I slogged through the first 8 books because my friend kept telling me it would get better, but then I finally gave up. All I remember is something or other slashed with blue silk, Nynaeve tugged her braid, Berelain was wearing a dress that left very little to the imagination, and every single male character could do with a good switching. Oh, and also Aviendha went batshit, out-of-any-semi-reasonable-world insane and nearly got herself frozen to death because of that one time when Rand accidentally saw her naked.
@@JosesAmazingWorlds And what a brilliant romance that was. I don't know why only some of the middle books are considered to be "the slog". For me, the entire thing felt like a slog. The only part I actually enjoyed was Perrin's arc in book 4, and that's it.
@@josephsalmonte4995 Haha. I know, right? Like, almost literally nothing else happens. And let's not forget about Faile. Whom he loved. Whom he loved deeply. More deeply than anyone can ever be loved... Just try reading that about 100 times per book and not getting sick of it.
I did the same thing. My dad kept insisting that the Brandon Sanderson books were good enough to justify reading the Robert Jordan ones. Maybe they are. I don't know, because I never got that far. My stamina ran out somewhere around the one called "Winter's Heart," or something like that.
If Nyneave had died in the boat that would have been a perfect escalatation of the stakes and making the Chosen more dangerous. The whole series is full of momement like this where you as a reader can see a much better story being missed again and again because jordan is afraid to raise the stakes for his main characters. But Robert Jordan can't kill his darlings
I was most disappointed with the whole Rhavin storyline with morgase being under compulsion. When she escaped I was so excited to see what would happen along with the possible political twists, and revealing that Gabril is actually one of the forsaken. But instead, Jordan just had him get deleted by Rand and called it good.
I also think that Jordan never killing his characters is a problem, but i also understands that he wanted everyone to be essential in the last battle and maybe die there, so it's mostly a writing choice
I shelved the series after finishing Path Of Daggers in January. The books after The Shadow Rising just felt like reading tax documents with a climactic battle in the end. They’re were hundreds of pages that just felt like complete useless and archaic information that contributed nothing to the plot or character development. I was in denial for awhile because the series was really hyped up and it was my first big fantasy series to get into. After awhile I was starting to think I was either dumb or this wasn’t what it was all it was cracked up to be. I do plan on finishing the series one day as I’ve invested in the series. I also plan on doing a reread as well. I’m hoping I find out what all the true fans love about this series but at the moment I just don’t see it.
Hopefully I’m wrong and you’ll find whatever it is, but I doubt it. I can’t imagine doing a reread in the next 20 years. It will really take that long for me to wonder if it was as bad as I remembered it. And probably by the fourth book I’ll conclude that yes it was and put it down for good. Best of luck to you though. 🍻
OMG you are so open-mindend. I own the entire series, but only as a sort of future reference to a mainstream fantasy series. I could never steel myself for another complete re-read. Honestly, a synopsis of EVERYTHING from book 5 to 12 would save you months of literary torture. 30% b*$&t? So generous! Literally HALF this series is not worth reading, ever. As far as I'm concerned, read the first four books, last three, and wiki everything in between. Believe me, you will save yourself a LOT of pain!
Okay, here at my page, we're not exactly Puritan. In fact, we tend to hate censorship of all kinds. But it must be said here that there are places in WoT that are more than a little WHAT THE SHIT-ish. Not because there are actually people having sex, but because there are people not having sex while sexual imagery flies off the page at the speed of light, zonking your poor brain and reducing you to a confused, quivering mass. Here are some memorable examples of this pseudosex - Everyone in the series is gradually turning into a lesbian. Moiraine was not a lesbian, nor was her friend Siuan, for about the first eight books. Then Jordan wrote a prequel where it is revealed that the two were "pillowfriends" when they got their training in the White Tower. This system, in addition to having the most pathetic name ever, was never mentioned before and never affected any of the female characters in the series (Incidentally, this story also featured Lan as some other woman's bitch, but that's not the point here). Nor did it add anything to either character. In the next book, he introduced another lesbian character that no one cares about and made her a lesbian for no apparent reason. If this trend continued, I have to assume that by the end, Nynaeve, Aviendha, Siuan, Moirane, Cadsuane, and Egwene would have been writhing together in one kinky, moany, sticky pile as they await the Last Battle. - The gang heads out into the Aiel Waste, a harsh desert-like area. There, they decide to undergo trials at Rhuidean. Rand and Mat take part in one trial, Moiraine in another. For some reason, Moiraine's trial requires her to strip naked and run through the desert at top speed, breasts flopping. Rand and Mat, allowed to keep their clothes on, spot her and ogle. - Egwene trains with the Aiel Wise Ones, who are all female channelers. She lies to them and tells them that she is a full Aes Sedai when in fact she is only a trainee. They determine that she must be punished. This entails a spanking with a leather strap by one Wise One in front of all the other Wise Ones. Keep in mind, Egwene is around 20 years old at this point. Yeaaaah. - At one point Elayne, Nynaeve, and someone else are taken captive by a band of women who are working for the enemy. In an attempt to prevent them using magic to escape, they are tied to beds and force-fed a special drug through a funnel every hour on the hour. This bondage/domination scene grinds on for several pages as they struggle to regain their power in time (by the way, the men of the party, repeatedly called useless, save the day here, and get no gratitude). - Aviendha and Elayne decide to become sisters. This unique ceremony involves them both stripping naked, kneeling on the floor before each other, and, before a watching crowd of Wise Ones and other assorted Aiel chicks, insulting each other, pulling each others' hair, and slapping each other about the face and breasts. I may be adding the hair pulling on my own, but the important thing is it's perfectly plausible for a scene that's already gone through Sanity Pass and deep into the Mountains of Freako. The fifteen book Wheel of Time saga is longer than The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, all five A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the three Dunk and Egg prequels, The First Law trilogy, the entire Chronicles of Narnia, the old and new testament of the Bible, the Quran, Alice in Wonderland, and The Odyssey. COMBINED. No wonder so many people quit reading it while in jail. And that's all I have. Nynaeve tugged her braid.
This comment ☝️. Pure gold. Made reading WoT and posting the video worthwhile. Just to read this. You, sir, hit the proverbial nail. This comment needs to be shared and read by many many people. 🍻🙏👍🤣🤣
I was SO pissed off with the women in this series. The men heroically save them time & again & not only do they not even get thanked, the women just carry on saying the men are useless good-for-nothings. They're ungrateful bitches!
Hello from the future. You've not much experience with female hierarchies and their rituals I take it? Talk to some ladies that were in sororities before the 00s
Robert Jordan needs an editor like a bukkake girl needs a wet nap. I thought about just leaving the review at that, as a sort of testament to how important brevity can be, but unfortunately I can't. Because RJ needs more than an editor - he could also use a beating and advice on creating characters that I don't want to kill and scenes that don't read like they were pulled right from the pages of his crusty teenage erotica jerk notebook. Part of me doesn't even know where to begin with this. The Wheel of Time series literally spans thousands of pages, contains hundreds of characters and dozens of PoVs, and is packed with intrigue that's almost as psychotically complicated as Hideo Kojima's. Maybe the best place to start is with the fans, or better yet, the ex-fans. There's nothing angrier than an ex-Wheel of Time fan. I don't care if your ex broke up with you because she was dating a mentally deranged pedo who works as a janitor down at the local Baskin Robbins, I don't care if she gave you one of his stupid but horribly strong STDs, I don't care if you found yourself wiping his drool off the face and breasts of your invalid grandmother, you don't feel as betrayed as Jordan's fans do. You might call this an exaggeration, but think about it - when your ex left you for the Cock that Brains Forgot, at least she didn't take 8,000+ pages and a decade to do it. I can say this, because I feel like I've been the recipient of a long, slow, hard fuck by Robert Jordan. And not the good kind of fuck, the kind where you're lying face down on a bed of nails and maggot-infested garbage as a fat guy wearing overalls reams you out with a meat mallet. You might think that I've gone a little bit heavy on the description in the paragraph above, but that's just because you haven't read enough Robert Jordan, you lucky fuck. Robert Jordan is the kind of man who will fill pages of prose with descriptions of the uniforms the soldiers are wearing, the color and cut of the dresses the Aes Sedai have on, the hairstyles of everyone in the room, and how many beetles are crawling across the ground. His writing style sort of reminds me of Urkel. At first, it's quaint and charming and quite unlike anything you've ever seen before, but before the end it's become bloated, misshapen and sad to the point that you just wish someone would drive a railroad spike through its forehead and end its travesty of a life. I know more about Egwene's taste in dresses than I do about my fucking major, and while I'm not quite sure if this is actually in the book or just something that came to me while I was masturbating dreaming, I'd stake my life on the fact that Min's left ass cheek has exactly seven freckles. Also, did I mention Nynaeve likes to tug her braid when she's annoyed, which is only about four times per page? Speaking of Nynaeve, she and her fellow companions deserve special mention. I remember the first cries of praise the Wheel of Time series received. Everyone was practically creaming their undergarment of choice at the idea that Jordan had *gasp* female characters! STRONG female characters! The battle of the sexes! This was somewhere Tolkien had never been before! This was new territory! Now, I'm not precisely sure when people stopped praising the books for this, but I have to believe it was somewhere around the time that they realized every woman in the series was so insanely bitchy and shrewish that any real man would sooner hack his dick off with a rusty spoon than fall into their hands. Then we discovered why Tolkien never went here; because apparently unlike Robert Jordan, his fifteen older sisters had never beaten him up and then poured lye down his peehole. I hope Jordan didn't really think all women are like this, because there isn't a likeable or believable one in the bunch. Actually, they all come off as one giant ubercharacter, a multifaceted Samsara-like entity of bitchery and annoyance that fills the universe and seeks only to destroy and dominate that which is male. Some may think I'm kidding, but those who have braved this hell know that I speak true- is there ever even a chapter where one of the female characters does not mention how stupid men are? Is there even one of them that doesn't resort to manipulating, insulting, and abusing the male characters in the books? Once again, I don't exaggerate - I literally mean abuse. One of the three main characters, a man with supernatural luck and lethal skill with a spear, spends a whole book being raped by a horny old queen. He repeatedly denies her and is repeatedly molested anyway. Then there's Nynaeve, who hides beneath her bitchy outer shell the heart of a harpy. I'm not even going to try to justify her because everything she says blends into one long, squealy whine. Of all the girls, Min is probably the nicest - at least she only calls Rand stupid and gets annoyed with him when he doesn't fuck her. No, I'm not fucking kidding, this is the shit that climbed to #1 on the New York Times list. Nynaeve tugged her braid. Of course, I can't place all the blame on the women, as the men are such unbelievable, galactic pussies that they take this abuse on the chin and come crawling back for more. This trait completely and totally destroys even the coolest of characters. Take Lan, the Warder. Lan is a superhumanly strong and resilient man who kicks ass and takes names. Throughout most of book one he is the Badass on Deck - the guy who flosses his teeth with Trolloc pubes just to prove how tough he is. However, since he apparently can't resist a frostybitch, he falls for Nynaeve, who then precedes to emasculate him and totally destroy him as a character. I know this sounds sexist, but believe me, it's the truth. Lan goes from kicking ass all across the map to literally being a woman's bitch in about book five or six. I'm serious. He's bonded to her through some sort of 'tarded process I don't want to get into and she spends her time using him as a fucktoy which of course makes Nynaeve TEH FURIOUS. I forget what happens to Lan. I think he gets free and hooks up with Nynaeve, but this doesn't really change anything but whose pussy he's licking. I believe once in a later book he gets to kill a fat lameass. It's such a colossal waste that it's saddening. You couldn't be more insulting of someone's talent if you hired a ninja to mow your lawn or Elton John to fuck your wife. Lan is just a case study, though. The three protagonists - Rand, Perrin, and Mat - are actually far more pathetic. Of these men the first two simply can't understand women at all (which is especially sad since Perrin is married and Rand is banging three broads at once) and the last will fuck anything that has a vaguely vagina-shaped hole in it. It's not exactly the most likeable collection of leads ever assembled, and as time goes on, they just get more and more obnoxious. It got so obnoxious that Nynaeve tugged her braid. Rand is the main character, so we'll start with him. First, as the Dragon Reborn, he's the most powerful male channeler on the planet, wrestling with a power that may destroy him and will surely eventually turn him mad and rot his body as he lives. He has to shoulder the responsibility of being both the savior and breaker of the world, and as nations and people flock to him, he must question who to trust and who to fear. Oh, and did I mention he's 20 and acts 12? Rand has three women in his life. There's Elayne, who's a princess, a magic-user, and a bitch. Then there's Aviendha: desert warrior, magic-user, bitch. Then there's Min: seer, dresses like a boy, vaguely bitchy (when you look at it this way, Min actually comes off decently). These relationships are so heartbreakingly juvenile and stupid I don't even know where to start. I won't give specifics, because I can't remember them and I wouldn't read this series again unless Selphie herself offered me a hummer. Suffice to say, some highlights include the not-cliche-at-all "must warm her freezing body" sequence, which ends in fuckery and then a promise of no more fuckery. This was with Aviendha, and sadly is the most believable of the experiences. The other two consist of Elayne demanding that Rand give her some of the sweet, sweet honey that Aviendha got and raping him and of Min getting surly and grumpy, wearing progressively tighter pants and raping him. Meanwhile, Nynaeve tugged her braid. During all this Rand scratches his head and endures their abuse, befuddled at the behavior of these women that he just can't understand! This plays as cute for the first few books, or maybe it's just that I was younger when I read them, but by the time you reach the tenth or so volume and Rand is still behaving like a guilty, confused 11 year old whose teacher touched his peepee, you're praying that he'll either start acting like a man or just go gay and get it the hell over with. Perrin, if anything, is the worst. There's no hiding it - Perrin got punked. Perrin got punked bad. And it's not like Loial the Ogier pinned him down and forced his Steddingpenis in, Perrin chose to get punked by randomly falling for Faile, or as I like to call her, SATAN'S TITS. Why, I don't know. Faile was an obnoxious girl who was hunting for the Horn of Valere. Apparently, her ability to bitch about anything and everything, coupled with Perrin's furry/submissive nature, made her irresistible to him. Highlights of their marriage include her bitching at him, her getting furious because he never bitched at her BACK, and sex. Which she probably bitches during.
