Books Kal re-reads The Wheel of Time so you don't have to

[Kal-El814]

So I've discovered that one of the things that I like to do while I'm painting minis, working on general tabletop game projects, or playing solo tabletop games is to listen to audiobooks I've already heard / read. I find those kinds of tasks require enough focus for me to not pay super close attention to what I'm listening to, so knowing the broad strokes of stuff allows me to mentally zoom in and out of focusing on what I'm listening to and what I'm painting / sculpting / basing.

 

Since I find that painting generally make time melt away, what better thing to listen to than one of the longest series out there... The Wheel of Time.

 

This is basically going to be a blog and I suspect little to no engagement but hey, whatever! It'll be fun for me as long as I stick with it. If people who know the series wanna chime in, I'm all for that, or if people wanna rubberneck this borderline flagellant activity... the more the merrier.

 

I'm not going to bother spoiler tagging anything, the series wrapped up a decade ago and it's clear enough to me that the show is going to shake things up enough that I don't think I'm really going to spoil that, either.

[Kal-El814]

Since I've read almost all of these books before, I thought I'd start chronologically and kick things off with...

 

2004's New Spring

 

I say "almost all of these books" because I was shocked to find out that... I don't think I've read this? Maybe it was just the graphic novel or maybe just a summary? Pretty early on I realized I hadn't actually read this and my plans to "live blog" this blew up. So I'm already cheating and I've finished New Spring before starting this thread; I couldn't listen to a new book and split my attention to painting like I will for the books I knew I read. So the following are my impressions of the whole book.

 

I don't think this book is particularly necessary in the grand scheme of WoT overall. I was mainly struck by the plot pacing being kind of bad. I know this is a Robert Jordan WoT book so that's certainly on brand. Still, it's a bit weird that for a book where the main point seems to be to give more context to Moiraine, Siuan, and Lan... it doesn't REALLY do that. Lan and Siuan in particular are basically fully baked and just waiting on a cooling rack for the real show to start. Moiraine is a little better off than them but given what I recall of her drive to find The Dragon Reborn by TEoTW... it would have been nice to have the novel not end where it did.

 

One of the things that struck me from not having engaged with the series much since reading AMoL is just how much NS focuses on Moiraine's thoughts about who has too much bosom, there must be close to a half dozen references to where arms were folded in relationship to someone's breasts, etc. The male gaze in the prose is pretty strong. I've read and listened to a good amount of feminist theory in the last ten years so it's not surprising that these things jump out at me. I suspect things like that and WoTs insistence on a rigid gender binary are going to be somewhat frustrating through this re-read. Jordan's take on "pillow friends" has always felt too cute by half and it would have been interesting to get more insight into Moiraine's and Siuan's relationship in that respect, but it's just as glossed over here as it was in the main series, which is kind of a shame on a couple levels.

 

The final confrontation in this book was also abrupt and I thought... bad. I believe one of the criticisms Jordan received through the run of WoT was that a lot of characters had plot armor, so the prequel probably gave him some flexibility to let one of the Black Ajah go HAM, but... then Merean just gets stabbed in the back? Despite the book clearly stating that no woman who could channel could sneak up on another women who could? And Lan mentioning that Ryne was a better swordsman feels like a pretty transparent glow up just to lend drama to his fight. The same applies to Moiraine bonding Lan. The whole book leading up to the way that happened again felt like a bit of a missed opportunity.

 

Thankfully this book doesn't commit the main sin that the middle of WoT does from my memory... it's not too fucking long.

 

So on a 1 - 5 scale (1: poor, 2: fair, 3: good, 4: very good, 5: excellent), I'd probably give New Spring a 2. More time spent with Moiraine is always worthwhile, though I wish we'd gotten more insight into Lan as opposed to just more of him. And Siuan is always a winner. Without the "missing" prequels it's hard to say it's necessary and since the whole WoT affair is already close to 4.5 million words... it's not really a meaningful addition to the series.

[DPCyric]

I listened to the audio books of the main series but skipped New Spring the production just felt off compared to the rest.

