Knife of Dreams

Knife of Dreams is much better than Winter's Heart or Crossroads of Twilight. Stuff happens in spite of Jordan’s usual foot-dragging, boring mental landscapes, and scene-killing clothing descriptions.

My favorite scene: Egwene mastering the situation as a prisoner of the Tower, converting the novices to her side, coping with the pain of punishment, drawing on her considerable inner resources, defying expectations, using her Aiel education. I thought that part of the book was especially well-paced and dramatized.

I’ve become more tolerant of Nynaeve, and more appreciative of her role as a source of amusement. Elayne, however, is an idiot, who succeeds in spite of herself. The Perrin/Faile separation was a trial in ways the author didn’t fully intend, and in the end the reader is relieved that THAT’s over. I was disappointed at the way RJ disposed of Rolan, but what would one expect from the Forsaken (e.g., Jordan.)

The buildup to Perrin's attack on the Shaido was a dreary, dull, drawn-out affair (as are most scenes.) I'm sorry, but that's not how one builds drama and tension, that's "frittering the time away and annoying the readers" or something like that.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing what Sanderson does in The Gathering Storm.

Wheel of Time Online Resources

This material was first published on Dreams & Speculation: Winter's Heart Mid-month Discussion.

Here are some valuable Wheel of Time online resources. My list is necessarily incomplete, because there is so much material available. Please add links to your favorite sites in the comments.

Can't keep up with a Wheel of Time read-through?

Not to worry! Hop on to one of the read-through summary sites below, to get acquainted with the books you missed, and you’ll be ready to start on this month’s book, and join in the discussion. I assure you, you’ll be just fine. Only those masochistic enough to want to savor every word — you know who you are — will feel that they’ve missed something. Many of us are eager to find out what Brandon Sanderson does with the completion of the Wheel of Time. If you can read a few of Jordan’s novels, you’ll be able to better appreciate Sanderson’s accomplishment.

Please note that websites are ephemeral. Wheel of Time fan sites are disappearing faster than they are appearing as the series nears completion, and as fans move beyond their enthusiasms. Many of the sites, even if they exist, have broken links and server errors because they are no longer maintained.

Read-throughs and synopses of the Wheel of Time novels

Foremost among these, for its depth, wit, and authority:
Leigh Butler’s Wheel of Time Re-read on Tor, the WoT publisher
Superbly, entertainingly written. Relatively spoiler-free if you don’t read the comments.

If that’s too long for you, try the solely plot-focused Wheel of Time Summary
Click the characters in the right column to see where they appear in the books and chapters. When I checked, the rest of that site had gone offline just days ago. Thanks to Google cache you can still see some of the other pages, but the summary is the meat.

If you want just a little more detail, try the Enyclopaedia WoT chapter summaries for each book
Warning: To avoid spoilers, do not read the notes, just read the summary.

Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan

Tor reread by Leigh Butler

Wheel of Time Challenge discussion on Dreams & Speculation

My "first half" review, through Chapter 18.

The second half of the book suffers from the same problems as the first half: chapters that are full of padding, pointless description, flaccid tension-building, wordy sentences, sub-plot shifts that ruin plot momentum, and meandering point-of-view writing that does little or nothing to enhance our understanding, enjoyment, or appreciation of the characters.

Jordan's editor evidently failed to tell him that a book composed of plotting and scheming is a dull thing without sparkling insights, tight dramatic writing, and unique characters. We can enjoy reading about the plotting and scheming that ensued, say, at the end of World War II, between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill (if it's well-written.) I'm just offering that, for the record, to show that I'm not opposed to reading about "plotting and scheming" per se.

Half-way through Winter's Heart ... the tedium of it

My contribution to the mid-month discussion. Actually, I'm almost done with the book, and I can assure you... almost nothing happens in this book, and there's little to enjoy about it. Oh yes, there are a few scenes you might enjoy, but wading through 800 pages for a few scenes spoils the enjoyment. Better to read the synopsis of this book.

I’m putting hands to head and screaming, “Hundreds of pages and nothing happens!”