You have put my pain into actual human words, successfully. Shine on you crazy diamond! And thank you for making the sacrifice. I could only force myself halfway up through The Great Hunt. Your suffering will not be forgotten.
@@ukamikazu I finished the first six books and did not have time or desire to read the other 6-8 books in the series. It should have been 3 books max and half as many pages.
OMG this was literally the highlight of my post-work, alcohol-fueled night. I couldn't agree with you more. I only wish that you had more choice words for Egwene, the queen of b*****s, who almost made me quit the series. I still don't understand why someone like Sanderson agreed to finish such a travesty, but, well, it happened, and we'll have to forgive him. All that said, I really enjoyed this post!
Thank you very much for your epic comment. I enjoyed it more than the video. I congratulate you for faultless spelling, good paragraphs and proper English grammar too. I know it takes a lot of work to write a long comment like that with such high quality.
Just to add, another significant weakness that I found in the WoT were the so called "bubbles of evil", which would make some random magical calamity suddenly happen to show the Dark One's influence on the world. It always seemed to me like a lazy alternative to having the Dark One and his minions actually execute a plot against the protagonists.
I disagree, the “bubbles of evil” showed what an existential threat the dark one represents, that reality itself will be warped to something murderous and sinister, that the logic of the world will be completely twisted, and it also showcases how DOs influence on the world is increasing.
You nailed it!!! My biggest gripe with this series was the lack of good villians. I've asked it before and I'll ask it again, why do people think this garbage is good??
What are you talking about? Egwene was a great villain! At least, I hated her heart and soul throughout the entire series, so that's gotta count for something, yeah?
I do think his point about the villains being bickering and petty was kinda their whole point tho. These villains are not meant to be brilliant schemers they're not game of thrones characters. They're meant to be all the worst aspects of humanity. Petty, proud, selfish, lying, hateful, and weak. Shaitan is supposed to be the only competent villain.
Same here. Read first two books. Nine rings, many borrowing from LOTR. I was waiting for characters names like Frodo Gagins. The Dark One could be called Sour-man, Perrin Agrin Took, Trolocs = Orcs. So obvious. Also: Gibberish names that weren’t explained…Aie Sedai, Marty McFly, I’m gonna cry, tear in my eye. Val Tar Dor, Dan Be More, Tar Valon, Gar Balon, flip Walon…. Gibberish. Rarely explained names or concepts. Not horrible books but Sanderson’s Mistborn and Light series are much, much, much better. Reminds me why I’m not a big fantasy fan. Make up magical solutions to get out of struggles
@@andreww4751 Yeah. Sometimes they're explained, but usually they are indeed gibberish with a pattern. Which is what I expect from fantasy stories. Unless you really are thinly veiling plagiarism, I don't see what the problem with fantasy names that don't map to any real-world language or meaning is. It's... another world. Why in the world should they use our naming conventions?
I also think that Wheel Of Time is hot garbage. People love to worship it as this massive thing because, well, it is a massive thing. But that's really all it is.
You're not wrong: the length, the slog, the repetitive descriptions, the sexism, the annoying characters, the weird pacing/structure of the series, too many characters, the bad romance, etc. After finishing the series myself, I decided the hype must mostly be from people having nostalgia of reading the series in their youth, though I thought Brandon Sanderson did a nice job with the climactic battle for the finale.
Wholeheartedly agree, but Sandersons work wasn't enough for me to rescue the series. Is nostalgia the only thing we can attribute the popularity of the series to?
Sexism? Why you people are so emotionally weak that you people ruin everything. Its because of you people that tv show has no good male characters. Because feminist wanted it to change.
It's weird how many parts of it are extremely sexist, yet it has some of the strongest female characters that I can think of in pretty much all fantasy.
This is why I've never wanted to read the books, all of these reasons deterred me from ever wasting my time. Wheel of Time? More like 'Waste of Time'. I did however watch the Amazon adaptation, but I found it very boring. I still plan to watch season 2 when it comes out but I would rank it very low on my list of shows that I watch. Are the books as boring as the TV show?
Yeah. I watched season one, but I can't get excited for season 2, let alone 3, 4 or 5. The infamous slog is very tedious. There 3-4 books that are just people talking with no plot advancement. The huge success of this series is beyond my comprehension.
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Just watched Season 2 and I have to say it also sucked. I can't for the life of me understand the appeal. The characters are all so insufferable and the story is so uninteresting and bland.
Sorry but Robert Jordan is not a good writer and the WOT series is not a good read. I am a big fan of Fantasy and sci/fi literature. Absolutely love all things Tolkien. So I purchased the first three books of the WOT series because of my love of the genre and because so many people online and a few of my friends just raved about their greatness. The first three books were being offered in package deal so I went ahead and picked them up. I read the first one and just found it awful. It was a slow tedious slog of a read. And it wasn't slow because it needed to be. It was just slow because it seemed like the author just wanted to drag it out due to a misguided belief that this would make it seem more epic. Boy howdy was that a bit of foreshadowing for the whole series. 100 pages of a story spread across 826 pages. Like trying to take one pat of butter and spreading it across 6 loaves of bread. There was not a single character I gave the least bit of shit about and there wasn't a single line of memorable dialog in the entire book. So I confront my friends and ask "WTF?" This sucks! Only to be hit with the standard WOT fanboy defense, "Oh yeah the first book isn't that good but it really picks up after that." "The later books are nothing like the first one" Blah, blah, blah. So I figured screw it I already have the second book so I'll stick with it. So I read the second book. Aaaannnnnndddd? It sucked just as bad as the first one. Not to mention containing virtually every lame run of the mill fantasy genre cliche imaginable. It was like something a student turned in for a class assignment in a Fantasy Literature 101 class. And not one of the A students either. One of the D students who went online to a website called youcanwriteafantasyepic.com and just downloaded some standard format story outline that leaves blank spots where you fill in your own personalized town and character names before you turn it in to the teacher. So I confront my friends again and I'm like, "this shit is still awful and I'm done with it." Only to be hit with, NOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOO, you can't stop at book two." This where it really gets good and this happens next and that as well. And so and so hasn't even entered the story yet. This is where Jordan is really about to come into his own as a writer. Blah, Blah, Blah. And I'm thinking, "None of you fuckers mentioned that the first two books sucked when you recommended this series." Why am I only being told this now? But screw it I already have the first three so I'll read the last one I have. And I have to admit when it comes to book three it......it.......it.......SUCKED JUST AS GODDAMN BAD AS THE FIRST FUCKING TWO! It wasn't one milligram better. It wasn't better by so much as the weight of an ant turd. I still didn't give two shits about a single character in it. I still had not read one line of memorable dialog. And it was glaring clear to me at this point that the author of this shit had no plan whatsoever to ever draw this shit to a close. Nope, he had found his meal ticket and he was going to ride this train until he dropped fucking dead. And that is exactly what he did. I felt like a prophet when I heard he died without finishing this series requiring it to be closed out by another writer. And if he was still alive right now book 21 of the WOT series would be coming out this year with still no fucking end in sight. I have no clue why this series is so popular. Given that it is 14 books long perhaps some people view completing it as some kind of harsh and grueling ritual that not everyone can complete. Like climbing Mt Everest. It's not really enjoyable while you are doing it but once back home you can brag that you endured the hellish conditions and reached the summit. Sometimes when the conspiracy part of my brain kicks in I think the WOT series is a long running prank to get gullible dumb-asses to read 14 terrible books by constantly telling them every time they want to quit that things are just about to get good. Then when you finish book 14 the other fans let you in on the joke and you can join them in leading other poor unsuspecting souls down this long awful waste of their life. Laughing as you prod them into starting one awful book after another in the vain hope that this is the one that will finally be good. Reply
I swear 😂, I only managed to reach the third book, but I couldn't get past the first few chapters. It's just so tedious, and the plot feels incredibly contrived. I mean, the whole Ta'veren concept? It's like a flimsy excuse for terrible writing. And don't even get me started on Rand-he's hands down one of the most annoying characters ever created. I get it, he doesn't want to be the Dragon Reborn, but seriously, his stubbornness and denial, despite all the facts, just grated on my nerves. And let's talk about Perrin. He goes through this entire character arc in the second book, embracing his powers and all, only to completely regress in The Dragon Reborn. It's like two steps forward, ten steps back! And the Seanchan invaders? It's almost as if the author randomly thought of them halfway through the book and decided to throw them in. The whole thing felt forced, out of nowhere, and honestly, it was just plain boring. None of the characters managed to win me over, and the Dark One's motives? Utterly nonsensical. Every time he showed up, he'd get killed, only to magically come back. And Your comment really helped me organize my thoughts, and I totally agree-this has to be some elaborate prank, because there's no way this is serious. I genuinely tried to give it a fair chance, but it disappointed me at every turn.
I'm on book 12, because I'm a completionist/sadio masochist /s. But in all seriousness, there hasn't been a single moment in the entire series where I felt like I was reading something I enjoyed. In 2020, I was about a third of the way thru "Hyperion", which I was loving. But I was also in the middle of some fairly big life changes so on a whim, I started googling around to find a modern, epic, long-winded fantasy novel. A good, or perhaps, great one. Yt video after yt video was suggesting "The Wheel of Time". All I can say is, don't bother. It's sub-par fantasy fiction. And he rips off "Dune" and other better works than him. I regret not finishing "Hyperion". "The Wheel of Time" is not worth your time.
Reading fantasy here and there, Dune pretty much stands as its own special category and i have noticed many b-grade fantasy trying to replicate that author.
I read them at least three times whole and I love it. I also love Tolkien, which has better language off course, ut apart from lord of the rings$ and the Hobbit, the Legendarium is mainly without a story and not even one coherent dialogue between a man and a woman. Beren and Luthien is a great strory but it is more like a fairy tale then a phantasy story. In the wheel of time apart from the horn of Valere, Tschechovs gun is the darkening of the world by the dark one and the upcoming battle between Rand and the dark lord in Shayol Gul. He needs to learn, and the women need to learn that only through collaboration they can win against the darkness. So he does not go alone into the last battle, but he goese with Nyneve and Moiraine. All the three Taveren grow from teenagers into adulthood during the series. Rand looses a hand and is humiliated captured and beaten several times. Matt loses an eye in thr tower of Ghenjai and his confrontation with the snakes and foxes is very interesting. Perrin is a gentle giant who has to live with the fact that many people fear him bevause of his yellow eyesan d despite of the fact that he prefers to create things, he often breaks them instead The relationshipof Rand with the three women is quiet thorougly explained in the Aiel culture and the Initiative stems from the women. The forsaken fail not because they are stupid or powerless , but because they are humans and through their various character flaws, which are all different, cannot work together because they do not trust each other. Trust is a major theme not only between men and women but also for Rand in general. Everybody has their own goals dealing with him, so the only people he really trusts are his three women and Nynaeneve, and just in the end the found again Moiraine,because she might have a temper but in the end he can allways trust on her, be it during the cleanding of Saidin or the battle of Shayol Gul.The part which I find a little hard to read is when Fail gets captured by the Shaido Ail, but reading it several times even this story within the story made sense to me within the framework of the battle between good and evil. Or the story of the politics especially of the one with the withe and later black tower , the withe cloaks , which I intensely dislike and the different factions of the black tower, as well as Pad on Fain make sense as antagonists since the struggle for power is the main weapon of the dark. It reminds me much on todays real world where humanity is facing an ever more closer catastrophe and still we are not able to collaborate because of egoism and hinger for power and closer we are to the edge worse it gets. Thats why Rand tries to unify the people at least until the last battle,because the evil they have to face is so bad, they will not be able to face it but together. They all have to give up their petty squabbels and power grabs in order to succeed to survive as a race. Igwene , one of the most powerful women in the whole cast dies during the last battle, since she is not able to collaborate even with her husband. She prefers ; just like him to rather sacrifice herself then to bend to the wills of others.Since at contrary to Tolkien this does not play in a catholic universe, apart from the withe cloaks and ma be Messana whi is a kind of violent religious zealoth like Savonarola in the wheel of time where people are continously reborn into this wheel and pattern , which is a believe system not only in Hindu or Buddhist philosophy, but in most of the Eastern countries and cultures of the globe, people have different potivations.. So there of course death is lighter then a feather, because you think you can evade hard decisions. Continue to live and endure all kinds of loss as hard as it might be for the sake of the community of mankind is harder then a mountain. To me it discusses and explores much the same concepts of good and evil, just from a different cultural perspective. Matt , when he goes to Rhuidean looses one life for another where he remembers not only the parts of his own life deytroyed by the dagger, but the many different lifetimes where he continously was a general or military man and all his experiences which are at his disposal are earned through various lifetimes. Karma as a concept is not mentioned in the book, but is there without a name. All the main protagonists are there because they have learned the skills necessary through different lifetimes. The blood of Manetheren means nothing else then people who had their share of strive and suffering through many different lifetimes only now have gained the capacity to lead mankind in their strugglr against anihilation.Every city is different,has their own chatacteristics, clothes, foods and traditions of power distribution From Tanchico which could be Algier to the borderlands which could be people up North in Siberia or Mongolia where much of the years nothing grows ,they all are different according to their climatic, economic and cultural circumstances. Just like in Tolkien gumand brought existence threatening evil inti life by technology and hybris, the believe into creating an eternal life through technology.Even the Sheanshen are like the generals of Alexander the great,who had kingdoms across his empire, like for example Egypt, after his death or the judaic people who lived in Diaspora are like the scatered armies of Arthur Hawkwing who want to turn back to their country of origin, where after a 1000 years they are strange abd alien and their way of living does not fit in the countries they are sorrounded by.I read the whold thing one after the other story and storyline by storyline and all make profound sense into the pattern of the narrative, from Tom Merrylin( very similar to Merlin, aka Gadalf) to people like Androl and Pevara the red sister which starting as enemies learn to understand each other. I also do prefer some storylines to others., but I can see why they all make sense together and are important in the context of the whole world. I as a woman may have overread the breast sizes and forms of most characters, like the behinds of our heroes, they are more hinted at, then actually described, but the girls? I could not tell you what different tits have Min , Ellaine and Aviendha. Each of the women brings a very special thing to the relationship and their are tons of cultures in the East, but even in the US the church of latter day saints where there are polygamous relationships. They are even called sister wives in mormonism. There are patriarchal as well as matrilinear societies in the world and this as well mirrors our own world. I find most of your criticism very Eurocentric, especially given that our concept of romantic love is comparatavely new even in the West; developed first during romanticism.I read the wheel of time totally different then you, but off course I respect your pov.
