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AlternateAccount posted:Seriously. The first 400 pages were 392 pages of trolloc fighting, flanking, line holding, pike whatever, it was terrible. I feel like the 'four armies' bit should have been in Towers of Midnight, and then Memory of Light should have had them gating their army as close as they could to the Dark One's prison (protected by a Dream Spike), and a final battle there while Rand & co. deep strike somehow. AlternateAccount posted:Second, the whole Pevara/Androl business... Yeah, this was weird. The whole Black Tower arc felt truncated and underdeveloped, but this was as much Jordan's fault as anyone. He had plenty of time to go there. I feel like there should have been another male chaneller view point character fairly early on in the series who we could have followed at the Black Tower. The part Pevara played should have been played by one of the other main character Aes Sedai running around Nynaevae, Siuan, somebody. AlternateAccount posted:And personally I really wanted Rand, Mat and Perrin to have some kind of conversation together at the epilogue :[ I took it for granted that we'd get one of these before final showdown. Was sad we didn't. When was the last time they were all together? The Stone of Tear in book 3? Fintilgin fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jan 20, 2013 |
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Jan 20, 2013 00:47
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evilweasel posted:That's pretty cool, I'm glad we get that backstory. I'm more interested in that than Slayer, which is who I'd assumed it was. Well I don't know how much to trust it, but it would indeed be nice. I feel that there could easily have been 100 pages less of TROLLOCS and 100 pages more of character moments instead. Even that might not have been enough. The Black Tower arc felt tacked on and took up a lot of early space, as cool as it was it should have gotten its own book dedicated to it. Would have left more room for stuff like a proper epilogue, but I can of course see why they did it this way (RJs notes/drafts seemed to have been shakey enough as it is). RJ kinda went off on a tangent way back and started focusing on a whole lot of not-even-secondary-plot threads, with the things like the Black Tower and some of the Forsaken suffering for their lack of development instead. Not Sandersons fault, and I think he did well enough with what he had, trying to write several books in another authers "voice" is hard enough on its own, can't really work with something that's not there. Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Jan 20, 2013 |
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Jan 20, 2013 00:49
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Finally it's over. I started reading this series in my teens and now I'm done. Can't say I'm that dissappointed with the book - it's on the same level as the other books in the series I think. However, with the exception of the prologue with Talmanes the read wasn't that good. Also. It's actually really nice that Demandred has been doing his own thing all along just building his power base and not revealing himself until the end. He's drat smart, doesn't take unnecessary risks and doesn't have the need to reveal himself... and then he starts acting like a freak having epic anime duels inviting the possibility of dying. Now that's one way of introducing a character, showing what a smart person he is to immediately destroy the same character. It makes the character to be not very credible. EDIT: Also, the whole Black Tower thing is just silly. The way it has served as a breeding pit for Dread Lords it's not credible that no one has noticed nor done anything about it through the whole series.
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Jan 20, 2013 00:54
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^^ Demandred was using the True Power rather heavily to fake being the Wyld. Batshit insanity and megalomania(see Ishamael thinking he really was the DO back in Book 1) is par for the course. He is as brilliant as always. Just nuts. Pimpmust posted:Well I don't know how much to trust it, but it would indeed be nice. I also doubt anyone but RJ himself could have done better on this, there was a seriously absurd amount of things to bring to closure, and it clearly could have easily gone on for 2 more books after this.
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Jan 20, 2013 05:59
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Just finished, and goddamn. "I came here to kill you. Death is lighter than a feather."   Olver and the Horn saved by Noal  Completely unexpected for me. Egwene rocking M'Hael So many emotions ran crazy while reading this book. So many moments made me smile so big, so many parts gave me chills reading, and others just flat out had me bawling like a baby. I think a few days to sit on this book would do me some good so I can make some coherent sense of my actual feelings about it. I was a little disappointed about Logain but mainly because I spent the entire book waiting for him to do something completely badass. I guess saving a bunch of innocents is cool, just unexpected. Great glory indeed...way to redeem male channelers in the eyes of the commoners.
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Jan 20, 2013 08:10
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veekie posted:^^ Yeah, the Black Tower Arc really should have run parallel to the White Tower stuff, preferably beginning several books back. Instead we get this weirdness where Rand seem to ignore the whole thing and Logain just disappears offscreen after what, KoD? "Oh btw, really should do something about that Taim guy" :shrugs: But yeah, at the normal RJ pacing we would still be waiting for the final book like 5 years from now. A drat shame we won't be getting the outrigger novels though 
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Jan 20, 2013 09:45
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Just finished this book. There's a lot I feel could have been done better with it, but overall I am happy with how things turned out in the end. Although, Rand waking up in Moridin's body was completely unexpected, not really sure how that one worked. Also, the Trolloc battles went on a poo poo ton more than necessary, although I was pretty happy that the Sharans finally made an appearance in the series. Too bad nothing ever happened with the Land of Madmen.
