• Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Me reading the wheel of time:

    • The Chosen One ✓ the main male characters, but definitely Rand

    • The Wise Yet Enigmatic Sage ✓Moiraine

    • The Sharp-Tongued Princess. ✓Nynaeve

    • The Rogue With A Heart of Gold. ✓Mat

    • Plots based on misunderstanding ancient prophecies that are so vaguely written they could be cookie recipes. ✓All the prophecies

    • Gods that slot into neat roles on a godly table of elements. ✓The forsaken all having distinct methods to get to the top

    • Magic systems so detailed and prosaic you may as well call them technology. ✓The one power

    • Elves ✓Warders

    All that said, I’m still enjoying the series thus far.

    • StereoTrespasser@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I honestly don’t understand the appeal of Robert Jordan. I made it through 50 pages of The Eye of the World before throwing it into the nearest little library. By then I had uncovered every fantasy cliche known to man, made even worse by the writing style of a 12 year-old.

      • theherk@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I started that book over and over and just could not do it. But then my dad convinced me to read it further. I did. Got hooked by book three, and then got stuck in a loop of reading the series on repeat. Love it.

      • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The Eye of the World suffers from being a fantasy work published in its era, when publishers wanted Lord of the Rings. So it’s basically Lord of the Rings. Chock-full of cliches because that’s what got published. The series gets significantly better from there on.

        Jordan wasn’t without his shortcomings as a writer, but he was very good at two things I find most appealing in a fantasy author: worldbuilding and hard magic systems. This is the same reason I love Brandon Sanderson, despite his (comparatively) weak prose against someone like, say, Rothfuss.

        He also, when he knew he was dying, managed to outline enough of his planned ending that another author was able to take it up and write the final three books of his series after he died, which is a really cool gesture for his fans.