Everything you say makes sense to me when I see it in black and white on paper. And while I can see that that was indeed the spirit of the story, the execution of it was really poor. And yes, my view is very Eurocentric because that is what I am, I suppose. But I also suppose Jordan was no great scholar of non western philosophy. Thank you for watching!
Uh, the Church of Jesus Christ does not still practice polygamous relationships. We stopped doing that in the late nineteenth century. And our religion is not properly known as Mormonism.
So glad to find the WoT no-hype support group lol. I'm not really a hater, and people like what they like. But ... no lies could be detected in this video.
Welcome Andy, feel free to share your experience with us. Nobody judges anyone here. I can’t be bothered to hate it. I’m trying to figure out whether I regret reading it or not. Thank you for watching! 👊🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds When the first book came out, it felt like a step backwards. It had none of the ideas of smart new wave writers, and none of the more contemporary prose either. Just ok-ish epic with some inconsistent Daoism thrown in. I also have no idea why it took off, except that maybe more modern fantasy fans see works through the lens of fandom, and part of that is having tons of material.
I should add that "the slog" is so annoying to me, because publishers are really harsh to new writers and claim it's about standards and principles - but if a writer or series has a built in audience to buy, those same publishers will put out any trash, and maybe just edit a couple of commas.
Theres a sequence of events in the first book were Rand and Mat run into three different dark friends right in a row and do virtually nothing. You can literally cut about 50 pages out from thier. and can gut a lot of the book.
One caveat, I don't mind an attention to detail like wot author does(I forget his name at this point). I love George r. r. Martin's lengthy descriptions of mundane details. It's just.....wot author's lengthy descriptions aren't really written well.
This bothered me so much when I read it - the men and women not communicating with each other. I was wondering whether just once a man and woman might have a respectful conversation with each other and resolve something. Every relationship (at least in my memory) is a battle to manipulate, intimidate, trick the other into doing something. It was just sad. I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on this. I gave up about book 8.
I liked the series in large part because I like long series. Other favorites are Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern and Terry Brooks' Shannara. That might say something about me as Shannara is regularly panned as a Lord of the Rings knock off and I don't see a quality difference between it and Wheel. I hate getting invested it characters and then it's over. The ONLY flaw in Mistborn was it ended too soon for me. If I could change Wheel I would have eliminated the long section of Perrin getting Faile back. He had 2 Ashaman with him that could have went back to the tower and brought overwelming force against the Aiel and saved half a book. I also think there were too many bad guys. Trolics and Shadow spawn, the Dark One, Black Aja, Seanchan, Forsaken, Shaido and possibly Shara (I'm only in book 11).There are intricate story lines and there is turning the books into encyclopedias.
Thank you. And yes, I have a series of videos on the tv series in the channel. ruclips.net/p/PLVe3a3u82BbZ0VEYs6BuwZ5X3jxx7W210 Thank you for watching!
I started reading Wheel of Time in about 1999 (when the 8th book was just released) and it was my favourite series at the time. Here is what I think the strengths and weaknesses of it is: Pros: Worldbuilding. I disagree a lot here, tbh I don't think fantasy worldbuilding has ever been done better and it's the main thing I like about WoT. The magic is logical, the cultures do not perfectly map onto Earth cultures, there is nothing that seems impossible by the rules of the world (in contrast to say The Wall in Song of Ice and Fire), and with the languages that is a conceit that basically all fantasy writers pull to make things easier (even in the Lord of the Rings every single character form hobbits to orcs is able to speak the same language). Plot. You seem to have missed a lot of subtitles here (which is very surprising because Jordan is not subtle at all). All the important plot points make sense and motivations and reasons explained. For example the 3 boys left the village not because they wanted to but because they knew if they stayed they'd get everyone in the village killed. When Nyaneve chased them she thought she'd be back in a few weeks at most. Mixed: Structure. When Jordan started writing this _everything_ was a Lord of the Rings clone. He chose to copy that structure for the beginning but never intended to end it that way. Realism. Yeah the main characters, and even the secondaries really, have plot armour. This was a time before George R. R. Martin, it was standard for those times. I prefer things a bit darker these days myself (Malazan is now my favourite series) but I don't blame Jordan for this. Cons: Characterisation (braid pulling, etc). Yes, it is very basic and is endlessly repetitive. It gives insight into what the characters are feeling at all times, but the story doesn't need that. There is way too much description that should have been cut. Pacing. The worst thing that happened to WoT was Jordan marrying his editor, and that's saying something considering his death. The first 5 books covered an enormous amount of ground, it's an epic story so it has to be lengthy. IMO the slog started to creep in even in book 6. Jordan just gets increasingly lost in his characters and writes and writes and writes and major plot points get further and further spaced out. I truly think it would be to the publisher's advantage to revise this series down to 12 books and rerelease it like that. Romance. Before WoT Jordan was actually a romance writer. I haven't read any of them but I suspect this is a major part of the problem. The most frustrating parts of the story to read, and Rand with the three women had way too convenient an ending. Everything is pretty tame as well, very PG-13 (ultimately I do kinda see this series as aimed at 13 to 16 year olds). It's been a long time since WoT was my favourite series (I stopped eagerly anticipating the new releases about book 10), but does it suck? No, not in my opinion. However I don't think it's that far away from it, I think there is probably a good argument for it but I wasn't convinced with this video. One thing I can absolutely agree on though is that The Wheel of Time is seriously overhyped, especially in this post-Game of Thrones world. PS: If anyone is reading the series and is considering dropping it I will say that if you don't enjoy it by the end of book 6 then it is _very_ unlikely you ever will and you should drop it there. That doesn't mean you shouldn't drop it earlier of course, but don't punish yourself with a 14 book series if you aren't already enjoying it. Life is too short.
I've been re-reading this book, and hoo boy. I hate it so much. Literally the only reason I'm reading it is so I can re-read those few interesting moments of Rand's madness, the cleansing of the saidin, the ending section. I hate the descriptions. I hate the gender roles. I hate the sexism. I hate how nobody talks to each other. Everything has to be a power play. Nobody shows any human emotion. Everything interesting that happens is summarized in a character's thoughts when they reflect on it after the fact, never shown as it is happening. Rand is a chameleon whose character does somersaults and backflips any time the plot needs it to. Mat gets everything handed to him and more and he's an annoying ungrateful little shit about it. Perrin has zero character growth for 90% of the series despite the set-up existing since the first few chapters. Characters fuck up constantly and not a single one ever acknowledges it. These interesting character moments are replaced with "SHE SNIFFED LOUDLY" or "HE TELEPORTED ELSEWHERE". Half of the plot is literally just Robert Jordan thirsting after his own characters. Every woman is a schemer in a sisterhood hive mind who only exist to talk about men. Every man doesn't understand women. Each culture of the world is a weird monoculture with one or two defining traits that apply universally to every representative. Cultures don't understand each other at all. I hate how the One Power is divided into male and female halves. Everyone treats other horribly, especially the female characters. There's an entire Ajah that has the defining characteristics of hating men and being lesbian. It's homophobic. It's horrible. Every obstacle the characters face is transparently manufactured and based on either characters refusing to just talk to each other or in Robert Jordan's favorite theme, "aw shucks, men are from mars and women are from venus!". Only thing more horrible is the fandom for those books. Because it's full of people who think it's awesome and/or want to gaslight you into thinking it's something else.
Nice, I've just finished a beer when clicking on the video. As a fantasy fan and Tolkien fan especially I was curious about the wheel of time. Even positive reviews of the series are adorned with sarcastic and critical comments. I actually became interested in finding reasons why I would not like Wheel of Time instead of the opposite ^^ Most horrid thing about it is that it sounds laborious, almost like a joyless dedication to get through all pages.
I totally agree with 1, and I agree Sanderson wrote it better. About nr. 3 - well, that is intentional. Without all the burdens it would be a fun story like Once upon a time in Tokyo. Story about how fate may work without people working, which is a: how things sometimes work in life, so it is fun in greater scale. I really enjoyed how Rand destroyed Cairhien with doing nothing, because everyone was used to political games. The best parts were where MC-s were guided by fate. Only when they tried to be proactive heroes things started to suck for me. Also b, it demonstrates how antagonist's strength was in the weaknesses of the former political system, not in their own strength. Same as in Star Wars, something well shown in Disney and ruined by EU. And c: this was and is the truly original part, something in life books tend to lose. Only parallel is the Foundation series by Asimov
I was acutely aware of all these problems as I read WoT. However, I still feel like the payoff was enormous, just because of the time and diligence Brandon Sanderson put into resolving all the characters and subplots. Basically, because Jordan had so many sub-plots simultaneously running by the time Sanderson took over, he was forced to give us 3 straight books of continuous story climax. Note that this could have gone very badly if they had stuck to the original plan of finishing the series in 1 book instead of 3.
Oh hell no. Those last three books are certainly an improvement on the drivel that Jordan put out, but not worth the pain and misery of the full series. Thank you for watching!
Entiendo que quieres llegar a un público anglosajón, pero, ESTO ES LO QUE ESTABA BUSCANDO. Año y medio me tardé en leer el 3ero El Ascenso de la Sombra, título nada relacionado con el libro porque, sorpresa, al final no siento que la sombra va ganando, tal vez por eso de la torre blanca... en fin, que bueno encontrar una idea tan revolucionaria jajaja
There are really good things in there like Shadar Logoth, Mashin Shin, the red ajah - black ajah agents, the sheol ghul pit, Rhand's transformation but there is so much pointless meandering and slog in this. I think 5 or 6 books were more than enough.
@@JosesAmazingWorlds you might not regret it. For context, i followed the audiobook narrator into it, from a history book and several operatic sci-fi's.
I tried it. My problem was language. My favorite book was “name of the wind” by rothfuss and I just hated the simple language there. Even Harry Potter had a more sophisticated language.
I read exactly one chapter of the first book and thought screw this I'm out. it felt like he really wanted to hammer home his English degree with so many unnecessary words. So, knowing there were so many more books to go through I opted out early
I liked the first one or two books, although I agree even those are not great and can be frustrating. The remaining books have taken me about 10 years to get through another 3 or 4 books... I just don't have the attention to get through them, because nothing much happens.
@@wunderthunder Yeah, the first few books have their issues. It's a long time ago since I read them, but I remember feeling frustrated, and thinking that it wasn't what I expected. The characters didn't develop how I thought they would/should, and same for the story line... was a bit of a laborious read.
The entire thing is a Lotr copy. Difference is Lotr needed only one book (split in 3) to become a legend. I gave up the wheel of time after "winter's heart" which is book 9. 9 freakin books I read and I hate the series. I blame the editor of this series as much as Jordan and his horrible characters.
I have not read that many high Fantasy series, so I didn’t realize how predictable the story is. I read the entire thing thinking it would have an original ending with a gigantic twist in it, for example that the reason Rand had so much plot armor and the forsaken was instructed to not kill him was because the dark one was going to use him for something. I got very disappointed by the ending. I wish Rand would stay as he was in the majority of BOOK 12 for the rest of the series instead of turn 100% good in the end of book 12. It also bothers me that Rand never in the entire series, at least as far as I can remember, never got seriously injured while fighting an enemy one on one without either allowing himself to be hurt for some reason or being attacked from behind. In my opinion Rand should have died at the end instead of switching body with Moridin. The way it is hinted at in previous books make it seam like Rand either is going to be the next version of Moridin, or that Moridin is somehow Rand in the future, Orr that there souls would combine so that the resultant being would be a combination of the two, much like Rand and Luce Therin. Instead it was just used to bypass the hole thing about Rand dying at the last battle. The series had so much potential, but waisted so much of it in my opinion.
You're actually correct, the Dark One was trying to use Rand. Only Rand can destroy the pattern, which is the Dark One's only goal. The moment on Dragonmount when Rand made the decision not to destroy everything, is the exact moment the Dark One lost. Every thing after that was the Dark One trying to make Rand's victory as painful as possible.
I read the entire series for some reason. There's a lot of great ideas in it, but it's all very poorly executed. I do think Jordan was a bad writer and I'm not sure why people recommend these books so religiously.