[Mercury33]

This might inspire me to get back to these. I read/listened(literally a combination of both) about halfway through book 4 leading up to the show. The last episode left such a bad taste in my mouth I just stopped engaging with the series completely haha. But I just finished Steven Kings Fairy Tale and I think the existence of this thread and desire to participate is pushing me to pick them back up. 

[TheLeon]

I’ve had the first book on Audible for probably a decade at this point, and I finally started it up over the weekend. I find it highly unlikely that I’ll ever make my way through the whole series, so it seems almost pointless to start at all, but 

[Kal-El814]

Time for Chapters 1 - 20 of 1990's... The Eye of the World

 

I haven't read this in a while, and my main impression about the first 20 chapters is that so much of this first book is Jordan remixing The Lord of the Rings. Bunch of people in a secluded town get visited by a wizard, they're pursued by black cloaked riders they ditch by a ferry crossing, there's a dude straight up named Thorin referenced in Moiraine's stories, those same stories also evoke a lot of Tolkien's elvish characters and names, there's a cursed treasure that someone poached from a shady creature, etc. Obviously this was done deliberately and it's not a knock, it's just much more overt than I'd remembered.

 

Also I'd forgotten about the references to our world, John Glenn, Mother Teresa, Moscow, etc.

 

Anyway aside from templating Tolkien, things start off pretty well. I wonder if new readers to this would have been looking for ASOIAF style swerve about who the protagonist would be. The show seemed to do that a bit, the book a lot less so given the POV focus on Rand early on and the hints about Rand being able to channel (which come up almost immediately after where I'm at IIRC).

 

It's a bit weird coming from New Spring to this; Moiraine comes off differently having spent a bunch of time in her head. Obviously time has passed for her since then but Lan comes off much more subservient so far than he was in NS and I don't know that it makes a ton of sense, given where he ends up in not too long. 

 

Mat is a straight up idiot at this point, which is more annoying than I remember. There's also more discussion about the Emonds Field kids not opening up to Moiraine about their dreams and such than I had recalled, which is a nice inverse to Mat being such a fucking moron. Strangely I think the show does a better job than the book of establishing why he'd be so treasure obsessed. The ages of everyone are more compressed than I realized. I thought Nynaeve was a good bit older than the Emonds Field Three, but I think it's like... 5 years? I know she'd young for a Wisdom, but I forgot she was just straight up young? So Lan's like... 20 years older than her? And she's JUST out of her teens? Ooooooooooooooooooooooooookay.

 

Also speaking of the show, Egwene is described in the book as, "Of a height with Nynaeve, and with the same dark coloring." I'd assumed they meant hair and eyes like most of the Two Rivers people, but it's neat that the show ran with that more literally.

 

It's fun to come back to these characters. My memory is that Rand and Mat change the most in terms of where their personalities start compared to where they end up. Egwene, Perrin, and Nynaeve feel a lot closer to where they end up but it's possible I'm just projecting that given that I know how it ends. Also fun to see where some of the magic stuff doesn't super gel with how it ends up later. 

 

Probably have more character specific thoughts as I keep going, my main impression is that it's fun to come back to these characters and this series when I can be engaged with other activities, and Jesus Christ this book moves at a brisk pace considering I think the party has been on the road for 2 WEEKS-ish already and the whole series / the remaining books (not counting New Spring) take two YEARS.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

I came in expecting Kal to read the books to ME, and I leave very disappointed. 

[thewhyteboar]

Robert Jordan must have had a "Nynaeve tugs on her braid" shortcut on his keyboard.

[Kal-El814]

3 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

Robert Jordan must have had a "Nynaeve tugs on her braid" shortcut on his keyboard.

Plump plump plump plump plump

[DPCyric]

10 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

Time for Chapters 1 - 20 of 1990's... The Eye of the World

 

I haven't read this in a while, and my main impression about the first 20 chapters is that so much of this first book is Jordan remixing The Lord of the Rings. Bunch of people in a secluded town get visited by a wizard, they're pursued by black cloaked riders they ditch by a ferry crossing, there's a dude straight up named Thorin referenced in Moiraine's stories, those same stories also evoke a lot of Tolkien's elvish characters and names, there's a cursed treasure that someone poached from a shady creature, etc. Obviously this was done deliberately and it's not a knock, it's just much more overt than I'd remembered.

