@@yannickjohansson5631 indeed! Unless he disagrees with my political opinions. Then he is the enemy of my enemy who is also my enemy, making my former enemy my friend. ... That is how it works, right?
King has mentioned a few times that he felt it necessary to deviate significantly from Tolkien’s quasi-European, archaic high-fantasy mode/aesthetic, since a modern American author writing in that tradition would feel artificial. Jordan, rather than swerving away from Tolkien's influence, immerses himself in it as almost a conscious framing device, before growing beyond. I can totally see how King would find that hackneyed and off-putting.
@@muhammadhashir6136 That's... exactly my point. Eye of the World is, in its structure and tone, almost LoTR, compressed. Jordan then proceeds to do different things, but I can see how King, who lamented the prevalence of Tolkien-pastiche, would have been turned off right away.
@@Beech27 Which is almost certainly what happened, I agree. King’s hardly the only one to react that way. Jordan did this deliberately as he thought it a good idea to start in a very familiar setting before leading the reader elsewhere, but for many newcomers like King (and initially me as a Tolkien fan) this made me hate EOTW deeply as purely derivative drivel and it took me three times and the insistence of friends to reach the end of book 1. And if it were not for the fact I had bought it with EOTW, I would not have picked the TGH. But I became a huge fan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I think King would have come to see in time that WOT is more genre breaking and genre bending than he thought, and it’s even not without parallels to his own ideas for The Dark Tower.
You don't have to say quasi European. Tolkien intentionally made the Lord of the Rings to give Britain and Europe a developed fantastic mythology (which he accomplished). And Britain is an island of Europe, however much sense that makes.
@@DanielAbeleira That was one his initial goals, but he later said he mostly abandoned it, and that Middle-earth is an imaginative history we shouldn't try to map in any geological terms on to our own.
you can't go around burying authors that don't like your favorite books, and you definitely can't ask me for help. I won't be free tomorrow after 11, don't call me
King's strength is his storytelling. He's not a world builder, he is a scene builder. I've always believed this is why his fantasy stuff isn't his strongest. He is at his best describing mundane everyday people and places, and putting them into crazy situations. He's good at giving just enough description to paint a scene, but not slow the pace. Not really the ideal style for building entire worlds, races, etc... I do think he is one of the greatest storytellers alive, as I find myself tearing through his books, even the ones I ultimately don't like, and despite knowing that his endings are always terrible. (Baby aliens? BABY ALIENS?!)
I'm sorry but have you read the Dark Tower series? How can you read IT or Salem's Lot and say that he isn't masterful at world building? He created a mythical Maine and a series of small towns that are basically characters in their own right. And to say his endings are always terrible is fashionable nowadays but a cheap shot. The Shining has a great ending. IT has a great ending. Pet Sematary has a rad as hell ending.
@@cleeks5549 I own his complete works, and truly believe he is the greatest author alive today. I still 100% stand behind what I said. His world building is not great (compare dark tower to Tolkien, or Clive Barker for example), and his endings are terrible.
@@Crinbo I mean, I'm not alone in my opinion. He's been getting flack for his endings for 40 years. I mean, the Dome and it's baby aliens, the absolute shit show that was the end of the dark tower books, decimating castle rock at the end of needful things, and many many more... He is self admittedly bad at buttoning up a story. Still my favorite author, still read everything he puts out and still I purchase every edition in hardcover for my collection. But you'd be lying to say he writes good endings. Critics and his fandom in general greatly disagree.
@@theotherpete Haven’t read Under the Dome or finished The Dark Tower series (which I don’t think is very good in general). He misses occasionally with an ending here or there, but they’re frequently good, sometimes great, and occasionally the best part of the book. Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Roadwork, Cujo, Pet Sematary, IT, Misery, The Tommyknockers, Insomnia, The Green Mile, Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, Doctor Sleep All books that have good to great endings. And I’m only up to the early 2000s, so I’ve got dozens of books left to go.
First book is slow starting so I can understand why someone would say they couldn't read it. But about halfway into book one through the end, the series is a fantastic AND fast read.
i think it comes down to writing style. stephen king is much more precise and straightforward, while robert jordan takes a lot of time to ease into situations, take in surroundings, and get used to the setting.
Straightfoward? Really? I tried to read 4 books of him, 2 of them just started some action at page 200 (And they had a little more than 300 pages), Carrie also just has something interesting at the beginning and the end. Long walk was the only one that was really straightforward. Also what I'm saying is not even an opinion, everyone that I see reviewing his books said that he take so much time to go to action that it can make people run away from his books (I'm one of them xD).
@@vojeremia I agree, but it clearly is not how the person who wrote the comment sees "Writing Style". So I was using what they understand for writing style to make my argumemt, just read what they said once more and you will understand what I'm talking about.
@@pedrovitor5324 Just to defend Carrie a bit. If you went into it expecting action then I can see how it would be disappointing, but to me the story is Carrie herself. Her experience at home, the environment she lives in and her emotions and thoughts. That is the story the “action” at the end is not the actual story, it’s part of the story for sure but for me the real story was what brought her to that point. Why she did what she did and that is all in the first part of the book. The book isn’t called High School Prom slaughter it’s called Carrie.
Stephen king is very short (2 feet tall in real life) he didn't like wheel of time because he was jealous of rand's tallness, No I don't take any criticism.
King & Jordan couldn't be more different as people & personalities. While they are two of my favorite authors their stories aren't in the same ballpark. King's wheelhouse is exploring the depths of the human mind and the surreal. Jordan didn't care about any of that. Quite frankly he had an idea about what it would be like to be labeled the 'chosen one' and resisting that responsibility. RJ lived on that idea for 2 decades. WoT is by far my favorite fantasy series, so I'm not throwing any shade. SK's style of writing is just so different. He couldn't possibly work on one story for that long.
@@koatam That series is great, but it just follows the main characters through nuts situations as they hunt the man in black. Everything is written on the fly.
I enjoy the wheel of time books but it’s undeniable that Jordan’s writing style is not for everybody. Even as a fan I constantly find myself thinking ‘get on with it Jordan’ when reading the books. Probably not the best idea having your wife as an editor. You could easily get rid of a couple of thousand pages from this 14 book saga without losing any major story points.
IMO, Robert Jordan made a DELIBERATE decision to spend the rest of his life writing Wheel of Time. You can see this when the first few Forsaken who got killed off get 'reincarnated', thus dragging it out more. You can also see more evidence in the change of his biography "About the Author" at the same point in time. The new bio included a phrase that he intended to keep writing until they nailed his coffin shut. IIRC, it was about that time that he was diagnosed with amyloidosis (sp?)... a terminal disease. ... And then it also started taking longer for things to happen in the books.
@@Nyet-Zdyes I’m not disagreeing with you but making the decision to keep writing the WOT books until he died didn’t necessarily mean he had to just write anything, regardless of how boring and meandering it could be. Again I love the books but if it wasn’t for the fact I knew Sanderson wrote the final three I would have tapped out by book 8. Books 7 thru 11 are just horrible.
I'm almost finishing book 5 and I completely agree with you there, and I've not yet faced the dreaded 6-11 books. Half of my thoughts when I'm reading are "Get on with it!" and "why are you telling us this again, we KNOW!"
@@Luumus oh it gets so much worse lol. I hate to say this but if Jordan hadn’t have died and Brandon Sanderson hadn’t taken over I would have quit at book 8. I only stuck with it because I wanted to read Sanderson’s books.
Stop with the Fake News! the Eye of the Tower was George RR Token's masterpiece. I saw the movie - it had an *EPIC Eye* on top of a *Ginormous Tower! OMFG!*
As much as I like Wheel of Time, book one comes off as predictable, generic fantasy for a lot of it, and several of the characters come off quite unlikeable. Can't blame anyone for not getting into it right away. It took me a while to really like it. King probably just didn't get that far.
I would say it’s probably because it’s longer than the dark tower and he felt jealous, since he had prided himself on writing it and seemed to think it was a superhuman achievement
I had the opposite experience. The more I read the harder it became to stick with it. Gave up after book 4. There are elements of the story that grow tiresome after a while. A lot of the dialogue is adolescent especially between the sexes.
So I'm reading the eye of the world for the first time, and I'm not really enjoying it. I always heard that books 6-10 were the ones that were boring and kind of bad, so I like that my feelings about the first book are validated by a fan of the series lol. I'm at page 700 something out of 845, and for the moment I'm not interested in reading the sequel. The ending would have to be mindblowing to change my mind.
I really liked the first three books and the prequel, but I just couldn't imagine how the plot could possibly necessitate stretching out as far as it did and hearing that middle books are a massive slog discouraged me from continuing.
@@ManCarryingThing it seems like to me that Sanderson and King were drawing from the same well of inspiration: Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, the same well that The Witcher and Loki are drawing from.
I'd venture to guess that Sanderson is not a fan of TDT, simply because I've heard him express that he doesn't like it when fantasy stories go "too dark." Personally, I wish Sanderson's writing was darker, but then it would lose its mass appeal. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
@@nathanforrest9370 I've read it. Its got a pretty dark concept in the diseased people that can't die. But that ain't shit. In King books, people have sex with dead people, get their genitals cut off, become possessed by demons, do cocaine, and much more.
King was probably bummed out when Rand didn’t transform into a hermaphrodite coffee pot and get sucked into a black hole. Oh well, like you said we were getting spoiled there for a bit.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree that Stephen King dislikes WoT because he approaches writing differently, honestly. Like Brandon Sanderson has a very meticulous plotting approach to writing but enjoys the writing of all sorts of authors, from discovery writers LIKE KING HIMSELF to soft magic system writers and more. In fact, the only reason Sanderson quit reading A Song of Ice and Fire is because he couldn't stomach Daenerys's plotline. I think it has less to do with the different approaches to writing and more to do with general reading preferences, and I do think you can see some of their general reading preferences in the ways that they approach writing, but considering that King writes thriller-style horror I'm sure he's read meticulously plotted thrillers before, so I don't think it's necessarily approach to writing as much as general reading preference like it is for everyone else.
King and Jordan had some interesting parallels. Both were influenced by the Lord of the Rings. Both were draft age for Vietnam but King was exempted on medical grounds. Robert Jordan served two tours. Both were raised religous, but King later stepped away from religion, while Jordan remained active in his faith. And for all his success, King's standalone novels have garnered more attention than his series. They made some decisions in their careers and personal lives that took them in very different directions. Jordan took aspects of Tolkien's work that King specifically avoided and was able to make a succesful series out of them. King had a rough childhood and had some self-destructive habits as an adult, and studied English in college. Jordan served in the military and studied physics. Jordan had a lot of reasons to take a similar outlook on life and to fantasy troupes to King but he didn't. I think when you face difficult decisions in life and you see someone else who started at a similar point but made some different decisions and was still successful and happy, its hard not to question your own past choices and wonder if you made a mistake. And that's uncomfortable.