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Jan 20, 2013 13:24
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Did anyone else notice that the speech Rand gives to Tuon about his past power pretty exactly matches Ishmael's comment to Lews Therin in the the EotW prologue? I though that was a pretty great callback.
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Jan 20, 2013 16:25
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The Baroness posted:Did anyone else notice that the speech Rand gives to Tuon about his past power pretty exactly matches Ishmael's comment to Lews Therin in the the EotW prologue? I though that was a pretty great callback. Yes I did notice that. I was pretty psyched when I read it.
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Jan 20, 2013 21:45
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Hmm, I thought Elaida was the Damane helping Mat with the viewgates, but on reread that was apparently just some random Damane named Mika, not Elaida/Suffa. Would have been neat otherwise 
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Jan 20, 2013 22:19
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I think people are missing the great glory of Logain bit. Nobody said he had to achieve it before the books were over. With Taim and co dead and Rand out of the picture he is set up to be the leader of the Black Tower. Given how long people who wield the One Power tend to live, he has entire lifetimes where he's going to be in charge of a fledgling organization of incredibly powerful channelers. It's easy enough to assume that "Logain, first true (probably not M'Hael anymore huh) of the Black Tower" will be one for the history books.
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Jan 21, 2013 01:25
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Eldercain posted:I think people are missing the great glory of Logain bit. Nobody said he had to achieve it before the books were over. With Taim and co dead and Rand out of the picture he is set up to be the leader of the Black Tower. Given how long people who wield the One Power tend to live, he has entire lifetimes where he's going to be in charge of a fledgling organization of incredibly powerful channelers. It's easy enough to assume that "Logain, first true (probably not M'Hael anymore huh) of the Black Tower" will be one for the history books. I think his glory might have been achieved when he saved the refugees from the Trolloc attack, and changed peoples minds about male channelers. But that could just be my view.
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Jan 21, 2013 02:33
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Sedgr posted:Ugh. I fell down the rabbit hole pretty bad today trying to logic my way through figuring out the various ages. The end result has charts and graphs and I think it's just made me cross eyed and given me a headache. I don't think this is a productive line of thought. To me, the idea that our world exists somewhere within the age cycle is cool enough, I don't feel the need to pin down the sequence of events. This is not to say that one shouldn't, I've just never seen an explanation of ages before the age of legends that added anything to the story for me.
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Jan 21, 2013 02:38
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MoreLikeTen posted:I don't think this is a productive line of thought. To me, the idea that our world exists somewhere within the age cycle is cool enough, I don't feel the need to pin down the sequence of events. This is not to say that one shouldn't, I've just never seen an explanation of ages before the age of legends that added anything to the story for me. Pretty sure we were supposed to be the First Age. See: Firey lances of Merk and Mosk, and the Mercedes symbol in the museum in Ebou Dar.
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Jan 21, 2013 05:27
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Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my picks for the worst sentences from A Memory of Light: From page 53: He felt like a multi-legged nachi trapped in a dried up tidal pool, waiting desperately for the water to return while watching a group of children work their way down the beach, gathering up anything that looked tasty. From page 447: The beasts yelled, howled and screeched depending on the orifice they'd been given. From page 576: Still, bedding down here was like trying to sleep while a murderer stood beside your bed, holding a knife and contemplating the color of your hair. From page 769: The beasts ran behind with howls and yells. And on page 227, the grand prize winner: She had a mature face, aged and wise, with a wise look about her and a smile on her face. ---- I definitely enjoyed the book, but the majority of the prose read like a first draft. I don't blame Brandon. I doubt it was his fault this one was so rushed. Most of the prose issues were stretched, silly metaphors or structure variation flaws that should have easily been fixed. I realize WOT isn't exactly high literature, but Jordan had pretty good standards when he was alive. MartingaleJack fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Jan 21, 2013 |
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Jan 21, 2013 06:06
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Synastren posted:Pretty sure we were supposed to be the First Age. See: Firey lances of Merk and Mosk, and the Mercedes symbol in the museum in Ebou Dar. I didn't mean that the information isn't there, I just thought that trying to string together a timeline in the Wheel of Time is a little counterproductive.
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Jan 21, 2013 06:10
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BananaNutkins posted:Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my picks for the worst sentences from A Memory of Light: I'm guessing many of those might have been from parts that Robert Jordan wrote himself? TOR seems to have wanted to leave those "as is", but maybe they were just sloppy too (plenty of Sandersisms in the book too). I definitely got the feel a few times that the book just lined up WoT phrases/things and didn't really use them properly. Like hitting up an encyclopedia with WoT-terms and throwing them on a page to see what sticks. Someone described Robert Jordan's notes as being in a completely different style from the "finished product", much more "then this and this happened" or "and he sees this thing", so I can imagine that his first/second drafts of the scenes in question didn't have quite the ...gravity as if he'd gone over them until he considered them done (and the book would probably have been 200 pages longer just from that ).
Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jan 21, 2013 |
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Jan 21, 2013 06:32
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BananaNutkins posted:Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my picks for the worst sentences from A Memory of Light: These are all so horrifically bad and I remember all of them. Honestly, I blame Sanderson, since these things remind me a LOT more of odd, bad sentences in STORMLIGHT than they do Jordan's prior work. Whoever was doing the editing really appeared to be incapable of saying THIS IS poo poo, REDO IT.
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Jan 21, 2013 07:16
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BananaNutkins posted:
Oh drat, I guess I skipped over that line somehow and I'm glad I did. That's absolutely horrendous. The kind of quality line you would expect from a Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction written by a 14 year old. Who was that describing?
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Jan 21, 2013 07:32
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BananaNutkins posted:Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my picks for the worst sentences from A Memory of Light: Your list seems to be lacking "Avi, you're a gem!" Which is probably the worst thing in the book. Nobody has ever referred to Aviendha as Avi before, and I can't imagine anyone in Randland using the phrase 'you're a gem'.
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Jan 21, 2013 07:32
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AlternateAccount posted:These are all so horrifically bad and I remember all of them. Honestly, I blame Sanderson, since these things remind me a LOT more of odd, bad sentences in STORMLIGHT than they do Jordan's prior work. Whoever was doing the editing really appeared to be incapable of saying THIS IS poo poo, REDO IT. Actually, the bolded part is what makes me think it's probably some of Jordan's leftover notes that leaked through. There would be a certain unwillingness to mess with his words.
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Jan 21, 2013 07:37
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The Lord Bude posted:Your list seems to be lacking "Avi, you're a gem!" Which is probably the worst thing in the book. Nobody has ever referred to Aviendha as Avi before, and I can't imagine anyone in Randland using the phrase 'you're a gem'. Brandon does hang out on Reddit quite a bit...
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Jan 21, 2013 07:37
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The Lord Bude posted:Your list seems to be lacking "Avi, you're a gem!" Which is probably the worst thing in the book. Nobody has ever referred to Aviendha as Avi before, and I can't imagine anyone in Randland using the phrase 'you're a gem'. I almost included that one. It's like she's suddenly channeling Lucille Ball. Another thing that really bothered me is when successive sentences start with a characters name. I don't have the book in front of me for a specific example, sadly. I assume Sanderson does it for clarity purposes, as it mostly occurs in scenes where there are lots of characters around. I think he hates pronouns or something. It's not that hard to figure out who's doing what through context, and the effect it has on the prose is...ugly.
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Jan 21, 2013 12:43
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Now that you mention it, I have to agree. Some of the prose in the novel does seem a little rough around the edges, in ways that The Towers of Midnight, and the Gathering Storm, were not. I would have thought those two would have demonstrated this trait more, given that they were the first ones Sanderson had a hand in. I've been reading Sanderson's other work, including The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive series), and the prose doesn't stick out in my mind as unwieldy or poorly flowing, so it does seem a bit of a mystery why A Memory of Light turned out like it did. Very odd.
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Jan 21, 2013 13:01
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My biggest problem with Sanderson has always been the use of the word "ain't" for the peasantry. None of the commoners in WoT have ever used that word in the Jordan era, and reading it in WoT now makes them sound like American hillbillies. It's like putting a cheese grater to my brain.
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Jan 21, 2013 16:29
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ShadowCatboy posted:My biggest problem with Sanderson has always been the use of the word "ain't" for the peasantry. None of the commoners in WoT have ever used that word in the Jordan era, and reading it in WoT now makes them sound like American hillbillies. It's like putting a cheese grater to my brain. http://idealseek.no-ip.com/IdealSeek.cgi?q=ain%27t
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Jan 21, 2013 16:39
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There was also some guy who "telegraphed his emotions".
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Jan 21, 2013 16:53
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My favourite Sanderism is still "Tempestuous" to describe emotion, preferably on the same page as the word Tempest shows up to describes an effect or action. Granted, I read the Way of Kings back to back with this book so all those writing quirks stood out more than they did when I read The Gathering Storm or Towers of Midnight. Coming off the high of the 900 page Sanderson Avalanche that was this book there's a lot of little nibbles that keep popping up in my head, from prose to how certain events played out, not necessarily in outcome, but how they were presented. Writing a 900 page monster of a finale book to a series like this in the relatively little time Sanderson did it might have had something to do with it, because the Way of Kings seemed a lot more polished (Even with higher density of Tempests ).