What mostly happens so far in Winter’s Heart is a lot of scheming and plotting. I find it tedious, especially since I don’t have a strong emotional connection to the characters, and certainly not to sketchily-drawn minor Aes Sedai or random darkfriend wannabes, who, when they’re not lording it over someone, are whingeing and cringing. Why would I care about Toveine’s misfortune to be bonded to Logain? Jordan has fun demeaning the arrogant Aes Sedai, a theme close to his heart; unfortunately the writing lacks the humor that should enliven these events. Ahem: I’ll allow that there’s crude humor in the scenes where the Sea Folk Windfinders turn their Aes Sedai teacher (Nynaeve) upside down, but again, there’s the morally painful, constant undercurrent of sadism, arrogance vs. humiliation. For more fun along those lines, we have Elayne stripping in front of Mazrim Taim. Such arbitrary, sexually humiliating scenes are self-indulgent, creepy, and Graendal-like, not “delightfully titillating.” It’s young adult porn.

The Path of Daggers

The Path of Daggers re-read at Tor Publishing

The Dreams and Speculation Discussion

I have to confess that I enjoyed this book more than the previous three books. I find that I'm more engaged in the good vs. evil context, and I'm less repelled, confused, or bored. That's not to say that all is good, but I feel more tolerant. Is it just me? Have I become more... submissive?

One of the most tedious aspects of the Wheel of Time (so far) is the unreflective dominance/bondage/submission theme. But I felt at least in Path of Daggers that the Aes Sedai played out the theme within a larger cultural background, more context-conscious and less prurient.  The reader sees the Aes Sedai clinging to the claims of knowledge and wisdom in their elaborate hierarchies even when actual knowledge is absent or lost, and that since the Asha'man (male channelers) and Dragon Reborn have become realities, the Aes Sedai are losing their certainties and must become more individually engaged in problems of knowledge and action, not merely asserting dominance and superiority. In other words, they seem more human. The scenes of the worst cringing, by the Kin (the not-so-secret-after-all ex-Aes-Sedai society) are alleviated by the mockery they suffer from the Atha'an Miere Windfinder and Wave Mistress channelers, who as outsiders (with their own deeply hierarchical dominance culture) aren't especially impressed by the Aes Sedai. The Forsaken have a more peripherally menacing role in this book, so we're not entertained by extended gratuitous torture scenes, nor are there many detail-relishing Aes Sedai debasing scenes, and Egwene doesn't have her bare bottom spanked, thank the Light.

I had the distinct impression that Path of Daggers benefitted from judicious editing, rather more than Crown of Swords. There were cases where I suspected that would-be drawn-out scenes were cut down to paragraph summaries — quite a relief.

A Crown of Swords

Dreams and Speculation blog's Wheel of Time challenge

Tor's Wheel of Time re-read and synopsis by Leigh Butler.

I am tired of whining about the quality and characteristics of these books. This month I just plunged in, and read it as if I were AA-grinding in EverQuest. If you want a payoff, you knuckle down and endure the dreary bits. I'm glad to say I finished it a few days ago.

I'm getting better at skimming over useless redundant detail. I've settled in my mind that this is poorly-written plot-driven "young adult" lit, and I'm treating it as the smelly object it is, trying to enjoy a few sparkly bits here and there.

My attitude being less-than-serious, I'm not glaring at the details, demanding that they make sense, I'm just shrugging my shoulders and saying "whatever!" It's like watching a bad movie and saying to oneself, "what the heck, it's sort of entertaining, though the script/acting/costumes/setting/effects are wrong and stupid," which would be typical of most movies these days.

Lord of Chaos

Dreams and Speculation blog's Wheel of Time challenge: review of LoC.

Tor's Wheel of Time re-read and synopsis by Leigh Butler.

Sigh, what to say. I'm fully onboard with sci-fi author Adam Roberts' take on this series.

What I detest about the Wheel of Time series so far:

1. I am not finding the characters to be interesting and compelling; rather I find them to be flawed creations that serve the plot. I detest when characters are stupid and dense merely to create plot tension, and that happens over and over. Mat could be interesting, Rand could be interesting, Perrin could be interesting... but they're mostly stupid. That's not fun to read, it's tiresome and condescending to readers. Feh.
2. The BD/SM (bondage-discipline/sado-masochism) themes permeating the series -- what I'd call the dominance-submission theme, is repetitive and not insightfully handled. I expect works of literature to shed at least a small light on human nature, to create some catharsis, but that's asking too much from WoT, and I fear from the "epic fantasy" genre in general. The prurient naughtiness of the description of Egwene having her bare bottom spanked by the Wise Ones... words fail me, I want to say "wtf!?" The female characters are consumed with finding ways to dominate men (the one exception being Min, the tomboy.) Men, for the most part, are chumps about female wiles, except when Rand returns the favor, and the reader feels a cheap thrill of relief. Feh. 
3. The good/evil theme? I'm still waiting for some development there.
4. Finally, the writing style itself, which Roberts dwells on at length, is puffed up with circumlocutions, descriptions that add little or no insight into character or events, and repetitive characterizations (I've heard so much about Nynaeve yanking her braid that I expect her hair to fall out from the abuse.) I enjoy descriptions that create a vivid sense of place, when the place is important to the story (usually a major theme in sci-fi and fantasy), and some of these are quite good in WoT, but the way the character descriptions are handled spoils the effect. Really, if the author wanted sprightly plot turns and to go light on characterization, he should have used pungent, focused sentences, and shorten these books by 50%! Epic = bloat? Feh.