There's a scene in The Great Hunt of Rand running through a burning building that was written with such precise detail that could only have been written by someone who has done exactly that.
@gobbledygook5000 Dude he got so lost writing a series that he wrote himself into it, talking to Roland, about writing the series... King is a great thriller Writer but Jordan destroys him in fantasy fiction. No question about it. Footnote is laughable.
@gobbledygook5000 If Ta'veren is a "lazy plot device" what is Ka and the Ka-tet then? Just your opinion but for the record neither are a "lazy plot device." Both are the way each author wrote a destiny arc around their chosen one characters in a way that works for and against them throughout the series. A lazy plot device is something like finding the Artist at the very end of the story that can conveniently save one of the main characters and kill the final big bad guy before f..king off again. I'm not trying to punk the Dark tower because I loved the Gunslinger and enjoyed the rest of the series for the most part; but even with thinking Ta'veren is lazy? One offence is infinitely worse than the other. Writing yourself into a series explaining to the main character why finishing the series has been hard?? Come on now!? If you don't like fantasy fiction, then you probably won't like Robert Jordan or the Wheel of Time so I get it... But I never saw Jordan pull some self indulgent, 4th wall BS like that at the expense of his story and then trash another writer that smoked him in the genre! that's some crazy, coked out behavior! I genuinely like them both.... and though King may well be a Goated Horror/Thriller writer, Robert Jordan is one of the greats of Fantasy Fiction and King should give him his flowers or STFU!
@@robwest2813 Everyone praises Jordan's worldbuilding but no one in these types of discussions ever seems to praise how he writes characters or how engaging his writing style is. More often than not, people describe getting through his books as entertaining sometimes and a chore at others. Say what you will about King, but his writing style isn't one that lets people zone out while reading. His stories always have motion in them. I don't think Jordan is necessarily a better fantasy writer just because he sticks to established fantasy norms, while King leans more into what can almost be described as urban fantasy.
Not everything is too everyone's taste. I am completely unable to read Tolkien's writing, but I'm really glad Peter Jackson could. It's just personal taste.
same here, even after the first LOTR movie I said I gotta read the book now, but just couldn't, even knowing what was happening it was just too much work keeping up with the "new" words and all. Same with Dune I really worked to read the first book then said no more. With Wheel series it was much easier, and I started with book 5!
Stephen king deep dives into personal psychology and the influences of the individual, Jordan deep dives into how personal psychology is extrapolated into sociology and social institutions, and how social dynamics influence the world and eventually back onto each individual in a shared history.
As someone who has studied psychotherapy and then did a degree in anthropology and sociology, I totally get this, and this one comment has convinced me to read WoT.
The Dark Tower started out as a good series, but took a hard left turn following King being nearly killed due to having been run over. At that point the series took a long hiatus, understandably so. But once he got back to it, the tone had changed completely and he wrote himself into the series as, no joke, the center of his own universe. On top of that, and typical for King, the ending was completely and utterly unsatisfying
Just the sheer depth and breadth of characters in the WOT series is mind boggling. I read up to 8 books in the past and gave up due to complete confusion of who was whom. But I got my hands on the epub version of the entirety of the series which amounted to over 13,000 pages, and now am on Book 13. I am determined to finish this series come hell or high water!
Agreed. The scope of the world is massive. My favourite fantasy series DESPITE the hard slog between books 7-10. I also love Raymond Feist, David Gemmell, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson. I enjoy Sara Douglas, Ian Irvine, Terry Goodkind and Terry Brooks.. A song of Ice and Fire is one of my least favourite. I still like it. The plot is decent but the writing is very average.
@@dneill8493 I LOVE Gemmell and Eddings. Goodkind's series is too similar to the WOT so after several books, I kinda got disinterested. I read the Belgariad and Malloreon series by Eddings, and I believe I read all of Gemmell's books. He is my favourite author by far. I loved his little nuggets of wisdom that were so unexpected in sword fantasy genre. They were socially and politically ahead of his time.
I got to halfway of book 8 but stopped due to more pressing concerns as a high school student at the time. I tried continuing where I left off years later but gave up because I forgot what the hell was happening.
I'd never heard this from Stephen King, but as a Diehard WoT fan who has a hard time with Stephen's "breaking the 4th wall" style or writing... This is really interesting.
I enjoyed the start of the Dark Tower series, but I ultimately loved the Wheel of Time series far more. I'm just sad that Robert Jordan didn't live to finish it himself. Though Sanderson did a wonderful job in finishing the series out thanks to Jordan's wife and notes, I wish he could have completed his masterpiece and seen the world's reaction.
IF it bothers you when someone dislikes a thing you like: you are identifying with the thing you like. It’s become part of your ego, so therefore you feel threatened when it is challenged. This is to be avoided, folks.
I gave up Wheel of Time after 6 or 7 books, 20 years ago for one specific reason. After reading an 800 page novel I'd think back and consider what actually happened, and it turns out, very little. Another author could have covered it in 300 pages. It was good, but I was getting a third of a book.
The WoT series could have been a trilogy and still not missed much of what he wrote. I can't recall which book it was but I had waited and waited for it and then all it did was to cover what a lot of other characters did while the action from the previous book took place. I had to finish the whole series (because I apparently have psycological issues) but it was tedious and waaaay to drawn out. Maybe Jordan needed the money and was out of other ideas. I don't know. But if I knew when I started what I knew when I finished I would not have bothered.
I really enjoyed that conversation! It's always distressful when people you like don't like the stuff you like 😂. Stephen King is a darker writer. Jordan is more classic. Both are awesome!
@@EpicTalez I can understand where you're coming from. Im looking at it in the lines of big series, Dark Tower vs WoT. Scary stuff in dark tower just...isn't. and pennywise is comically not scary to me, and that's how I see alot of his monsters. His more human stuff works. I think what rand and Perrin go through, insanity and the wolves, is just as tense.
@@brt1strrbb110 this is true. Very true. I read a bunch of SK when I was a kid. Penny wise was scary to me at the time but now he isn’t. You make a solid point. He is scarier when he is writing about humans.
Based on their writings, Stephen King generally hates humanity and everything it does. Jordan displays an underlying optimism about humanity's potential.
Let’s be real. I’m currently on book 11 of WoT but it took me two try’s to get here. The books are phenomenal, but there are huge stretches of boring parts
“Why does Man Carrying Thing hate his moustache?” I’m going to make my own RUclips video with this title (not really) and there’s NOTHING you can do to stop me.
Fantasy become large genre, at the time of the 80s and 90s this term mostly covered Tolkien-copies and more experiancial works, like Discworld or the rewival of the Sword and Sorcery subgenre. King's own take on the fantasy was in fact The Stand, which isn't exactly a genre fiction, it was a mixture of pandemic fiction(I think that will come back), post-apocalyptic and supernatural thriller. I assume he thinks very little about people whose aren't trying to do something bold, or at least that was his impression about the "Eye of the World".
I dont think he "thought little" of Jordan. I simply think he didnt like the books. As there are others who doesnt, me being one of tjem. And it is not that i dont like them because im stupid, that i dont get it, that i have read too little to understand them, or have "bad taste". I simply did not like them, and can argue why im in that camp. Just as you (i presume) can argue why you Do like them. Respect the fact that others have different opinions than you, and that that is ok.
@@KamiRecca yes, you are right! I don't wanted to create this picture about King, just wanted to demonstrate how his take on fantasy may effected why didn't like WOT. Sidenote: Robert Jordan was an amazing author, but in the recent years I had a familiar experiance with Brandon Sanderson. "Mistborn" wasn't as great as people described to me, ast least not to me. His other works like Era Two or "Stormlight Archives" is amazing. Mistborn on the other hand, even I know it's good don't had as much inpact on me.
In all fairness I hated both when I first read them. But then as I started to spend time really getting into them, researching them, I began to realise how great they are. The gunslinger is so hard to get into but it’s Stephen king so I can bypass how much of an acid trip it really is and enjoy it on its own level. From book two, the series just took off and I loved it. Wheel of time, once I took the time to sit down and read it properly, made me realise how much I could actually enjoy this series. I’ve only read up to book 11 but it is something I’m enjoying and I’m looking forward to the ending. In conclusion, both series are great and both series I believe you really need to give time and commitment to to really enjoy them
@@Amethyst_Friend yeah because my opinions and perspectives changes over time and now I love them. There’s stuff I loved when I was younger and now hate
Who is the Walter Scott in this remix going "Eh, let him be, he's fine actually..." and then everyone who likes Jordan goes "That person who was the only person who complimented Jordan is actually outdated unlike Jordan"?
Lol to assume King is jealous of any other author is a BIG assumption. It just feels too much like Tolkien. I struggle heavily with the wheel of time for the same reasons. It's like a beat for beat remake similar to the new star wars.
King definitely gets jealous. I noticed that when another author's book, say Dan Brown or James Patterson, gets awarded book of the year or some other prestigious honour he normally gets vocal about it. Negatively vocal. He annoys me to no end and for a multitude of reasons I cannot stand him.
I don't know about the situation with Dan Brown, but James Patterson is the literary version of Thomas Edison. He has writing credits for over 150 books, but he barely writes any of that. He mostly offers his name to up and coming authors to help their work reach a wide audience, but he takes most of the credit. I don't know what the money split is, but I doubt it fair.
He essentially said he couldn't get into it. He didn't say it was bad or that he hated it. Think of it like film. Citizen Kane is an all time classic. A masterfully crafted film which I personally can't sit through. Doesn't mean I hate the movie or that I think its had. Just means that it wasn't my cup of tea.
Robert Jordan’s rich notes was called DUNE, from which he lifted concepts and plot points. And I’ll bet good money that in the 70s at midnight cinema a young Steven King watched Jodorowski’s El Topo several times before penning the Gunslinger.
WOT was ok for about five books, then I died out when the next was all talking. Zipping around the world to have laborious conversations, and more talking. By that point, the characters had their mannerisms set, and they became parodies of themselves. No one trusted people that they had every reason to trust, but would form quick friendships with people that should have been avoided. And the realization that there were still eight books to go. Aaarg.
I feel the same way I got to book 10 and I couldn't finish it Winter heart was not that great and crossroad of twilight was really me training my patience. It should have been called the Egwene and Elaine book With how much focus they get.
@@jayarcher3331 now I know many people may say the same thing but you quit right before it picks up again... Knife of Dreams is amazing! And from there it's like a sprint to the finish.
Since Tolkien is mentioned it should be noted Stephen King described The Stand as his American Lord of The Rings. It should also be pointed out for years The Dark Tower series was known as the unfinished series he started as a collage kid, it wasn't until he almost was killed that sat down and finished it if I remember right.
Probably outgrew his taste for Jordan's type of fantasy. I mean, there were a lot of Tolkien-clones when King was younger and he must have read and seen them all already
I can see how King would think after the first WoT book that it is a Tolkien epigone. Wonder what his opinion would be after book 3-4, though. Love them both, now I have to learn to live with the fact that one must not love the other.
