what book are you on? i just started book 10. truth be told i like the books a lot and they are absolutely epics with incredible world building especially given how long ago the first was written. having said all that... yah, there's infinitely better stuff written in the past decade
I'm halfway through book two. I think part of the problem is I am listening to them immediately consecutively after each other. I am at the point where if Rand and Egwene have another stupid fight I am going to scream.
World building is solid af though it's why I'm still listening.
If men and women constantly arguing is too grating for you I've got some bad news about the other 12 books. I don't think it starts to get particularly good until like book 3 and then around 7 or 8 it's nothing but people sitting in rooms arguing for an entire book.
Not men and women, Rand and Egwene specifically. They have fought and made up and then fought about the exact same thing again four times now. Perhaps it's 'realistic' to teenagers, but it does not make for compelling reading material.
I don't know if I could ever read them again. I was a fairly voracious reader when I was a teenager and there's a couple entries in the series that really drag.
for recent "epics" i liked mistborn quite a bit. it's fairly YA but the themes were good
the themes in brent weeks lightbringer were god awful but the dude writes like an absolute poet and, unfortunately, i found the world to be super interesting.
american gods is cool. the witcher books are fun.
gentleman bastards book 1 is phenomenal. NICE BIRD, ASSHOLE. book 2 is okay and book 3 is meh.
next on my list once i finish WOT (@ book 10 rn) is the blacktongue thief. i'm pret stoked.
So what I remember is some magic dude went to fight Satan and got owned like a thousand years before. Said process of ownage broke the kind of magic that men get so men go insane if they use magic but women are fine.
i don't want to plot spoil, but yes. in book 1 you're introduced to the white tower of female magic users. the red faction hunts down males who can wield the power because when men wield magic power they eventually go crazy and kill everyone (analogy for male rage, power, abuse, etc.)
The answer is "Robert Jordan was a boomer who probably was never presented with the existence of trans people before he got too far into the series to figure out how to make his gender binary a spectrum," but they do explain that which half of magic you get access to is basically a boolean flag on your soul so presumably a trans channeler would just be someone who's soul got reincarnated into a body opposite whatever that flag was.
kinda sorta spoilers for a minor plot point
There's actually a quasi trans character, though I'm using that term very loosely here, who is a channeler. They were a heavily misogynistic man, pissed off Not Satan quite a lot by failing at something, and got their soul forcibly shoved into a woman's body as punishment. They continued to wield the male half of the Source.
Frank Herbert decreed that men, by essentialist nature, could only be Mentats, and feeemales could (only) be Bene Gessarits, and if a male Mentat eventually got Bene Gessarit powers, his male awesomeness would rule the universe.
Still loved the novels, but that's fucked up ideology.
They go mad because prior to the books the world was a magical scientific utopia but they discovered a source of energy that, if tapped, could theoretically allow people to do basically anything with magic along with eliminating the differences between male and female channelers (since each can only touch half the source of magic, and each half lets them do different things more easily).
Well it turns out this energy source was Not Satan, detected through a thinning in the skin of reality, which they bored through and consequently released
This led to the downfall of the utopia as Not Satan spread his influence and turned people violent and greedy, etc.
Lews Therin Telamon, The Dragon, and his 100 Companions attacked the Bore and used their magic to seal it shut. However, the contact made in doing so allowed Not Satan to connect to Saidin, the male half of the Source, and taint it with malignancy.
It's described as an oily taint on top of a pool of water, you can't dip into the pool without being exposed to the taint, and repeated exposure is essentially guaranteed to drive a channeler insane over time.
980(? i don't know exactly, a long time ago) years ago in the past from the books (what you're referencing in your comment):
spoiler
this guy lews therin was hella powerful with the male magic. him and a bunch other fought the devil and sealed the devil away. the devil, as a last gesture before being sealed away, tainted the male power so anyone who wielded it would go mad.
all the male magic users went absolutely crazy, killed everyone, moved mountains, oceans, etc. literally "broke the world"
the books are generally about the present day and lews therin being "reborn" (debately if true or not) and fighting the devil once and for all
All magic dudes are killed because they eventually get too powerful and literally start to go mad seeing past the fabric of reality and through the wheel of time. Dudes are magic way less but when they are magic they do a bunch of damage.
Men go mad because before the post- apocalypse (yes, it's post apocalyptic) setting their half of the source of magic was tainted by Not Satan. It's not that they're more powerful (they are explicitly stated to be more powerful in general, though), but every time they "touch" the source this taint feeds into them and drives them insane. It's not about how powerful they get, but how often they are exposed to and how resistant they are to this taint.
And then when they go mad they're a danger because they're essentially casting wild magic according to their delusions
I am very literally guessing based off of information I have halfway through book two. But this doesn't really ruin anything for me as I was going to listen to it anyways.
add a panel about males having this magic and females having that magic and you get wheel of time almost perfectly
:(
I'm listening through WoT books for the first time and honestly they are pretty mid. I'm going to finish them, but it was wildly oversold to me.
what book are you on? i just started book 10. truth be told i like the books a lot and they are absolutely epics with incredible world building especially given how long ago the first was written. having said all that... yah, there's infinitely better stuff written in the past decade
I'm halfway through book two. I think part of the problem is I am listening to them immediately consecutively after each other. I am at the point where if Rand and Egwene have another stupid fight I am going to scream.