 

Also I'd forgotten about the references to our world, John Glenn, Mother Teresa, Moscow, etc.

 

Anyway aside from templating Tolkien, things start off pretty well. I wonder if new readers to this would have been looking for ASOIAF style swerve about who the protagonist would be. The show seemed to do that a bit, the book a lot less so given the POV focus on Rand early on and the hints about Rand being able to channel (which come up almost immediately after where I'm at IIRC).

 

It's a bit weird coming from New Spring to this; Moiraine comes off differently having spent a bunch of time in her head. Obviously time has passed for her since then but Lan comes off much more subservient so far than he was in NS and I don't know that it makes a ton of sense, given where he ends up in not too long. 

 

Mat is a straight up idiot at this point, which is more annoying than I remember. There's also more discussion about the Emonds Field kids not opening up to Moiraine about their dreams and such than I had recalled, which is a nice inverse to Mat being such a fucking moron. Strangely I think the show does a better job than the book of establishing why he'd be so treasure obsessed. The ages of everyone are more compressed than I realized. I thought Nynaeve was a good bit older than the Emonds Field Three, but I think it's like... 5 years? I know she'd young for a Wisdom, but I forgot she was just straight up young? So Lan's like... 20 years older than her? And she's JUST out of her teens? Ooooooooooooooooooooooooookay.

 

Also speaking of the show, Egwene is described in the book as, "Of a height with Nynaeve, and with the same dark coloring." I'd assumed they meant hair and eyes like most of the Two Rivers people, but it's neat that the show ran with that more literally.

 

It's fun to come back to these characters. My memory is that Rand and Mat change the most in terms of where their personalities start compared to where they end up. Egwene, Perrin, and Nynaeve feel a lot closer to where they end up but it's possible I'm just projecting that given that I know how it ends. Also fun to see where some of the magic stuff doesn't super gel with how it ends up later. 

 

Probably have more character specific thoughts as I keep going, my main impression is that it's fun to come back to these characters and this series when I can be engaged with other activities, and Jesus Christ this book moves at a brisk pace considering I think the party has been on the road for 2 WEEKS-ish already and the whole series / the remaining books (not counting New Spring) take two YEARS.

 

I listened to the series in the past couple of years and early on I hated Mat. The series does a much better job of making him relatable and likable. 

 

Rand and Mat do change the most but it makes sense considering what they go through. Mat went from my least liked characters to one of my favorites (though Sanderson wasn't good at writing him sadly). Perrin barely changes I think intentionally so. Egwene and Nynaeve do change but are just an evolution of who they are.

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, DPCyric said:

 

I listened to the series in the past couple of years and early on I hated Mat. The series does a much better job of making him relatable and likable. 

 

Rand and Mat do change the most but it makes sense considering what they go through. Mat went from my least liked characters to one of my favorites (though Sanderson wasn't good at writing him sadly). Perrin barely changes I think intentionally so. Egwene and Nynaeve do change but are just an evolution of who they are.

 

I come around a lot on Mat as the series goes on, to the best of my memory. I knew he was a bit of a card at the start, I forgot that he was just... a moron. My memory of Perrin is that I like him in general but he's the worst victim of the series being too long and overwritten in the middle, and I recall thinking Faile is just a miserable character, so I hope I'm wrong about that

[Mercury33]

I think I remember actively hating Mat for being so generically stupid until around book 4? I think that’s when he pulled a 180 and became one of my favorites. 

[Kal-El814]

9 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I think I remember actively hating Mat for being so generically stupid until around book 4? I think that’s when he pulled a 180 and became one of my favorites. 

 

Yeah so far I think Jordan was shooting for a rakish prankster, which... kinds works to establish who he is in Emonds Field. But there's just no reason for him to be all "OOOOH TREASURE" when Creepfest Magoo is baiting them into the Randland equivalent of an unmarked van.

 

Spoilers for... a lot of stuff from later books coming up here.