@@doubletake1238 having read only up to book 4 in WoT, and i do not see the comparison. If anything, WoT to mee is a mixture of LoTR and Sinbad the Sailor stories from a thousand and one nights
There is no one more wordy than Jordan. Everything is explained too much: actions, clothes, faces, scenery... ending up stealing the fluidity of the text. it's soo boring.
Sounds dreadful, though King does it too sometimes. I'm definitely looking for authors who don't describe clothes or how the friggin wind is blowing at the moment.
I actually stopped reading Wheel of Time. The quality of writing and dialogue itself felt like the Twilight Series of High Fantasy, but the story and concept were interesting, so the story kept me hooked, while the quality of the writing itself felt amateurish. The amount of times someone can "nervously tug" on their ponytail was mind numbing. I think I made it 3 or 4 books in.
There's also the fact that Eye of the World feels very much like a Lord of the Rings reheat, and it's flowery. King doesn't do flowery, not like that. It's not really his style, and he has said more than once in his life that he simply doesn't have time to read all the books. WoT is a huge, huge series, and you have to be invested; if it just wasn't his cup of tea and he didn't like it, then I can totally see why he wouldn't commit more time to it.
He also straight-up copied some stuff from Tad Williams, which to me is the most glaring influence in GoT. I haven't read wheel of time, yet. So I'll refrain from speaking about it.
I don't think it's the pre-planning that bugs Stephen King. It's just that he says you should prioritize interesting characters in unique situations and see where the story naturally goes from there. If he felt that the characters weren't intriguing him from the get go and instead the world/story was leading things then he probably considered it poor writing no matter how great the story/world was. (If he had read further, he may he grown to love the characters too)
I've watched that interview so many times. lol. As someone who overthinks and over outlines, I'm glad to hear that Jordan was a plotter. Maybe King picked up The Eye of the World the same day he got hit by a van? If I remember correctly it was right after that, when he was in the hospital he started reading asoiaf. Maybe it had to do with pace? Perhaps if he would have read EOTW while in the hospital he would have had the patience to get through it? Maybe I'm overthinking this and should get back to reading. lol
If you are one to reread novels, id urge giving it a second go. I also very much disliked the last three... But gave it a few years and then came back to them. While i still dont love them, i appreciated them more. In general, i think that King has been such a prolific writer, that he created an archetype of fiction, and never broke out of that mold. He is who he is, and it gets tiresome to some readers, after 7000 novels.
There's really no comparison for the two. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King AND Robert Jordan and have been for decades. I can honestly appreciate what both authors bring to the table and I don't have to make any comparisons between them to be able to appreciate both. With King, there's a distinct - This could happen - in many of his books, and there's always something that reaches to the human side of people - whether it's Carrie - the teen who is bullied until she snaps, IT - the town terrorized by an evil entity that went after the children (Think serial killer types), Gerald's Game - sexual deviance and death, are all things that could happen to any one of us and his work tends to probe into the darker parts of the mind. Robert Jordan touches on that futuristic vision that digs deep into the psychological aspects of the world and the characters relationships to it. It makes you think about foreign concepts while adding a little bit of a fantasy perspective, not unlike D&D and Forgotten Realms type books. Each brings a unique and different perspective on the human mind and each has a different impact on that same mind. Just my thoughts and opinions on the subject. 😁
I think wheel of time has a pretty awful writing style. Especially with the overly dramatic and corny prologues. And while reading it it felt like it really borrowed a bit too much from LOTR. But like who doesn’t like a good story about magic and witches…. And say the character tension between Lan and just like carried the first 8 or so books. At that point I was pretty invested and just suffered through the rest of them because I felt I had grown up with the characters and 13 books is gonna give you a pretty rich and colourful world. Now Stephan Kings characters are more real. The man has mastered the art of subtlety (and various other arts). I mean he’s not much of a plot guy so there are some real stretches and dropped threads in dark tower and i’m sure he really really struggled to force closure on a thing where he didn’t know the ending himself. Both are rich universes with characters that you became friends with but King is undoubtedly a better writer if you like a well rounded character with depth and flaws. The best thing would have been if we could have forced them to collaborate. They would have hated it but the final product would have been majestic as their writing skills are opposite and they could have completed one another but yeah if you read the books you can immediately see why King would go “eyeroll” and think wheel of time is cliched and lame
Wheel of Time wasn't as planned/plotted as everyone says. Seriously. He set out to write a trilogy and we ended at 15 books. He knew the opening scene, the end scene, and some of the middle. Did he take notes? Absolutely. So did King, actually. (Those were even organized for him by an aid so he could keep his facts straight.) As a writer, you have to take notes if you're doing a series. Honestly, I keep hearing how Jordan "meticulously" plotted his series, but it wasn't that way at all. I think that's why it drags on in some bits. He got on a roll when he was writing it. I can see the same sort of stuff that I end up doing whenever I'm writing. Jordan had the experience to take something as simple as setting up a scene, and just riff on it for whole chapters. If he had meticulously plotted it out, I believe STRONGLY that the series would have been far shorter. That said, I felt his final, Knife of Dreams, was his best work. He had notes set up for one final book - so everybody says - but we saw what happened with that. Sanderson wrote the three longest books in the series. That, to me, does not sound like meticulous plotting. It's meticulous note-taking. Jordan also tended to explore every single idea, every side-track. We spend time with characters we never see again. And for all that? He also wound up with some plot holes, and lingering questions that just feel off in context of how detailed everything is. We only know what happened to Asmodeun because it was in his notes, for instance. Read Fires of Heaven again and tell me Jordan wasn't planning something bigger than a never-mentioned off-screen death. Add to that the one time his disappearance is mentioned, Rand acts like it's no big deal. There's this implication that he sent the guy out on some purpose. They formed a bond, and Rand came to trust him as far as he could trust any man that could channel. Now, it's possible Jordan realized that Asmodeun represented a bit of a plotting problem. He's a man who knew too much, and after Fires of Heaven, there was no reason he would have for not sharing what he knew. I think death became the plan due to that. I also think Jordan planned to do it "on-stage." Point it. As a writer, you get carried away. Sure, some people do plot meticulously. They tend to write the shorter books, franchise fiction, murder mysteries. I've seen folks try to apply some kind of method to writing, and the results are generally flat. It's those sidetracks, those slow scenes, the long descriptions of random tableware, that breathes life into a series. Jordan did that, and then he took notes. I'm actually trying to get better about that myself. It's frustrating trekking through a previous volume just to see if you specifically mentioned the color of someone's eyes, or who their favorite band is, or whatever. Anyways, it's just something I keep hearing and I just wanted to give some perspective from a writer' s point of view.
After binging a few of your videos, it’s just nice to hear you say you like Stephen King, because I haven’t heard you talk about him yet. Also, I haven’t read The Wheel of Time yet, I only know it as the series Sanderson finished. But now I’m a bit more tempted… and daunted.
Could it simply be that The Wheel of Time is not very good? I started reading WoT as soon as the first book came out because I loved fantasy and in 1990 it was not that many fantasy authors out there. Around book 3 I really started to dislike the writing. One thing that irritated me was how Jordan started repeating what I would term his personal clichés related to the different characters, and the whole series started to feel like a juvenile fantasy. By book seven I could not stand them so I never picked up book 8, and the Sanderson books I have not read. By the late nineties there were better fantasy books out there. My theory is that the love many feel for WoT is due to most people being kids or young adults when they first started reading them. It is like with your first love, you never quite get over her.
Naw. King likes technically sound stories. You're looking at his Dark Tower series to draw comparisons when you should be looking at his short stories. The guy is a Hugo winner. And he likes Hugo winners. Tight prose, meaning and movement, narrative cleverness and technical skill to know what to say, when to say it and what not to say. And he likes socio double-speak within the prose.
King is quite particular about writing style (I remember reading in On Writing how he put a book down because of one sentence he didn't like). Could be likely he didn't like the constantly repeated descriptions in Jordan's writing (X was always better with girls, X pulled on her braids etc)
I can understand that I have put down multiple novels, including King's just because I disliked his writing style. It's not being disrespectful, just why waste time with something you don't enjoy? As much of a fan I am of WOT, I think he does repeat himself way too often and his descriptions can be tedious.
I think it more than just style. There are elements in WOT that grow tiresome after a while. A lot of the dialogue is adolescent especially between the sexes.
I wasn't surprised upon finding this out. I read On Writing a while ago and in there, Robert Jordan is his favorite target for bad writing. I don't know why either, but I already knew pretty well he's not a WoT fan.
I just think that everyone should read the Malazan books. That is a series that does it all. Each book is different and in different styles. Depending on what you like, everyone will have their favs but the series is amazing. It's never redundant nor does it feel stretched out. Each book of the serious is a book unto itself.
The thing is that there are curre ntly 28 books in the series, that's going to turn a lot of people away. Most people don't want to read a series that's too long or spend so much money in a single book franchise. That's why Malazan is niche among fantasy and hasn't been repainted, which also makes it quite hard to find anything apart from the paperback, and even that is almost non-existent in some countries.
King got bored after Jordan wouldn't finish the series in 8 books. Yes, Jordan could have finished the series in 8 books. There's just so much nothing that happens at some points, that it would have done everyone a favor and cut the series in half.
I would argue that it already starts in book one... I stopped after the first have of book one... good world building, excellent world building even, but the character writing is terrible and the pacing ....
Wheel of time summary: “Hey I can do magic stuff”…….following 27 books “Look how much more magic I can do you’ll never get sick of hearing about it”……”By the way……would you like to learn a new Aes Sedai characters name every four seconds to never hear from them again?”……”additionally I can offer you a bridge to jump off if you don’t want to spend fifteen years reading redundant versions of the same theme until your eyes melt”
Stephen King: "Jordan just doesn't go far enough into fantasy concepts. Remember when I wrote about how all the boys in It ran a train on Beverly Marsh? Why didn't we see the Green Ajahs getting down with their Warders like that? That's why I like you George, you're all about that nookie and boobies"
I think GRRM is the better writer of the three. His words read so easily, and paint such a vivid picture. While in Jordan & Kings books I often finish a chapter, or paragraph & think "wtf did I just read?" And have to re-read it. They also can both be slogs & too much book, while Martin feels like it's never enough book.
I think it's pretty simple. They have completely opposite writing styles. I think it's also the reason I don't care for Stephen King's books, although they make some great movies.
I might be wrong, but is not the first WoT book also quite hard to get into? Like, when I tried it, I found that a lot of things were ridiculous (from the feeling that the "main group" was a boring blend of Tolkien's characters, the last "deus ex machina'ed" battle and the fact that a lot of concepts were clearly poorly disguised things, such as the Ogiers being Ogres, Trollocs being Trolls, Artur Paendrag being the King Arthur, etc.). It only got interesting to me during the second book, when we are introduced to Liandrin and how she interact with Moiraine (of course she screams "I'm the bad guy", but this created real mistrust between characters and not "bullshit mistrust" that appear out of nowhere to fuel conflict). So, in a way, I get why Stephen King had trouble getting into the WoT : it takes a while before getting interesting.