Cheers for making this video. The wot books are.. good and horrible. I skipped several and.. quite literally missed nothing. This should have been a trilogy. A lot of the books seem to be the author impressing himself with how very descriptive he is. A lot of people doing things that dont really matter and you dont give a shit. Having said that id say read the first three then skip through any middle books that bore you.. The final books are good though.. the final is very.. disneyesque (but good because youre just so glad you finished it)
While not without flaws, tWoT was a truly exceptional, generational series. Its not for everyone, as Tolkien isn't for everyone, and even diehard fans agree that it could probably have been better done in two books fewer... but the first four and the last three are among the best in fiction. Most often I find that when there is a lack, the lack is in the reader, rather than the prose. For those unable to appreciate such an magnificent epic, there is always the absolute garbage adaptation by Amazon to wallow in.
If I had a braid, I'd be tugging at it, and if I had breasts, I would be crossing my arms under the them at the suggestion that the lack is in me. Merry Christmas!
I'm at the end of book 4. and every page is a struggle. Id say this is probably the worst fantasy series I have ever come across. I'm very happy to say I didn't buy the rest of this garbage. This series is an editors nightmare
@@JosesAmazingWorlds thankfully the TV show has been properly edited to fit a TV frame. I just imagine the writers on the show dreading the task of making it watchable
Im 1.5 books in, and I find Robert Jordan's writing like licking sandpaper. Its like he started with great ideas and story arch's, and his world has a great history and depth, but I cant get past his delivery of the story, and the character development and dialogue - he comes across as not aware of how regular people actually converse or behave. In book 2 (no spoilers) Rand and his companions are still one-dimensional characters who are over-emotional 12 year old's always in "Luke Skywaker rushing off to save his friends without thinking it through" mode. I get it, they are plain country folk but Jordan makes Rand A COMPLETE AND UTTER IDIOT in his decision making to the point where it frustrates the reader. He often becomes a most dis-likable character which is very hard when he is THE MAIN PROTAGONIST. Also Rand does this thing where he focuses on one thing at all costs for what seems like 10 pages. "Must save Eugwene!!" (we dont even know if she is in danger yet) "Must save Eugwene!!" (but some new threat has appeared that now needs your attention) "Must save Eugwene!!" (but there is now someone trying to cut off your head) "Must save Eugwene!!" etc.. etc.. This writting device comes in other forms in different parts of the book. Like his characters all have OCD. Ironically I found the writing of the Wheel of Time show not that bad at all lol.
As strange as this may sound, I simply cannot disagree with you on any of your points on the series. I'll only address the repetition and over description aspect. Yes, absolutely way too much. I still cringe when I read or hear the word "bosom"... but it's probably the things he doesn't go into detail too much on that I like the most. I don't like being fed every minute detail, which he does with clothing for example but doesn't explain how the World of Dreams works. Another thing I probably have in my favor on this series is that outside this series, I do not like or read fantasy. I did read Tolkien when I was like 12 but I pretty much grew out of the genre once I hit my late teens. My favorite books are "The Da Vinci Code" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". There's probably a lot of newer novels that I would like but I've been lazy in reading for awhile and prefer to listen to books on RUclips (which means they're older books and part of public domain). Last book I listened to was "Animal Farm". The Wheel of Time is my favorite series but I can 100% understand your point of view
Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. I am ok with ultimately enjoying a book in spite of its flaws. I acknowledge some of the books I truly enjoyed are flawed. With this series, I just couldn’t get past the ones here.
I completely get your points and you're honesty in voicing them. Not a fan of seeing people "like" something for monetary gain and you don't budge on your opinion, I really like that. I'll read just about anything not fantasy so I'll be going through your videos to pick up good titles but probably won't watch them until I get around to reading the books.
Just finished Eye of the World, and it sucked. Very generic, world isn't that interesting, bland characters, not enough enticing mystery, and is generally boring till the last 15% of the book. I just read Pillars of the Earth right before it, and it really highlights just how boring and uninteresting it is compared to PotE; realize how bad things are when you actually read a good book. Maybe the story gets better but how did it get popular in the first place? Who the hell read book one and thought "yeah, can't wait for book 2 now"
I'm only six books in and loving the series and I think most of your criticism is totally fair and honestly mostly correct but the point you make about the main characters not having their powers explained is completely wrong. Three of them have taveren powers, that let them have plot armor, which is explained, one of them has a natural magic power that turns him into basically a werewolf, the other has the memories of the greatest wizard ever that comes with the massive drawback of a personality disorder that is explained, the third one has luck and war powers that are given to him by fae creatures the same way Odin became the head god of his pantheon. The other two have skills thanks to their trade, and work their butts off to get better at channeling and many of the pedantic ass paragraphs are spent detailing this. You spent time explaining how their powers work so they do have an explaination, they aren't really Gary/Mary Stu characters at all. The macguffin moving them from point A to point B is that they are taveren.
Thank you for watching! For me, however, the whole taveren thing is a convenient way to not explain anything. Why is this character...? Because taveren...
The Wheel of Time is absolutely one of my favorite series of all time. BUT!!! There are many, many things about it that annoy the hell of out me. The things I can think of most off the top of my head would be: 1) The over describing of people's clothing, and many other things. 2) The way all nationalities are so stereotyped (Illianers do this, Cairieners are like this) with no real nuance from person to person. 3) Elayne. Fuck Elayne. She is the most obnoxious character in the entire series and it would've been far better without her. 4) Elayne's succession to the throne. Don't care AT ALL. It adds literally NOTHING to the story. 5) Women characters in general are absolutely awful, particularly in the beginning of the series. Some, like Nynaeve and Egwene get better as the series progresses, but overall, just terribly written women.
Okay good video first of all! I’m a huge Wheel of Time fan so total disclaimer at first. I think the thing about the Wheel of Time community is they’re very often the first people to point out it’s flaws. The way women are described is uncomfortable and weird, the slog is undeniable(though personally for me I didn’t mind it! but it’s still a reason I have trouble ever recommending it) and 14 books is a lot!! The thing is for me, something being 14 books is pretty exciting, I like big things I can really sink my teeth into, and I really enjoyed the size of the wheel of time. I don’t think it’s fair to say the characters go through no struggle, Rand is on a downhill for many books and really in an awful place by the like 3/4 mark of the series. I don’t feel like he gets better very quickly and even when he does there’s this kind of innocence lost where he feels less like himself and more has become the embodiment of that figure. I think it’s very much a story about self sacrifice and you see it in every character. It’s funny you mention Mat’s eye because that’s something my friend and I both think Branderson didn’t handle the best, he didn’t seem to really care about it. I don’t know, it definitely isn’t the series for everyone, but I think it’s earned it’s place where it is. There are some really amazing story arcs in there, it’s super rough around the edges, but I think it’s a testament to really how good the story is that despite all of the sexism, despite all of janky writing, despite the slog that it’s as popular as it is. Again enjoyed the video, I know this is old and you may not read it but thanks for the fun watch
Thank you for watching and the comment! I totally respect your perspective on the series and understand what you are saying. I'm even glad we found some common ground.
U have good points, but one thing im not sure i agree with u. Arent Rand, Matt and others reincarnations of great people from past, and were destined to have all those powers and knowledge? I mean, Rand is literally reborn Dragon from 3000 years ago, of course he will be most powerful wizard or Matt is reborn great military leader from Maneteren land and etc. Series is called wheel of time, so it means that world had same battle over and over and over again, at least, thats what i understand
I think you may be right. So yes Rand is the dragon reborn, but the others? They acquire their super powers seemingly randomly. I agree with you. I can accept they all are reincarnations of heroes past. But we still see no progression or struggle, they remain super powered heroes throughout that contributed to make the series one continued borefest. Thank you for watching and commenting! 👊🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds For me, biggest let down is how Forsaken basically did nothing, and i loved their history and everything about them. Really too bad. Keep up the good work bro
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Fair enough, but I think after a few books it should be clear enough that if you don't like it yet, you won't suddenly gonna like it afterwards especially considering the bad rep the middle books have. I can understand someone going through all the books with an agenda, like you, to make an educated review on youtube etc. But going through 14 books you vehemently dislike like this person, I won't ever understand. Life is so short and there are tons of authors out there that one might enjoy better.
I tried to watching the Amazon prime series "The Wheel of Time" and was baffled by the homunculus horse shit that it was. So damn boring and poorly written. Are the books as bad as the TV series????
@@Daniel-tq6sq worse. My hope was the TV show would trim the fat. I only watched the first season and stopped. I doubt they'll even finish it. Is anyone even watching it or talking about it?
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I read the WoT as an adult just a few months ago and it's my fav series ever. The world building is best of all fantasy IMO. Character work is the slowest of the slow burn. Rand is fantasy's greatest character IMO. So I'm here offering a counter opinion, but I agree it's not for everyone. I agree that the villains are bad, but that is the point. If you thought stromlight archive was too long, then you'll hate WoT.
People are so afraid to criticize Wheel of Time because the fandom is so rabid, but you're right. I read the whole series, and I guess the one thing it taught me that it was okay to DNF books and series I wasn't enjoying. WoT is poorly written YA. It's massively overhyped due to nostalgia. ETA also I think people really want to like and advocate for things they've spent a lot of time reading, and WoT sure is long.
As a Wheel of Time fan this hurts.Jordan is my 3rd favourite fantasy author. I gave up after Path of Daggers for now.But I PLAN to finish the entire thing next year. 😁
@@JosesAmazingWorlds The slog is real but it doesn't change The fact I love Wheel of time more than many other series.I will definetly finish it next year.
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Thanks.Book 8 was really bad so I had to quit to continue with First Law World which I finished recently.Way better than Wheel of time for sure 😊 Now I read John Gwynne 😁
Just so that I could say all this from a position of knowledge with a sound basis. Which points do you particularly disagree with? Thank you for watching!
Sorry I just saw this. I actually went through and watched most of your videos regarding The Wheel of Time. Some of your criticisms felt as if it could be aimed at fantasy literature as a whole. I mean I understand the criticism of Jordan’s S&M shit and the character writing to an extent. Let me know what your ideal fantasy series is. I am very curious. Not here to hate on you I am just interested in what you look for in a fantasy epic.
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I slogged through the first 8 books because my friend kept telling me it would get better, but then I finally gave up. All I remember is something or other slashed with blue silk, Nynaeve tugged her braid, Berelain was wearing a dress that left very little to the imagination, and every single male character could do with a good switching. Oh, and also Aviendha went batshit, out-of-any-semi-reasonable-world insane and nearly got herself frozen to death because of that one time when Rand accidentally saw her naked.
All of that is true. And the only way to warm her up from near death freezing cold was to... you know... generate some human friction.
Your description is a perfect synopsis of the series 😂
@@JosesAmazingWorlds And what a brilliant romance that was. I don't know why only some of the middle books are considered to be "the slog". For me, the entire thing felt like a slog. The only part I actually enjoyed was Perrin's arc in book 4, and that's it.
@@josephsalmonte4995 Haha. I know, right? Like, almost literally nothing else happens. And let's not forget about Faile. Whom he loved. Whom he loved deeply. More deeply than anyone can ever be loved... Just try reading that about 100 times per book and not getting sick of it.
I did the same thing. My dad kept insisting that the Brandon Sanderson books were good enough to justify reading the Robert Jordan ones. Maybe they are. I don't know, because I never got that far. My stamina ran out somewhere around the one called "Winter's Heart," or something like that.
If Nyneave had died in the boat that would have been a perfect escalatation of the stakes and making the Chosen more dangerous.
The whole series is full of momement like this where you as a reader can see a much better story being missed again and again because jordan is afraid to raise the stakes for his main characters.
But Robert Jordan can't kill his darlings
I was most disappointed with the whole Rhavin storyline with morgase being under compulsion. When she escaped I was so excited to see what would happen along with the possible political twists, and revealing that Gabril is actually one of the forsaken. But instead, Jordan just had him get deleted by Rand and called it good.
I also think that Jordan never killing his characters is a problem, but i also understands that he wanted everyone to be essential in the last battle and maybe die there, so it's mostly a writing choice
I shelved the series after finishing Path Of Daggers in January. The books after The Shadow Rising just felt like reading tax documents with a climactic battle in the end. They’re were hundreds of pages that just felt like complete useless and archaic information that contributed nothing to the plot or character development. I was in denial for awhile because the series was really hyped up and it was my first big fantasy series to get into. After awhile I was starting to think I was either dumb or this wasn’t what it was all it was cracked up to be. I do plan on finishing the series one day as I’ve invested in the series. I also plan on doing a reread as well. I’m hoping I find out what all the true fans love about this series but at the moment I just don’t see it.
Hopefully I’m wrong and you’ll find whatever it is, but I doubt it. I can’t imagine doing a reread in the next 20 years. It will really take that long for me to wonder if it was as bad as I remembered it. And probably by the fourth book I’ll conclude that yes it was and put it down for good. Best of luck to you though. 🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I read first six books then lost interest. too much reading for a series.
@@GuitarsAndSynths you are smarter than me, I went all the way!
OMG you are so open-mindend. I own the entire series, but only as a sort of future reference to a mainstream fantasy series. I could never steel myself for another complete re-read. Honestly, a synopsis of EVERYTHING from book 5 to 12 would save you months of literary torture. 30% b*$&t? So generous! Literally HALF this series is not worth reading, ever. As far as I'm concerned, read the first four books, last three, and wiki everything in between. Believe me, you will save yourself a LOT of pain!