 

I know this is a weird thing to wonder about during Book 1, but I can't recall if the series addresses people getting burned out of the pattern with the generally cyclical nature of the wheel of time itself? I think there's a bit where Rand ponders whether or not The Dark One would basically rule / destroy the whole universe if they lose The Last Battle and comes to the conclusion that wouldn't be what happens. So does The Creator remake stuff from jump at some point? Or... if someone goes to the moon in the nest First Age, would they see the American flag and the footprint, the whole thing? Is there a finite number of people that gets smaller every time someone gets Balefired?

[DPCyric]

3 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I come around a lot on Mat as the series goes on, to the best of my memory. I knew he was a bit of a card at the start, I forgot that he was just... a moron. My memory of Perrin is that I like him in general but he's the worst victim of the series being too long and overwritten in the middle, and I recall thinking Faile is just a miserable character, so I hope I'm wrong about that

 

I really liked Faile 

[Kal-El814]

18 minutes ago, DPCyric said:

 

I really liked Faile 

 

Her, "why won't you treat me like dirt, daddy," vibe got old.

[DPCyric]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Her, "why won't you treat me like dirt, daddy," vibe got old.

 

I don't think she wanted him to treat her like dirt just wanted him to grow a backbone like her...

[Kal-El814]

3 hours ago, DPCyric said:

 

I don't think she wanted him to treat her like dirt just wanted him to grow a backbone like her...

Fair enough. I haven’t read any of the books with her in them since they were initially released I think? Probably? I hope I feel differently about her now. 

[DPCyric]

12 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

Fair enough. I haven’t read any of the books with her in them since they were initially released I think? Probably? I hope I feel differently about her now. 

 

Yeah they made it pretty clear that in their culture the women and men had to be tough because they lived so close to the blight. I will say she did have a ton of jealousy issues though.

[stepee]

the topic title is a lie okay you aren’t READING

[Kal-El814]

Back on my bullshit.

 

On 1/23/2023 at 12:01 PM, stepee said:

the topic title is a lie okay you aren’t READING

 

Spoiler

 

Kidding aside I guess I'll sum up things too so y'all know what's happening.

 

Back to... Chapters 21 - 40 of 1990's... The Eye of the World. In which...

 

Everyone gets separated

Nyneave sneaks up on Lan, and their May / December romance kicks off kinda

Moraine talks about the One Power in ways that don't really come up this way ever again a few times

Mat goes full Gollum

Perrin does his best Pierce Brosnan impression

Rand gets the DTs, channels some more, and gets the DTs again

Thom takes one for the team

Perrin and Egwene meet some Tinkers and everyone gets horny but nobody does much about it

The Children of the Light are real dicks, capturing Perrin and Egwene

Chapters 31 - 34 are needlessly confusing with poorly established flashbacks

We realize Rand has never seen a blonde person before

Rand and Mat end up in Camelyn and meet Loial

Lan, Moiraine, and Nynaeve rescue Perrin and Egwene

Rand sneaks a peek at Logan and meets Elayne, Gawyn, and Galad, then Morgase, Gareth, and Elaida

 

Once again I'm blown away by the pace of this book compared to the middle and back end of this series. I forget how long the whole affair was supposed to be... three books? Four? And while we'd miss out on a lot of some stuff. my feeling going into this and especially now is that the series is just too damned long.

 

Some thoughts...

 

Funny that power wrought weapons are supposed to be rare but Rand, Thom, and Lan all have one.

 

Some stuff here is just never explained. The shimmering at White Bridge... I don't think that ever comes up again. It's never really clear how Moraine uses the tokens, or having Healed the boys, or both of them, to track? And I don't think this stuff comes up later. I don't think a  bunch of stuff about Elyas gets explained, or why the Children of the Light are in a position to bump into Perrin and Egwene at all. How did Morgase ever hear what someone from the Two Rivers sounded like? The Emonds Fielders didn't even know they had a queen!

 

Also Chapters 31 - 34 are... badly written flashbacks. I wonder if Jordan intended them to be deliberately disorienting to let us vibe with how Rand was presumably feeling, but it just kinda sucks. And hey, Loial! Who doesn't like Loial.

 

One thing that I think is clever about the series ie the notion that the boys being ta'veren can do a lot of heavy lifting for why shit happens the way it does. Oh you think Rand has plot armor? So sorry, he does almost literally.