Two of the heros from old in their legends is Len and Sally, referring to two astronauts one being Sally Ride. Who rode a dragon of fire to the moon. I think that particular idea of cyclical time and ages repeating themselves is genius. That Artur Hakwing is our past, and Sally ride is theirs.
I got 3/4 of the way through Eye of the World and found it so similar to Lord of the Rings that couldn't stand to finish it. Felt like a low-rent knock-off to me. Maybe King's assessment was the same?
Yes. Robert Jordan said that he wanted to write a more realistic version of the LotR adventure. That being said WoT quickly grows out of its LotR background.
Yeah, and it gets worse - I got sucked in by these people, it's just terrible. Yay for you if you like them, but there is plenty to dislike about it - sexism, overly repetitious, and yes "I have read all this before.," also "This is everything I wish fantasy would stop doing." And on, and on. I wasted multiple books of time from these folk going "It gets better." No, for some of us, it just gets worse.
I started this video seeing the clip from the interview anticipating a really long skit... and I'm not disappointed with the video I got 💚 I've always put King not liking WoT down to his absolute love of LotR. King has put it as one of his most influential pieces of literature and with people saying the first books of WoT are a rewrite of LotR, I just assumed that rubbed King the wrong way and he never made it far enough where it starts growing for itself
Or it ould be because he simply didnt like WoT due to the books themselves. There is no law that we all must love WoT, and the books are not Good by a galactic, unquestionable truth. Taste differs. I hate them, the 4 books that i managed to torture myself through. Thats my opinion, based on my taste and reclections of it. It takes NOTHING away from your love for the books. Arguing that there must be reasons beyond that for disliking a thing on the other hand DOES take something away; namely respect for the opinions of others and/or the validation of their own reasons. Its like this. I can argue why i do not like WoT. You cannot argue why i Should like it. Only why You like it. See?
@@KamiRecca Anyone can argue anything. It doesn't make one's argument correct, but it is inaccurate to say that one cannot argue that you should like the books; one can indeed make that argument. Moreover, if everyone accepted your rules for debate, no one would ever change anyone else's mind, for the simple fact that they would all be too busy "respecting and validating" each other's opinions.
@@grotesquehead322 no, you cannot make an argument why i Should like a thing. You can make a Statement, but a statement is not an Argument. Let me try and explain this. You can say for example that a book is good because it does X (lets say "Its Action" thats the statement) but i simply need to say i dont like X in my books for the statement not to hold any weight. In short i cannot be told to like something just because you like it. We can argue if specific things are well done, like for example "it has good character development", and then expand the argument with examples and points. Then one can offer counterargument why thats not true, and expand the argument by examples and points. But you cannot argue i Should like the character development. Thats an empty statement. It cannot hold objective importance, see? So its merely a statement about your own taste and disposition. Another example: Dune. I love how its written, others dont like the style. Its said to be written in a very dry style. I can argue why I find it to be fitting for the story being told. But i cant argue that it is fitting in an Objective sense. Others simply find the style dry and boring, and they are not Wrong in an objective sense. So no, you cannot argue against personal taste, only comment and make personal statements about it. Edit: Btw are you saying we shouldnt respect each others opinions (provided they are not provocatively hatefull (like racism and sexism) or flat out testably wrong (like flat earth or ether hypothesis))? If so i guess i'll just say that you are wrong and your "argument" dont deserve to be respected. See what that does to our argumentation...
Funny, I tried to read King’s novels a few times,couldn’t fathom why people liked reading his material. I’ve read thousands of novels by different authors over the years, and I would recommend hundreds of authors over King’s.
This is funny. After reading the _thorough_ disappointment that was the ending for The Dark Tower, I didn’t want to even start WoT in case it had the same HACK ending. I’m so glad that I did!
As a new subscriber it is SO weird seeing a Man Carrying Things video without the constant satirical irony. I keep anticipating when will some twist come.
I think the Wheel of Time is just hard to read. I think that’s mostly it. Working in a bookstore showed me 50% of people who LOVE the Wheel of Time (my best friend included) and 50% who cannot even get to the second chapter (myself included). People warned me to stay away, and some said I had to read it all. It’s just preference.
Thats. Most. Books. Name me the story that kills the main character halfway through the story. I'll wait. This is another criticism thats always levied on fantasy but its just as, if not more, in other genres. Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher dodge bullets like they're neo and I dont know how many times Inspector Lynsey and Travis McGee thwarted assassination attempts on their lives and no one rolls an eye Yet Belgarion or Rand survive an orc attack by throwing a lightning bolt at them and its oh, now its hard to be engaged with them because they're bullet proof!? Is it too hard to ask for criticism thats not low effort?
Dude, that comment at the end about wanting to side with one is dead on. I immediately think "Fuck you Stephen!" and then I remember he was one of my favorite authors growing up and I've read the Dark Tower like five times. I can't side. I love me some Jordan, and I love me some King.
I mean he just said that he didn't like them. I can see why literally anyone would bounce off the wheel of time. i love them but they are not for everyone by any stretch of the imagination
I feel like King is probably a more high concept kind of guy. There is nothing really crazy or unique about wheel of time that sets it apart from everything else from the start.
George Armani's A song of spaghetti and meatballs is way better than Robin William's a wheel of semetary
No, as Robin Williams is a bloody angel and will always win.
This is cursed
Wrong
so so true
I need the andidote to this comment.
My own theory: King’s deviation from my opinion means that he’s a bad author, a bad person, and clearly a fraud.
As a person who has never read his books and never met him, I endorse your opinion.
@@yannickjohansson5631 indeed! Unless he disagrees with my political opinions. Then he is the enemy of my enemy who is also my enemy, making my former enemy my friend.
... That is how it works, right?
this commenter's deviation from my opinion clearly means they are out to get me and and hate america
I don't understand this sentence
@@ManCarryingThing Only one of those things is wrong.
King has mentioned a few times that he felt it necessary to deviate significantly from Tolkien’s quasi-European, archaic high-fantasy mode/aesthetic, since a modern American author writing in that tradition would feel artificial. Jordan, rather than swerving away from Tolkien's influence, immerses himself in it as almost a conscious framing device, before growing beyond. I can totally see how King would find that hackneyed and off-putting.
not really, only the first book is reminiscent of Tolkein, the rest of the series elevated the genre at its time.
@@muhammadhashir6136 That's... exactly my point. Eye of the World is, in its structure and tone, almost LoTR, compressed. Jordan then proceeds to do different things, but I can see how King, who lamented the prevalence of Tolkien-pastiche, would have been turned off right away.
@@Beech27 Which is almost certainly what happened, I agree. King’s hardly the only one to react that way. Jordan did this deliberately as he thought it a good idea to start in a very familiar setting before leading the reader elsewhere, but for many newcomers like King (and initially me as a Tolkien fan) this made me hate EOTW deeply as purely derivative drivel and it took me three times and the insistence of friends to reach the end of book 1. And if it were not for the fact I had bought it with EOTW, I would not have picked the TGH. But I became a huge fan. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
I think King would have come to see in time that WOT is more genre breaking and genre bending than he thought, and it’s even not without parallels to his own ideas for The Dark Tower.
You don't have to say quasi European. Tolkien intentionally made the Lord of the Rings to give Britain and Europe a developed fantastic mythology (which he accomplished). And Britain is an island of Europe, however much sense that makes.
@@DanielAbeleira That was one his initial goals, but he later said he mostly abandoned it, and that Middle-earth is an imaginative history we shouldn't try to map in any geological terms on to our own.
So I thought of a new use for that shovel.
you can't go around burying authors that don't like your favorite books, and you definitely can't ask me for help.
I won't be free tomorrow after 11, don't call me
daniel, don't betray a man who retweeted you. that would be WRONG.
Ypu need to do a video fior yhis one
@@ManCarryingThing i think he is just making a joke
@@althor1247 oh really? you mean to tell me Daniel doesn't really want to kill Stephen King? No... I don't think so
King's strength is his storytelling. He's not a world builder, he is a scene builder. I've always believed this is why his fantasy stuff isn't his strongest. He is at his best describing mundane everyday people and places, and putting them into crazy situations. He's good at giving just enough description to paint a scene, but not slow the pace. Not really the ideal style for building entire worlds, races, etc... I do think he is one of the greatest storytellers alive, as I find myself tearing through his books, even the ones I ultimately don't like, and despite knowing that his endings are always terrible. (Baby aliens? BABY ALIENS?!)
I'm sorry but have you read the Dark Tower series? How can you read IT or Salem's Lot and say that he isn't masterful at world building? He created a mythical Maine and a series of small towns that are basically characters in their own right.
And to say his endings are always terrible is fashionable nowadays but a cheap shot. The Shining has a great ending. IT has a great ending. Pet Sematary has a rad as hell ending.
@@cleeks5549 I own his complete works, and truly believe he is the greatest author alive today. I still 100% stand behind what I said. His world building is not great (compare dark tower to Tolkien, or Clive Barker for example), and his endings are terrible.
“His endings are always terrible”
Ok lol
@@Crinbo I mean, I'm not alone in my opinion. He's been getting flack for his endings for 40 years. I mean, the Dome and it's baby aliens, the absolute shit show that was the end of the dark tower books, decimating castle rock at the end of needful things, and many many more... He is self admittedly bad at buttoning up a story. Still my favorite author, still read everything he puts out and still I purchase every edition in hardcover for my collection. But you'd be lying to say he writes good endings. Critics and his fandom in general greatly disagree.
@@theotherpete
Haven’t read Under the Dome or finished The Dark Tower series (which I don’t think is very good in general).
He misses occasionally with an ending here or there, but they’re frequently good, sometimes great, and occasionally the best part of the book.
Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Roadwork, Cujo, Pet Sematary, IT, Misery, The Tommyknockers, Insomnia, The Green Mile, Bag of Bones, Dreamcatcher, Doctor Sleep
All books that have good to great endings. And I’m only up to the early 2000s, so I’ve got dozens of books left to go.
He didn't say that he hated The wheel of time, He just said he couldn't read it. Says to me that its just not for him.
I came to say this as well... Honestly it's a hard read.
He mentioned this around in a joking matter around 2:30 or something.
Also came to say this.
First book is slow starting so I can understand why someone would say they couldn't read it. But about halfway into book one through the end, the series is a fantastic AND fast read.
@@snerdterguson I started them a week ago and found that to be exactly it. On the 4th one now.
i think it comes down to writing style. stephen king is much more precise and straightforward, while robert jordan takes a lot of time to ease into situations, take in surroundings, and get used to the setting.
absolutely
Straightfoward? Really? I tried to read 4 books of him, 2 of them just started some action at page 200 (And they had a little more than 300 pages), Carrie also just has something interesting at the beginning and the end. Long walk was the only one that was really straightforward.
