Thursday, June 04, 2009

Re-reading is fun

I've started reading the Wheel of time again. There will be a new book out this fall, which is quite a feat since the author died before finishing it. Luckily for those of us who want to see the damned story end- they hired someone to finish the last book. Robert Jordan had already written much of it, and left detailed notes on the parts he didn't write. At one point he vowed it would be wrapped up in one book even if it was thousands of pages long and had to be shipped with its own cart. Despite that, at this point, it will be published in 3 parts. Since I've already read 11 books in the series, (12 including the short prequel,) I don't mind reading 3 more, even if they won't be as long as the others.


These pics are from Striving to be Delicious. If only the cover art from the actual books was this good. They suffer from the generic crappy fantasy novel disease, where they are poorly painted and you usually can't tell who the people on the cover are supposed to be. It's not because the author didn't provide descriptions, he described everything in the books in way too much detail. So much detail that after reading thousands of pages, many of us readers just skim large portions of text. I think a lot of people gave up on Jordan around the 5th or 6th book partially because the details got to be too much, and partially because he showed no signs of wrapping up any plot threads, and even kept adding characters. Not me though, I like reading long fantasy series. It's paid off, exciting things happen in the 11th book... finally.


Right now I'm halfway through the third book. That puts me about 1,920 pages in. That just leaves about 7765 pages to go before I get to read something new!

It almost makes a person wish George RR Martin would keel over so someone could finish a Song of Ice and Fire. I mean, Robert Jordan's dead and he's still gonna finish his series.

3 comments:

-al said...

.... And Bruce Campbell as Gareth Bryne.

Have to agree on the crappy cover art is it Dragon Reborn that looks completely ripped off of a romance novel cover? Never got the impression that Rand was all super buff.

I do really like the chapter heading art. I think some of them (Mat's dice) would make good tattoos.

Margaret said...

Nah, TDR is the one where he's reaching for Callandor. Lord of Chaos is probably the one you're thinking of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Chaos

A Crown of Swords is pretty horrible, and they manage to make Rand look like he has goat legs.

You're right about the chapter icons! They're sweet. Here's a page where somebody scanned them: http://www.eigenspace.net/wot/newwot.html

-al said...

Crown of Swords.