@@danielliu22 that is a very nice summary actually. Thank you for watching! 👊🍻
Okay, here at my page, we're not exactly Puritan. In fact, we tend to hate censorship of all kinds. But it must be said here that there are places in WoT that are more than a little WHAT THE SHIT-ish. Not because there are actually people having sex, but because there are people not having sex while sexual imagery flies off the page at the speed of light, zonking your poor brain and reducing you to a confused, quivering mass. Here are some memorable examples of this pseudosex
- Everyone in the series is gradually turning into a lesbian. Moiraine was not a lesbian, nor was her friend Siuan, for about the first eight books. Then Jordan wrote a prequel where it is revealed that the two were "pillowfriends" when they got their training in the White Tower. This system, in addition to having the most pathetic name ever, was never mentioned before and never affected any of the female characters in the series (Incidentally, this story also featured Lan as some other woman's bitch, but that's not the point here). Nor did it add anything to either character. In the next book, he introduced another lesbian character that no one cares about and made her a lesbian for no apparent reason. If this trend continued, I have to assume that by the end, Nynaeve, Aviendha, Siuan, Moirane, Cadsuane, and Egwene would have been writhing together in one kinky, moany, sticky pile as they await the Last Battle.
- The gang heads out into the Aiel Waste, a harsh desert-like area. There, they decide to undergo trials at Rhuidean. Rand and Mat take part in one trial, Moiraine in another. For some reason, Moiraine's trial requires her to strip naked and run through the desert at top speed, breasts flopping. Rand and Mat, allowed to keep their clothes on, spot her and ogle.
- Egwene trains with the Aiel Wise Ones, who are all female channelers. She lies to them and tells them that she is a full Aes Sedai when in fact she is only a trainee. They determine that she must be punished. This entails a spanking with a leather strap by one Wise One in front of all the other Wise Ones. Keep in mind, Egwene is around 20 years old at this point. Yeaaaah.
- At one point Elayne, Nynaeve, and someone else are taken captive by a band of women who are working for the enemy. In an attempt to prevent them using magic to escape, they are tied to beds and force-fed a special drug through a funnel every hour on the hour. This bondage/domination scene grinds on for several pages as they struggle to regain their power in time (by the way, the men of the party, repeatedly called useless, save the day here, and get no gratitude).
- Aviendha and Elayne decide to become sisters. This unique ceremony involves them both stripping naked, kneeling on the floor before each other, and, before a watching crowd of Wise Ones and other assorted Aiel chicks, insulting each other, pulling each others' hair, and slapping each other about the face and breasts. I may be adding the hair pulling on my own, but the important thing is it's perfectly plausible for a scene that's already gone through Sanity Pass and deep into the Mountains of Freako.
The fifteen book Wheel of Time saga is longer than The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, all five A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the three Dunk and Egg prequels, The First Law trilogy, the entire Chronicles of Narnia, the old and new testament of the Bible, the Quran, Alice in Wonderland, and The Odyssey. COMBINED.
No wonder so many people quit reading it while in jail. And that's all I have.
Nynaeve tugged her braid.
This comment ☝️. Pure gold. Made reading WoT and posting the video worthwhile. Just to read this. You, sir, hit the proverbial nail. This comment needs to be shared and read by many many people. 🍻🙏👍🤣🤣
I was SO pissed off with the women in this series. The men heroically save them time & again & not only do they not even get thanked, the women just carry on saying the men are useless good-for-nothings. They're ungrateful bitches!
That can't be a real synopsis of the events. I've read smut fics that manage to be more coherent and centered than that. Many times.
Hello from the future. You've not much experience with female hierarchies and their rituals I take it?
Talk to some ladies that were in sororities before the 00s
Of all things to complain about, this is definitely the gayest I've ever seen. Go back to the church, nun.
Robert Jordan needs an editor like a bukkake girl needs a wet nap.
I thought about just leaving the review at that, as a sort of testament to how important brevity can be, but unfortunately I can't. Because RJ needs more than an editor - he could also use a beating and advice on creating characters that I don't want to kill and scenes that don't read like they were pulled right from the pages of his crusty teenage erotica jerk notebook.
Part of me doesn't even know where to begin with this. The Wheel of Time series literally spans thousands of pages, contains hundreds of characters and dozens of PoVs, and is packed with intrigue that's almost as psychotically complicated as Hideo Kojima's. Maybe the best place to start is with the fans, or better yet, the ex-fans. There's nothing angrier than an ex-Wheel of Time fan. I don't care if your ex broke up with you because she was dating a mentally deranged pedo who works as a janitor down at the local Baskin Robbins, I don't care if she gave you one of his stupid but horribly strong STDs, I don't care if you found yourself wiping his drool off the face and breasts of your invalid grandmother, you don't feel as betrayed as Jordan's fans do. You might call this an exaggeration, but think about it - when your ex left you for the Cock that Brains Forgot, at least she didn't take 8,000+ pages and a decade to do it. I can say this, because I feel like I've been the recipient of a long, slow, hard fuck by Robert Jordan. And not the good kind of fuck, the kind where you're lying face down on a bed of nails and maggot-infested garbage as a fat guy wearing overalls reams you out with a meat mallet.
You might think that I've gone a little bit heavy on the description in the paragraph above, but that's just because you haven't read enough Robert Jordan, you lucky fuck. Robert Jordan is the kind of man who will fill pages of prose with descriptions of the uniforms the soldiers are wearing, the color and cut of the dresses the Aes Sedai have on, the hairstyles of everyone in the room, and how many beetles are crawling across the ground. His writing style sort of reminds me of Urkel. At first, it's quaint and charming and quite unlike anything you've ever seen before, but before the end it's become bloated, misshapen and sad to the point that you just wish someone would drive a railroad spike through its forehead and end its travesty of a life. I know more about Egwene's taste in dresses than I do about my fucking major, and while I'm not quite sure if this is actually in the book or just something that came to me while I was masturbating dreaming, I'd stake my life on the fact that Min's left ass cheek has exactly seven freckles. Also, did I mention Nynaeve likes to tug her braid when she's annoyed, which is only about four times per page?
Speaking of Nynaeve, she and her fellow companions deserve special mention. I remember the first cries of praise the Wheel of Time series received. Everyone was practically creaming their undergarment of choice at the idea that Jordan had *gasp* female characters! STRONG female characters! The battle of the sexes! This was somewhere Tolkien had never been before! This was new territory! Now, I'm not precisely sure when people stopped praising the books for this, but I have to believe it was somewhere around the time that they realized every woman in the series was so insanely bitchy and shrewish that any real man would sooner hack his dick off with a rusty spoon than fall into their hands. Then we discovered why Tolkien never went here; because apparently unlike Robert Jordan, his fifteen older sisters had never beaten him up and then poured lye down his peehole.
I hope Jordan didn't really think all women are like this, because there isn't a likeable or believable one in the bunch. Actually, they all come off as one giant ubercharacter, a multifaceted Samsara-like entity of bitchery and annoyance that fills the universe and seeks only to destroy and dominate that which is male. Some may think I'm kidding, but those who have braved this hell know that I speak true- is there ever even a chapter where one of the female characters does not mention how stupid men are? Is there even one of them that doesn't resort to manipulating, insulting, and abusing the male characters in the books? Once again, I don't exaggerate - I literally mean abuse. One of the three main characters, a man with supernatural luck and lethal skill with a spear, spends a whole book being raped by a horny old queen. He repeatedly denies her and is repeatedly molested anyway. Then there's Nynaeve, who hides beneath her bitchy outer shell the heart of a harpy. I'm not even going to try to justify her because everything she says blends into one long, squealy whine. Of all the girls, Min is probably the nicest - at least she only calls Rand stupid and gets annoyed with him when he doesn't fuck her. No, I'm not fucking kidding, this is the shit that climbed to #1 on the New York Times list. Nynaeve tugged her braid.
Of course, I can't place all the blame on the women, as the men are such unbelievable, galactic pussies that they take this abuse on the chin and come crawling back for more. This trait completely and totally destroys even the coolest of characters. Take Lan, the Warder. Lan is a superhumanly strong and resilient man who kicks ass and takes names. Throughout most of book one he is the Badass on Deck - the guy who flosses his teeth with Trolloc pubes just to prove how tough he is. However, since he apparently can't resist a frostybitch, he falls for Nynaeve, who then precedes to emasculate him and totally destroy him as a character. I know this sounds sexist, but believe me, it's the truth. Lan goes from kicking ass all across the map to literally being a woman's bitch in about book five or six. I'm serious. He's bonded to her through some sort of 'tarded process I don't want to get into and she spends her time using him as a fucktoy which of course makes Nynaeve TEH FURIOUS. I forget what happens to Lan. I think he gets free and hooks up with Nynaeve, but this doesn't really change anything but whose pussy he's licking. I believe once in a later book he gets to kill a fat lameass. It's such a colossal waste that it's saddening. You couldn't be more insulting of someone's talent if you hired a ninja to mow your lawn or Elton John to fuck your wife.
Lan is just a case study, though. The three protagonists - Rand, Perrin, and Mat - are actually far more pathetic. Of these men the first two simply can't understand women at all (which is especially sad since Perrin is married and Rand is banging three broads at once) and the last will fuck anything that has a vaguely vagina-shaped hole in it. It's not exactly the most likeable collection of leads ever assembled, and as time goes on, they just get more and more obnoxious. It got so obnoxious that Nynaeve tugged her braid.
Rand is the main character, so we'll start with him. First, as the Dragon Reborn, he's the most powerful male channeler on the planet, wrestling with a power that may destroy him and will surely eventually turn him mad and rot his body as he lives. He has to shoulder the responsibility of being both the savior and breaker of the world, and as nations and people flock to him, he must question who to trust and who to fear. Oh, and did I mention he's 20 and acts 12?
Rand has three women in his life. There's Elayne, who's a princess, a magic-user, and a bitch. Then there's Aviendha: desert warrior, magic-user, bitch. Then there's Min: seer, dresses like a boy, vaguely bitchy (when you look at it this way, Min actually comes off decently). These relationships are so heartbreakingly juvenile and stupid I don't even know where to start. I won't give specifics, because I can't remember them and I wouldn't read this series again unless Selphie herself offered me a hummer. Suffice to say, some highlights include the not-cliche-at-all "must warm her freezing body" sequence, which ends in fuckery and then a promise of no more fuckery. This was with Aviendha, and sadly is the most believable of the experiences. The other two consist of Elayne demanding that Rand give her some of the sweet, sweet honey that Aviendha got and raping him and of Min getting surly and grumpy, wearing progressively tighter pants and raping him. Meanwhile, Nynaeve tugged her braid.
During all this Rand scratches his head and endures their abuse, befuddled at the behavior of these women that he just can't understand! This plays as cute for the first few books, or maybe it's just that I was younger when I read them, but by the time you reach the tenth or so volume and Rand is still behaving like a guilty, confused 11 year old whose teacher touched his peepee, you're praying that he'll either start acting like a man or just go gay and get it the hell over with.
Perrin, if anything, is the worst. There's no hiding it - Perrin got punked. Perrin got punked bad. And it's not like Loial the Ogier pinned him down and forced his Steddingpenis in, Perrin chose to get punked by randomly falling for Faile, or as I like to call her, SATAN'S TITS. Why, I don't know. Faile was an obnoxious girl who was hunting for the Horn of Valere. Apparently, her ability to bitch about anything and everything, coupled with Perrin's furry/submissive nature, made her irresistible to him. Highlights of their marriage include her bitching at him, her getting furious because he never bitched at her BACK, and sex. Which she probably bitches during.
You have put my pain into actual human words, successfully. Shine on you crazy diamond! And thank you for making the sacrifice. I could only force myself halfway up through The Great Hunt. Your suffering will not be forgotten.
@@ukamikazu I finished the first six books and did not have time or desire to read the other 6-8 books in the series. It should have been 3 books max and half as many pages.
Guess I know which series not to read.
OMG this was literally the highlight of my post-work, alcohol-fueled night. I couldn't agree with you more. I only wish that you had more choice words for Egwene, the queen of b*****s, who almost made me quit the series. I still don't understand why someone like Sanderson agreed to finish such a travesty, but, well, it happened, and we'll have to forgive him.
All that said, I really enjoyed this post!
Thank you very much for your epic comment. I enjoyed it more than the video. I congratulate you for faultless spelling, good paragraphs and proper English grammar too. I know it takes a lot of work to write a long comment like that with such high quality.
Just to add, another significant weakness that I found in the WoT were the so called "bubbles of evil", which would make some random magical calamity suddenly happen to show the Dark One's influence on the world. It always seemed to me like a lazy alternative to having the Dark One and his minions actually execute a plot against the protagonists.
I disagree, the “bubbles of evil” showed what an existential threat the dark one represents, that reality itself will be warped to something murderous and sinister, that the logic of the world will be completely twisted, and it also showcases how DOs influence on the world is increasing.
@@JeffPenaify How old were you when you read the books?
@@zahel-of-nalthis young but rereading currently so irrelevant
You nailed it!!! My biggest gripe with this series was the lack of good villians. I've asked it before and I'll ask it again, why do people think this garbage is good??
I haven't cracked that nut. I'll email you and we'll put a date for a discussion
Padan Fain was a good villain in the series and same with the Forsaken.
@@GuitarsAndSynths Padan Fain = Undeveloped, unsatisfyingly concluded, and a boring personality.
What are you talking about? Egwene was a great villain! At least, I hated her heart and soul throughout the entire series, so that's gotta count for something, yeah?
I do think his point about the villains being bickering and petty was kinda their whole point tho. These villains are not meant to be brilliant schemers they're not game of thrones characters. They're meant to be all the worst aspects of humanity. Petty, proud, selfish, lying, hateful, and weak. Shaitan is supposed to be the only competent villain.