 

At this point I can't remember when people who channel get to see the weaves... I know it comes up eventually but I keep forgetting that Egwene and Nynaeve can't? I don't think Moiraine is inverting everything she does, and they don't see the weaves themselves since Nynaeve is initially in denial about whether she can channel at all.

 

No Mat POV at all yet? I guess it doesn't happen at all in this book given what's coming and the fact that he's in the bag for most of it.

 

Anyway there are 13 chapters left in TEoTW, everything is about to make even less sense, and goddamn the back half of this book must channel the speed force if they haven't even made it to the damned blight yet.

[Kal-El814]

Back at it again with the White Tower.

 

Chapters 41 - 53 of 1990's... The Eye of the World. In which...

 

The band gets back together!

Mat continues to go full Gollum

I'm pretty sure we finally learn (not accounting for New Spring) Moiraine is Blue Ajah

Moving at a pace the series will rarely hit again after another couple books, the gang gets to Fal Dara

We go into The Bright, the pace remains bonkers by WoT standards, and are there for feel what 15 minutes

The Green Man is weird

The Eye of The World is weird and the fight that happens there makes little sense

The Creator talks to Rand, doing him the favor of letting him know that god's not going to help him

Rand makes the first of a billion promises to himself that he'll end up breaking

 

My main takeaways from the back 1/4 of this book are how everything flies by in general, and by WoT standards it's practically beyond light speed. And also that I reread a couple of the last few chapters and some of the stuff about The Eye of The World and the fight that happens there just... don't make a ton of sense. Some things rarely seem to work like this again, the purpose of The Eye itself seems kinda weird and In don't think ever really gets resolved in a way that is satisfactory. And the cords come back less often than it seems like they should unless the ability to see them is a Talent Rand has? But I don't think that's ever really expanded upon either.

[BloodyHell]

On 1/15/2023 at 11:24 PM, DPCyric said:

I listened to the audio books of the main series but skipped New Spring the production just felt off compared to the rest.

New Spring makes more sense after book four or five. It wasn’t the first book written by any means. It falls first in the timeline, but id never suggest starting with it. 

[DPCyric]

17 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

New Spring makes more sense after book four or five. It wasn’t the first book written by any means. It falls first in the timeline, but id never suggest starting with it. 

 

I went to listen to it after finishing the mainline books but the production quality was poor. Maybe I should actually just read that one.

[Mercury33]

I both loved and hated the last 1/4 of EotW. The battle felt like he read some of the more insane parts of the Book of Revelations and thought “YES, this is what will make sense!” Shit is wild. I remember thinking there’s no way they can even think about adapting this for the show, they’re gonna have to change it. The problem is that I think it moves way to fast. It’s the one part they should have slowed down(literally everywhere else in the books should have been sped up haha). At that pace it makes the already absurd and confusing even more so. That being said it’s still probably one of my favorite parts of any of the books. 

[Kal-El814]

8 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I both loved and hated the last 1/4 of EotW. The battle felt like he read some of the more insane parts of the Book of Revelations and thought “YES, this is what will make sense!” Shit is wild. I remember thinking there’s no way they can even think about adapting this for the show, they’re gonna have to change it. The problem is that I think it moves way to fast. It’s the one part they should have slowed down(literally everywhere else in the books should have been sped up haha). At that pace it makes the already absurd and confusing even more so. That being said it’s still probably one of my favorite parts of any of the books. 

 

Not that WoT "makes sense" when you get down to specific stuff, but I always really disliked the notions that the threads to The Dark One were in some sense literal and could be severed, and that channelers could be forced to become darkfriends.  For the former it just comes up so infrequently and conveniently; it's weird that it doesn't warrant more of an explanation.

 

For the latter the concept always kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and then... Rand behaves very stupidly about it for a long time which is the most irritating bit.

[BloodyHell]

31 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I both loved and hated the last 1/4 of EotW. The battle felt like he read some of the more insane parts of the Book of Revelations and thought “YES, this is what will make sense!” Shit is wild. I remember thinking there’s no way they can even think about adapting this for the show, they’re gonna have to change it. The problem is that I think it moves way to fast. It’s the one part they should have slowed down(literally everywhere else in the books should have been sped up haha). At that pace it makes the already absurd and confusing even more so. That being said it’s still probably one of my favorite parts of any of the books. 

