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Hello and Welcome to my first time reading through the Wheel of Time series, I've loaded all 14 of the books onto my Kindle. Starting with The Eye of the World, and going through A Memory of Light. Wish me luck as I go through and read an epic fantasy series, where men are treated as cucks, and women hold their rightful place in the world, as leaders. Look forward to anyone joining me on the journey Through The Wheel of Time!
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Oct 31, 2021 21:10
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So far, I've gotten through the Prologue and the First Chapter, my thoughts on the Prologue will be in this post. PROLOGUE - Dragonmount So we're introduced to basically the two big energies in the book series, or at least so far, The Light and the Dark. The Light being represented here by Lews Therin Telamon, and the Dark by Elan Morin Tedronai. The setting is at the end of something gone terribly wrong, obviously, everything is in shambles. As we read further on, we realize that Lews Therin Talamon's blasphemy is what killed everyone and leaving it seems most of the valueables in place. After all some talking back and forth about a bunch of things, finally landing on the Light vs Dark conversation and then Lews Therin "Travels" is the word tehy use in the book, and becomes a mountain, thus laying a Shadow on the World.
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Oct 31, 2021 21:30
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Didn't start with the prequel, "New Spring"? Anyway, I'm going through for my second time since like 15 years ago. Let me know when you start tugging your braid in frustration, or smoothing your skirts nigh-constantly
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Nov 1, 2021 02:19
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mercenarynuker posted:Didn't start with the prequel, "New Spring"? New Spring starts with like a four page deep dive in the history of the POV character's suit of armor while he's in the middle of a battle without a single hint about who the guy wearing it is or why anyone should give a poo poo about him. Skipping Book 0 is a wise choice.
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Nov 1, 2021 04:11
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Oh neat! Threads like this are always great! We have a lot of old readers of this around here but not many new ones. Glad to see you. And yeah don't start with New Spring -- it's best read somewhere later on in the series. You can also arguably skip the "Ravens" prologue in Eye, it was added in for later Young Adult editions and wasn't part of the original publication.
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Nov 1, 2021 19:02
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But also the "ravens" chapter is p cool and fine and is worth revisiting later if you've skipped over it. I sorta feel like it is more interesting later once you know who our core characters are.
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Nov 2, 2021 22:47
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Good luck! My last re-read was back in 2019, I believe. It was really good.
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Nov 4, 2021 00:11
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would it be ok if we sent other first time readers to this thread and made it a general "new WoT readers" thread, or do you want to keep this one for your own readthrough? Either one is good!
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Nov 5, 2021 16:53
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Anyone can join in
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Nov 6, 2021 06:50
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I am also a wot first timer and its ok. 51% of eotw.
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Nov 6, 2021 17:41
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As new readers you don't know how lucky you are - I well remember waiting years for some of the books to come out. This is my all time favorite series of books. I have 2 pieces of advice for new readers 1 - as previously mentioned do not start with New Spring, I'm sure everyone has their own views but personally I wouldn't read it until after Book 6 at the earliest and probably best left until after you have read through the full series. 2 - Stick with it. For me Book one is relatively slow compared to some of the others and it takes a little while to get going. (Just as an aside Book 3 is my favorite). Later in the series some of the books can be a bit heavy going but as you get to the end of the series you understand the need for all the detail in there. I have read the series more times than I can recall and still find extra foreshadowing etc every time I read through. Good luck and happy reading.
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Nov 8, 2021 15:14
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Andoman posted:As new readers you don't know how lucky you are - I well remember waiting years for some of the books to come out. This is my all time favorite series of books. I have 2 pieces of advice for new readers I did pretty good up until book... 11 or 12? then the delay between books coming out led to me just getting burned out on the wait. Not true this time, I just went and bought books 13 and 14! My one regret is that the covers aren't the full majesty of Darrell Sweet's artwork like the rest of my collection is. And as for the foreshadowing, you're absolutely right. There were things mentioned in passing that I completely did not realize got introduced, even vaguely. And a lot of that stuff actually came down the pipe a lot sooner than I remembered as well.
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Nov 8, 2021 15:28
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OP Here, I'm up to Chapter 9 in Eye of the World, and it finally feels like something is happening. Granted it's only the second day in the book, yeah there's a lot of detail in this book. Anyone who is at this same point, what do you think it is about Rand al'Thor that the Myrddraal wants with them?
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Nov 8, 2021 20:05
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Well up to 64%. So it's as obvious as his name. He's having fever where I'm up to. As obvious as if his name where Randog Het That's sort of a spoiler. He and his friends are special.
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Nov 8, 2021 20:48
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Bookmarking this one because I'm insanely envious for someone being able to dive in to the series for the first time.
