The Wheel of Time
 

Just finished reading book 10 and realized that its not even close to being finished.

Worse, Jordan is taking time off from continuing the story to write prequels. He's an old man and its been 15 years since he started on it... imagine if he dies before he finishes it.

I hate when authors pull crap like this. At least book 11 comes out in october.

He's absolute shit. Too many plot lines, too many shallow, unbelievable characters, and he's very obviously trying to milk this thing for every cent he can. I know way too many of his fans that don't read it anymore...I mean, book 10 was 800 more pages of NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS. How many setup books can he possibly write? I don't buy Jordan books anymore. I borrow them when I have nothing better to do.

George RR Martin has him beaten hands down, and his 4th (of probably 7) is coming out next month.

It's a fantastic series, and I have been entertained in books 1-9, but I really thought he was gonna end it in 10 and as you said it was just 800 pages where nothing really happened and it had no climax but just cliffhangers.

its a 12 book series....he finished 90% of the plot lines in book 9 and made book 10 to intro the last 2 books, seriously I tell people don't bother reading book 10 untill book 11 is out. Agreed book 10 sucked but will see. I feel the guy has great plot, descriptions etc but he took a fall on this last book.

On the otherhand reading A Game of Thrones series by George RR Martin is almost a waste, the guy kills every char and plot, screws up by trying to lead you somewhere the story shouldn't go. Anyways I will get book 4 when it comes out still just to see if the guy has improved after spending 3 years doing comics of a short story based around the series.

Give Tad Williams a try he has one fantasy trilogy (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn), 1 Sci-fi 4 book series (Otherland) 2 Stand alone books and just came out with the 1st book of another fantasy series (shadowmarch). He's controlled in his plots and chars, great descriptions and worlds one of my favorite authors, his writing reminds me of J. Michael Straczynski's approach to how he did Babylon 5 all planned out from the beginning.

My last sure win for reading is Neil Gaiman...If you haven't read his stuff or heard of it, I know you've seen it, besides doing the Sandman Comics he wrote some amazing books. One of the best authors out there in the world.
Novels include, Stardust, American Gods, Neverwhere, Smoke and Mirrors, Good Omans and a few others. Try neverwhere and american gods first, then work your way through his stuff, you'll be amazed by him.

Loves, Hugs and Doots all.
Eglin

Personally I like the wheel of time series, I agree that not much happened in book ten but I like the characters (specially mat, that sly bastard), and I like the storyline so far. The only fault I have with them so far is that it seems as if Jordan himself has not read them! somtimes the characters conveniently forget they can do the exact thing that will get them out of a tough spot, or he makes up some startrekish reason why they cannot use uber power X to get past nasty life threatening situation Y.

as for other books, the magician series by Feist is one of the best series in my opinion, except for the three newest books... they are shit.

also read goodkind among a host of other people... and I do not reccomend that series cause it is just the sam damn thing happening over and over.

I like the Songs of Fire and Ice series. But I'm such a slacker and haven't finished book 3.

every Lord of the Rings book, ftw! ;o

I finished book 10 of WoT about 2 weeks ago, and I was pissed too, nothing fucking happened. But he did setup for an interesting ending. Has anyone read the prequal? If so is it any good?

I`ll have to go buy a handful of those before I goto London eggy, as I have a feeling I will have alot of time to read there, traveling and what not.

Be silent, Lord Fungus!

lol streaz your new sig owns 8-O

I'll believe this when I see it. When I met him, he said 7 books, 9 max...now he's shuttled off into prequels. He has a great idea, yes, but I think it has surpassed his talent to tell it. Too many plot threads, and the guy has some serious mommy issues which shine through in all of his female characters & the inter-character relationships. I shall henceforth refer to him as the George Lucas of Fantasy...

You're crazy! :P That's what's so refreshing about him. Nothing is sacred, things will not always be ok, and war is hell. Good characters die, bad characters win, and in the end, you're not entirely sure how it's going to end up until it happens. This is a breath of fresh air in a genre that is over-run with shallow, cliche bullshit and cut-rate authors. Martin is a serious writer in an often under-rated or juvenile theme. As for where the story shouldn't go, I have no idea what the heck you mean by that. After all, it IS his story to tell so it can't really go anywhere it shouldn't.

That said, if you think Dragonlance is literature or you don't like darkly violent and not so happy plot lines, stay the hell away from Martin. He goes for realism and substance over the typical fantasy fare.

