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api call girl posted:It still tickles me in all the right spots that the boss there is a fire-breathing dragon wielding the holy grail facing the knights of the round table. Oh for fucks sake! He is, isn't he?
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Oct 5, 2014 21:10
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Oh for fucks sake! He is, isn't he? Yep. Demandred got a little of his wish, he'll steal a little piece of "the Dragon's" legacy.
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Oct 5, 2014 23:55
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:After the first few times, I imagine they'd just have a heron, bull, river, etc. shaped logo flash across the screen for a second, maybe with a title scroll across the bottom. Rand uses Heron Wading in the Rushes! It's super effective! The perfect combination https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z3reZWYdZ0&t=304s
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Oct 6, 2014 19:53
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api call girl posted:It still tickles me in all the right spots that the boss there is a fire-breathing dragon wielding the holy grail facing the knights of the round table. Oh gently caress off how did I not notice that.
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Oct 7, 2014 13:54
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Rereading "I'm not Aiel, Lord Barthanes, and I'm not of the royal line, either." Oh Rand  Also I'm stunned by how early Tallanvor is mentioned and that Jordan goes as far as to demonstrate him having a thing for Morgase in the first book. Oh, that and that Moraine knows Aviendha's undo a weaving trick in the first book.
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Oct 15, 2014 19:10
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I just started on this series. So far I'm really not impressed. Our generic white male protagonist starts off as a humble peasant son. To the surprise of absolutely no one the demonic forces of the dark lord burn his village and kills his father (he gets better). Before he dies, his father bestows upon him a magic sword™ and vague references to a mysterious past and a great destiny. He then joins the fellowship of the magic girl, in company of So far it's been a pretty standard Fighter/Mage/Thief Dwarf/Orc/Elf RPG of a story. I'm half way through the first book and I hope things begin to pick up soon.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:23
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Zephyrine posted:I just started on this series. So far I'm really not impressed. It might help somewhat to remember that he wrote the first volume in the 80's and it was a product of its time. Having a female Gandalf figure was relatively innovative then, for example. That said the story does have some legitimately interesting elements even today. I think the most profitable reading is to look at the story as a reaction to Viet Nam, in the same way that the LotR was a reaction to WWI -- there are lots of elements of insanity, PTSD, the saviour protagonists' severe political unpopularity, etc.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:38
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Keep in mind the series started at the height of Piers Anthony and other generic 80s fantasy dominating the genera. A lot of the stuff in the first book are gentle subversions of standard tropes, or the beginnings of such. You will be shocked at some of the characters and plot lines set up in book one that don't really come into play until a few books later.
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Oct 17, 2014 20:39
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Daedalus Esquire posted:Keep in mind the series started at the height of Piers Anthony and other generic 80s fantasy dominating the genera. I'll give it 4-5 books to draw my interest but this generic goody-two-shoes protagonist is wearing me down. Also since I started reading this book. I've drank more tea in a week than I have in the last 6 months. It's always making me think of tea.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:11
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Zephyrine posted:I'll give it 4-5 books to draw my interest but this generic goody-two-shoes protagonist is wearing me down. If you don't like it by the end of the third book you won't like it at all. It probably peaks around book IV-V, starts to decline with book 6, has a deeeeep valley of bad around book 10, then picks up again and the concluding volumes are good again.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:17
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The first book for sure basically rips off the entire plot of Lord of the Rings, start to finish. Then he runs out of plot points to steal and starts coming up with his own stuff. Not that he totally breaks loose from generic fantasy tropes of course but yes things do get a lot more original. I should point out, the series also has this whole theme about how legends change in the retelling. So one way to interpret the first book is as "the real story of Lord of the Rings." Jordan keeps this ambiguous, probably in case it is just too silly for some people (as opposed to say, Arthurian myth, where his references are much clearer) but I'm sure it crossed his mind more than once. Fake edit: Rand does not continue to be a "goody two-shoes" forever, let me just tell you that. Actually most or all of the main characters get a lot of development, but of course the pace is fairly glacial so you will have to suffer for a while. There will always be some characters you want to stab though; Jordan is very good at writing obnoxious people. McNerd fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Oct 17, 2014 |
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Oct 17, 2014 21:29
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:If you don't like it by the end of the third book you won't like it at all. It probably peaks around book IV-V, starts to decline with book 6, has a deeeeep valley of bad around book 10, then picks up again and the concluding volumes are good again. Book 6 was my favorite in the series for a long time, but book 7 has a very sharp decline in quality. 7-8-9-10 are all slogs, but 11-12-13-14 are amazing, so you kinda just have to grit your teeth and accept that the payoff for the slog is worth it.
