I’ve seen them mentioned a lot, especially now with the show.
Are they actually worth the read?
Or is it standard fanfare?
I was a huge fan as a teen and have been rereading them now very slowly with multiple long breaks between books. There's decent amount of cool ideas, but also a lot that feels either outdated or overdone at this point. I enjoy it but hard to say how much of that is due to just nostalgia.
Also I swear half of the interpersonal drama in these books could be resolved by characters actually talking to each other and being honest but everyone acts like babies instead. There's also a massive amount of obvious fetish fuel, so if stuff like that bothers you I'd maybe just stay away.
basically femdom on femsub :geordi-yes:
femdom on malesub :geordi-no:
Lol, when you put it all like that, I'm now remembering the books differently.😅
Yeahhhh I was apparently a little innocent 20 years ago when I read these.
I read them in my thirties and still just accepted it. And I'm a perv.😅🤷♂️
Also I swear half of the interpersonal drama in these books could be resolved by characters actually talking to each other and being honest but everyone acts like babies instead.
So... just like real life?
They're one of my favorite book series. The core worldbuilding hasn't aged the best since it's largely built around a gender binary magic system, but it influenced so much of modern fantasy that it's 100% worth the read.
Robert Jordan was one of the best at planning out his series (book 10 arcs aside). There's so much stuff buried in the text that only comes out on a reread that it blows my mind. The magic system is phenomenal, the characters are incredible, the main character has one of the best arcs in fiction. It is dense though, be prepared for Tolkien-level descriptions of clothing and food.
The first 3 books are very LotR, then book 4 goes full Dune, just as an FYI.
I’m reading through them for the first time.
It’s similar to Seinfeld, in that it did a lot of the tropes first, but coming to it fresh nowadays, it feels a tad derivative, simply because you’ve already encountered the tropes in other contexts.
They’re not bad for leisure reading, by any means.
I think I got to like book 10 a long time ago and then just never came back. I remember it being a lot of words and some interesting concepts, fairly standard fantasy stuff mainly, but not a great deal going on. Jordan died and Sanderson took over, but I never read those, or any of his books, but I've heard that he's rather bland. I kinda wish there was an abridged version that a ruthless editor tightened up to, say, half the length, but I doubt that'll ever happen.
I'd recommend Robin Hobb, Joe Abercrombie, or Mark Lawrence instead
In Rhythm of War by Sanderson, he had this rule that nothing interesting could happen without a chapter break to a new point of view and could only come back to the interesting point after it was no longer interesting until one climactic thing happened. It upset me and now I have my guard up around anything he's written.
I've never read any of his other books but his WoT entries felt kind of average. He had trouble writing Mat Cauthon for example.
The way he made Mat the idiotic comic relief was really disappointing
Mat was absolutely my favorite one out of the main cast, definitely felt like Sanderson just didn't really get the character.
I really like the First Law series but the author is kind of a weird reactionary. Ironically the series centers around a revolution and has some illegalist themes.
Still got the great person theory of history, as people don't really matter after the first books.
Disappointing to learn because he's a genuinely great author. I didn't think he was a leftist by any means, but the "banks control everything" set me up.
Steven Erikson is still the best then.
Was 10 the one where there's like all of one chapter worth of plot development in each story arc?
That’s the one that broke me as well.
It was also new at the time and it was the book that was essentially a Dragon Ball Z episode of characters reacting to Frieza doing something.
Yeah that's the one. I stopped reading there too, although mostly because it was the most recent book at the time and by the time the next one came around I missed it completely and never came back around to picking the books up again.
My recommendation is to read books 1-6, read chapter summaries for books 7-11, then read books 12-14
This the exact recommendation I give people. I have a friend who's been stuck in the 7-11 slog for years and I just want her to skip to Sanderson's I can say stuff without spoiling it.
I recently re-read the series this way and it was a good way to keep the momentum going without getting bogged down in Rand’s Very Moody Arc
Rand’s Very Moody Arc.
I’m on book five. So far, this is an accurate description of the series.
Was the seventh book where they're looking for the bowl of the Winds or whatever? I was an extremely avid reader when I was younger or I don't think I could have done it.
I like them, I've just finished listening to the fifth one. The world building is really cool although the whole gender essentialism is kind of shitty. I don't like Jordan's writing style, and I know that I would've dropped the series one book ago if I were reading rather than listening to them. There's only so many instances of characters saying "men are impossible to understand" and "women are impossible to understand" that I'm willing to read without my eyeballs rolling permanently into their sockets.
The Kramer/Reading audiobooks are my gold standard for audiobook narration, though. Their reading is one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to the series.
I read the majority of the series in high school but I remember some of them just dragging for seemingly forever where it's basically a period piece of people going over to each others houses and talking about the weather. The few books that were written by Brandon Sanderson were fine, I feel like he was constrained by Jordan's major plot points that he had finished before he died because it was a little dumb, and there was so much material he ended up having to split what was only supposed to be the last book into three.
I liked them but they're not without a lot of problems. Cheesy writing, weird gender dynamics, a good amount of physical abuse, boob looking. I had nothing to do so I read the whole series in about three weeks last month or so. Most of the annoying stuff I was able to set aside personally but i expect other people will be bothered more. I liked the worldbuilding for the most part and there were a lot of interesting characters and plotlines i got invested in. A good number of the characters are just assholes though so.
If you like fun fantasy romp and have nothing better to read for an extended period of time I think I would recommend it. I wouldn't particularly recommend reading them all as fast as I did, I don't think they're written to be read that fast.
I didn't read them growing up. I listened to the audio books recently and I enjoyed them. Kate Redding and Michael Kramer I think. I listened mostly on my commute so I had a good excuse to keep the momentum going. It's a lot.
I'm happy I read them (listened to them) but they weren't life changing.
I read them like 15 years ago. There’s like 10 books in the middle where nothing fucking happens. I highly recommend chapter summaries, there are a bunch in the web like this: https://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=Chapter_Summaries
My partner did like the books as teenager but she got kinda annoyed with them and the author for not being able to write women and about sensible gender interactions.