Also what I'm saying is not even an opinion, everyone that I see reviewing his books said that he take so much time to go to action that it can make people run away from his books (I'm one of them xD).
@@pedrovitor5324 "get to the point" kind of? i guess an author's style can be straightforward even if the story isn't.
@@vojeremia I agree, but it clearly is not how the person who wrote the comment sees "Writing Style". So I was using what they understand for writing style to make my argumemt, just read what they said once more and you will understand what I'm talking about.
@@pedrovitor5324 Just to defend Carrie a bit. If you went into it expecting action then I can see how it would be disappointing, but to me the story is Carrie herself. Her experience at home, the environment she lives in and her emotions and thoughts. That is the story the “action” at the end is not the actual story, it’s part of the story for sure but for me the real story was what brought her to that point. Why she did what she did and that is all in the first part of the book. The book isn’t called High School Prom slaughter it’s called Carrie.
Stephen king is very short (2 feet tall in real life) he didn't like wheel of time because he was jealous of rand's tallness, No I don't take any criticism.
lol stephen king is NOT 2 feet tall. He's 1ft 11'5
this post was made by celebheights
crazy how they make him look like 6ft in those videos!
Jordan was a pretty tall guy. Maybe he wasn't just jealous of Rand 😉
King & Jordan couldn't be more different as people & personalities. While they are two of my favorite authors their stories aren't in the same ballpark. King's wheelhouse is exploring the depths of the human mind and the surreal. Jordan didn't care about any of that. Quite frankly he had an idea about what it would be like to be labeled the 'chosen one' and resisting that responsibility. RJ lived on that idea for 2 decades. WoT is by far my favorite fantasy series, so I'm not throwing any shade. SK's style of writing is just so different. He couldn't possibly work on one story for that long.
Do you have any other fantasy series to recomend?
I assume you've read LotR. If not that's a great place to start. Brandon Sanderson is great too. Mistborn is a good place to start with him
Stephen King does have the Dark Tower series that's 8 books long. Granted it does come short of Wheel of Time's 14 books.
@@koatam That series is great, but it just follows the main characters through nuts situations as they hunt the man in black. Everything is written on the fly.
@@ibear2554 replace "the fly" with "cocaine"
I enjoy the wheel of time books but it’s undeniable that Jordan’s writing style is not for everybody. Even as a fan I constantly find myself thinking ‘get on with it Jordan’ when reading the books. Probably not the best idea having your wife as an editor. You could easily get rid of a couple of thousand pages from this 14 book saga without losing any major story points.
IMO, Robert Jordan made a DELIBERATE decision to spend the rest of his life writing Wheel of Time.
You can see this when the first few Forsaken who got killed off get 'reincarnated', thus dragging it out more.
You can also see more evidence in the change of his biography "About the Author" at the same point in time. The new bio included a phrase that he intended to keep writing until they nailed his coffin shut.
IIRC, it was about that time that he was diagnosed with amyloidosis (sp?)... a terminal disease.
... And then it also started taking longer for things to happen in the books.
@@Nyet-Zdyes I’m not disagreeing with you but making the decision to keep writing the WOT books until he died didn’t necessarily mean he had to just write anything, regardless of how boring and meandering it could be. Again I love the books but if it wasn’t for the fact I knew Sanderson wrote the final three I would have tapped out by book 8. Books 7 thru 11 are just horrible.
@@Banner-18 Oh, I remember being quite frustrated at the lack of any progression in the main story.
I'm almost finishing book 5 and I completely agree with you there, and I've not yet faced the dreaded 6-11 books. Half of my thoughts when I'm reading are "Get on with it!" and "why are you telling us this again, we KNOW!"
@@Luumus oh it gets so much worse lol. I hate to say this but if Jordan hadn’t have died and Brandon Sanderson hadn’t taken over I would have quit at book 8. I only stuck with it because I wanted to read Sanderson’s books.
Every time a random picture of a person clearly NOT who he’s talking about pops up on the screen, it kills me lol
it's like my favorite gag at this point
I got confused tbh lol didn't know this trend. I don't follow many yt channels
Brendan Sanderson cracked me up.
@@605111 It's not a thing that a bunch of channels do, it's just a joke MCT likes to make.
It's a classic videogamedunkey gag
The Eye of the Tower is my favorite C.S. Lewis book.
I'm more of the Return Of The Prince Caspian, i think it's Terry Pratchett's best book
I love the Way of the Mistborn written by J.R.R. Martin.
It's got nothing on the lord of Narnia by Robert Tolkien
Stop with the Fake News! the Eye of the Tower was George RR Token's masterpiece. I saw the movie - it had an *EPIC Eye* on top of a *Ginormous Tower! OMFG!*
I am drowning in references...
Either Brandon Sanderson or Brendan Fraser is offended right now.
Brendon Fraser is Brandon Sanderson.
@@robdonut66 Yes .
As much as I like Wheel of Time, book one comes off as predictable, generic fantasy for a lot of it, and several of the characters come off quite unlikeable. Can't blame anyone for not getting into it right away. It took me a while to really like it. King probably just didn't get that far.
Not wrong
I would say it’s probably because it’s longer than the dark tower and he felt jealous, since he had prided himself on writing it and seemed to think it was a superhuman achievement
I had the opposite experience. The more I read the harder it became to stick with it. Gave up after book 4. There are elements of the story that grow tiresome after a while. A lot of the dialogue is adolescent especially between the sexes.
So I'm reading the eye of the world for the first time, and I'm not really enjoying it. I always heard that books 6-10 were the ones that were boring and kind of bad, so I like that my feelings about the first book are validated by a fan of the series lol.
I'm at page 700 something out of 845, and for the moment I'm not interested in reading the sequel. The ending would have to be mindblowing to change my mind.
I really liked the first three books and the prequel, but I just couldn't imagine how the plot could possibly necessitate stretching out as far as it did and hearing that middle books are a massive slog discouraged me from continuing.
I can see the Daniel Greene influence on this channel.
And then in looking at the other videos I can see that's very much the case and... deliberate?
The goblin horde won't back down
Daniel Greene sucks and so does his new book
@@jeremywendelin oh no...anyway
@@jeremywendelin well you read it
So now we gotta know; What does Brandon Sandon think of The Dark Tower?
i've heard him mention it in lectures a couple of times, but not whether he likes it or not! i'd be interested to find out!
@@ManCarryingThing it seems like to me that Sanderson and King were drawing from the same well of inspiration: Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, the same well that The Witcher and Loki are drawing from.
I'd venture to guess that Sanderson is not a fan of TDT, simply because I've heard him express that he doesn't like it when fantasy stories go "too dark." Personally, I wish Sanderson's writing was darker, but then it would lose its mass appeal. Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
@@mvprindle I haven’t read Kings work but Elantris felt crazy dark.
@@nathanforrest9370 I've read it. Its got a pretty dark concept in the diseased people that can't die. But that ain't shit. In King books, people have sex with dead people, get their genitals cut off, become possessed by demons, do cocaine, and much more.
King was probably bummed out when Rand didn’t transform into a hermaphrodite coffee pot and get sucked into a black hole. Oh well, like you said we were getting spoiled there for a bit.
Spoilers:
Don’t they send the dark ones taint into a black hole basically?
Yeah, but it wasnt Rand
@@imsosexy8585
the taint is the pathway to every black hole.
Bottoms be like :😏😏😏😏
@Adam Miller I was thinking that King didn’t understand why anyone spent over a week writing any book? (It’s a joke people)
I'm not sure I necessarily agree that Stephen King dislikes WoT because he approaches writing differently, honestly. Like Brandon Sanderson has a very meticulous plotting approach to writing but enjoys the writing of all sorts of authors, from discovery writers LIKE KING HIMSELF to soft magic system writers and more. In fact, the only reason Sanderson quit reading A Song of Ice and Fire is because he couldn't stomach Daenerys's plotline.
I think it has less to do with the different approaches to writing and more to do with general reading preferences, and I do think you can see some of their general reading preferences in the ways that they approach writing, but considering that King writes thriller-style horror I'm sure he's read meticulously plotted thrillers before, so I don't think it's necessarily approach to writing as much as general reading preference like it is for everyone else.
Sanderson quit ASOIAF?
@@nityamjain1561 Yeah, he read A Game of Thrones and was like "This is a work of genius but I feel miserable reading it so I don't want to read more"
@@UdyKumra Oh I get why he felt that reading the early daenerys chapters,is it on an interview or something?
@@nityamjain1561 he's talked about it in his lectures!
@@nityamjain1561 Technically everyone quit reading it cause there isn't anymore.
King and Jordan had some interesting parallels. Both were influenced by the Lord of the Rings. Both were draft age for Vietnam but King was exempted on medical grounds. Robert Jordan served two tours. Both were raised religous, but King later stepped away from religion, while Jordan remained active in his faith.
And for all his success, King's standalone novels have garnered more attention than his series.
They made some decisions in their careers and personal lives that took them in very different directions.
Jordan took aspects of Tolkien's work that King specifically avoided and was able to make a succesful series out of them. King had a rough childhood and had some self-destructive habits as an adult, and studied English in college. Jordan served in the military and studied physics. Jordan had a lot of reasons to take a similar outlook on life and to fantasy troupes to King but he didn't.
I think when you face difficult decisions in life and you see someone else who started at a similar point but made some different decisions and was still successful and happy, its hard not to question your own past choices and wonder if you made a mistake. And that's uncomfortable.
I… actually really appreciate this perspective.
There's a scene in The Great Hunt of Rand running through a burning building that was written with such precise detail that could only have been written by someone who has done exactly that.
Both were influenced by Robert E. Howard as much as they were influenced by Tolkien
“I can’t read Robert Jordan”
*Writes graphic child sex scene*
It’s not very graphic. Clutch your pearls, dude
@Day i dont wanna know about it
@gobbledygook5000 Dude he got so lost writing a series that he wrote himself into it, talking to Roland, about writing the series... King is a great thriller Writer but Jordan destroys him in fantasy fiction. No question about it. Footnote is laughable.
@gobbledygook5000 If Ta'veren is a "lazy plot device" what is Ka and the Ka-tet then?
Just your opinion but for the record neither are a "lazy plot device." Both are the way each author wrote a destiny arc around their chosen one characters in a way that works for and against them throughout the series. A lazy plot device is something like finding the Artist at the very end of the story that can conveniently save one of the main characters and kill the final big bad guy before f..king off again.
I'm not trying to punk the Dark tower because I loved the Gunslinger and enjoyed the rest of the series for the most part; but even with thinking Ta'veren is lazy? One offence is infinitely worse than the other. Writing yourself into a series explaining to the main character why finishing the series has been hard?? Come on now!? If you don't like fantasy fiction, then you probably won't like Robert Jordan or the Wheel of Time so I get it... But I never saw Jordan pull some self indulgent, 4th wall BS like that at the expense of his story and then trash another writer that smoked him in the genre! that's some crazy, coked out behavior!