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Oct 17, 2014 21:47
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4 is still my favorite, just sayin'.
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Oct 17, 2014 22:39
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Zephyrine posted:I'll give it 4-5 books to draw my interest but this generic goody-two-shoes protagonist is wearing me down. You'll be fine. Just take it with a grain of salt and remember that the first book needed to be a little generic and dated by our standards because when it was written fantasy wasn't really a genre synonymous with quality. Each of the goody two-shoe farm boys will grow up fast in very different ways, as will (most) of the girls. Lan will get cooler and divert pretty hard from what you think of him now, and you'll gain a lot of respect for Moraine as more then just "Girl Gandalf." Your current issues with the novel will go away pretty quickly.
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Oct 18, 2014 00:26
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Kaninrail posted:Book 6 was my favorite in the series for a long time, but book 7 has a very sharp decline in quality. 7-8-9-10 are all slogs, but 11-12-13-14 are amazing, so you kinda just have to grit your teeth and accept that the payoff for the slog is worth it. Book 7 is actually quite good, and 8 isn't that bad, but it is kind of slow and suffers from one of the worst plotlines in the series. 9 at least has a really cool ending. Book 10 is the only completely bad one. A lot of it is concurrent with the end of 9 and doesn't move the plot *at all*.
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Oct 18, 2014 03:32
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Daedalus Esquire posted:You'll be fine. Just take it with a grain of salt and remember that the first book needed to be a little generic and dated by our standards because when it was written fantasy wasn't really a genre synonymous with quality. Except Elayne. You might as well be warned up front that when it's all said and done Elayne will be exactly the same petulant and indefatigably impulsive womanchild she is now. I mean even Faile finally grows up a little in the last two books. Elayne, never, ever. Fakeedit: Incidentally there's one notable male character that is also petulant, indefatigably impulsive and never grows up right to the bitter end. Fancy that.
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Oct 18, 2014 04:23
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Your enjoyment of the series (especially the later books) will also benefit tremendously from not having to wait 2 years between books. They read alot better when you can smash them out all at once.Zephyrine posted:Also since I started reading this book. I've drank more tea in a week than I have in the last 6 months. This is one of the major themes of the series. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Oct 18, 2014 |
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Oct 18, 2014 09:41
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I started them just after book 7 was released and waiting an age for the crushing disappointment of books 8,9 and 10 finished me off. Having them all available to read in a row is great as you can keep track of the legion of individuals and the numerous plot threads. People who have trouble with A song of ice and fire don't know the half of it. Due to its great length one thing tWoT does exceptionally well is interesting character development, and don't worry about Rand, he becomes a worthy protagonist, as does Mat. I am still waiting for enough time to start reading from the start. I can see where my bookmark is in knife of dreams, measuring it I have 23 inches of reading to get up to where I left off.
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Oct 18, 2014 10:34
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The Lord Bude posted:Your enjoyment of the series (especially the later books) will also benefit tremendously from not having to wait 2 years between books. They read alot better when you can smash them out all at once.
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Oct 18, 2014 10:38
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As the books went on, I found myself doing the exact same thing my friends do with Game of Thrones: Skip the parts that showcase the people and events I don't care about, and only read the chapters that have the people I do care about in them. It works wonders, actually.
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Oct 20, 2014 03:30
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Gologle posted:As the books went on, I found myself doing the exact same thing my friends do with Game of Thrones: Skip the parts that showcase the people and events I don't care about, and only read the chapters that have the people I do care about in them. It works wonders, actually. That sounds like an awful way to read a book.
