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OhFunny posted:I really enjoyed the chapters where Rand vision walks through the history of the Aiel. Such strong worldbulding with just snippets of moments. Every section was a tragedy, but so pivotal historically. It is really neat to see things weaved together. Such as the Aiel and Tinkers sharing a common connection.
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Sep 22, 2023 21:46
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Yeah the aiel are good. You think they are fremen at first but he goes and makes them unique
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Sep 23, 2023 04:02
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euphronius posted:Yeah the aiel are good. You think they are fremen at first but he goes and makes them unique Basically answers the question of 'what if the fremen were more fleshed out and super funny?' Knife of Dreams, chapter 20 "The Golden Crane flies for Tarmon Gai'don"  Absolutely insane how much better this book is than the previous four.
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Sep 26, 2023 16:48
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Crossroads of Twilight is killing me. I think this may be the end
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Sep 27, 2023 02:15
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euphronius posted:Crossroads of Twilight is killing me. I think this may be the end I have 100 pages left. It’s been my least favorite since maybe Eye, but mostly the dead middle of it. I enjoyed the beginning and it gets more interesting once they get off the Elayne and Faile chapters.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:21
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Power through, dudes. It’s absolutely worth it. Prologue of Knife of Dreams immediately sets a new tone. Glad I powered through, but I don’t think I’d have missed much if I had just read the synopsis of 9 and 10 on Library at Tar Valon.
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Sep 27, 2023 03:01
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euphronius posted:Crossroads of Twilight is killing me. I think this may be the end You are allowed to . . . .skim
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Sep 27, 2023 03:06
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euphronius posted:Crossroads of Twilight is killing me. I think this may be the end Seriously, read a summary and move on to the much better Knife of Dreams. You're almost finished with the slog.
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Sep 27, 2023 03:40
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Finished CoT last night and man even the ending is kind of a letdown. Just a limp chase so Mat can allow a soldier to shoot a fleeing prisoner and Egwene getting captured. No cool showdown, no great battle, nothing. Glad to be through it.
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Sep 27, 2023 13:02
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Soul Glo posted:Finished CoT last night and man even the ending is kind of a letdown. Just a limp chase so Mat can allow a soldier to shoot a fleeing prisoner and Egwene getting captured. No cool showdown, no great battle, nothing. Glad to be through it. Yeah, a little more oomph on those last two plot points could have salvaged it a little. Just ends on a big nothing.
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Sep 27, 2023 18:38
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100 pages into Knife of Dreams, and already more has happened than in the entirety of Crossroads of Twilight. we’re back, baby.
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Oct 2, 2023 18:28
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Sanderson is not loving around, and I'm here for it. Everything in the first third of The Gathering Storm has been (re)stating their purpose going forward and/or moving the plot along. The prose is not as interesting and a little inconsistent from the previous books, but not to the point of it being Just finished chapter 16, and wow Egwene rules now. Her telling Eliada what time it is was an all-time WoT moment.. She might be my favorite character at this point.
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Oct 10, 2023 22:04
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Pretty cruel of Jordan to give me like 250 pages of good poo poo in Knife of Dreams to start off and then slap 100 pages of Elayne’s frustrations at court before I can get back to the good stuff, imo
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Oct 10, 2023 22:13
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81sidewinder posted:Sanderson is not loving around, and I'm here for it. Everything in the first third of The Gathering Storm has been (re)stating their purpose going forward and/or moving the plot along. The prose is not as interesting and a little inconsistent from the previous books, but not to the point of it being The vast majority of Egwene sequences in TGS were either directly written by Jordan or mostly written by Jordan. They absolutely own bones. The Rand sequences were all mapped out but less of them were totally Jordan, Sanderson worked on those more.
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Oct 11, 2023 00:22
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Soul Glo posted:Pretty cruel of Jordan to give me like 250 pages of good poo poo in Knife of Dreams to start off and then slap 100 pages of Elayne’s frustrations at court before I can get back to the good stuff, imo KoD is an improvement, but still has a LOT of Elayne
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Oct 11, 2023 02:01
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81sidewinder posted:
The best chapter in the series other than the Rhuidean time gates imo.
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Oct 12, 2023 22:01
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I skipped the rest of crossroads knife of dreams is amazing so far. Thanks for recommending
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Oct 14, 2023 23:41
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81sidewinder posted:Sanderson is not loving around, and I'm here for it. Everything in the first third of The Gathering Storm has been (re)stating their purpose going forward and/or moving the plot along. The prose is not as interesting and a little inconsistent from the previous books, but not to the point of it being I'm through chapter 46 now, and this was taken to another level. Maybe because I just read it, but this is probably my new favorite part of the story. Verin's last words, the siege at the tower, Bryne and Siuan finally take the next step, Gawyn shows up but he's just kind of there - it all rules so much. Then, we get to the chapter of raising her to Amyrlin for everyone -just a nuts run of putting the story all together The Aes Sedai cheering for her at the end after she addresses the reunited tower, hoo baby what a payoff  Curious to see how Elaida fares with the Seanchan Absolutely insane that there are still five chapters left. Obviously needs to be something big to follow all of this.
