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[This is part of a series analyzing Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time novels. Previous installments can be found under the tag. Comments on old posts are welcome, but please, no spoilers for books after this one.]
After more than eight and a half years of waiting, I finally get to find out What Happens Next.
I read this last month, but it's taken me a while to sit down and post about it. See, I'm doing two things now: analyzing the structural decisions and their effects (the general purpose of these posts), but also reacting to new developments in the story. I actually considered making two posts, one for each purpose. This is already an epic enough undertaking, though, that I decided to keep it to one, and see if I can't handle both tasks.
On the reaction side, then: was I satisfied by this book? No -- but I don't think there's any world in which this book could have satisfied me. I've been waiting for the story to move forward since January 2003, y'all. After the disappointment that was Crossroads of Twilight, this book would have had to walk on water and raise the dead for me to be entirely happy with it. Was it an improvement? Hell YES. (But then, there was pretty much nowhere to go but up.)
( I'm going to take this in order, I think, so as to balance reaction and analysis. And it's going to take a while. )
Final takeaway: I think Winter's Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams could and should have been two books instead of three. As discussed in previous posts, you could have offloaded some of the CoT material into WH; then take what remains, jettison 2/3 of it, tighten up what remains and the flabbier parts of KoD, and walk away with two volumes of much leaner, meaner plot.
It's easy to say that in retrospect, of course. I have sympathy for the difficulty of wrangling so many strands over such a long series. But this is an argument for keeping better control of those strands in the first place, so you don't end up with such a pacing mess that it takes a herculean effort to drag yourself out of it again.
. . . and now I'm in the home stretch. All that remains are the three Sanderson books. If I stick to the original schedule, I'll be reading The Gathering Storm in November/December, The Towers of Midnight in January/February, and then A Memory of Light in March, which is (last I checked) the planned pub date. Sanderson is 70% of the way through the first draft, according to his site, and given how fast Tor can push the book out to shelves when they have to, he may yet make it. Or not. I'll keep an eye on things, and adjust the schedule as needed.
After more than eight and a half years of waiting, I finally get to find out What Happens Next.
I read this last month, but it's taken me a while to sit down and post about it. See, I'm doing two things now: analyzing the structural decisions and their effects (the general purpose of these posts), but also reacting to new developments in the story. I actually considered making two posts, one for each purpose. This is already an epic enough undertaking, though, that I decided to keep it to one, and see if I can't handle both tasks.
On the reaction side, then: was I satisfied by this book? No -- but I don't think there's any world in which this book could have satisfied me. I've been waiting for the story to move forward since January 2003, y'all. After the disappointment that was Crossroads of Twilight, this book would have had to walk on water and raise the dead for me to be entirely happy with it. Was it an improvement? Hell YES. (But then, there was pretty much nowhere to go but up.)
( I'm going to take this in order, I think, so as to balance reaction and analysis. And it's going to take a while. )
Final takeaway: I think Winter's Heart, Crossroads of Twilight, and Knife of Dreams could and should have been two books instead of three. As discussed in previous posts, you could have offloaded some of the CoT material into WH; then take what remains, jettison 2/3 of it, tighten up what remains and the flabbier parts of KoD, and walk away with two volumes of much leaner, meaner plot.
It's easy to say that in retrospect, of course. I have sympathy for the difficulty of wrangling so many strands over such a long series. But this is an argument for keeping better control of those strands in the first place, so you don't end up with such a pacing mess that it takes a herculean effort to drag yourself out of it again.
. . . and now I'm in the home stretch. All that remains are the three Sanderson books. If I stick to the original schedule, I'll be reading The Gathering Storm in November/December, The Towers of Midnight in January/February, and then A Memory of Light in March, which is (last I checked) the planned pub date. Sanderson is 70% of the way through the first draft, according to his site, and given how fast Tor can push the book out to shelves when they have to, he may yet make it. Or not. I'll keep an eye on things, and adjust the schedule as needed.