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Nov 11, 2021 02:36
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I don't want to add more here because I'm far ahead, but I've just started book 6 now and I'm having a great time. Listening to a couple of hours of the audiobooks every day and I'm always surprised by how fast the books go by. Seems wild thinking about how much story is still ahead with what's already happened so far, but I was already feeling like that 2-3 books in. Toast King fucked around with this message at 12:25 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 12:16
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Toast King posted:I don't want to add more here because I'm far ahead, but I've just started book 6 now and I'm having a great time. Listening to a couple of hours of the audiobooks every day and I'm always surprised by how fast the books go by. It was really interesting being at about book 6 or so when these first came out as we had no idea how long the series was going to be so you were only about 80% sure at that stage that the book in your hand wasn't the last in the series (until you read it obviously). An then when RJ sadly passed it was guaranteed that the series would be finished although his wife made a pretty early statement that RJ had outlined the remaining plot so that the work could be finished.
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Nov 11, 2021 14:56
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Finished the first book and it was good, on to the second and...is the sword thing a stealth retcon? I am not a big fantasy reader and will read those that are the highest rated. A lot of the prose tends to be overtly portentous, rather than playful/ironic which I prefer. There were few moments of levity in the first book, so the castle chapter (2?) With Rand trying to hide is a good sign that the second won't be as dread serious. Is this the case? An example of prose style I enjoy would be Slow Horses series by Mick Herron. I'm sure my ailing father will enjoy this series, if he hasn't already, he liked Malazan and I couldn't finish the first one.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:39
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Collateral posted:
There's more comedic moments yes but also more melodrama too. I feel like there's a big comics / anime element to the series overall. Sometimes it's cartoony comedy, sometimes it's cartoony melodrama.
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Nov 11, 2021 19:44
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Toast King posted:I don't want to add more here because I'm far ahead, but I've just started book 6 now and I'm having a great time. Listening to a couple of hours of the audiobooks every day and I'm always surprised by how fast the books go by. Maybe just tag your posts? It's the spoiler policy I'm used to using, saying something like: [TSR] [spoiler spoiler spoiler] if you're talking about something only people who have finished The Shadow Rising should see, or cite a specific chapter if you're talking about a particular thing from that chapter. Collateral posted:Finished the first book and it was good, on to the second and...is the sword thing a stealth retcon? I'm not sure what you mean by sword thing. Is it this: [The Great Hunt, Chapter 1] You mean the thing about Rand's sword being made by the ancient Aes Sedai in the Age of Legends? That's not a retcon, I think. Back in the first book, chapter 5: quote:When the shaft fell free, he looked at the sword blade in wonder. Even the best-sharpened axe would have dulled chopping through that hard, aged wood, but the sword looked as brightly sharp as ever. He touched the edge with his thumb, then hastily stuck it in his mouth. The blade was still razor-sharp. As for writing style, one of the things I always think about The Wheel of Time is that it's hilarious. But I feel like it takes a while to get there? It's a lot of playing around with the characters' lack of self-awareness, and the narration sticking strictly to point-of-view writing, so you only get a character's view of themselves and have to infer how ridiculous or creepy they're being. The first book is a lot more serious and straightforward than the later books. It might just be that the comedic style requires a lot of familiarity with the characters and the world for the style to work, and so it can't come in to play until after you've gotten that. I haven't read a whole bunch of the epic fantasy stuff that preceded The Wheel of Time, but I'm told that for people who have, WoT's first book feels like more of the same, while the second book is a sudden "oh poo poo you're doing something different, this is cool." I always characterize the first three books as The Opening Trilogy, and claim that the series proper starts in book four. (This is, of course, ridiculous, given that I'm saying the series starts 2,200 pages in, but  .)But: if you liked the first book, I recommend the second, and would enjoy reading your thoughts about it.
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Nov 11, 2021 21:13
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Vavrek posted:
Close to what I think except I say it really gets going in Book 3
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Nov 11, 2021 21:17
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There's one new character POV in book 3 that quickly become the comedic highlight of the series
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Nov 11, 2021 21:20
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Vavrek posted:Maybe just tag your posts? It's the spoiler policy I'm used to using, saying something like: [TSR] [spoiler spoiler spoiler] if you're talking about something only people who have finished The Shadow Rising should see, or cite a specific chapter if you're talking about a particular thing from that chapter. Yeah I think the good policy is that this is the thread for spoiler tags code:
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Nov 11, 2021 21:54
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I just finished book one, and found it pretty great, but also extremely PG. not that it’s a bad thing, but it really felt like a single notch above YA fiction. Is this more or less the tone for the rest of the books?
