The entirety of Chapter 1 has also now been posted online...

http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/09/a-memory-of-light-chapter-1-qeastward-the-wind-blewq

So. Pumped.

 

Will Mat's chapter get fully published as well, like chapter one and the prologue were?

I bet the opposing andoran army will reformed by the pattern, and turn up to save the people of the city.

 

5 DAYS SLUTS

IF YOU'RE NOT HYPED YOU CAN GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE

 

Thanks for the link AnvariX.

Pumped.

 

Ok so I got to book 7 on my reread before I just kind of lost interest. I have gotten to knife of dreams in the past, but I only remember the broad plot details. How is Brandon Sanderson doing with it? Is it worth drugging through the boredom to get there? I remember books 7 and 8 being a tad boring, and crossroads of twilight being unbelievably bad.

Are there any abridged versions to make the reread more palatable?

 

Jesus Christ I haven't started my re-read. Fuck real life. ;_;

Oh well, maybe I'll just re-read EoTW, TSR , TGS and ToM.

Ellisande: Stick with it. Sanderson blew a new life into the series.

 

I just finished A Memory of Light yesterday.

Oh yes, perks of working in a bookshop. We got a few copies from warehouse by accident last week.

It is good - maybe even great - and I won't be going into spoilers until more have had a chance to read it.

Having been waiting ten years for the conclusion of this series, I have to say that A Memory of Light was... satisfying.

Yes, satisfying.

 

I made my own abridged version, I just skipped the chapters covering Perrin/Faile, Elayne, and Egwene. Shortened the books remarkably, I have read the entire series multiple times, so I had a good track of the events even if I did not read about them this last read through.

 

Sadly, this style of reading is not totally bullshit. Robert Jordan is the high fucking king of world-building, but he really can't write a woman worth a shit. Every female in the Wheel of Time series is really just the same woman, on a bitchiness scale of 1 to 10. 10, of course, being Cadsuane.

Dat world structure, though. DAT SETTING

 

It's pretty much after Book 3 when that sort of shit started piling up. Before that, it was largely excusable.

 

Godammit, no. There were good books after three. The first two were actually some of the weakest, despite having the reader still be interested in the world, having not quite seen the lot of it. Dragon Reborn? The Shadow Rising? The Fires of Heaven and the Lords of Chaos? Those were the strongest streak, imo : steady action and awesome shit to counter the dry spells of agonizing description and Aes Sedai sniffing at people. Then Mat and Perrin starting fucking off in random locales, Rand starting forming his assholish crysalis, and there was nothing to offset the boredom when nothing seemed to be happening.

Crossroads of Twilight was hands down the worst offender.

 

I remember when I read the first one, I came out of it thinking it was just another Fellowship of the Ring ripoff. But from there it really diverged and had its own magic.

But the part I most struggled was around Knife of Dreams, where I completely lost interest, dropped the series and had to reread the whole thing again a few years later.

 

I think I got to Lords of Chaos before stopping. While it was a lot better at that point then when it started, there were still some parts where my interest waned. Anything to do with that bitch Nynaeve and her troupe namely.

 

... Lamora, I was talking about when the females started becoming complete bitches. Not about when the quality went off a cliff and then found wings.

If you'll remember, Mat saved the girls in the Stone of Tear from a Black Ajah group that were pretty much enslaving them, and when they found one of the Black Ajah girls on the way out they flipped out on her. When Mat asked them why they were flipping out, they got mad at him too. While all that was excusable by what they had gone through even only hours before, the fact that none of them apparently apologized by TSR was the beginning of the end for normal women in the series.

 

Heh, there were some pretty bad moments in the books.

Apart from the whole Perrin stuff, the storyline I found the most irritating was, I think, Elayne and Nynaeve joining that circus. :|

 

My plan for this summer is to reread every word, chapter, and book in the series before finishing off with a Memory of Light. A last farewell for a series, with it's distractions, that helped inspire my imagination into writing and helped create my own little world in my head. (Which will never see the light of day most like.)

As to World-Building? I never really got that from him. All his ideas, save some, were borrowed. Hell, even some of his description were. Lan being all planes and angles was straight from Dune, as were the Aes Sedai(Bene Gessirit) and Aiel(Fremen.) A lot of the cultures described there-in, customs to dress, were from history and applied. Though, I guess given the cyclic nature of his mythos this is explained.

However, the one thing that I absolutely loved was weaving. The One Power, True Source. That was amazing. Plus, all the tiny details he put into parts of the narrative. The Forsaken's POV saw channeling as a web, while the modern day was more like a weave. Things like that I enjoyed.

So who was everyone's favorite of the three Protagonists? I liked Mat, always seemed to enjoy his POV's more than the other two.

 

Early on (like, until after the whole Two Rivers shit went down), I was a Perrin man myself. I was all "Manetheren, fuck yeah!", but then Perrin's character arc continually dragged down in really stretched out stuff (the Shaido Aiel stuff was cool in theory, but come on...) and he basically just get refusing to step up and take responsibility and become the lord people treated him as. Rand more and more falling into the pit of insanity and losing emotions was cool, but Mat's all out badassery post-Dragon Reborn, plain sensibleness and the fact that he brings back military technology not used in thousands of years and Ages made him the front-runner.

 

Judging by what I've read, I'd have to say Mat as well. That hat, that spear -- he just oozes badass. Though I didn't get far enough in to see if he'd be saddled with some naggy bitch like almost every other male character.

 

Multiple naggy characters. And he's pretty much raped by a Queen on a regular basis for a book.

 

... On second thought, maybe I'll just leave this series where I left it.