Adam Roberts' sharp and witty criticism of Wheel of Time

I relish Adam Roberts' criticisms of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I'm slogging along, barely able to keep up with the one-book-per-month guilty pleasure/onerous chore of TJ's Wheel of Time Challenge. (see my footer.)

I was spoiled by George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I thought other popular fantasy writing would be up to those standards. Au contraire, mes amis.

I love how Adam puts it:

...stylistically it’s the same hideous jumble, the same self-parodic bloat. Jordan is a writer who writes ‘this fire was not at all small, and the room seemed not far short of hot, a welcome heat that soaked into the flesh and banished shivers’ [343] because he is constitutionally allergic to the phrasing ‘a large fire warmed the room.’ He thinks the former sentence is more precise and therefore evocative. He’s wrong. That's not precision, it’s a finicky fussing textual aspergers, a style that can see nothing but details (and, more to the point, nothing but a certain very limited palate of details – colours of clothing, speed of movement, types of food, gradations of heat and cold—never the telling details great writers master). It is a style wholly incapable of illuminating penetration or evocation.

Go, Adam! Poor thing, he has to keep repeating this point on every WoT book review. But he does find spicy, fun ways to say it. I am looking forward to what he makes of Brandon Sanderson's work completing the series. From the snippets I've read by Sanderson, I'd say he's a much better writer.

The Fires of Heaven

Dreams and Speculation's Wheel of Time Challenge.

Tor.com's Wheel of Time reread of TFoH by the ever-entertaining and in-your-face Leigh Butler

Adam Roberts' witty and snide review of TFoH. What most concerns him is the writing style. And really, I agree with him.

A very sprawling read, and I really began to feel bored. Very tedious and repetitive detail. What kind of literary mind repeats unilluminating details over and over, as if that conveys character? Perhaps he wrote each scene in isolation, then stitched it all together without realizing, "hey, I used that same description in the last chapter." A good editor could have pruned and tightened this up and reduced it by 200 pages without losing anything. This book demonstrates a failure in editing as much as writing. Perhaps by book five RJ's Tor editors were bowing and scraping — unwisely.

Starting The Fires of Heaven

So I broke down last night and started reading The Fires of Heaven, book 5 of The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. Participating in a reading group does give one some of the "stick" when the "carrot" isn't so tasty.

Elaida, the new Amyrlin Seat, is being ignored because although she instigated the revolt and deposing of the previous Amyrlin, she doesn't herself command enough power and authority over the other Aes Sedai co-conspirators.

I'm going to try and be less of a curmudgeon about this, I get tired of listening to my own criticism. I think I can enjoy this as long as my time is available! Maybe it will stimulate my own writing, I have been taking a short writing course at WriterHouse, and I should make a stab at "speculative fiction".

(I remember that the biggest badass guild in EverQuest was the Fires of Heaven. On my server, it was Triton.)

The Shadow Rising

Book Love Affair blog discussion for this book and the Tor reread outline by Leigh Butler.

I feel like I'm being sucked along in this Wheel of Time epic. I'm not a rabid fan (they seem to be out there) but I am enjoying certain aspects of the story. It's written in a way that moves along well, for plot, and has dreamworld and magic themes that interest me, and I care just enough about the main characters to want to see what happens to them.

But still, I'm sad that there's so little depth of personality in the characters. Sigh.