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Nov 12, 2021 05:20
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If you're talking sexuality, things get allusory at most. Suggestive without ever really going into detail. Think going into a bedroom in a movie then fade to black. If you're talking violence, then that gets a little more graphic later. There are several "fade to black" moments, but still definitely some atuff shown "on screen", as it were. If you're talking language, well burn me, but this mother's milk in a cup gets about as blasted a bloody bollocks as the Dark One's own eyes
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Nov 12, 2021 05:40
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meanolmrcloud posted:I just finished book one, and found it pretty great, but also extremely PG. not that it’s a bad thing, but it really felt like a single notch above YA fiction. Is this more or less the tone for the rest of the books? minor spoilers, nothing really major: its never really a song of ice and fire or anything, most sex stuff is just fade to black. your protagonists at this point in the story actually come from a very conservative and prudish part of the world, and this is made clear as you see more backgrounds. the violence can be quite graphic at times and rj really does an excellent job of selling the point of view of a soldier in battle. but yeah, mostly it's in the pg-13ish range or even just pg; all swears are things like "bloody ashes" and "mother's milk in a cup" type stuff.
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Nov 12, 2021 05:49
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meanolmrcloud posted:I just finished book one, and found it pretty great, but also extremely PG. not that it’s a bad thing, but it really felt like a single notch above YA fiction. Is this more or less the tone for the rest of the books? Things also shift slowly over time as the books move on. The first book is pretty intentionally.. Not quite simple and easy, but, narrow in scope and depth compared to how the series later expands. I think the best way to put it is that a beginning like this makes the depths that some of the later books descend to much more impactful. There are a ton of moments later on that will hopefully leave people going "holy poo poo how in the hell did we get here after where we started out?". There are very very dark moments in the books, but for the most part they're psychological and not GoT style excessive gore/rape/torture. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Nov 12, 2021 |
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Nov 12, 2021 05:59
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the first book is very 'lord of the rings' in tone, intentionally so to where the author has directly said as much so it could onboard people a bit better, but the series expands out to be more adult in various ways in following books purely just because it fully grows into what it wants to be. a common recommendation is to at least give it through books 2 and 3 to get more of a feeling for the tone.
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Nov 12, 2021 12:18
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meanolmrcloud posted:I just finished book one, and found it pretty great, but also extremely PG. not that it’s a bad thing, but it really felt like a single notch above YA fiction. Is this more or less the tone for the rest of the books? Glad you liked the book! I feel like The Wheel of Time has an entirely unearned reputation as the PG/PG-13 version of A Song of Ice and Fire. I haven't read ASoIaF or seen Game of Thrones, so I can't really comment on it directly. But: as mentioned, the language used is full of curse-substitutions. Other than that, ... actually, I haven't really read any recent YA stuff. It might be a decent comparison. Anyway, my point: The Wheel of Time has plenty of scenes of nudity, plenty of sexually active characters, a habit of fading to black when the sex begins, and also a ton of gruesome violence both in battle and torture. But the thing is, the narrative voice doesn't linger on it. The narrative isn't here to give you all the horrifying/salacious details. It's something I'm curious to see the show handle, because there are a number of scenes I think would deserve an immediate R if translated directly to the screen. I'd compare or contrast it with what HBO did ... if I'd seen GoT. However, the full impact of what you're reading about only comes if you think about it, try to visualize it. I think my first time through, I just... didn't do that as strongly as I do now. I hope you keep reading the series and sharing your thoughts with us. My brain is broken and I am constantly obsessed with The Wheel of Time, and new-reader reactions are delightful.
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Nov 14, 2021 02:55
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Vavrek posted:Glad you liked the book! I've been kinda thinking about this. I think the big split is that "YA" wasn't a whole separate genre in the same way thirty years ago when Eye of the World came out. Harry Potter and Twilight really shifted that landscape in a big way. So when Eye came out it was being written for, basically, ages twelve and up inclusive. The other big shift is that fantasy written for adults, post-WoT, really shifted heavily towards "grimdark," ultraviolence, and cynicism, largely due to the influence of Song of Ice and Fire and other similar works. So when Eye was written, it both was generally "cleaner" because fantasy fiction generally was "cleaner" across the board and because it was aimed at least in part at "young adult" readers (though not in the way that a "ya" book would be today). So reading Eye of the World today, it feels very innocent and very "youth audience", partly because everything else adult has gone much darker, and partly because it was written in a time when the fantasy genre generally was much more "innocent" in tone than the post-GoT fantasy market is.