Also, expect more to die in this one. Martin is trying to avoid Jordan's failure of having too many plotlines and POV characters. He's stated quite openly that more POVs will die this time around.

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn rocked. Dragonbone chair is a bit slow on the takeoff though, so if you're going to read it, be ready to bear with him for a couple hundred pages. Otherland was amazing, imho. Original stuff to it's core.

Gaiman rocks, though I know many people who don't like him. He's quite good, but he's not for everyone.

^^^ yeap .

I really enjoyed the first Wheel of Time books, but i stopped somewhere around book 7 as it started to feel like he was retelling the story and not progressing much.

I definitely agree with Sandeh's take on Martin's series..really enjoy the 'realistic fantasy' thing he has going.

For those that like the darker stories, anyone tried Clive Barker's novels? He's definitely on my list of top creative minds..but perhaps a bit twisted for some.

quoted for truth

WoT books are a decent read. I have been reading this genre for 20 years+ and there are a lot of great authors out there whose books are well worth reading.

Terry Brooks - Shannara Series
Roger Taylor - Hawklan Series
James Clemens - The Banned and the Banished
A.A Attanasio - Dark Shore books
Mercedes Lackey
David Gemmell - Legend series, Waylander series, Druss series (one of my favourite authors)
Simon R. Green - Deathstalker series (weird but good)
Raymond E. Feist - "Magician" is my all time favourite book.
Robin Hobb- The Farseer books, very good
Sara Doublis - the Axis Books.
Tad Williams - great stuff, both the older fantasy books and his more recent books

There are 1000's of books out there well worth reading. I have about 800 or so at the moment, some good, some crap, but you'll never know if you'll like them unless you read them.


As to WOT books, I hope he gets aroudn to finishing them soon. Book 10 was a non-event.

buncha book reading nerds
 

anyone read the historian yet? :=)

The Robin Hobb farseer series is the first trilogy of 3 trilogies focusing in the same world/time place...pretty entertaining

Have read some of the others that rip quoted but will look into the others, would like to keep htis thread open for other books to read, I do about 1-2 books a week. (don't sleep well). So always looking, lol I went as despareate to read all of grissam's books last month and just read one book by patterson, not really anything I"d suggest but just getting across I read alot, but prefer good stuff.

Loves, Hugs and Doots
Eglin

Working my way through WoT atm too...
And I do love the books, but hate alot of the ways it's written.

1. The super battles at the end of each book, is just to short. You read 600 pages building up to the fight, and it ends in 3 pages...some times it seems like he's just to excited about writing the fights, that he rushes through it.

2. Repetition! Every god damn book repeats every damn detail about every shitty little thing, like you hadnt read it 10 times allready.

3. He changes his writing style to much through the books. Understandable since a man has to change over 15 years, but some times he switches to a new story telling style for 100 pages, then goes off to another or his original :(

Other than that I'm loving the books..good story, good eye for detail (if you like that ^^) and the plain fact that you dont finish the books in 3 days and wish there was more :p

Also worth reading is the Icewind Dale saga, Raymond E. Feist's books like Riftwar saga, serpentwar saga etc, and Dune ofc.

edit:
While reaing the books, I thought about how cool it would be if someone made a mmorpg based on the WoT world. Sadly it would require a massive team to get all the details of the world and story into the game. There's loads of things in the story that woukld work excellent in a mmorpg, and a chance to make a more "diffuse" good vs evil setting.

Edit 2:
And 30 mins later I find there is a WoT game with multiplayer/inet support O.o
Prolly shit, but atleast gonna try it when i get home ^^

tell us how that goes ani, heh

Stop after 7 heh, save yourself the tragic waste of paper it's become.

Read Robin Hobb instead - all the realism of Martin without the constant slaughtering of every one of your favourite characters. Admittedly, seeing the heroes live through everything without a scratch apart from the one scripted, overdone death near the end(see Eddings, Feist if that's your sort of thing, it's all good fun to read) gets pretty freaking anonying after a while, but Martin takes it beyond the ridiculous from my point of view. Hobb is the only one to have found the balance I would like to see.

Bernard Cornwell is another whose historical fantasy are hugely realistic and gritty - the Warlord and Grail trilogies in particular.