Same here. Read first two books. Nine rings, many borrowing from LOTR. I was waiting for characters names like Frodo Gagins. The Dark One could be called Sour-man, Perrin Agrin Took, Trolocs = Orcs. So obvious. Also: Gibberish names that weren’t explained…Aie Sedai, Marty McFly, I’m gonna cry, tear in my eye. Val Tar Dor, Dan Be More, Tar Valon, Gar Balon, flip Walon…. Gibberish. Rarely explained names or concepts. Not horrible books but Sanderson’s Mistborn and Light series are much, much, much better. Reminds me why I’m not a big fantasy fan. Make up magical solutions to get out of struggles
The names didn't bother me since I have read a fair amount of fantasy. Everything else though...
The Supergirls pulling magical solutions to thousand-year-unsolvable problems out of their hats was one of the biggest turnoffs in the series, for me.
Because Sanderson's names are explained? They're gibberish too.
@@andreww4751 Yeah. Sometimes they're explained, but usually they are indeed gibberish with a pattern. Which is what I expect from fantasy stories. Unless you really are thinly veiling plagiarism, I don't see what the problem with fantasy names that don't map to any real-world language or meaning is. It's... another world. Why in the world should they use our naming conventions?
I also think that Wheel Of Time is hot garbage. People love to worship it as this massive thing because, well, it is a massive thing. But that's really all it is.
But why is it so popular? Thank you for watching! 👊🍻
You're not wrong: the length, the slog, the repetitive descriptions, the sexism, the annoying characters, the weird pacing/structure of the series, too many characters, the bad romance, etc. After finishing the series myself, I decided the hype must mostly be from people having nostalgia of reading the series in their youth, though I thought Brandon Sanderson did a nice job with the climactic battle for the finale.
Wholeheartedly agree, but Sandersons work wasn't enough for me to rescue the series. Is nostalgia the only thing we can attribute the popularity of the series to?
@@JosesAmazingWorlds It's possible we secretly like stories with annoying characters and bad pacing? LOL.
@@jeremyfee NO!
Sexism? Why you people are so emotionally weak that you people ruin everything. Its because of you people that tv show has no good male characters. Because feminist wanted it to change.
It's weird how many parts of it are extremely sexist, yet it has some of the strongest female characters that I can think of in pretty much all fantasy.
This is why I've never wanted to read the books, all of these reasons deterred me from ever wasting my time. Wheel of Time? More like 'Waste of Time'. I did however watch the Amazon adaptation, but I found it very boring. I still plan to watch season 2 when it comes out but I would rank it very low on my list of shows that I watch. Are the books as boring as the TV show?
Yeah. I watched season one, but I can't get excited for season 2, let alone 3, 4 or 5. The infamous slog is very tedious. There 3-4 books that are just people talking with no plot advancement. The huge success of this series is beyond my comprehension.
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Just watched Season 2 and I have to say it also sucked. I can't for the life of me understand the appeal. The characters are all so insufferable and the story is so uninteresting and bland.
@@dalecooper2232 nobody cares about that TV show. None of the pop culture channels are covering it. Even Sanderson was ambivalent about the show.
Sorry but Robert Jordan is not a good writer and the WOT series is not a good read. I am a big fan of Fantasy and sci/fi literature. Absolutely love all things Tolkien. So I purchased the first three books of the WOT series because of my love of the genre and because so many people online and a few of my friends just raved about their greatness.
The first three books were being offered in package deal so I went ahead and picked them up. I read the first one and just found it awful. It was a slow tedious slog of a read. And it wasn't slow because it needed to be. It was just slow because it seemed like the author just wanted to drag it out due to a misguided belief that this would make it seem more epic. Boy howdy was that a bit of foreshadowing for the whole series. 100 pages of a story spread across 826 pages. Like trying to take one pat of butter and spreading it across 6 loaves of bread. There was not a single character I gave the least bit of shit about and there wasn't a single line of memorable dialog in the entire book.
So I confront my friends and ask "WTF?" This sucks! Only to be hit with the standard WOT fanboy defense, "Oh yeah the first book isn't that good but it really picks up after that." "The later books are nothing like the first one" Blah, blah, blah. So I figured screw it I already have the second book so I'll stick with it.
So I read the second book. Aaaannnnnndddd? It sucked just as bad as the first one. Not to mention containing virtually every lame run of the mill fantasy genre cliche imaginable. It was like something a student turned in for a class assignment in a Fantasy Literature 101 class. And not one of the A students either. One of the D students who went online to a website called youcanwriteafantasyepic.com and just downloaded some standard format story outline that leaves blank spots where you fill in your own personalized town and character names before you turn it in to the teacher.
So I confront my friends again and I'm like, "this shit is still awful and I'm done with it." Only to be hit with, NOOOOOOOO, NOOOOOOO, you can't stop at book two." This where it really gets good and this happens next and that as well. And so and so hasn't even entered the story yet. This is where Jordan is really about to come into his own as a writer. Blah, Blah, Blah. And I'm thinking, "None of you fuckers mentioned that the first two books sucked when you recommended this series." Why am I only being told this now? But screw it I already have the first three so I'll read the last one I have.
And I have to admit when it comes to book three it......it.......it.......SUCKED JUST AS GODDAMN BAD AS THE FIRST FUCKING TWO! It wasn't one milligram better. It wasn't better by so much as the weight of an ant turd. I still didn't give two shits about a single character in it. I still had not read one line of memorable dialog. And it was glaring clear to me at this point that the author of this shit had no plan whatsoever to ever draw this shit to a close. Nope, he had found his meal ticket and he was going to ride this train until he dropped fucking dead. And that is exactly what he did. I felt like a prophet when I heard he died without finishing this series requiring it to be closed out by another writer. And if he was still alive right now book 21 of the WOT series would be coming out this year with still no fucking end in sight.
I have no clue why this series is so popular. Given that it is 14 books long perhaps some people view completing it as some kind of harsh and grueling ritual that not everyone can complete. Like climbing Mt Everest. It's not really enjoyable while you are doing it but once back home you can brag that you endured the hellish conditions and reached the summit. Sometimes when the conspiracy part of my brain kicks in I think the WOT series is a long running prank to get gullible dumb-asses to read 14 terrible books by constantly telling them every time they want to quit that things are just about to get good. Then when you finish book 14 the other fans let you in on the joke and you can join them in leading other poor unsuspecting souls down this long awful waste of their life. Laughing as you prod them into starting one awful book after another in the vain hope that this is the one that will finally be good.
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I wholeheartedly agree with everything you just said! Thank you for watching! 🍻
I swear 😂, I only managed to reach the third book, but I couldn't get past the first few chapters. It's just so tedious, and the plot feels incredibly contrived. I mean, the whole Ta'veren concept? It's like a flimsy excuse for terrible writing. And don't even get me started on Rand-he's hands down one of the most annoying characters ever created. I get it, he doesn't want to be the Dragon Reborn, but seriously, his stubbornness and denial, despite all the facts, just grated on my nerves.
And let's talk about Perrin. He goes through this entire character arc in the second book, embracing his powers and all, only to completely regress in The Dragon Reborn. It's like two steps forward, ten steps back! And the Seanchan invaders? It's almost as if the author randomly thought of them halfway through the book and decided to throw them in. The whole thing felt forced, out of nowhere, and honestly, it was just plain boring.
None of the characters managed to win me over, and the Dark One's motives? Utterly nonsensical. Every time he showed up, he'd get killed, only to magically come back. And Your comment really helped me organize my thoughts, and I totally agree-this has to be some elaborate prank, because there's no way this is serious. I genuinely tried to give it a fair chance, but it disappointed me at every turn.
I'm on book 12, because I'm a completionist/sadio masochist /s. But in all seriousness, there hasn't been a single moment in the entire series where I felt like I was reading something I enjoyed. In 2020, I was about a third of the way thru "Hyperion", which I was loving. But I was also in the middle of some fairly big life changes so on a whim, I started googling around to find a modern, epic, long-winded fantasy novel. A good, or perhaps, great one. Yt video after yt video was suggesting "The Wheel of Time". All I can say is, don't bother. It's sub-par fantasy fiction. And he rips off "Dune" and other better works than him. I regret not finishing "Hyperion".
"The Wheel of Time" is not worth your time.
Unfortunately, my time was spent on it, ALL of it. But then I feel justified in having my opinion. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Reading fantasy here and there, Dune pretty much stands as its own special category and i have noticed many b-grade fantasy trying to replicate that author.
@@JOSEPH-vs2gc WoT cheaply rips off Dune a time or two and other things too.
I think "Hyperion" is very good, and I highly recommend it. "Hyperion" is one of the best science fiction novels ever written.
You absolutely owe it to yourself to finish Hyperion, and read the full series.
I read them at least three times whole and I love it. I also love Tolkien, which has better language off course, ut apart from lord of the rings$ and the Hobbit, the Legendarium is mainly without a story and not even one coherent dialogue between a man and a woman. Beren and Luthien is a great strory but it is more like a fairy tale then a phantasy story. In the wheel of time apart from the horn of Valere, Tschechovs gun is the darkening of the world by the dark one and the upcoming battle between Rand and the dark lord in Shayol Gul. He needs to learn, and the women need to learn that only through collaboration they can win against the darkness. So he does not go alone into the last battle, but he goese with Nyneve and Moiraine. All the three Taveren grow from teenagers into adulthood during the series. Rand looses a hand and is humiliated captured and beaten several times. Matt loses an eye in thr tower of Ghenjai and his confrontation with the snakes and foxes is very interesting. Perrin is a gentle giant who has to live with the fact that many people fear him bevause of his yellow eyesan d despite of the fact that he prefers to create things, he often breaks them instead The relationshipof Rand with the three women is quiet thorougly explained in the Aiel culture and the Initiative stems from the women. The forsaken fail not because they are stupid or powerless , but because they are humans and through their various character flaws, which are all different, cannot work together because they do not trust each other. Trust is a major theme not only between men and women but also for Rand in general. Everybody has their own goals dealing with him, so the only people he really trusts are his three women and Nynaeneve, and just in the end the found again Moiraine,because she might have a temper but in the end he can allways trust on her, be it during the cleanding of Saidin or the battle of Shayol Gul.The part which I find a little hard to read is when Fail gets captured by the Shaido Ail, but reading it several times even this story within the story made sense to me within the framework of the battle between good and evil. Or the story of the politics especially of the one with the withe and later black tower , the withe cloaks , which I intensely dislike and the different factions of the black tower, as well as Pad on Fain make sense as antagonists since the struggle for power is the main weapon of the dark. It reminds me much on todays real world where humanity is facing an ever more closer catastrophe and still we are not able to collaborate because of egoism and hinger for power and closer we are to the edge worse it gets. Thats why Rand tries to unify the people at least until the last battle,because the evil they have to face is so bad, they will not be able to face it but together. They all have to give up their petty squabbels and power grabs in order to succeed to survive as a race. Igwene , one of the most powerful women in the whole cast dies during the last battle, since she is not able to collaborate even with her husband. She prefers ; just like him to rather sacrifice herself then to bend to the wills of others.Since at contrary to Tolkien this does not play in a catholic universe, apart from the withe cloaks and ma be Messana whi is a kind of violent religious zealoth like Savonarola in the wheel of time where people are continously reborn into this wheel and pattern , which is a believe system not only in Hindu or Buddhist philosophy, but in most of the Eastern countries and cultures of the globe, people have different potivations.. So there of course death is lighter then a feather, because you think you can evade hard decisions. Continue to live and endure all kinds of loss as hard as it might be for the sake of the community of mankind is harder then a mountain. To me it discusses and explores much the same concepts of good and evil, just from a different cultural perspective. Matt , when he goes to Rhuidean looses one life for another where he remembers not only the parts of his own life deytroyed by the dagger, but the many different lifetimes where he continously was a general or military man and all his experiences which are at his disposal are earned through various lifetimes. Karma as a concept is not mentioned in the book, but is there without a name. All the main protagonists are there because they have learned the skills necessary through different lifetimes. The blood of Manetheren means nothing else then people who had their share of strive and suffering through many different lifetimes only now have gained the capacity to lead mankind in their strugglr against anihilation.Every city is different,has their own chatacteristics, clothes, foods and traditions of power distribution
From Tanchico which could be Algier to the borderlands which could be people up North in Siberia or Mongolia where much of the years nothing grows ,they all are different according to their climatic, economic and cultural circumstances. Just like in Tolkien gumand brought existence threatening evil inti life by technology and hybris, the believe into creating an eternal life through technology.Even the Sheanshen are like the generals of Alexander the great,who had kingdoms across his empire, like for example Egypt, after his death or the judaic people who lived in Diaspora are like the scatered armies of Arthur Hawkwing who want to turn back to their country of origin, where after a 1000 years they are strange abd alien and their way of living does not fit in the countries they are sorrounded by.I read the whold thing one after the other story and storyline by storyline and all make profound sense into the pattern of the narrative, from Tom Merrylin( very similar to Merlin, aka Gadalf) to people like Androl and Pevara the red sister which starting as enemies learn to understand each other. I also do prefer some storylines to others., but I can see why they all make sense together and are important in the context of the whole world. I as a woman may have overread the breast sizes and forms of most characters, like the behinds of our heroes, they are more hinted at, then actually described, but the girls? I could not tell you what different tits have Min , Ellaine and Aviendha. Each of the women brings a very special thing to the relationship and their are tons of cultures in the East, but even in the US the church of latter day saints where there are polygamous relationships. They are even called sister wives in mormonism. There are patriarchal as well as matrilinear societies in the world and this as well mirrors our own world. I find most of your criticism very Eurocentric, especially given that our concept of romantic love is comparatavely new even in the West; developed first during romanticism.I read the wheel of time totally different then you, but off course I respect your pov.