I mean, they already strayed so far from the books that it doesn't matter. The show follows some beats, but has totally butchered it. Hell, Rand isn't even the main character. When they made the one power a single source they completely changed the story, because as Jordan said many times, the whole series is as much about an exploration of sex as it is Rands journey. There's stuff that's now impossible, like Balthamels/Halima's fate later in the series, because there's just the source, which men "Make dirty" when they touch it. It's just awful retconning. 

 

I really wish that Hollywood's showrunners and writers would stop butchering works of fiction for the worst. They can't do better than the original writer, it just hasn't happened in any of these adaptations. 

[Kal-El814]

12 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

I mean, they already strayed so far from the books that it doesn't matter. The show follows some beats, but has totally butchered it. Hell, Rand isn't even the main character. When they made the one power a single source they completely changed the story, because as Jordan said many times, the whole series is as much about an exploration of sex as it is Rands journey. There's stuff that's now impossible, like Balthamels/Halima's fate later in the series, because there's just the source, which men "Make dirty" when they touch it. It's just awful retconning. 

 

I really wish that Hollywood's showrunners and writers would stop butchering works of fiction for the worst. They can't do better than the original writer, it just hasn't happened in any of these adaptations. 

 

The Wheel of Time as an exploration of sex was perhaps noble but obviously flawed and incomplete even at the time. An adaptation coming out today when there is increased visibility of trans people and trans rights necessitates a change in the series' take on sex and gender being essentially the same thing. They're represented as a symbolically black and white issue. The Halima shit is fucking bad and needed to change, as it's clear that The Dark One "swapped" their gender as a punishment, it's just one they adapted to. The only example of a character who could be read as trans ending up that way because the literal devil made it so is a bad look. Credit to Jordan for featuring many prominent and powerful female characters, but the male gaze is consistent and obvious (women are described as having their arms crossed in relation to their breasts dozens of times, we have many takes on whether or not a woman has too much bosom and the like from the POV of other women, etc.), the whole "pillow friend" issue is clearly written from a man's perspective, and so on.

 

I have issues with the series but I like it very much (I wouldn't subject myself to one billion hours of audiobook re-reads if I didn't like it) but I feel like not strictly adhering to the source material is going to be fine if the TV series is good in general, and the first season was not great perhaps, but I liked it. And hey, maybe the show will take some of the threads that started in the first couple books that end in the last couple and have them not blow complete ass!

 

I'm looking at you...

 

Spoiler

Padan Fain!

 

Anyway I'm happy to tell myself that whatever happens on the show is just a different Third Age on a different cycle of the wheel, whatever.

[BloodyHell]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:07 PM, Kal-El814 said:

 

The Wheel of Time as an exploration of sex was perhaps noble but obviously flawed and incomplete even at the time. An adaptation coming out today when there is increased visibility of trans people and trans rights necessitates a change in the series' take on sex and gender being essentially the same thing. They're represented as a symbolically black and white issue. The Halima shit is fucking bad and needed to change, as it's clear that The Dark One "swapped" their gender as a punishment, it's just one they adapted to. The only example of a character who could be read as trans ending up that way because the literal devil made it so is a bad look. Credit to Jordan for featuring many prominent and powerful female characters, but the male gaze is consistent and obvious (women are described as having their arms crossed in relation to their breasts dozens of times, we have many takes on whether or not a woman has too much bosom and the like from the POV of other women, etc.), the whole "pillow friend" issue is clearly written from a man's perspective, and so on.

 

I have issues with the series but I like it very much (I wouldn't subject myself to one billion hours of audiobook re-reads if I didn't like it) but I feel like not strictly adhering to the source material is going to be fine if the TV series is good in general, and the first season was not great perhaps, but I liked it. And hey, maybe the show will take some of the threads that started in the first couple books that end in the last couple and have them not blow complete ass!

 

I'm looking at you...

 

  Hide contents

Padan Fain!

 

Anyway I'm happy to tell myself that whatever happens on the show is just a different Third Age on a different cycle of the wheel, whatever.