Least liked scene: Egwene and Elayne chatting like junior high school girls about who's going to go out with Rand -- oh, excuse me -- who "really loves him." (gag me with a spoon, please!) The manipulativeness of the women, their disdain for men (even the women who claim to like men) is tedious. If this was a characteristic of just a handful of the female characters I could understand that as an intrinsic part of the story, but ALL the female characters despise men and talk to them in an egregiously condescending manner. And the men are social bumpkins who are unable to master the schemes of women; they respond like surly children who are constantly being scolded. In a word: there's NO romance going on anywhere in this epic, so move along. In defense, there is this conceit that men have broken the world, and now women are more powerful, but still, there should be some distinctness among characters about this condition of social relations between men and women. Bleah. I'm seriously considering not reading any more of this. The good part is that Rand seems to be becoming more of a man in this book, and he takes responsibility for his own actions, and resists the machinations of the women around him. Yes, the men are never manipulative, it's just the women.

Oh wait, maybe there is ONE female character who isn't SO manipulative: that would be Min. Whew. But she's rather a weakling, mostly a device for foreshadowing.

The Dragon Reborn

Book Love Affair blog discussion for this book and the Tor reread outline by Leigh Butler.

I love the feeling of being absorbed in a richly imagined alternative world, as I used to enjoy in Everquest, and I experience some of that in these books. They're very long, with enough juiciness and intrigue to stay inviting, although they have their frustrations for this reader.

It has become more clear to me how women dominate in the Wheel of Time world. The breaking of the world legend turns female power (saidar) into the authority, and women dominate or are equals in most of the societies, as compared to our world. To the extent that it's not mere "political correctness" I find that angle interesting and compelling.  Compare Jordan's WoT world to the Tolkien world of The Lord of the Rings: female characters there have a distinctly minor importance, Galadriel excepted. Is there a well-conceived theme of feminine and masculine principles organizing the thread of the Wheel of Time story and the trajectories of character actions? Mmmm... sort of,  but not really. I'll see how it unfolds.

The Great Hunt

Reactions to The Great Hunt
I found this book more absorbing than The Eye of the World; I finished reading it around Feb. 15 and had to force myself not to start The Dragon Reborn until March. Picked up Bernard Cornwell's The Winter King in the meantime, but more about that in another post (TK).

Leigh Butler's smartly written synopses at Tor are very handy references and refreshers.

I think these books need to be understood as "Lord of the Rings fan fiction". I read that quote somewhere. Wheel of Time could never have been written without LoTR. These books have similar strengths and weaknesses of LoTR: shallow characters, black-and-white vision of good/evil, a chaste and non-gritty way of describing and experiencing, richly envisioned landscape, culture, and long journeys, epic "save the world" plot, and of course the usual cast of warriors, magicians, orcs, elves and other such myth-like beings. For those of us who were entranced by LoTR, the WoT promises a much longer immersion in a magical world where one's actions have epic meaning and value.

Starting The Great Hunt

Reactions so far to The Great Hunt:

I'm enjoying Rand's resistance to his calling. Almost every genuine spiritual calling is met by horror and resistance. Oh, you need examples to prove the point? Moses, St. Augustine, Jesus (if you like Kazantsakis' deeply-felt interpretation) ... um, I'll think of some more. A "spiritual transformation" is a destruction of the ego. It's a "lose yourself to find yourself" thing. It's the meaning of death. Yeah, I don't think most of us are ready to die, we're way too full of self-love.

No, I think Siddhartha is a different story, Buddhism isn't about "spiritual calling", a Buddhist should laugh or snort about "spirituality", they wouldn't have patience with it. Most of what goes by the name of "spirituality" these days is new-age wishful thinking, quest for warm-fuzzies, yearning to feel connected or important.

I do like the Aes Sedai envisioned as spiritual practitioners.

The Eye of the World

OK, signed up for the Wheel of Time big read-in on Book Love Affair blog.

Just happenstance that I started reading WoT. I really liked George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire (so far) and wanted to indulge my LoTR-inclination, did some research, and picked up The Eye of the World.

What I enjoyed in this book:

• Large, detailed world with (typical fantasy-lit) medieval-style political/economic/technology/cultural setting
• Plot-driven, suspenseful writing
• Sense of an epic, unfolding narrative
• evocative villages/towns/cities, buildings, clothing, and landscape descriptions
• Likable characters
• Tolkienesque equivalents are enjoyable homage: Aragorn/Strider, hobbits, wizards, Sauron.

What I didn't enjoy in this book:

• simplistic, unexplained good vs. evil scenario
• uncomplicated (dare I say shallow, one-dimensional) characters
• some continuity/context errors