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Oct 20, 2014 09:48
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Gologle posted:As the books went on, I found myself doing the exact same thing my friends do with Game of Thrones: Skip the parts that showcase the people and events I don't care about, and only read the chapters that have the people I do care about in them. It works wonders, actually. He is Da'tsang.
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Oct 20, 2014 10:27
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Zephyrine posted:That sounds like an awful way to read a book.
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Oct 20, 2014 12:28
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Zephyrine posted:That sounds like an awful way to read a book. It is, unless you glance at summaries now and then. However, it is a wonderful way to re-read a book.
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Oct 20, 2014 15:37
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nucleicmaxid posted:It is, unless you glance at summaries now and then. However, it is a wonderful way to re-read a book. Also not true, because you pick up a lot more on a re-read if you actually re-read it. Instead of you know, going straight to the bang and the boom. In other words The Lord Bude posted:He is Da'tsang.
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Oct 20, 2014 16:07
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I guess we just disagree. If I hate a chapter or a character and I skip it, I count it as a positive experience. I read for pleasure, not to analyze some literary device about a character I can't stand reading about.
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Oct 20, 2014 16:11
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You're both right in your own ways. You should never skip dialogue, but some things can safely be skipped, such as pages-long descriptions of women's clothing, or pages-long internal diatribes wherein Nynaeve elaborately blames every single problem in the world on everyone other than herself, to pick an example. In Wheel of Time these two things alone probably account for 600 pages' worth of safely skippable material, which does add up to a fair bit of your life that you won't get back.
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Oct 20, 2014 17:51
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Eric the Mauve posted:You're both right in your own ways. You should never skip dialogue, but some things can safely be skipped, such as pages-long descriptions of women's clothing, or pages-long internal diatribes wherein Nynaeve elaborately blames every single problem in the world on everyone other than herself, to pick an example. In Wheel of Time these two things alone probably account for 600 pages' worth of safely skippable material, which does add up to a fair bit of your life that you won't get back. These can be really, really annoying in the audiobooks. The break from a conversation into fifteen paragraphs of internal monologue can last several minutes, causing me to kinda forget what the characters were even talking about when they finally say their next line.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:33
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Smoke tabac erryday
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Oct 20, 2014 19:12
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Oh god, listening to anything from Wheel of Time as an audiobook would be torture.
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Oct 20, 2014 23:00
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Eric the Mauve posted:You're both right in your own ways. You should never skip dialogue, but some things can safely be skipped, such as pages-long descriptions of women's clothing, or pages-long internal diatribes wherein Nynaeve elaborately blames every single problem in the world on everyone other than herself, to pick an example. In Wheel of Time these two things alone probably account for 600 pages' worth of safely skippable material, which does add up to a fair bit of your life that you won't get back. Oh, come in now, Faile being captured by the Shaido Aeil took up waaaay more time than Nynaeve being unable to accept she causes her own problems. One of my favourite things is how Tuon dismisses everything people around her say as barbarian superstition yet pays huge attention to her own omens and portents, and all her omens and portents were just the worst ones possible, all the time. She kind of reminds me of Daenerys's Dothraki handmaidens in ASoIaF, repeating incredibly retarded common wisdom as though it were fact. "It is known."