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Nov 14, 2021 03:24
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I've been kinda thinking about this. That's interesting. I'm reminded a bit of a post I saw (someone's blog? a tumblr? somewhere) arguing that the Animorphs novels were distinctly not YA, but were children's novels. (For those unaware, the Animorphs books are about child soldiers fighting a guerrilla war and if you asked me which had more hosed-up content in it between Animorphs and The Wheel of Time I would stare into the distance for a few minutes before giving the medal to Animorphs.) Part of the explanation was that what is meant by YA fiction, post-2000, wasn't really a thing in the mid-90s when Animorphs (and Harry Potter) started. The other part, relevant for The Wheel of Time, is the transition from youth to adulthood. By the end of Animorphs, before the epilogue, the characters are ... still children. In Harry Potter, you watch characters go from being children to being young adults, relating to some of their former teachers/guardians as fellow adults, albeit young ones. In The Wheel of Time, Mat Cauthon is allegedly twenty years old (I swear to god: I actually wrote "ten" before seeing what I'd done and hitting backspace) but it's hard to believe it based on the first few chapters of The Eye of the World. You start with characters that are technically adults, but haven't yet (save Nynaeve) actually taken up adult roles in society. You get a very similar journey into adulthood, mixed with becoming worldly. And then, you know, it's like book four or six or eight or something and you've still got the rest of the series to go. (It'd be difficult to say when the characters feel like they become "adult" both for its own sake and because it's at different places in the series depending on the character.)
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Nov 14, 2021 04:20
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Started reading the series a couple months ago, just got to the Sanderson trilogy, which I theoretically read The Gathering Storm once before, but remember NONE of. It is like Uncanny Valley WoT. I recognize all the pieces (some better than others), but the discrepencies really stand out Minor "character who gets introduced a little later" spoilers Aviendha is going on and on about honor like she's Worf in a youtube compilation
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Nov 14, 2021 04:59
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Is it just me or is there a tenancy for these types of tales to have heroes be 10 ft tall and handsome as mountain range, the heroines to be as beautiful as a daybreak etc. Just once can a heroic dowdy frump get some of limelight? Someone with lovely hair...
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Nov 14, 2021 17:59
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Everyone in The Wheel of Time is staggeringly hot, not just the heroes. I'm not sure of a fantasy novel with a protagonist that looks distinctly just ... like a normal person. A lot of the Discworld books. The Hobbit. (Normal for hobbits, anyway.) Not The Lord of the Rings. (I bet Frodo was eye-catching in some way.) Other books that're coming to mind are specifically children's novels, about children, so it doesn't apply. The lovely hair comment does make me think of Anita Blake, whose narration always says "I look ... fine. I'm an okay looking person. Great hair, though." Eventually, I glanced at the photo of the author inside the back cover and thought "You do have great hair."
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Nov 14, 2021 21:47
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Vavrek posted:Everyone in The Wheel of Time is staggeringly hot, not just the heroes. Frodo was, in fact, described as having an Elvish look to him, iirc.
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Nov 14, 2021 23:50
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Vavrek posted:Everyone in The Wheel of Time is staggeringly hot, not just the heroes. Every now and again someone in WoT gets described as homely but yeah mostly incandescent beauty. Which presumably means everyone is actually pretty normal looking if you think about it - in a world where nearly everyone is stunning then stunning becomes just ordinary surely?
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Nov 15, 2021 12:22
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mercenarynuker posted:Started reading the series a couple months ago, just got to the Sanderson trilogy, which I theoretically read The Gathering Storm once before, but remember NONE of. It is like Uncanny Valley WoT. I recognize all the pieces (some better than others), but the discrepencies really stand out There are parts on the Sanderson trilogy I hate - especially some of the parts meant to be funny, its like he tries a little too hard. Overall though, hats off for picking up the mantle and seeing it through to the end - could have been a real poison chalice for an author who has a good reputation in his own right.
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Nov 15, 2021 12:26
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So is gentling what I think it is  ? Poor logain, they should have killed him.Oh look, it's another fantasy land with gunpowder and no bloody guns. I get that it's a contrivance but authors should never underestimate peoples dreadful inventiveness when it comes to being nasty to other people. Or the scientific method when applied to mass murder. Somebody fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Nov 15, 2021 |
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Nov 15, 2021 15:30
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Collateral posted:So is gentling what I think it is In early drafts yes it involved literal castration but that got changed in editing. There is an in-universe explanation for the lack of gunpowder weapons There is a fireworks guild that shows up later and it turns out they've been murdering anyone who uses gunpowder for anything without guild oversight and permission.
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Nov 15, 2021 15:36
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There is an in-universe explanation for the lack of gunpowder weapons There is a fireworks guild that shows up later and it turns out they've been murdering anyone who uses gunpowder for anything without guild oversight and permission. Considering the amount of lives lost to gun violence they're the biggest heroes of the series 
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Nov 15, 2021 15:44
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