I genuinely like them both.... and though King may well be a Goated Horror/Thriller writer, Robert Jordan is one of the greats of Fantasy Fiction and King should give him his flowers or STFU!
@@robwest2813 Everyone praises Jordan's worldbuilding but no one in these types of discussions ever seems to praise how he writes characters or how engaging his writing style is. More often than not, people describe getting through his books as entertaining sometimes and a chore at others. Say what you will about King, but his writing style isn't one that lets people zone out while reading. His stories always have motion in them. I don't think Jordan is necessarily a better fantasy writer just because he sticks to established fantasy norms, while King leans more into what can almost be described as urban fantasy.
Not everything is too everyone's taste. I am completely unable to read Tolkien's writing, but I'm really glad Peter Jackson could. It's just personal taste.
same here, even after the first LOTR movie I said I gotta read the book now, but just couldn't, even knowing what was happening it was just too much work keeping up with the "new" words and all. Same with Dune I really worked to read the first book then said no more. With Wheel series it was much easier, and I started with book 5!
@@timwilliams9163 I really enjoy Dune. Did you try watching the new movie version?
@@timwilliams9163 I was with you until Dune and book 5. You sound like an insane person
Stephen king deep dives into personal psychology and the influences of the individual, Jordan deep dives into how personal psychology is extrapolated into sociology and social institutions, and how social dynamics influence the world and eventually back onto each individual in a shared history.
love this
don’t get this but will still like it
As someone who has studied psychotherapy and then did a degree in anthropology and sociology, I totally get this, and this one comment has convinced me to read WoT.
@@theimperfectscrapper5313 bruh
@@theimperfectscrapper5313 bruh
The Dark Tower started out as a good series, but took a hard left turn following King being nearly killed due to having been run over. At that point the series took a long hiatus, understandably so. But once he got back to it, the tone had changed completely and he wrote himself into the series as, no joke, the center of his own universe. On top of that, and typical for King, the ending was completely and utterly unsatisfying
Dark Tower did have the worst ending I've ever seen. That said, Wheel of Time also had a horrible ending.
@@ReekeMoyel The Stand had the worst ending of a book I've ever read. Never read a Stephen King book again after that waste of time.
spot on with the Dark Tower series, especially the ending , arghhh!
Agreed, that hiatus and his accident led to the series demise.
are you new here? he's ALWAYS done that. or didn't you notice every book is from fucking Bangor Maine.
Just the sheer depth and breadth of characters in the WOT series is mind boggling. I read up to 8 books in the past and gave up due to complete confusion of who was whom. But I got my hands on the epub version of the entirety of the series which amounted to over 13,000 pages, and now am on Book 13. I am determined to finish this series come hell or high water!
Agreed. The scope of the world is massive. My favourite fantasy series DESPITE the hard slog between books 7-10.
I also love Raymond Feist, David Gemmell, David Eddings, Stephen Donaldson. I enjoy Sara Douglas, Ian Irvine, Terry Goodkind and Terry Brooks..
A song of Ice and Fire is one of my least favourite. I still like it. The plot is decent but the writing is very average.
@@dneill8493 I LOVE Gemmell and Eddings. Goodkind's series is too similar to the WOT so after several books, I kinda got disinterested.
I read the Belgariad and Malloreon series by Eddings, and I believe I read all of Gemmell's books. He is my favourite author by far. I loved his little nuggets of wisdom that were so unexpected in sword fantasy genre. They were socially and politically ahead of his time.
@@9y2bgy Did you read the Elenium and Tamuli by Eddings? Sparhawk is one of coolest fantasy characters I've read.
@@9y2bgy Would love to see Gemmell's Legend made into a movie/series. Was my favourite battle until the final WoT novel.
I got to halfway of book 8 but stopped due to more pressing concerns as a high school student at the time. I tried continuing where I left off years later but gave up because I forgot what the hell was happening.
Bet there's nothing in those books as bad as THAT SCENE in "IT".
😂
Please explain
I'd never heard this from Stephen King, but as a Diehard WoT fan who has a hard time with Stephen's "breaking the 4th wall" style or writing... This is really interesting.
"you wouldn't see a fourth wall break in wot"
Lews Therin : laughs
I enjoyed the start of the Dark Tower series, but I ultimately loved the Wheel of Time series far more. I'm just sad that Robert Jordan didn't live to finish it himself. Though Sanderson did a wonderful job in finishing the series out thanks to Jordan's wife and notes, I wish he could have completed his masterpiece and seen the world's reaction.
IF it bothers you when someone dislikes a thing you like: you are identifying with the thing you like. It’s become part of your ego, so therefore you feel threatened when it is challenged. This is to be avoided, folks.
I gave up Wheel of Time after 6 or 7 books, 20 years ago for one specific reason. After reading an 800 page novel I'd think back and consider what actually happened, and it turns out, very little. Another author could have covered it in 300 pages. It was good, but I was getting a third of a book.
OMG 😳 that's me I did the same thing . But I picked them back up on Audible Lol .
I should have done the same thing, instead I finished the series. It ended well but wasn't worth the trip
The WoT series could have been a trilogy and still not missed much of what he wrote. I can't recall which book it was but I had waited and waited for it and then all it did was to cover what a lot of other characters did while the action from the previous book took place. I had to finish the whole series (because I apparently have psycological issues) but it was tedious and waaaay to drawn out. Maybe Jordan needed the money and was out of other ideas. I don't know. But if I knew when I started what I knew when I finished I would not have bothered.
Yeah, we call that literature.
Maybe you should wait for the cliff notes.
They are shit books. I am embarrassed that I read them. My only excuse is that I had a long illness and was looking for things with continuity.
I really enjoyed that conversation! It's always distressful when people you like don't like the stuff you like 😂. Stephen King is a darker writer. Jordan is more classic. Both are awesome!
yes, both are awesome
Wheel of time is horrifying dude. The gholam is more scary than anything King has come up with
@@brt1strrbb110 Maybe. WOT has its moments but Kings book have a darker tone.
@@EpicTalez I can understand where you're coming from. Im looking at it in the lines of big series, Dark Tower vs WoT. Scary stuff in dark tower just...isn't. and pennywise is comically not scary to me, and that's how I see alot of his monsters. His more human stuff works. I think what rand and Perrin go through, insanity and the wolves, is just as tense.
@@brt1strrbb110 this is true. Very true. I read a bunch of SK when I was a kid. Penny wise was scary to me at the time but now he isn’t. You make a solid point. He is scarier when he is writing about humans.
I beleive that point 1 is the most accurate one. However I love both of them. They have written great books and that's all that matters to me!
agreed
Based on their writings, Stephen King generally hates humanity and everything it does. Jordan displays an underlying optimism about humanity's potential.
No
Absolutely no. Ya readin them wrong bud.
Nope
I've never got that impression reading any wheel of time book.
Yes, because the Dark Tower series contains no meandering character backstories and The Stand totally needed to be 1000 pages long
not sure about the tower, but the stand....yes,...it did.
Let’s be real. I’m currently on book 11 of WoT but it took me two try’s to get here. The books are phenomenal, but there are huge stretches of boring parts
“Why does Man Carrying Thing hate his moustache?”
I’m going to make my own RUclips video with this title (not really) and there’s NOTHING you can do to stop me.
Make an interview where bacon sanwichson ask him that question
nothing i can do to stop you??? really?????? ....oh wait ur right
I have won the moustache battle, but The Moustache War rages ever onwards.
*Next up: what do Sanderson, King, and GRRM think of One Piece*
The only one of those three I can imagine even reading One Piece is Sanderson.
@@cbalan777 My thoughts too.
I could honestly see George as a fan of Berserk and King a fan of Naoki Urasawa.
@@nightmarishcompositions4536 I feel that GRRM loves Berserk
Fantasy become large genre, at the time of the 80s and 90s this term mostly covered Tolkien-copies and more experiancial works, like Discworld or the rewival of the Sword and Sorcery subgenre. King's own take on the fantasy was in fact The Stand, which isn't exactly a genre fiction, it was a mixture of pandemic fiction(I think that will come back), post-apocalyptic and supernatural thriller. I assume he thinks very little about people whose aren't trying to do something bold, or at least that was his impression about the "Eye of the World".
I dont think he "thought little" of Jordan.
I simply think he didnt like the books. As there are others who doesnt, me being one of tjem.
And it is not that i dont like them because im stupid, that i dont get it, that i have read too little to understand them, or have "bad taste".
I simply did not like them, and can argue why im in that camp.
Just as you (i presume) can argue why you Do like them.
Respect the fact that others have different opinions than you, and that that is ok.
@@KamiRecca yes, you are right! I don't wanted to create this picture about King, just wanted to demonstrate how his take on fantasy may effected why didn't like WOT. Sidenote: Robert Jordan was an amazing author, but in the recent years I had a familiar experiance with Brandon Sanderson. "Mistborn" wasn't as great as people described to me, ast least not to me. His other works like Era Two or "Stormlight Archives" is amazing. Mistborn on the other hand, even I know it's good don't had as much inpact on me.
In all fairness I hated both when I first read them. But then as I started to spend time really getting into them, researching them, I began to realise how great they are. The gunslinger is so hard to get into but it’s Stephen king so I can bypass how much of an acid trip it really is and enjoy it on its own level. From book two, the series just took off and I loved it.
Wheel of time, once I took the time to sit down and read it properly, made me realise how much I could actually enjoy this series. I’ve only read up to book 11 but it is something I’m enjoying and I’m looking forward to the ending.
In conclusion, both series are great and both series I believe you really need to give time and commitment to to really enjoy them
You finish and then reread books you hate?
@@Amethyst_Friend yeah because my opinions and perspectives changes over time and now I love them. There’s stuff I loved when I was younger and now hate
The Dark Tower, Wheel of Time, and Song of Ice Fire are all great imo, albeit with a different emotion for each.
Lost my mind with that Brendon Fraserson picture.
I dont like Stephen kings writing style so his opinion on writers that I do like doesn't offend me
it sounds like a remix of Mark Twain vs. Jane Austen. At least King didn't threaten to dig up Jordan and beat him with his own shin bone.
Who is the Walter Scott in this remix going "Eh, let him be, he's fine actually..." and then everyone who likes Jordan goes "That person who was the only person who complimented Jordan is actually outdated unlike Jordan"?
Robert Jordan: I died before finishing my story
Stephen King: yeah I don't know how to end a story either
If he watched the show he’d hate it even more.
Unpopular opinion: the rare case where the show was better than the books. Show was… okay at best, but the books were awful.
Lol to assume King is jealous of any other author is a BIG assumption.
It just feels too much like Tolkien. I struggle heavily with the wheel of time for the same reasons. It's like a beat for beat remake similar to the new star wars.
King definitely gets jealous. I noticed that when another author's book, say Dan Brown or James Patterson, gets awarded book of the year or some other prestigious honour he normally gets vocal about it. Negatively vocal. He annoys me to no end and for a multitude of reasons I cannot stand him.