Everything you say makes sense to me when I see it in black and white on paper. And while I can see that that was indeed the spirit of the story, the execution of it was really poor. And yes, my view is very Eurocentric because that is what I am, I suppose. But I also suppose Jordan was no great scholar of non western philosophy. Thank you for watching!
Uh, the Church of Jesus Christ does not still practice polygamous relationships. We stopped doing that in the late nineteenth century. And our religion is not properly known as Mormonism.
I have been debating on whether to read this or not and this video has convinced me not to. I had a feeling. Thanks.
Thank you for watching!
What is the watch that your are wearing?
A simple Garmin forerunner
So glad to find the WoT no-hype support group lol. I'm not really a hater, and people like what they like. But ... no lies could be detected in this video.
Welcome Andy, feel free to share your experience with us. Nobody judges anyone here. I can’t be bothered to hate it. I’m trying to figure out whether I regret reading it or not. Thank you for watching! 👊🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds When the first book came out, it felt like a step backwards. It had none of the ideas of smart new wave writers, and none of the more contemporary prose either. Just ok-ish epic with some inconsistent Daoism thrown in. I also have no idea why it took off, except that maybe more modern fantasy fans see works through the lens of fandom, and part of that is having tons of material.
I should add that "the slog" is so annoying to me, because publishers are really harsh to new writers and claim it's about standards and principles - but if a writer or series has a built in audience to buy, those same publishers will put out any trash, and maybe just edit a couple of commas.
@@AndyBestHP yep, the huge commercial success of the series is a mystery to me!
We need a Cliff Notes version of the series.
Not for me thanks!
Theres a sequence of events in the first book were Rand and Mat run into three different dark friends right in a row and do virtually nothing. You can literally cut about 50 pages out from thier. and can gut a lot of the book.
You can cut a lot of ALL the books!
You could make that first book 300 pages easily@@JosesAmazingWorlds
One caveat, I don't mind an attention to detail like wot author does(I forget his name at this point). I love George r. r. Martin's lengthy descriptions of mundane details. It's just.....wot author's lengthy descriptions aren't really written well.
And they are repetitive!
This bothered me so much when I read it - the men and women not communicating with each other. I was wondering whether just once a man and woman might have a respectful conversation with each other and resolve something. Every relationship (at least in my memory) is a battle to manipulate, intimidate, trick the other into doing something. It was just sad. I'm glad I'm not the only one who picked up on this. I gave up about book 8.
@@ericlancaster412 I'm miffed by the popularity of the series
I liked the series in large part because I like long series. Other favorites are Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern and Terry Brooks' Shannara. That might say something about me as Shannara is regularly panned as a Lord of the Rings knock off and I don't see a quality difference between it and Wheel. I hate getting invested it characters and then it's over. The ONLY flaw in Mistborn was it ended too soon for me. If I could change Wheel I would have eliminated the long section of Perrin getting Faile back. He had 2 Ashaman with him that could have went back to the tower and brought overwelming force against the Aiel and saved half a book. I also think there were too many bad guys. Trolics and Shadow spawn, the Dark One, Black Aja, Seanchan, Forsaken, Shaido and possibly Shara (I'm only in book 11).There are intricate story lines and there is turning the books into encyclopedias.
Book 9 was terrible. Make it four books shorter and do a little less description. But regardless the moments when it hits were amazing.
But surely not enough to make it worthwhile. And what moments would those be, out of curiosity...
The last three books, the first two books, some really cool fights@@JosesAmazingWorlds
Great review of the book.
Can you do a review of the tv series?
Thank you. And yes, I have a series of videos on the tv series in the channel.
ruclips.net/p/PLVe3a3u82BbZ0VEYs6BuwZ5X3jxx7W210
Thank you for watching!
I started reading Wheel of Time in about 1999 (when the 8th book was just released) and it was my favourite series at the time. Here is what I think the strengths and weaknesses of it is:
Pros:
Worldbuilding. I disagree a lot here, tbh I don't think fantasy worldbuilding has ever been done better and it's the main thing I like about WoT. The magic is logical, the cultures do not perfectly map onto Earth cultures, there is nothing that seems impossible by the rules of the world (in contrast to say The Wall in Song of Ice and Fire), and with the languages that is a conceit that basically all fantasy writers pull to make things easier (even in the Lord of the Rings every single character form hobbits to orcs is able to speak the same language).
Plot. You seem to have missed a lot of subtitles here (which is very surprising because Jordan is not subtle at all). All the important plot points make sense and motivations and reasons explained. For example the 3 boys left the village not because they wanted to but because they knew if they stayed they'd get everyone in the village killed. When Nyaneve chased them she thought she'd be back in a few weeks at most.
Mixed:
Structure. When Jordan started writing this _everything_ was a Lord of the Rings clone. He chose to copy that structure for the beginning but never intended to end it that way.
Realism. Yeah the main characters, and even the secondaries really, have plot armour. This was a time before George R. R. Martin, it was standard for those times. I prefer things a bit darker these days myself (Malazan is now my favourite series) but I don't blame Jordan for this.
Cons:
Characterisation (braid pulling, etc). Yes, it is very basic and is endlessly repetitive. It gives insight into what the characters are feeling at all times, but the story doesn't need that. There is way too much description that should have been cut.
Pacing. The worst thing that happened to WoT was Jordan marrying his editor, and that's saying something considering his death. The first 5 books covered an enormous amount of ground, it's an epic story so it has to be lengthy. IMO the slog started to creep in even in book 6. Jordan just gets increasingly lost in his characters and writes and writes and writes and major plot points get further and further spaced out. I truly think it would be to the publisher's advantage to revise this series down to 12 books and rerelease it like that.
Romance. Before WoT Jordan was actually a romance writer. I haven't read any of them but I suspect this is a major part of the problem. The most frustrating parts of the story to read, and Rand with the three women had way too convenient an ending. Everything is pretty tame as well, very PG-13 (ultimately I do kinda see this series as aimed at 13 to 16 year olds).
It's been a long time since WoT was my favourite series (I stopped eagerly anticipating the new releases about book 10), but does it suck? No, not in my opinion. However I don't think it's that far away from it, I think there is probably a good argument for it but I wasn't convinced with this video. One thing I can absolutely agree on though is that The Wheel of Time is seriously overhyped, especially in this post-Game of Thrones world.
PS: If anyone is reading the series and is considering dropping it I will say that if you don't enjoy it by the end of book 6 then it is _very_ unlikely you ever will and you should drop it there. That doesn't mean you shouldn't drop it earlier of course, but don't punish yourself with a 14 book series if you aren't already enjoying it. Life is too short.
I've been re-reading this book, and hoo boy. I hate it so much. Literally the only reason I'm reading it is so I can re-read those few interesting moments of Rand's madness, the cleansing of the saidin, the ending section. I hate the descriptions. I hate the gender roles. I hate the sexism. I hate how nobody talks to each other. Everything has to be a power play. Nobody shows any human emotion. Everything interesting that happens is summarized in a character's thoughts when they reflect on it after the fact, never shown as it is happening. Rand is a chameleon whose character does somersaults and backflips any time the plot needs it to. Mat gets everything handed to him and more and he's an annoying ungrateful little shit about it. Perrin has zero character growth for 90% of the series despite the set-up existing since the first few chapters. Characters fuck up constantly and not a single one ever acknowledges it. These interesting character moments are replaced with "SHE SNIFFED LOUDLY" or "HE TELEPORTED ELSEWHERE". Half of the plot is literally just Robert Jordan thirsting after his own characters. Every woman is a schemer in a sisterhood hive mind who only exist to talk about men. Every man doesn't understand women. Each culture of the world is a weird monoculture with one or two defining traits that apply universally to every representative. Cultures don't understand each other at all. I hate how the One Power is divided into male and female halves. Everyone treats other horribly, especially the female characters. There's an entire Ajah that has the defining characteristics of hating men and being lesbian. It's homophobic. It's horrible. Every obstacle the characters face is transparently manufactured and based on either characters refusing to just talk to each other or in Robert Jordan's favorite theme, "aw shucks, men are from mars and women are from venus!". Only thing more horrible is the fandom for those books. Because it's full of people who think it's awesome and/or want to gaslight you into thinking it's something else.
I have no idea why you are rereading this. You nailed it. It's awful. Squared. Thank you for watching 👊🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I got nostalgic after having forgotten everything bad about it. And then I remembered.
Nice, I've just finished a beer when clicking on the video. As a fantasy fan and Tolkien fan especially I was curious about the wheel of time. Even positive reviews of the series are adorned with sarcastic and critical comments. I actually became interested in finding reasons why I would not like Wheel of Time instead of the opposite ^^ Most horrid thing about it is that it sounds laborious, almost like a joyless dedication to get through all pages.
@@Crafty_Spirit pretty much!
I totally agree with 1, and I agree Sanderson wrote it better. About nr. 3 - well, that is intentional. Without all the burdens it would be a fun story like Once upon a time in Tokyo. Story about how fate may work without people working, which is a: how things sometimes work in life, so it is fun in greater scale. I really enjoyed how Rand destroyed Cairhien with doing nothing, because everyone was used to political games. The best parts were where MC-s were guided by fate. Only when they tried to be proactive heroes things started to suck for me. Also b, it demonstrates how antagonist's strength was in the weaknesses of the former political system, not in their own strength. Same as in Star Wars, something well shown in Disney and ruined by EU. And c: this was and is the truly original part, something in life books tend to lose. Only parallel is the Foundation series by Asimov
@@kairemeriniit thank for the well thought out response!
I was acutely aware of all these problems as I read WoT. However, I still feel like the payoff was enormous, just because of the time and diligence Brandon Sanderson put into resolving all the characters and subplots. Basically, because Jordan had so many sub-plots simultaneously running by the time Sanderson took over, he was forced to give us 3 straight books of continuous story climax. Note that this could have gone very badly if they had stuck to the original plan of finishing the series in 1 book instead of 3.
Oh hell no. Those last three books are certainly an improvement on the drivel that Jordan put out, but not worth the pain and misery of the full series. Thank you for watching!
Entiendo que quieres llegar a un público anglosajón, pero, ESTO ES LO QUE ESTABA BUSCANDO. Año y medio me tardé en leer el 3ero El Ascenso de la Sombra, título nada relacionado con el libro porque, sorpresa, al final no siento que la sombra va ganando, tal vez por eso de la torre blanca... en fin, que bueno encontrar una idea tan revolucionaria jajaja
Hace poco abrí un canal en español, La Biblioteca de José, donde comento temas parecidos. Gracias por ver y comentar!
There are really good things in there like Shadar Logoth, Mashin Shin, the red ajah - black ajah agents, the sheol ghul pit, Rhand's transformation but there is so much pointless meandering and slog in this. I think 5 or 6 books were more than enough.
@@boxcutter8887 i would even question all the things you mentioned. It really isn't great by any stretch of the imagination
The spellmonger series something that really holds up. cannot tell how underrated it is. anyways.
@@JoaoSantos-lv4rc not the first person to mention it. Might have to check it out
@@JosesAmazingWorlds you might not regret it. For context, i followed the audiobook narrator into it, from a history book and several operatic sci-fi's.
I tried it. My problem was language. My favorite book was “name of the wind” by rothfuss and I just hated the simple language there. Even Harry Potter had a more sophisticated language.
@@modemuffel9911 I keep hearing about Name of the Wind, but not going to touch it until it's finished. Thank you for watching!
I read exactly one chapter of the first book and thought screw this I'm out. it felt like he really wanted to hammer home his English degree with so many unnecessary words. So, knowing there were so many more books to go through I opted out early
@@Pyrenthius seems to be a love or hate series. And his language isn't that elaborate either. Thank you for watching and commenting!
IIRC his degree is in physics, not English.
I liked the first one or two books, although I agree even those are not great and can be frustrating. The remaining books have taken me about 10 years to get through another 3 or 4 books... I just don't have the attention to get through them, because nothing much happens.
Absolutely!
uh.. the first 2 are the GOOD books? good gravy I cant even get through them
@@wunderthunder Yeah, the first few books have their issues. It's a long time ago since I read them, but I remember feeling frustrated, and thinking that it wasn't what I expected. The characters didn't develop how I thought they would/should, and same for the story line... was a bit of a laborious read.
The entire thing is a Lotr copy. Difference is Lotr needed only one book (split in 3) to become a legend. I gave up the wheel of time after "winter's heart" which is book 9. 9 freakin books I read and I hate the series. I blame the editor of this series as much as Jordan and his horrible characters.
And of course, we know who the editor was...
@@JosesAmazingWorlds lol.. yeah..
I read the first book and didn't like it, but I would like to watch a summary of the series with spoilers.
I have not read that many high Fantasy series, so I didn’t realize how predictable the story is. I read the entire thing thinking it would have an original ending with a gigantic twist in it, for example that the reason Rand had so much plot armor and the forsaken was instructed to not kill him was because the dark one was going to use him for something. I got very disappointed by the ending. I wish Rand would stay as he was in the majority of BOOK 12 for the rest of the series instead of turn 100% good in the end of book 12. It also bothers me that Rand never in the entire series, at least as far as I can remember, never got seriously injured while fighting an enemy one on one without either allowing himself to be hurt for some reason or being attacked from behind. In my opinion Rand should have died at the end instead of switching body with Moridin. The way it is hinted at in previous books make it seam like Rand either is going to be the next version of Moridin, or that Moridin is somehow Rand in the future, Orr that there souls would combine so that the resultant being would be a combination of the two, much like Rand and Luce Therin. Instead it was just used to bypass the hole thing about Rand dying at the last battle. The series had so much potential, but waisted so much of it in my opinion.
