So there are parts of it that I really like. The focus on dreams and the horror in them was super cool. I like hearing about the world and the different cultures and how different everyone speaks and dresses. I have liked the character development too, especially Perrin's. I actually felt like I related to his wolf stuff as a trans person.
But hooooooollllyyy shit how about a cis het sit down honey you need to fucking relax. Men and women aren't seperate fucking species you nonce. Also why can no one ever say what they mean?? In general but especially men and womens interactions are like halfway between a conversation and a discussion of platonic forms. I can't fucking handle it. It's bad enough that he can't seem to describe women without first establishing their relationship to men, and that he sees liking men as a moral thing, and everything I've mentioned so far.
But when Mr. Jordan decided to include dom/sub dynamics into THE FUCKING MAGIC SYSTEM I sincerely ragequit. FOR FUCKS SAKE. Not only that but a woman having to ask a man is treated like its a degrading, dishonorable thing, and the women who just sorta ask and want things like affection and sex are seen as strange and other! A woman flirted with a man you haven't even confessed to and you are contemplating kidnapping?? Murder??
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
anyway the books really are neat but I am 50 shades of gay and I don't think it's going to get any better. Maybe when sanderson takes over it does but those are just the last two books soooooooooooo. I guess I could read summaries and then go to the last two books but I could also just read another series, considering red rising or malazaan book of the fallen. or kingkiller chronicles.
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH
if anyone does want to vouch for it feel free, I'm already feeling pretty stockholmy
The story structure and how exactly the party got divided up when it was split into different arcs was also extremely similar. Like beat for beat it felt like it was just LotR with the details changed around at least until later on, like it was started from an outline boiling down the scenes and progression of LotR into vague summaries and then expanding on those.
Like it even had not-ring-wraiths, not-orcs, and not-gollum on top of that.
I don't know the actual history of how Robert Jordan went about starting the series, but it wouldn't be surprising to learn it began as just like a straight up genre exercise that got fleshed out and turned into its own thing in the same way the Dresden Files began as just like a genre writing exercise when the author was in college (IIRC).
I had forgotten the breaking of the fellowship in WoT. I guess I just see them as tonally quite different. The feeling that LoTR gave me was so much different than WoT I didn't properly think of the plot similarities. I guess I don't care about plot so much? Mostly just the themes and characters and world.
Rand being the hero instead of Frodo and the fellowship hating moirane are huge differences that aren't strictly plot related, and are more what I was thinking of.
It's also at least somewhat intentional. The books are very tropey across the board, but the in-universe explanation for that is that these events are the ones that inspired all the subsequent tropes and cultural myth-making of our world. The guy was genuinely pretty well read in world mythology, and sets up lots of references--some subtle, some not-so-subtle to other books, legends, and religions.