I don't know about the situation with Dan Brown, but James Patterson is the literary version of Thomas Edison. He has writing credits for over 150 books, but he barely writes any of that. He mostly offers his name to up and coming authors to help their work reach a wide audience, but he takes most of the credit. I don't know what the money split is, but I doubt it fair.
He essentially said he couldn't get into it. He didn't say it was bad or that he hated it. Think of it like film. Citizen Kane is an all time classic. A masterfully crafted film which I personally can't sit through. Doesn't mean I hate the movie or that I think its had. Just means that it wasn't my cup of tea.
Robert Jordan’s rich notes was called DUNE, from which he lifted concepts and plot points.
And I’ll bet good money that in the 70s at midnight cinema a young Steven King watched Jodorowski’s El Topo several times before penning the Gunslinger.
I' m reading Dune right now and it's shocking how much "inspiration" Jordan took from Herbert.
WOT was ok for about five books, then I died out when the next was all talking. Zipping around the world to have laborious conversations, and more talking. By that point, the characters had their mannerisms set, and they became parodies of themselves. No one trusted people that they had every reason to trust, but would form quick friendships with people that should have been avoided. And the realization that there were still eight books to go. Aaarg.
I feel the same way I got to book 10 and I couldn't finish it Winter heart was not that great and crossroad of twilight was really me training my patience. It should have been called the Egwene and Elaine book With how much focus they get.
@@jayarcher3331 now I know many people may say the same thing but you quit right before it picks up again... Knife of Dreams is amazing! And from there it's like a sprint to the finish.
To be honest I read all 13? books in the wheel of time series, and I agree with Stephen here....
Since Tolkien is mentioned it should be noted Stephen King described The Stand as his American Lord of The Rings. It should also be pointed out for years The Dark Tower series was known as the unfinished series he started as a collage kid, it wasn't until he almost was killed that sat down and finished it if I remember right.
Yup, and his car accident was such a huge defining moment in his life that the last two books are effectively all about his car accident
Probably outgrew his taste for Jordan's type of fantasy. I mean, there were a lot of Tolkien-clones when King was younger and he must have read and seen them all already
I can see how King would think after the first WoT book that it is a Tolkien epigone. Wonder what his opinion would be after book 3-4, though. Love them both, now I have to learn to live with the fact that one must not love the other.
To me, GOT is an X rated rip off of WOT. Enjoy both series, but read them back to back, which I have more than once,and it's obvious.
@@doubletake1238 having read only up to book 4 in WoT, and i do not see the comparison. If anything, WoT to mee is a mixture of LoTR and Sinbad the Sailor stories from a thousand and one nights
Much like the whole Scorcese superhero stuff debate...i just think people have different palates and not everyone enjoys ketchup with french fries.
“I like them both” is the best answer. Kudos.
why do you need all of your favorite authors to like each other when brandon sanderson doesn't even like you
pain.
This world shall know pain.
Right. They all seem to be doing just fine without one another. 😂
There is no one more wordy than Jordan. Everything is explained too much: actions, clothes, faces, scenery... ending up stealing the fluidity of the text. it's soo boring.
Sounds dreadful, though King does it too sometimes. I'm definitely looking for authors who don't describe clothes or how the friggin wind is blowing at the moment.
This was like me finding out my bandmates didn't like some of my favourite bands. Utter travesty 😭
lol accurate
I actually stopped reading Wheel of Time. The quality of writing and dialogue itself felt like the Twilight Series of High Fantasy, but the story and concept were interesting, so the story kept me hooked, while the quality of the writing itself felt amateurish. The amount of times someone can "nervously tug" on their ponytail was mind numbing. I think I made it 3 or 4 books in.
So did i, and dropped it for very much the same reasons. Exept that i found the story to be rather bad too.
There's also the fact that Eye of the World feels very much like a Lord of the Rings reheat, and it's flowery. King doesn't do flowery, not like that. It's not really his style, and he has said more than once in his life that he simply doesn't have time to read all the books. WoT is a huge, huge series, and you have to be invested; if it just wasn't his cup of tea and he didn't like it, then I can totally see why he wouldn't commit more time to it.
The only thing King is flowery about is his sexual deviance lived out through his novels. His books are like serial killers jerk off journals.
Eh, I don't see the Tolkien comparisons, WOT is far more grounded in some form of realism than Tolkien. 🤷
If it wasn’t for Robert Jordan‘s wheel of time, Game of Thrones would have not been born. Martin borrowed a lot from wot
He also straight-up copied some stuff from Tad Williams, which to me is the most glaring influence in GoT. I haven't read wheel of time, yet. So I'll refrain from speaking about it.
I don't think it's the pre-planning that bugs Stephen King. It's just that he says you should prioritize interesting characters in unique situations and see where the story naturally goes from there. If he felt that the characters weren't intriguing him from the get go and instead the world/story was leading things then he probably considered it poor writing no matter how great the story/world was. (If he had read further, he may he grown to love the characters too)
I've watched that interview so many times. lol. As someone who overthinks and over outlines, I'm glad to hear that Jordan was a plotter. Maybe King picked up The Eye of the World the same day he got hit by a van? If I remember correctly it was right after that, when he was in the hospital he started reading asoiaf. Maybe it had to do with pace? Perhaps if he would have read EOTW while in the hospital he would have had the patience to get through it? Maybe I'm overthinking this and should get back to reading. lol
that's a brilliant theory, lol. that would explain the unprovoked hatred 😂
Or maybe he has a different opinion than you wich you cant accept.
Thats a You-problem, not a King-problem.
maybe he was reading while he got hit by that van
If pacing is the case, then I'm guessing Stephen King never read Salem's Lot or The Stand.
Jordan wrote like they were paying him per syllable.
I remember being quite upset upon finishing the Dark Tower series, I stopped reading Steven King for a while.
Same
If you are one to reread novels, id urge giving it a second go. I also very much disliked the last three... But gave it a few years and then came back to them. While i still dont love them, i appreciated them more.
In general, i think that King has been such a prolific writer, that he created an archetype of fiction, and never broke out of that mold. He is who he is, and it gets tiresome to some readers, after 7000 novels.
There's really no comparison for the two. I'm a huge fan of Stephen King AND Robert Jordan and have been for decades. I can honestly appreciate what both authors bring to the table and I don't have to make any comparisons between them to be able to appreciate both. With King, there's a distinct - This could happen - in many of his books, and there's always something that reaches to the human side of people - whether it's Carrie - the teen who is bullied until she snaps, IT - the town terrorized by an evil entity that went after the children (Think serial killer types), Gerald's Game - sexual deviance and death, are all things that could happen to any one of us and his work tends to probe into the darker parts of the mind. Robert Jordan touches on that futuristic vision that digs deep into the psychological aspects of the world and the characters relationships to it. It makes you think about foreign concepts while adding a little bit of a fantasy perspective, not unlike D&D and Forgotten Realms type books. Each brings a unique and different perspective on the human mind and each has a different impact on that same mind. Just my thoughts and opinions on the subject. 😁
thank you for typing this out, I appreciate it
I think wheel of time has a pretty awful writing style. Especially with the overly dramatic and corny prologues. And while reading it it felt like it really borrowed a bit too much from LOTR. But like who doesn’t like a good story about magic and witches…. And say the character tension between Lan and just like carried the first 8 or so books. At that point I was pretty invested and just suffered through the rest of them because I felt I had grown up with the characters and 13 books is gonna give you a pretty rich and colourful world.
Now Stephan Kings characters are more real. The man has mastered the art of subtlety (and various other arts). I mean he’s not much of a plot guy so there are some real stretches and dropped threads in dark tower and i’m sure he really really struggled to force closure on a thing where he didn’t know the ending himself.
Both are rich universes with characters that you became friends with but King is undoubtedly a better writer if you like a well rounded character with depth and flaws. The best thing would have been if we could have forced them to collaborate. They would have hated it but the final product would have been majestic as their writing skills are opposite and they could have completed one another
but yeah if you read the books you can immediately see why King would go “eyeroll” and think wheel of time is cliched and lame
Wheel of Time wasn't as planned/plotted as everyone says.
Seriously. He set out to write a trilogy and we ended at 15 books. He knew the opening scene, the end scene, and some of the middle. Did he take notes? Absolutely. So did King, actually. (Those were even organized for him by an aid so he could keep his facts straight.)
As a writer, you have to take notes if you're doing a series.
Honestly, I keep hearing how Jordan "meticulously" plotted his series, but it wasn't that way at all. I think that's why it drags on in some bits. He got on a roll when he was writing it. I can see the same sort of stuff that I end up doing whenever I'm writing. Jordan had the experience to take something as simple as setting up a scene, and just riff on it for whole chapters.
If he had meticulously plotted it out, I believe STRONGLY that the series would have been far shorter.
That said, I felt his final, Knife of Dreams, was his best work. He had notes set up for one final book - so everybody says - but we saw what happened with that. Sanderson wrote the three longest books in the series. That, to me, does not sound like meticulous plotting. It's meticulous note-taking.
Jordan also tended to explore every single idea, every side-track. We spend time with characters we never see again. And for all that? He also wound up with some plot holes, and lingering questions that just feel off in context of how detailed everything is. We only know what happened to Asmodeun because it was in his notes, for instance. Read Fires of Heaven again and tell me Jordan wasn't planning something bigger than a never-mentioned off-screen death.
Add to that the one time his disappearance is mentioned, Rand acts like it's no big deal. There's this implication that he sent the guy out on some purpose. They formed a bond, and Rand came to trust him as far as he could trust any man that could channel. Now, it's possible Jordan realized that Asmodeun represented a bit of a plotting problem. He's a man who knew too much, and after Fires of Heaven, there was no reason he would have for not sharing what he knew. I think death became the plan due to that. I also think Jordan planned to do it "on-stage."
Point it. As a writer, you get carried away. Sure, some people do plot meticulously. They tend to write the shorter books, franchise fiction, murder mysteries. I've seen folks try to apply some kind of method to writing, and the results are generally flat. It's those sidetracks, those slow scenes, the long descriptions of random tableware, that breathes life into a series. Jordan did that, and then he took notes.
I'm actually trying to get better about that myself. It's frustrating trekking through a previous volume just to see if you specifically mentioned the color of someone's eyes, or who their favorite band is, or whatever.
Anyways, it's just something I keep hearing and I just wanted to give some perspective from a writer'
s point of view.
After binging a few of your videos, it’s just nice to hear you say you like Stephen King, because I haven’t heard you talk about him yet.
Also, I haven’t read The Wheel of Time yet, I only know it as the series Sanderson finished. But now I’m a bit more tempted… and daunted.
High quality audio. Great job!
thanks!
That picture of "Brandon Sanderson" was actually Brendan Fraser. 😂 I don't know if it was intentional but I found it hilarious.
he is a god
I hope it was intentional 😂
Common mistake, but they just look very similar. Like Zoey Deschanel and Katy Perry.