I have no problem whatsoever with anyone enjoying it, but it’s not my Wheel of Time, and it’s doubtful I’ll watch more of it. 
 

I wanted a fairly straight adaptation, and this isn’t it. I get the reasoning, and I still think it’s a bad decision that fundamentally changes the one power and the story.

Then there’s making Moiraine the star, a character who I love, but isn’t even around for 60% of the story. I want tge focus on Rand/Mat/Perrin/Nynaeve/egwene. I absolutely despise the Perrin killing his wife bit, or ever having a wife in the first place. 
 

There’s also so much cut. I understand time is a factor, and even huge budgets are limited, and theres no real solution.

 

god, I would love to see the whole thing done in hand drawn animation. Bruce Timm style animation with a faithful adaptation. I know that will never, ever happen, but I can wish. 
 

I do like the casting a lot except Mat, Im glad he’s being replaced. I think the world is beautiful. But the last two episodes of season one killed any hope I had for the show even if the early changes didn’t bother me.

[Kal-El814]

40 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

I have no problem whatsoever with anyone enjoying it, but it’s not my Wheel of Time, and it’s doubtful I’ll watch more of it. 
 

I wanted a fairly straight adaptation, and this isn’t it. I get the reasoning, and I still think it’s a bad decision that fundamentally changes the one power and the story.

Then there’s making Moiraine the star, a character who I love, but isn’t even around for 60% of the story. I want tge focus on Rand/Mat/Perrin/Nynaeve/egwene. I absolutely despise the Perrin killing his wife bit, or ever having a wife in the first place. 
 

There’s also so much cut. I understand time is a factor, and even huge budgets are limited, and theres no real solution.

 

god, I would love to see the whole thing done in hand drawn animation. Bruce Timm style animation with a faithful adaptation. I know that will never, ever happen, but I can wish. 
 

I do like the casting a lot except Mat, Im glad he’s being replaced. I think the world is beautiful. But the last two episodes of season one killed any hope I had for the show even if the early changes didn’t bother me.

 

I think the show's biggest flaw is the possibility that they're going one season for every book. There's just no fucking way they're ever going to finish adapting all the books with that approach, so you might as well not have TEoTW take the whole first season from jump.

[BloodyHell]

2 minutes ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

I think the show's biggest flaw is the possibility that they're going one season for every book. There's just no fucking way they're ever going to finish adapting all the books with that approach, so you might as well not have TEoTW take the whole first season from jump.

I also agree with that. Theres absolutely no way they do this with 8 episodes a season with less than a season a book, and leaving a lot out. I always knew it probably wouldn’t be finished, and they would have to cut a lot. I just hoped they would at least stay faithful in what they could do.

 

Overall, I just don’t know how you ever finish a show this big. Even the best tv grows stale, actors age and move on, all that stuff. 
I thought I heard 8 planned seasons, but then you’re cutting out over half the series. 

[Kal-El814]

I'm further ahead in the series than I am in this thread, so I have to refer to my notes while I talk about...

 

Chapters 1 - 12 of 1990's The Great Hunt

 

A brief aside to call out that it's been roughly 3,000 years since the last ASoIaF book, but good ol' Robbie J managed to get out The Eye of The World and The Great Hunt in the same calendar year.

 

In which...

 

The Darkfriends have a social, and we learn that some Whitecloaks are SUPER BAD as opposed to just very bad

Rand got really good at sword fighting really quick

Padan Fain / Mordeth starts his glow up

Moiraine doesn't tell Siuan that the Forsaken are back for... no reason? I've never understood this, it seems like it'd be one of the first things that comes up

Egwene hangs out with Padan Fain for... no good reason!

Mat does a solid Gollum impression

We get some lengthy prophecy stuff and Moiraine STILL doesn't mention The Forsaken being back to Siuan for... no good reason

Hurin shows up and can smell stuff real good

Fain can make illusions now I guess?