There's been a lot of other good series listed so far in the thread, so I won't make this any longer by writing reviews of them all online. (I work in a library, so i've got the time heh :p)

Supposedly you need to play it multiplayer to get any value out of it. Its a poor fps where you use terangreal as weapons and can't channel without them for some reason even though you are an aes sedai

Yes...it sucked bawls..big time

Big hairy goat bawls?

You would have to ask Zak about that...not my area of expertice

I had stareted cataloging the books I had last year but my damn barcode scanner broke and i couldnt be arsed typing in ISBN numbers.

good god rip, thats ALOT of books.

hes old though, but yes thats a fucking TON of books :dead:

I wouldn't be surpised if Rip had an original copy of the Bible laying around on stone tablets somewhere in his house. Old bum. :p

I wrote the original, based on stories Tob told me of his younger years.

The women characters in the WoT series really piss me off.Every one of them is a 'stern woman' and all that crap.Saying that i still read the books even though the useless retard releases 1 book about every 20 years,if we are lucky.

GRRM beats all the competition around at the moment hands down in my opinion.

Yea lol, the women in WOT have to be the most annoying women ever.

Err btw i accidentally deleted my book list web page. I migt put it back up agian this weekend if i get aroudn to it.

Must admit, that WoT is seriously starting to cunt me off.

I've read them in sequence over the past 4 months and am now up to Book 9. At first I liked them and I was reading them in a few days, then they stretched out to a week each. I think Book 9 is going to take me a fucking month.

More like Waste of Time, seriously, hes dragging things on too much, and things that should be big events do not get the mention they deserve. The story is far too complex and it seems just about every character apart from a select few are the bad guys.

I must agree with you all that the latest WoT books has been bad.
When I read the first chapters of book 10 I knew what would happen inn the last chapter and thats real anoying when you got ~500 pages to go thru to get there. :-/
The "interlude" book New Spring I enjoyed thou.
I hope its true WoT is going to be no more then a 12 book series. Means Jordan have to make book 11 good and that there's light inn the end of the tunnel ;-)

If I were to recomend some books it would be:
-Glen Cook's Black Company series.
Its 10 books which got an ending (So you dont have to wory about the author dying on you without finnishing the plot :)
-Robyn Hoob's 9 books also are good althou I only read book 1-3 and 7-9.
Book 4-6 afterall is another story even thou related.
-Goerge R.R. Martins tale ofcourse must be included and thats suposed to be a 6 books series so hopefully inn the not so distant future we will see the end
And the greatest of them all atm:
-Steven Erikson's A tale of the Malazan Book of the fallen series.
Its not finnished yet but the 5 books written so far are great, and book 3 Memories of Ice is the best Fantasy book I ever read!!

I also got a soft spot for the Dragon Lance series by Weis and Hickman and the books written by Raymond E. Feist
Both the series are about ~10 books loong and got an end ;-)

ps. if any of you out there havent read The Hobbit and LOTR yet youre not ready to enter the world of fantasy so go and read those first ;-)

They're finally releasing the Erikson books in the US, so I started reading them. They're only to book 2 here though with 3 set for release in november, so I think they're carrying the others on Amazon now. Annoying as hell as the reason for delay is that they're americanizing the language. "Oh noes! They have extra U's in the originals!!!!" 8-O

Anyway, Robin Hobb, Steven Erikson, and George RR Martin are must reads. Jordan and Goodkind can be safely given a miss as they are both having a hard time keeping their storylines remotely interesting (or believable, for that matter). Anything Dragonlance or D&D are great...if you're 12. (Sorry, fans! Weiss/Hickman and even Salvatore are pretty shallow and unimpressive authors.)

Others that I like are Gene Wolfe, though he has a very literary style of writing that doesn't sit well with many fantasy readers, and a guy by the name of Matthew Woodring Stover. "Heroes Die" and "Blade of Tyshall" were wonderfully dark and extremely violent stories where the main character is more bad guy than good guy.

Someone recommended Goodkind to me but i have never had chance as of yet to read any of his books.Is there more than one series or is it just a lot of books on the same series ?

Ahh so much better now Grendel kindly sorted my password out heh.Just need to find my old siggy now :(

Butlerian jihad, machine crusade and battle for corrin of the dune series for the WIN! Also read the houses series House atriedes, harrkonen and corrino!

Goodkind only has 1 series that I know of. Sword of Truth series, more long winded then WOT but good to pass the time, the first 5 books are nice.