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Jan 21, 2013 17:00
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veekie posted:Actually, the bolded part is what makes me think it's probably some of Jordan's leftover notes that leaked through. There would be a certain unwillingness to mess with his words. I think veekie has the right of things here. I remember reading somewhere (this thread, probably) that Jordan's own prose started out rough and was then edited to a fine polish. That combined with the previously-mentioned sanctity of the stuff Jordan did write likely combined to create some of the more awkward sentences. As to why it's more prominent now, I'd write it off as Jordan having written more of the final third than either of the first two books. The last time I remember people really up in arms about stuff not sounding like Jordan was the Tower of Ghenjei scene, and it turned out that Jordan wrote it.
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Jan 21, 2013 17:07
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Huh. Well color me wrong.
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Jan 21, 2013 17:54
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The Lord Bude posted:Your list seems to be lacking "Avi, you're a gem!" Which is probably the worst thing in the book. Nobody has ever referred to Aviendha as Avi before, and I can't imagine anyone in Randland using the phrase 'you're a gem'. I absolutely hated this piece of dialogue and really wish it didn't exist. Also, I just watched Snatch for the millionth time the other night, and now it makes me picture Elayne saying that to Cousin Avi. Dialogue redeemed.
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Jan 21, 2013 18:26
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lDDQD posted:There was also some guy who "telegraphed his emotions". What's really funny is that I don't know if I ever would have noticed how meticulous Jordan was with his prose in the earlier books if the later ones hadn't had these lacunae.
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Jan 21, 2013 18:27
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Yeah, I have to wonder if some of the jarring dialogue/descriptions were due to the more rough interleaving of Sanderson and Jordan for this one due to a much higher percentage of Jordan-written content. Or to put it another way, its much easier to write around and polish material when you're just working off an outline or a few sentences, but trying to work in a half finished chapter (or a mostly written one that hasn't seen much/any editing passes) with a mandate to preserve the original material would probably strain anyone. I'm overall pleased with how it turned out, regardless.
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Jan 21, 2013 19:05
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I think he and Harriet did edit Jordans work, but obviously they were going to go lighter on that to preserve as much Jordan as possible. Sanderson did mention he'd cut up or rewrite Jordan sentences. However, I imagine it's a lot easier to be merciless on editing bad sentences when you can get new ones from the author.
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Jan 21, 2013 19:15
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lDDQD posted:There was also some guy who "telegraphed his emotions". "Telegraphed" doesn't refer to the technology. The word literally means "pictured from a distance"; in other words, when you telegraph something then it's obvious just by looking at you.
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Jan 21, 2013 19:18
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Jedit posted:"Telegraphed" doesn't refer to the technology. The word literally means "pictured from a distance"; in other words, when you telegraph something then it's obvious just by looking at you. That may be technically correct but I'm pretty sure it's a word that never appeared in the Jordan books. Anyway it's a weird nitpick to make about this line of criticism since there are definitely many other vocabulary mistakes. One that I've been noticing ever since the first Sanderson book, but I'm not sure if it's real or a figment of my imagination, is that I think in the first 11 books the characters said "blood and ashes" and then they started saying "bloody ashes" instead. Whether that one's real or not, I did feel like there was an overuse of "bloody" and an underuse of "Light!" in general in this book. I don't know why but the improper fake cursing gets me the most.
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Jan 21, 2013 19:44
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Fake cursing done properly is the most important part of any wholesome fantasy/space opera setting  (Unless it's supposed to be super-gritty shades of grey stuff where everyone is shouting gently caress! like it's going out of style)
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Jan 21, 2013 19:58
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erezaka posted:One that I've been noticing ever since the first Sanderson book, but I'm not sure if it's real or a figment of my imagination, is that I think in the first 11 books the characters said "blood and ashes" and then they started saying "bloody ashes" instead. I think you may be getting confused with Mat starting to say "Blood and bloody ashes!" as he gets increasingly vexed.
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Jan 21, 2013 20:08
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Jedit posted:"Telegraphed" doesn't refer to the technology. The word literally means "pictured from a distance"; in other words, when you telegraph something then it's obvious just by looking at you. Depending how obtuse you want to be "computer" likewise may, or may not refer to technology.
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Jan 21, 2013 20:19
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Jedit posted:I think you may be getting confused with Mat starting to say "Blood and bloody ashes!" as he gets increasingly vexed. No I'm saying that under the Jordan regime the standard was "blood and ashes" and the enhanced version (the MF if you will) was "blood and bloody ashes". Now it starts at "bloody ashes" which sucks. I am pretty sure I'm right about this but I haven't actually reread any of the Jordan books in a while so I could be wrong.
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Jan 21, 2013 20:26
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