO slow". Yes there are a couple of books in the middle that do drag a touch (although I have to say on the re-read I found them far easier to read, I may have just been a bit too young for them the first time around), but they're a small part of a far larger story and the greater story is just that, Great.

[Deleted]

Because as an overall series it IS great. When dealing with a series that has a total page count in numbers bigger than are calculable by modern super computers, you CAN'T really take them as individual books, you have to look at the series as a whole.

It's like saying "How can you say Lord of the rings is great, when that chapter where they're at the Entmoot is SO slow". Yes there are a couple of books in the middle that do drag a touch (although I have to say on the re-read I found them far easier to read, I may have just been a bit too young for them the first time around), but they're a small part of a far larger story and the greater story is just that, Great.

I'm sorry but we're talking a good third of the series at least here which is almost insufferably dull and bloated. Not just a chapter here and there. And I haven't read the last third, could easily be just as bad if not worse. And that isn't even getting into stuff like the excessive description and terribly sexist female characters. To me, Wheel of Time was a charming little Tolkien imitator which Jordan got cocky about and decided to blow it up into the bloated mess it is today. The first few books still hold some of that charm, the rest does not.

[Gallahadd]

Ah, see I think there's your problem: You've not read the ending, how far did you get? Because the last books are freaking AMAZING. I hate to say it... But when Brandon Sanderson took over the series hit new hights for me. Jordan's writing started to drag, but Sanderson takes the core of his work and trims off all the excess.

[AeneasBK]

While its my favourite series of books probably, if you struggled to get past the first few chapters it's probably not for you.

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Ah, see I think there's your problem: You've not read the ending, how far did you get? Because the last books are freaking AMAZING. I hate to say it... But when Brandon Sanderson took over the series hit new hights for me. Jordan's writing started to drag, but Sanderson takes the core of his work and trims off all the excess.

He does make it a "little" bit too conversational in style sometimes I think. Atm just halfway through 14 again, and some of the lines there make me cringe with their... cliché. But mostly does a great job

[Arthas242]

Ah, see I think there's your problem: You've not read the ending, how far did you get? Because the last books are freaking AMAZING. I hate to say it... But when Brandon Sanderson took over the series hit new hights for me. Jordan's writing started to drag, but Sanderson takes the core of his work and trims off all the excess.

jordan him self was a better writer, but i see what you mean because the series is very very long so it did kinda slow down, brandon wrote the last few books based on all of Jordans notes though. and i guess he had enough notes for 3 books when it was designed to be the final book before he died, which is why brandon wrote 3 books instead of one.

[AeneasBK]

I'm sorry but we're talking a good third of the series at least here which is almost insufferably dull and bloated. Not just a chapter here and there. And I haven't read the last third, could easily be just as bad if not worse. And that isn't even getting into stuff like the excessive description and terribly sexist female characters. To me, Wheel of Time was a charming little Tolkien imitator which Jordan got cocky about and decided to blow it up into the bloated mess it is today. The first few books still hold some of that charm, the rest does not.

In a world in which for 3000 years some men have been going insane and destroying everything around them, 3000 years preceded by "The Breaking" of the world by other insane men, in which whole mountain ranges were formed or flattened... it kinda makes sense that there would be a strong misandrist streak among the women...

And another point regarding the pace: I think it slows down when its unfamiliar to you, having read it through a couple of times, I found as I was much more easily able to reference events and characters as they appeared, the pace didn't seem to slow at all. When you're interested in several of the story arcs, and they spend 2 chapters dealign with a completely new story arc, it seems like "wasted time" in a way; but once you understand the significance of allthe events in the context of the bigger picture, there isn't any of that "wasted time" so the pace doesn't slow down as much.

[Deleted]

Ah, see I think there's your problem: You've not read the ending, how far did you get? Because the last books are freaking AMAZING. I hate to say it... But when Brandon Sanderson took over the series hit new hights for me. Jordan's writing started to drag, but Sanderson takes the core of his work and trims off all the excess.

I got to Crown of Swords. But it's irrelevant. The ending could be the most amazing ending to any series ever, and it wouldn't change the fact that the prior books weren't very good. It would raise the average grade of the series, but not enough to make it great. After all, what use is an ending if I don't care about what's being ended? It's three books of simplistic Tolkien imitation and then 4 books of boring faux-political thrillers. Then it's a few more books which I hear are also similar to books 4-7 and then the Sanderson Books.

Another thing I hate - Ta'veren. I mean I've got to applaud Jordan for having the gall to invent them, but has there ever been a more disgustingly lazy and contrived plot device in the history of literature? I suppose he thought he was being terribly clever.

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In a world in which for 3000 years some men have been going insane and destroying everything around them, 3000 years preceded by "The Breaking" of the world by other insane men, in which whole mountain ranges were formed or flattened... it kinda makes sense that there would be a strong misandrist streak among the women...

I don't mean that the female characters are sexist (they are, but that's not the complaint). I mean that the female characters are all sexistly written. I feel kind of hypocritical for using the word bitchy, but that's really the best word to describe them. They're all incredibly bitchy and abrasive.

[Rennadrel]

The first several books are really good. Path of Daggers was the last good one that RJ did to be honest, people seem to have a love hate relationship with Winter's Heart but I enjoyed it quite a bit. Crossroad of Twilight and Knife of Dreams were brutal reads though, the Perrin heavy story arc was a rough read.

[Gallahadd]

Oh wow you only got to Crown of Swords... Yeah ok, you haven't even hit the part that I thought was bad . I thought everything up till around Winter's Heart was good, then Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight dragged pretty hard, as well as maybe the first 1/2 of Knife of Dreams, then Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight and Memory of Light (basically, the ones written by Sanderson) are all freakin AMAZING.

And yeah the female characters are a touch stereotypical... But there are FAR worse writers out there for that (I'm looking at you Terry Goodkind), frankly MOST fantasy series solely written by men are pretty bad for writing believeable female characters, it's not a surprise that most of the series written by "men" that have decent female casts were actually co-written by females.

I disagree about Ta'veren though, it's a fairly common fantasy trope, you can't REALLY just call out Jordon for using it.