World building is solid af though it's why I'm still listening.
If men and women constantly arguing is too grating for you I've got some bad news about the other 12 books. I don't think it starts to get particularly good until like book 3 and then around 7 or 8 it's nothing but people sitting in rooms arguing for an entire book.
Not men and women, Rand and Egwene specifically. They have fought and made up and then fought about the exact same thing again four times now. Perhaps it's 'realistic' to teenagers, but it does not make for compelling reading material.
Jordan beats the "men and women just don't understand each other" horse into the dirt, with a lot of braid tugging and men being stubborn / stoic.
smooths skirts
sniffs
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I don't know if I could ever read them again. I was a fairly voracious reader when I was a teenager and there's a couple entries in the series that really drag.
try to make it to the end of book 3 if you can. shit was awesome
Recs for new shit?
for recent "epics" i liked mistborn quite a bit. it's fairly YA but the themes were good
the themes in brent weeks lightbringer were god awful but the dude writes like an absolute poet and, unfortunately, i found the world to be super interesting.
american gods is cool. the witcher books are fun.
gentleman bastards book 1 is phenomenal. NICE BIRD, ASSHOLE. book 2 is okay and book 3 is meh.
next on my list once i finish WOT (@ book 10 rn) is the blacktongue thief. i'm pret stoked.
And then there's Dune
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So what I remember is some magic dude went to fight Satan and got owned like a thousand years before. Said process of ownage broke the kind of magic that men get so men go insane if they use magic but women are fine.
i don't want to plot spoil, but yes. in book 1 you're introduced to the white tower of female magic users. the red faction hunts down males who can wield the power because when men wield magic power they eventually go crazy and kill everyone (analogy for male rage, power, abuse, etc.)
there's more to it but it might be plot spoiling
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The answer is "Robert Jordan was a boomer who probably was never presented with the existence of trans people before he got too far into the series to figure out how to make his gender binary a spectrum," but they do explain that which half of magic you get access to is basically a boolean flag on your soul so presumably a trans channeler would just be someone who's soul got reincarnated into a body opposite whatever that flag was.
kinda sorta spoilers for a minor plot point
There's actually a quasi trans character, though I'm using that term very loosely here, who is a channeler. They were a heavily misogynistic man, pissed off Not Satan quite a lot by failing at something, and got their soul forcibly shoved into a woman's body as punishment. They continued to wield the male half of the Source.
exactly. i also think this is why idiot jk rowling's brain is broken
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Frank Herbert decreed that men, by essentialist nature, could only be Mentats, and feeemales could (only) be Bene Gessarits, and if a male Mentat eventually got Bene Gessarit powers, his male awesomeness would rule the universe.
Still loved the novels, but that's fucked up ideology.
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spoilers
They go mad because prior to the books the world was a magical scientific utopia but they discovered a source of energy that, if tapped, could theoretically allow people to do basically anything with magic along with eliminating the differences between male and female channelers (since each can only touch half the source of magic, and each half lets them do different things more easily).
Well it turns out this energy source was Not Satan, detected through a thinning in the skin of reality, which they bored through and consequently released
This led to the downfall of the utopia as Not Satan spread his influence and turned people violent and greedy, etc.
Lews Therin Telamon, The Dragon, and his 100 Companions attacked the Bore and used their magic to seal it shut. However, the contact made in doing so allowed Not Satan to connect to Saidin, the male half of the Source, and taint it with malignancy.
It's described as an oily taint on top of a pool of water, you can't dip into the pool without being exposed to the taint, and repeated exposure is essentially guaranteed to drive a channeler insane over time.
980(? i don't know exactly, a long time ago) years ago in the past from the books (what you're referencing in your comment):
spoiler
this guy lews therin was hella powerful with the male magic. him and a bunch other fought the devil and sealed the devil away. the devil, as a last gesture before being sealed away, tainted the male power so anyone who wielded it would go mad.
all the male magic users went absolutely crazy, killed everyone, moved mountains, oceans, etc. literally "broke the world"
the books are generally about the present day and lews therin being "reborn" (debately if true or not) and fighting the devil once and for all
She's not the only one.
I'm a huge fan of the Dune series, but Frank Herbert had some very gross gender essentialist ideology in the foundations of the story.
spoiler
All magic dudes are killed because they eventually get too powerful and literally start to go mad seeing past the fabric of reality and through the wheel of time. Dudes are magic way less but when they are magic they do a bunch of damage.
that ain't it
Men go mad because before the post- apocalypse (yes, it's post apocalyptic) setting their half of the source of magic was tainted by Not Satan. It's not that they're more powerful (they are explicitly stated to be more powerful in general, though), but every time they "touch" the source this taint feeds into them and drives them insane. It's not about how powerful they get, but how often they are exposed to and how resistant they are to this taint.
And then when they go mad they're a danger because they're essentially casting wild magic according to their delusions
spoiler
I am very literally guessing based off of information I have halfway through book two. But this doesn't really ruin anything for me as I was going to listen to it anyways.
There's non channelers who do stuff though
yaya like min farshaw or the ogiers. i'm just generalizing. i really like WOT a lot even tho it leans into a lot of m/female tropes