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Oct 20, 2014 23:30
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Eric the Mauve posted:Oh god, listening to anything from Wheel of Time as an audiobook would be torture. I went through all 14 books via audible, and yeah, I loving hate Elaine chapters now. I also have no clue how to spell anyone's names
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Oct 21, 2014 00:56
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Eric the Mauve posted:Oh god, listening to anything from Wheel of Time as an audiobook would be torture. I actually kinda like it. I originally listened to EoTW on cd to occupy myself during a long solo roadtrip a few years back. I missed out on the awesome maps but I knew how to pronounce the character names at least when I then got into the books. And this year I've started going though then with audible at work, I just finished TSR this morning actually. But yeah, there are certainly some annoying bits. The readers pronouncing some things differently, 15 minute long internal monologues in the middle of conversations, etc. Arrath fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 02:31
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Eric the Mauve posted:You're both right in your own ways. You should never skip dialogue, but some things can safely be skipped, such as pages-long descriptions of women's clothing, or pages-long internal diatribes wherein Nynaeve elaborately blames every single problem in the world on everyone other than herself, to pick an example. In Wheel of Time these two things alone probably account for 600 pages' worth of safely skippable material, which does add up to a fair bit of your life that you won't get back. Those are integral parts of the wheel of time, and I enjoy them all greatly. I don't listen to audio books but I have read the series in it's entirety (aside from the Sanderson books that hadn't been written yet during most of them) at least 15 times in the past 12 years. The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Oct 21, 2014 |
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Oct 21, 2014 02:37
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Zephyrine posted:I just started on this series. So far I'm really not impressed. Haha, this is so similar to my post in this thread after reading the first book. After the first book, it stops copying LotR beat by beat and grows into its own. To me, it became more enjoyable, but definitely had its own problems. I can't imagine how some of you felt after waiting years for one of these books to be released, then having to read about Elayne and co dicking around some city or a circus for hundreds of pages.
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Oct 22, 2014 14:45
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Professor Wayne posted:Haha, this is so similar to my post in this thread after reading the first book. After the first book, it stops copying LotR beat by beat and grows into its own. To me, it became more enjoyable, but definitely had its own problems. I can't imagine how some of you felt after waiting years for one of these books to be released, then having to read about Elayne and co dicking around some city or a circus for hundreds of pages. I wouldn't blame him for ripping on LOTR so much if I had liked LOTR in the first place. I forced my way through LOTR last year just so that I could say that I had read them but by god did I not like those books. In LOTR a significant scene can be passed in half a page. Meanwhile indept descriptions of the characters eating can take up dozens of pages. What kind of food it it. How it was prepared. Where it came from and how it stands up compared to all the previous food eaten so far. Not to mention page after page of song lyrics.
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Oct 22, 2014 15:31
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Professor Wayne posted:I can't imagine how some of you felt after waiting years for one of these books to be released, then having to read about Elayne and co dicking around some city or a circus for hundreds of pages. Zephyrine posted:Meanwhile indept descriptions of the characters eating can take up dozens of pages. What kind of food it it. How it was prepared. Where it came from and how it stands up compared to all the previous food eaten so far. I'm confused. You guys act as if these are all bad things. The pacing of WoT is one of the best things about it, the in depth descriptions and stuff is what makes it such an immersive world. Maybe I'm just weird for enjoying scenes of characters going to seamstresses and picking out nice dresses?
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Oct 22, 2014 15:46
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Zephyrine posted:I wouldn't blame him for ripping on LOTR so much if I had liked LOTR in the first place. I forced my way through LOTR last year just so that I could say that I had read them but by god did I not like those books. In fairness Tolkien was actually good at writing song lyrics. One of the really wince-inducing things about a lot of fantasy novels is excruciatingly bad poetry/lyrics being woven in (I love you, Brandon Sanderson, but you can't write poetry or lyrics. Please stop. Or at least find someone at BYU that can help you.)
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Oct 22, 2014 16:37
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The Lord Bude posted:I'm confused. You guys act as if these are all bad things. The pacing of WoT is one of the best things about it, the in depth descriptions and stuff is what makes it such an immersive world. I don't approve of skipping chapters about characters you don't care about. It bothers me when people skim entire books in an afternoon. And I firmly believe that everyone should take the time to read things like Tolkien's songs. But by the fifth book. my eyes would glaze over every time I saw a paragraph describing what women on the street wore or what the air smelled like during lunch or when Rand met a group of nobles with lengthy descriptions. That last one was one of the worst for me. I spent so much time learning nobles' names during Rand's conquering days and looked for them to scheme in the background. I'd say about 90% of them never showed up again in any form.
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Oct 22, 2014 17:21
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I've finished reading the first book of War and Peace and I have to admit it felt like Jordan's style seems a lot like Tolstoy's.
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Oct 22, 2014 17:29
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