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Oct 16, 2023 18:15
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It really is such an exceptional series of bangers and payoffs many many books in the making for those plotlines, it's so much fun.
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Oct 16, 2023 18:42
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What is the general consensus on Sanderson? I'm 2/3 through Towers of Midnight and I've been really impressed. The way we have the Perrin and Egwene plots run parallel and touch up to each other was extremely cool He's not perfect on knowing the correct tone for all characters (Mat), but I have enjoyed it quite a bit.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:00
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81sidewinder posted:What is the general consensus on Sanderson? I'm 2/3 through Towers of Midnight and I've been really impressed. I think overall people really appreciate that he picked things up and held himself to be as true to Jordan as he could be, including increasing the book count. He's not Jordan, but he was pretty much the next best author to finish the series. I wish he had done even more, but totally understand that he didn't because there weren't notes for it, and he didn't want to invent things whole cloth in someone else's series. I liked his WoT books so much I've moved on to reading the Cosmere and have been enjoying the ride quite a lot.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:16
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Yeah I just got to the first Mat chapter in the first Sanderson book and it reads wayyyy more quippy than anything before it. I don’t know the split about how much Jordan had written for these books, but that was the first chapter that felt off.
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Oct 27, 2023 23:22
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Different people have different takes. For me he's basically Well Meaning Step-dad. I give him credit for doing as well as he did, but he's not "real."
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Oct 27, 2023 23:23
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Overall: Excellent finish to the series. He has a different way of describing and writing everything in comparison to Jordan, so it is a noticeable switch. The main complaint is that he missed the voice on Mat in his first book. Some of the roughest parts in the books were apparently based on drafts that Jordan had written but not revised and that subsequently weren't revised enough. Some people complain about Sanderson leaning a bit too much into "creative" uses of the One Power, but Jordan did some of that in previous books as well - Sanderson just leaned into it a bit more. A really excellent breakdown of the Mat "voice" and how Sanderson missed it in his first book is in the Neuxue first time reader blog about chapter 20 of The Gathering Storm. Obviously spoilers there. Verdict: Probably the best possible author to finish the series. The other author (very briefly) considered for finishing the series was George RR Martin. Bullet dodged there. DTurtle fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Oct 27, 2023 |
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Oct 27, 2023 23:25
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Hahah they’d still be waiting for him to wrap up The Gathering Storm if GRRM got it
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Oct 27, 2023 23:26
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I was happy Sanderson took over because we could be sure he was going to keep poo poo moving along and draw things to a close in the most satisfying way he could. I honestly don't think Jordan could have finished the series in as many books with as brisk a pacing.
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Oct 28, 2023 00:14
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Soul Glo posted:Yeah I just got to the first Mat chapter in the first Sanderson book and it reads wayyyy more quippy than anything before it. I don’t know the split about how much Jordan had written for these books, but that was the first chapter that felt off. This is the most egregious chapter, and without it I don't know how much it would have been on my mind Hieronymous Alloy posted:Different people have different takes. For me he's basically Well Meaning Step-dad. I give him credit for doing as well as he did, but he's not "real." Great analogy because it works on a few levels. You pick stepdad apart because he's not dad, and dad can get away with much less effort because he's dad. dwarf74 posted:I was happy Sanderson took over because we could be sure he was going to keep poo poo moving along and draw things to a close in the most satisfying way he could. Yeah, we're probably waiting for book 20 right now if RJ didn't have his illness.
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Oct 29, 2023 00:31
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Soul Glo posted:Yeah I just got to the first Mat chapter in the first Sanderson book and it reads wayyyy more quippy than anything before it. I don’t know the split about how much Jordan had written for these books, but that was the first chapter that felt off. When I got to the "making up elaborate backstories that will obviously be utterly unimportant" part in my reread I felt like I was straight-up reading a Brooklyn-Nine-Nine script. It was funny, just so out of place.
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Oct 29, 2023 01:08
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dwarf74 posted:I was happy Sanderson took over because we could be sure he was going to keep poo poo moving along and draw things to a close in the most satisfying way he could. IDK about this. I think it would have been 2-3 books tops. He was aiming for one 2,000 page book, but it likely would have been split into two. I don't think Jordan would have had the last battle sequence be quite as long, that was entirely a Sanderson thing. He did the one extra long chapter (9 hours in the audiobooks) to make the reader feel the characters exhaustion, which is a cool idea tbh. With AKoD starting to knock the dominos over it was all clearly coming to a close.
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Oct 29, 2023 03:48
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Got to the part in The Gathering Storm where Rand nukes the palace where Graendel's hiding out. I'm interested to see how this whole business with the Seanchan pans out after they attack Tar Valon. They're picking a fight they know is gonna piss him off, and he has the strength to literally just toss their entire conquested region back into the ocean. I'm guessing they'll succeed in loving up the Tower, which pushes the Aes Sedai to come together, and rather than a big fight resulting from that, Rand actually does just vaporize a large percentage of Seanchan and they break towards him. Still not sure how the prophecy of him bowing to Tuon/Fortuona plays out, because he's written way too strong to lose whatever fights coming with them. Also guessing about The Towers of Midnight that one of the towers is Ghenjei where Thom, Mat and Noal go in and rescue Morraine, who rejoins Rand and brings him back from the brink of his inhumanity. Very ready for her to re-enter the story, see where everything has gone since she disappeared and be like WHAT THE FUUUUUUCK. Also feel better about these obvious Sanderson chapters with Mat after that first one that was off-key. They feel a lot closer to the older stuff now.