At this stage I think every bit of criticism levelled at WoT is entirely justified. Thank you for watching! 🍻
You're actually correct, the Dark One was trying to use Rand. Only Rand can destroy the pattern, which is the Dark One's only goal. The moment on Dragonmount when Rand made the decision not to destroy everything, is the exact moment the Dark One lost. Every thing after that was the Dark One trying to make Rand's victory as painful as possible.
I read the entire series for some reason. There's a lot of great ideas in it, but it's all very poorly executed. I do think Jordan was a bad writer and I'm not sure why people recommend these books so religiously.
I agree with you. And the editor!
it's also impossible to fit an entire world inside one wardrobe
😂😂😂👊🍻
Cheers for making this video. The wot books are.. good and horrible. I skipped several and.. quite literally missed nothing. This should have been a trilogy. A lot of the books seem to be the author impressing himself with how very descriptive he is. A lot of people doing things that dont really matter and you dont give a shit. Having said that id say read the first three then skip through any middle books that bore you.. The final books are good though.. the final is very.. disneyesque (but good because youre just so glad you finished it)
Finally some reasoning how awful this shit is 😅 Thanks you!!!
My pleasure!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I also read the entire series... unfortunately 😅
@@volinad129 my considerations 😭
While not without flaws, tWoT was a truly exceptional, generational series. Its not for everyone, as Tolkien isn't for everyone, and even diehard fans agree that it could probably have been better done in two books fewer... but the first four and the last three are among the best in fiction. Most often I find that when there is a lack, the lack is in the reader, rather than the prose. For those unable to appreciate such an magnificent epic, there is always the absolute garbage adaptation by Amazon to wallow in.
If I had a braid, I'd be tugging at it, and if I had breasts, I would be crossing my arms under the them at the suggestion that the lack is in me. Merry Christmas!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Merry Christmas, sir. :)
I'm at the end of book 4. and every page is a struggle. Id say this is probably the worst fantasy series I have ever come across. I'm very happy to say I didn't buy the rest of this garbage. This series is an editors nightmare
Unless the editor is the writer's wife!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds thankfully the TV show has been properly edited to fit a TV frame. I just imagine the writers on the show dreading the task of making it watchable
@@paulthomassen5007 I quit the TV show after season 1. It really wasn't great. I had high hopes for it, but...
@@JosesAmazingWorlds it's ok, not great. There's plenty of much better books that would be great tv shows
Im 1.5 books in, and I find Robert Jordan's writing like licking sandpaper. Its like he started with great ideas and story arch's, and his world has a great history and depth, but I cant get past his delivery of the story, and the character development and dialogue - he comes across as not aware of how regular people actually converse or behave. In book 2 (no spoilers) Rand and his companions are still one-dimensional characters who are over-emotional 12 year old's always in "Luke Skywaker rushing off to save his friends without thinking it through" mode. I get it, they are plain country folk but Jordan makes Rand A COMPLETE AND UTTER IDIOT in his decision making to the point where it frustrates the reader. He often becomes a most dis-likable character which is very hard when he is THE MAIN PROTAGONIST. Also Rand does this thing where he focuses on one thing at all costs for what seems like 10 pages.
"Must save Eugwene!!" (we dont even know if she is in danger yet)
"Must save Eugwene!!" (but some new threat has appeared that now needs your attention)
"Must save Eugwene!!" (but there is now someone trying to cut off your head)
"Must save Eugwene!!" etc.. etc..
This writting device comes in other forms in different parts of the book. Like his characters all have OCD.
Ironically I found the writing of the Wheel of Time show not that bad at all lol.
thank you for saving me the time, I really was thinking about to start reading 🤣
Don't take my word for it, you might enjoy it!
As strange as this may sound, I simply cannot disagree with you on any of your points on the series.
I'll only address the repetition and over description aspect. Yes, absolutely way too much. I still cringe when I read or hear the word "bosom"... but it's probably the things he doesn't go into detail too much on that I like the most. I don't like being fed every minute detail, which he does with clothing for example but doesn't explain how the World of Dreams works.
Another thing I probably have in my favor on this series is that outside this series, I do not like or read fantasy. I did read Tolkien when I was like 12 but I pretty much grew out of the genre once I hit my late teens.
My favorite books are "The Da Vinci Code" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". There's probably a lot of newer novels that I would like but I've been lazy in reading for awhile and prefer to listen to books on RUclips (which means they're older books and part of public domain). Last book I listened to was "Animal Farm".
The Wheel of Time is my favorite series but I can 100% understand your point of view
Thank you for taking the time to watch and comment. I am ok with ultimately enjoying a book in spite of its flaws. I acknowledge some of the books I truly enjoyed are flawed. With this series, I just couldn’t get past the ones here.
I completely get your points and you're honesty in voicing them. Not a fan of seeing people "like" something for monetary gain and you don't budge on your opinion, I really like that.
I'll read just about anything not fantasy so I'll be going through your videos to pick up good titles but probably won't watch them until I get around to reading the books.
@@CharlieJ69 thank you very much. My tagline isn’t “Honest Reviews” for nothing…
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Good point lol
Just finished Eye of the World, and it sucked. Very generic, world isn't that interesting, bland characters, not enough enticing mystery, and is generally boring till the last 15% of the book. I just read Pillars of the Earth right before it, and it really highlights just how boring and uninteresting it is compared to PotE; realize how bad things are when you actually read a good book.
Maybe the story gets better but how did it get popular in the first place? Who the hell read book one and thought "yeah, can't wait for book 2 now"
@@ahabgaddis7277 beats me mate, and you are nowhere near the slog. Imagine how dire things get! Thank you for watching and commenting!
There are things to dislike, but with these straw mans you made me realize how much more I like it.
I'm glad you got something out of it, although not sure you are applying the straw man concept correctly here. Thank you for watching!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I think I am.
"Heretics! Heretics! Each and every one of them!"
I've given up after 1/5 of second book. Don't get the hype.
A wiser person than I was! Thank you for watching
I'm only six books in and loving the series and I think most of your criticism is totally fair and honestly mostly correct but the point you make about the main characters not having their powers explained is completely wrong. Three of them have taveren powers, that let them have plot armor, which is explained, one of them has a natural magic power that turns him into basically a werewolf, the other has the memories of the greatest wizard ever that comes with the massive drawback of a personality disorder that is explained, the third one has luck and war powers that are given to him by fae creatures the same way Odin became the head god of his pantheon. The other two have skills thanks to their trade, and work their butts off to get better at channeling and many of the pedantic ass paragraphs are spent detailing this. You spent time explaining how their powers work so they do have an explaination, they aren't really Gary/Mary Stu characters at all. The macguffin moving them from point A to point B is that they are taveren.
Thank you for watching! For me, however, the whole taveren thing is a convenient way to not explain anything. Why is this character...? Because taveren...
The Wheel of Time is absolutely one of my favorite series of all time. BUT!!! There are many, many things about it that annoy the hell of out me. The things I can think of most off the top of my head would be:
1) The over describing of people's clothing, and many other things.
2) The way all nationalities are so stereotyped (Illianers do this, Cairieners are like this) with no real nuance from person to person.
3) Elayne. Fuck Elayne. She is the most obnoxious character in the entire series and it would've been far better without her.
4) Elayne's succession to the throne. Don't care AT ALL. It adds literally NOTHING to the story.
5) Women characters in general are absolutely awful, particularly in the beginning of the series. Some, like Nynaeve and Egwene get better as the series progresses, but overall, just terribly written women.
Agree 100%
The wheel of time kicks assssssssssss.
More like it needs to be kicked in the ass!
Okay good video first of all! I’m a huge Wheel of Time fan so total disclaimer at first. I think the thing about the Wheel of Time community is they’re very often the first people to point out it’s flaws. The way women are described is uncomfortable and weird, the slog is undeniable(though personally for me I didn’t mind it! but it’s still a reason I have trouble ever recommending it) and 14 books is a lot!! The thing is for me, something being 14 books is pretty exciting, I like big things I can really sink my teeth into, and I really enjoyed the size of the wheel of time. I don’t think it’s fair to say the characters go through no struggle, Rand is on a downhill for many books and really in an awful place by the like 3/4 mark of the series. I don’t feel like he gets better very quickly and even when he does there’s this kind of innocence lost where he feels less like himself and more has become the embodiment of that figure. I think it’s very much a story about self sacrifice and you see it in every character. It’s funny you mention Mat’s eye because that’s something my friend and I both think Branderson didn’t handle the best, he didn’t seem to really care about it. I don’t know, it definitely isn’t the series for everyone, but I think it’s earned it’s place where it is. There are some really amazing story arcs in there, it’s super rough around the edges, but I think it’s a testament to really how good the story is that despite all of the sexism, despite all of janky writing, despite the slog that it’s as popular as it is. Again enjoyed the video, I know this is old and you may not read it but thanks for the fun watch
Thank you for watching and the comment! I totally respect your perspective on the series and understand what you are saying. I'm even glad we found some common ground.
While I understand your criticism I cannot agree with the most your points but thank u for you opinion.
Thank you for watching and engaging! 👊🍻but please tell me the parts you don’t agree with and why.
U have good points, but one thing im not sure i agree with u. Arent Rand, Matt and others reincarnations of great people from past, and were destined to have all those powers and knowledge? I mean, Rand is literally reborn Dragon from 3000 years ago, of course he will be most powerful wizard or Matt is reborn great military leader from Maneteren land and etc. Series is called wheel of time, so it means that world had same battle over and over and over again, at least, thats what i understand
I think you may be right. So yes Rand is the dragon reborn, but the others? They acquire their super powers seemingly randomly. I agree with you. I can accept they all are reincarnations of heroes past. But we still see no progression or struggle, they remain super powered heroes throughout that contributed to make the series one continued borefest. Thank you for watching and commenting! 👊🍻
@@JosesAmazingWorlds For me, biggest let down is how Forsaken basically did nothing, and i loved their history and everything about them. Really too bad. Keep up the good work bro
@@worlddd7777 cheers. Thank you. The lack of an antagonist is something that held back the series as well. Much appreciated.
Just finished the last book. WoT is trash.
On that we agree! 👊🍻
Took you 14 books to realize that, or you just have that much free time to read through 14 books containing nearly 1000 pages a piece?
@@Rhand007 just like me, he gave it a fair chance!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Fair enough, but I think after a few books it should be clear enough that if you don't like it yet, you won't suddenly gonna like it afterwards especially considering the bad rep the middle books have. I can understand someone going through all the books with an agenda, like you, to make an educated review on youtube etc. But going through 14 books you vehemently dislike like this person, I won't ever understand. Life is so short and there are tons of authors out there that one might enjoy better.
@@Rhand007 some people are like that. Find it difficult to leave things unfinished. I can be like that a lot of the time. It can be a curse….
Preach! I read 9 of those books before I finally gave up. Worst story ever put to paper.
I tried to watching the Amazon prime series "The Wheel of Time" and was baffled by the homunculus horse shit that it was. So damn boring and poorly written. Are the books as bad as the TV series????
@@Daniel-tq6sq worse. My hope was the TV show would trim the fat. I only watched the first season and stopped. I doubt they'll even finish it. Is anyone even watching it or talking about it?
The books are great the show is woke and crap. Same with Amazon Rings of Power.
I agree with two of your statements! 👊🍻
The Lord of the Dawn will be your salvation!
Or not... You never know!
@@JosesAmazingWorlds I read the WoT as an adult just a few months ago and it's my fav series ever. The world building is best of all fantasy IMO. Character work is the slowest of the slow burn. Rand is fantasy's greatest character IMO. So I'm here offering a counter opinion, but I agree it's not for everyone. I agree that the villains are bad, but that is the point. If you thought stromlight archive was too long, then you'll hate WoT.
@@jaishans there are a lot of greatest in fantasy statements there. VERY debatable to say the least. Thank you for watching!
People are so afraid to criticize Wheel of Time because the fandom is so rabid, but you're right. I read the whole series, and I guess the one thing it taught me that it was okay to DNF books and series I wasn't enjoying. WoT is poorly written YA. It's massively overhyped due to nostalgia. ETA also I think people really want to like and advocate for things they've spent a lot of time reading, and WoT sure is long.
@@S-jw2wv no fear over here! Thank you for watching!
As a Wheel of Time fan this hurts.Jordan is my 3rd favourite fantasy author.
I gave up after Path of Daggers for now.But I PLAN to finish the entire thing next year. 😁
On a serious note: how can you be a fan of a series that you couldn't even finish?
@@JosesAmazingWorlds The slog is real but it doesn't change The fact I love Wheel of time more than many other series.I will definetly finish it next year.
@@noname3609 best of luck to you. Hope you enjoy it more than I did
@@JosesAmazingWorlds Thanks.Book 8 was really bad so I had to quit to continue with First Law World which I finished recently.Way better than Wheel of time for sure 😊
Now I read John Gwynne 😁
@@noname3609 you are on the right path. Next Robin Hobb or Trudi Canavan
I respectfully disagree with a lot, but why did you read all 15 books😂😂
Just so that I could say all this from a position of knowledge with a sound basis. Which points do you particularly disagree with? Thank you for watching!
Sorry I just saw this. I actually went through and watched most of your videos regarding The Wheel of Time. Some of your criticisms felt as if it could be aimed at fantasy literature as a whole. I mean I understand the criticism of Jordan’s S&M shit and the character writing to an extent. Let me know what your ideal fantasy series is. I am very curious. Not here to hate on you I am just interested in what you look for in a fantasy epic.
Matt is my favourite character.