Hey we see Lanfear but we don't know that yet

A Padan Fain POV, ugh this guy sucks so much and not in an interesting way

We get some details about Egwene being a dreamer

EDIT - on and I guess the horn and the darrger get stolen, lul

 

TGH continues the comparatively breakneck pace of the first three or so books, assuming I'm remembering when things slow down correctly. Unlike the stuff at the end of TEoTW kind of not jiving with how things work later on power or ability wise, I feel like in hindsight the start of this book is a mishmash of things that end up being really important and directly foreshadow things very specifically and other stuff that makes little to no sense.

 

Stuff like the dark prophecy teases stuff that I don't think shakes out until way later, like Slayer and his deal. But stuff like Moiraine not mentioning the Forsaken being out to Siuan is absolutely bananas. Also there's some stuff that seems to make no sense at the time, like Siuan knowing which way the Trollocs went. Also I assume that Siuan and Moiraine feeling the "tingle" when the other is channeling mentioned here was retconned into New Spring? The way it's mentioned here doesn't apply to how women detect one another channeling anywhere else so far.

 

It's so frustrating to see how deadly RJ is establishing Padan Fain to be knowing how things ultimately end up going. And while I appreciate the extent to which things actually happen in this book and we largely focus on and get POVs from characters we care about, the beginning of this one specifically I feel moves almost too quick for anything to really land.

 

But hey! There's still no Faile, and that's something to be happy about.

[Kal-El814]

Okay I'm further along now, just haven't written my notes here.

 

I'm going to use the fact that I also have these on ebook to do a titty count. The number of times RJ refers to rings between breasts, arms folded under breasts, who is showing too much bosom, etc., is fucking bananas.

[Kal-El814]

Catching up on my notes on…

 

Chapters 13 - 24 of The Great Hunt

 

In which!

 

Rand warps people to a whole new world like Aladdin

I think we get our first Verinism?

Rand gets branded in Cool World or whatever

Lanfear shows up and is hot in a very Lanfear way, though she doesn’t smell evil which is weird

Egwene and Nynaeve show up in Tar Valon after Nynaeve hadoukens Siuan accidentally

Rand steals the Horn from Padan Fain, who sucks and seems like he can’t detect Rand sometimes but I don’t think this works consistently

Hey, Chodean Kal shows up. Not the best Kal, but it’s A Kal and that’s something

Rand plays Game of Thrones in a hotel named after some Tolkien bullshit, it’s a whole thing

Moraine says some stuff. Incidentally I remember there being some “Moraine is a darkfriend” theories back in the day and chapters like this made that whole proposition confusion. 

Nynaeve becomes accepted after some sad visions

Egwene and Elaine start to become buddies and Galad are very pretty and have some… truly stupid takes on who Egwene “belongs to,” which is on brand for Gawyn being a moron about most things

 

Again we’re still cooking with gas by WoT standards. Stuff is coming and going at a breakneck pace and we’re still dealing with stuff that doesn’t end u sticking or making sense long term, but that’s fine in general. Except when it comes to something like Padan Fain, who sucks. Nynaeve becoming Accepted despite not being able to reliably channel always felt off to me, and it still does now. Yes her potential is of the charts, but… it feels very plot contrived without the excuse of her being ta’veren to explain it.

[Kal-El814]

A brief aside to use the power of searching ebooks to bring us…

 

Randland Titty Count! This episode is brought to you by… Weaves of Air! Underwire at risk of breaking the skin? Worried that your smallclothes can’t hold your large breasts? When you fold your arms, do they lay on top of your breasts when they used to lay under them? Try Weaves of Air! Supporting breasts in Randland since the Age of Legends. We thank them for sponsoring this segment.

 

Let’s start in chronological order, with… New Spring which features:

 

FOUR references to arms being folded beneath breasts

ONE reference to the colors of clothes being belted beneath women’s breasts

FOUR references to embroidery being on breasts

ONE reference to a baby being at a mother’s breast

FOUR references to an abundance of / emphasis on / snugness at the bosom

ONE reference to decoration at someone’s bosom

 

Special mention to Chapter 25 for having TWO references to arms folded under and colors belted beneath breasts within 10 pages of one another!

 

This brings New Spring to an ample FIFTEEN titty references! This is one of the shorter books in the series at 304 pages. Is it possible that New Spring is busting out of its hooks and clasps to have the densest page / titty ratio in the series despite being chronologically earliest??? Stay tuned!