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Nov 1, 2023 15:59
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Finished Towers of Midnight - this had it's moments and I really enjoyed it, but it wasn't on that insane level that Gathering Storm hit at times for me. Mat and Perrin got their big payoffs. Very cool moments, but it just wasn't the same blockbuster moment that Elayne got in the previous book. Very interested to see how all these different storylines converge - that seems to be one of Sanderson's strengths the way that he blended Egwene's nightmare about being collared again wiht Perrin's wolf dream hunt - probably my favorite moment in this book
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Nov 1, 2023 19:57
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A Memory of Light, Chapter 26 The Egwene and Fortuona showdown, hoo baby. Egwene saying 'bitch, I will put you in the ground' had me cheering, haha She remains my favorite character by a mile.
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Nov 6, 2023 19:53
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Egwene is an absolute raging badass for the last few books.
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Nov 6, 2023 20:18
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I was digging through some of my dad's books and found "The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan & Teresa Patterson that I didn't know he had
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Nov 6, 2023 21:19
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It doesn’t make everyone invisible, or invisible in the same way. Even Frodo can be seen by some others while wearing it
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Nov 7, 2023 19:20
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euphronius posted:It doesn’t make everyone invisible, or invisible in the same way. Even Frodo can be seen by some others while wearing it Wrong thread, nerd! :p
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Nov 7, 2023 19:27
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Amazon-produced crossover special where it's revealed that Tolkien's Middle-Earth is actually just Earth, in an age long past / yet to come...
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Nov 7, 2023 21:44
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A Memory of Light, Chapter 36 About to start The Last Battle, wish me luck
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Nov 8, 2023 19:30
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Make sure you have a ready source of caffeine.
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Nov 8, 2023 19:39
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Finished the book - listened to the epilogue on the commute to work this morning. I have some thoughts, haha. OneSizeFitsAll posted:Egwene is an absolute raging badass for the last few books. She was my favorite part of the story, and I don't think it's close. The Flame of Tar Valon at the end Racing Stripe had a solid post when they finished, so I'll jump off of some of that Racing Stripe posted:
Absolutely - super fun ending, and Sanderson did an excellent job on the whole Racing Stripe posted:
Egwene actually being more of a main character Hugely improved the story, she went out like an absolute boss. Died like an absolute boss - the real main character of the story, imo Racing Stripe posted:
The Foresaken were a missed opportunity. Too many of them, too many names, too little sense of who they were and what they wanted. Demmandred was an absolute badass in AMoL, but I wish we'd have built to that moment more. Lanfear's turn to 'help' Perrin was way too short as well. The false dragons and the foresaken should have been like 5-6 characters, not 15. Racing Stripe posted:This might seem crazy to say, but I think it should have been longer. After 500 (?) pages of battle (I don't know, I read on Kindle) the denouement felt rushed. I wanted a little bit more of a look at what the characters were going to be doing for the rest of their lives. This is also me just not wanting it to be over, but it felt like after the battle was won, we got a two-page check-in with all of our favorites and that was it. This is not crazy at all - the epilogue alone could have been 100 more pages. Racing Stripe posted:Also, what are we to understand about Rand's body switch? He carried Moridin out of the cave and did a Mirror Mists on the both of them, and either talked to his girlfriends about it or they could tell because of the bond, and Alivia was in on it too somehow? That's all fine, but Nynaeve spent days trying to heal him without detecting the subterfuge? This needed to be eliminated or fleshed out. Way too short as it was. The body switching was kind of explained, but the riding into the sunset just felt super odd considering how the previous 2000 pages of the story went. Also, we never really got an actual reason why Rand needed three women in his life, but then he walks off wearing a mask hiding from all three? IDGI. Just leaving him dead would have made more sense to me here. Racing Stripe posted:Who killed Asmodean? Yeah, this sucked. Should have been a huge payoff, but I had to google what happened - the info was presented in such a subtle way and it was clearly a re-write from RJ's original idea. The way that Logain, Taim and Rand never really had a major scene together is a drag. I also read that RJ wanted Demandred to be Taim, but he changed it becasue the fandom guessed it. That would have been a huge moment and added a little more spice to the last battle. Ultimately, Sanderson did an outstanding job converging the ideas RJ had presented but there were just too many characters to pay off all of them Very satisfied with the series as a whole, but I actually hate the slog even more after finishing now because there are so many things I wish were spent more time on. The Black Tower drama (and a bunch of other extremely cool things) going on basically offscreen while we spent time with Elyane in the bath and Mat getting sexually assaulted is my biggest gripe. A- final grade for me on first read. Already planning on which arcs I'm going to read again.
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Nov 10, 2023 18:45
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