Yeah I'm not sure 2 writtting styles could be more different I love them both but they are so different.
Could it simply be that The Wheel of Time is not very good? I started reading WoT as soon as the first book came out because I loved fantasy and in 1990 it was not that many fantasy authors out there. Around book 3 I really started to dislike the writing. One thing that irritated me was how Jordan started repeating what I would term his personal clichés related to the different characters, and the whole series started to feel like a juvenile fantasy. By book seven I could not stand them so I never picked up book 8, and the Sanderson books I have not read. By the late nineties there were better fantasy books out there. My theory is that the love many feel for WoT is due to most people being kids or young adults when they first started reading them. It is like with your first love, you never quite get over her.
Naw. King likes technically sound stories. You're looking at his Dark Tower series to draw comparisons when you should be looking at his short stories. The guy is a Hugo winner. And he likes Hugo winners. Tight prose, meaning and movement, narrative cleverness and technical skill to know what to say, when to say it and what not to say. And he likes socio double-speak within the prose.
King is quite particular about writing style (I remember reading in On Writing how he put a book down because of one sentence he didn't like). Could be likely he didn't like the constantly repeated descriptions in Jordan's writing (X was always better with girls, X pulled on her braids etc)
I can understand that I have put down multiple novels, including King's just because I disliked his writing style. It's not being disrespectful, just why waste time with something you don't enjoy?
As much of a fan I am of WOT, I think he does repeat himself way too often and his descriptions can be tedious.
I think it more than just style. There are elements in WOT that grow tiresome after a while. A lot of the dialogue is adolescent especially between the sexes.
I wasn't surprised upon finding this out. I read On Writing a while ago and in there, Robert Jordan is his favorite target for bad writing. I don't know why either, but I already knew pretty well he's not a WoT fan.
I listened to On Writing a few months back and I noticed this too.
Jordan is an excellent example of bad writing though
I just think that everyone should read the Malazan books. That is a series that does it all. Each book is different and in different styles. Depending on what you like, everyone will have their favs but the series is amazing. It's never redundant nor does it feel stretched out. Each book of the serious is a book unto itself.
yeah, I have head a lot about them too. Could you tell about what to expect as someone who has likes LoTR, ASOIAF, HP, Witcher etc
The thing is that there are curre
ntly 28 books in the series, that's going to turn a lot of people away. Most people don't want to read a series that's too long or spend so much money in a single book franchise. That's why Malazan is niche among fantasy and hasn't been repainted, which also makes it quite hard to find anything apart from the paperback, and even that is almost non-existent in some countries.
I tried reading The Eye of the World in college and got 80 pages in before DNFing it. Jordan was a terrible prose stylist.
King got bored after Jordan wouldn't finish the series in 8 books. Yes, Jordan could have finished the series in 8 books. There's just so much nothing that happens at some points, that it would have done everyone a favor and cut the series in half.
I would argue that it already starts in book one... I stopped after the first have of book one... good world building, excellent world building even, but the character writing is terrible and the pacing ....
I also see stormlight behind you. Another great Auther
Wheel of time summary: “Hey I can do magic stuff”…….following 27 books “Look how much more magic I can do you’ll never get sick of hearing about it”……”By the way……would you like to learn a new Aes Sedai characters name every four seconds to never hear from them again?”……”additionally I can offer you a bridge to jump off if you don’t want to spend fifteen years reading redundant versions of the same theme until your eyes melt”
Stephen King: "Jordan just doesn't go far enough into fantasy concepts. Remember when I wrote about how all the boys in It ran a train on Beverly Marsh? Why didn't we see the Green Ajahs getting down with their Warders like that? That's why I like you George, you're all about that nookie and boobies"
I think GRRM is the better writer of the three. His words read so easily, and paint such a vivid picture. While in Jordan & Kings books I often finish a chapter, or paragraph & think "wtf did I just read?" And have to re-read it. They also can both be slogs & too much book, while Martin feels like it's never enough book.
I think it's pretty simple. They have completely opposite writing styles.
I think it's also the reason I don't care for Stephen King's books, although they make some great movies.
I might be wrong, but is not the first WoT book also quite hard to get into? Like, when I tried it, I found that a lot of things were ridiculous (from the feeling that the "main group" was a boring blend of Tolkien's characters, the last "deus ex machina'ed" battle and the fact that a lot of concepts were clearly poorly disguised things, such as the Ogiers being Ogres, Trollocs being Trolls, Artur Paendrag being the King Arthur, etc.). It only got interesting to me during the second book, when we are introduced to Liandrin and how she interact with Moiraine (of course she screams "I'm the bad guy", but this created real mistrust between characters and not "bullshit mistrust" that appear out of nowhere to fuel conflict). So, in a way, I get why Stephen King had trouble getting into the WoT : it takes a while before getting interesting.
That all was intentional lol. Jordan said our world is the source of their legends, and they are the source of ours. Because time is a wheel...
Two of the heros from old in their legends is Len and Sally, referring to two astronauts one being Sally Ride. Who rode a dragon of fire to the moon. I think that particular idea of cyclical time and ages repeating themselves is genius. That Artur Hakwing is our past, and Sally ride is theirs.
I got 3/4 of the way through Eye of the World and found it so similar to Lord of the Rings that couldn't stand to finish it. Felt like a low-rent knock-off to me. Maybe King's assessment was the same?
Yes. Robert Jordan said that he wanted to write a more realistic version of the LotR adventure. That being said WoT quickly grows out of its LotR background.
definitely starts out that way, but changes pretty quickly
Yeah, and it gets worse - I got sucked in by these people, it's just terrible. Yay for you if you like them, but there is plenty to dislike about it - sexism, overly repetitious, and yes "I have read all this before.," also "This is everything I wish fantasy would stop doing." And on, and on. I wasted multiple books of time from these folk going "It gets better." No, for some of us, it just gets worse.
@@stevespain6445 oh wow. That sucks to hear. How many of the books did you read?
I started this video seeing the clip from the interview anticipating a really long skit... and I'm not disappointed with the video I got 💚
I've always put King not liking WoT down to his absolute love of LotR. King has put it as one of his most influential pieces of literature and with people saying the first books of WoT are a rewrite of LotR, I just assumed that rubbed King the wrong way and he never made it far enough where it starts growing for itself
Or it ould be because he simply didnt like WoT due to the books themselves. There is no law that we all must love WoT, and the books are not Good by a galactic, unquestionable truth.
Taste differs. I hate them, the 4 books that i managed to torture myself through. Thats my opinion, based on my taste and reclections of it. It takes NOTHING away from your love for the books.
Arguing that there must be reasons beyond that for disliking a thing on the other hand DOES take something away; namely respect for the opinions of others and/or the validation of their own reasons.
Its like this. I can argue why i do not like WoT.
You cannot argue why i Should like it. Only why You like it. See?
@@KamiRecca Anyone can argue anything. It doesn't make one's argument correct, but it is inaccurate to say that one cannot argue that you should like the books; one can indeed make that argument. Moreover, if everyone accepted your rules for debate, no one would ever change anyone else's mind, for the simple fact that they would all be too busy "respecting and validating" each other's opinions.
@@grotesquehead322 no, you cannot make an argument why i Should like a thing. You can make a Statement, but a statement is not an Argument.
Let me try and explain this.
You can say for example that a book is good because it does X (lets say "Its Action" thats the statement) but i simply need to say i dont like X in my books for the statement not to hold any weight. In short i cannot be told to like something just because you like it.
We can argue if specific things are well done, like for example "it has good character development", and then expand the argument with examples and points. Then one can offer counterargument why thats not true, and expand the argument by examples and points.
But you cannot argue i Should like the character development. Thats an empty statement. It cannot hold objective importance, see? So its merely a statement about your own taste and disposition.
Another example: Dune. I love how its written, others dont like the style. Its said to be written in a very dry style. I can argue why I find it to be fitting for the story being told. But i cant argue that it is fitting in an Objective sense. Others simply find the style dry and boring, and they are not Wrong in an objective sense.
So no, you cannot argue against personal taste, only comment and make personal statements about it.
Edit:
Btw are you saying we shouldnt respect each others opinions (provided they are not provocatively hatefull (like racism and sexism) or flat out testably wrong (like flat earth or ether hypothesis))?
If so i guess i'll just say that you are wrong and your "argument" dont deserve to be respected. See what that does to our argumentation...
Funny, I tried to read King’s novels a few times,couldn’t fathom why people liked reading his material. I’ve read thousands of novels by different authors over the years, and I would recommend hundreds of authors over King’s.
Same. It was torture to get through the Dark Tower series. Everything more popular is terrible, except for The Shining movie he hates.
I've read alot of King but I would never re-read them
This is funny. After reading the _thorough_ disappointment that was the ending for The Dark Tower, I didn’t want to even start WoT in case it had the same HACK ending. I’m so glad that I did!
As a new subscriber it is SO weird seeing a Man Carrying Things video without the constant satirical irony. I keep anticipating when will some twist come.
I think the Wheel of Time is just hard to read. I think that’s mostly it. Working in a bookstore showed me 50% of people who LOVE the Wheel of Time (my best friend included) and 50% who cannot even get to the second chapter (myself included). People warned me to stay away, and some said I had to read it all. It’s just preference.
im in book 5 wheel of time, i am never worried about characters something always saves them , no stakes.
Yeah, that changes
Oh you're in for it
Ha!
King literally brings back characters from the dead in the Dark Tower though
Thats. Most. Books.
Name me the story that kills the main character halfway through the story. I'll wait.
This is another criticism thats always levied on fantasy but its just as, if not more, in other genres. Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher dodge bullets like they're neo and I dont know how many times Inspector Lynsey and Travis McGee thwarted assassination attempts on their lives and no one rolls an eye Yet Belgarion or Rand survive an orc attack by throwing a lightning bolt at them and its oh, now its hard to be engaged with them because they're bullet proof!?
Is it too hard to ask for criticism thats not low effort?
Dude, that comment at the end about wanting to side with one is dead on. I immediately think "Fuck you Stephen!" and then I remember he was one of my favorite authors growing up and I've read the Dark Tower like five times. I can't side. I love me some Jordan, and I love me some King.
He never said he hates the wheel of time. Just said they weren't for him
Which all fans of Cosmere fans noticed the Rhythm of War book in the back?
I mean he just said that he didn't like them. I can see why literally anyone would bounce off the wheel of time. i love them but they are not for everyone by any stretch of the imagination
Why does Stephen King hate the Wheel of Time?
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Because.
yes.
I feel like King is probably a more high concept kind of guy. There is nothing really crazy or unique about wheel of time that sets it apart from everything else from the start.
“Book three is a talking train”
I love your description of all three, but this got me especially 😂
Wheel of Time is like LoTR, but Gandalf is a girl and Nazguls are called Myrddraal and Orcs are Trollocs.