Turnings and returnings of the Wheel
The last book of Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series has been announced as coming out next March, and that requires some attention on my part. I've had an on-and-off relationship with this series for the past 20 years -- which has been mostly "off," for the last decade. Somewhere around book 10, Elora and I both threw up our hands and said "Enough! Get back to us when it's done." Which is an attitude that a lot of people seem to have taken at some point, most earlier than we did. That's not to say that the books haven't had an effect in my fiction-reading life -- the series was a big deal to me back when they were actually coming out regularly, and I thought they might finish. When we moved to the house and set up our bookshelves, we left a blank space for where we knew the concluding volumes would someday be. (The "Song of Ice and Fire" has a similar shelf space, but let's not get into that.) Our recent interest in Brandon Sanderson's other novels was sparked entirely because we knew that he'd be finishing (yes, finishing) the story after Mr. Jordan's Author Existence Failure.
So, with all that in mind, and knowing that I had about a year until the series concluded, I decided to embark on my own Wheel of Time Re-Read. I started at the end of February, with New Spring, and I figured that if I read one book per month, or a tad faster, I could probably just make it under the wire. So here we are, at the end of April, and I'm most of the way through book 4. Hey, guess what? These early books, they're engaging! Also, apparently, kinda short.
Back when we were in high school, my friends had somewhat unusual ways of getting me to read certain books. shiny_bauble's favorite method was to simply bring the book to my house, leave it on my shelf, and refuse to take it back until I'd read it. To be fair, he was usually justified in doing that. It worked for the Belgariad (which, whatever you may think of it now, is completely awesome when you're 15), and he did the same thing with The Eye of the World, just before I went off to college. I didn't really need to be urged to read it; I liked it almost immediately, as I recall. I'm pretty sure I borrowed The Great Hunt from him as well, although I don't recall the particulars. I do know, though, that I convinced him to turn over his copy of The Dragon Reborn almost as soon as he'd finished it, and then I held onto it for an entire semester before returning it. Sorry about that. The thing is, and I swear this is true, at the time, I thought it was a trilogy, and I was really excited to read the final volume. Worse, I got all the way to the end of the book before realizing that although that book had a strong ending, the series itself wasn't finished yet. I distinctly recall slamming the book shut and saying something nasty out loud, although I don't know why I'd been so certain it would end there.
But that really does say something interesting about the first three books -- they all have strong endings. The battle at the Eye, the battle at Falme, the battle at Tear. They've got a nice episodic structure that I've noticed in Jim Butcher's writing, and Brandon Sanderson's, just to pick two recent examples. Sure, they're part of a series, but when the book's done, it's done, and you're looking forward to the next adventure, rather than wondering about the cliffhanger. And when it could be years before the next installment, I think that's the better way to go about it.
You know what else? In these first three books, stuff happens. Time actually passes. In Eye of the World, it's weeks between the party splitting up at Shadar Logoth, and their being reunited in Caemlyn, and that's just the second half of the book. The Great Hunt memorably has half of the main characters magically slipping forward in time by four months, during which the rest of the characters...get on with their lives! They learn stuff, they acquire skills, they advance their own subplots. The third book skips days, even weeks at a time while the characters cross the continent. It's funny, given that this series is the poster child for having too much plot and not enough passage of time (I think it's one of the later novels where only a few days pass in 700 pages, isn't it?)
The other really odd thing, which I should have expected, but didn't, is that I'm seeing the characters differently now than when I originally read it. The first time through, the protagonists were "my age," at least socially, in terms of being considered near-adults in their culture, even if they were chronologically a bit younger. Now it's 20 years later, and it's the same phenomenon as when you suddenly realize that Luke Skywalker (in the first movie) is less a dashing hero and more a whiny kid (somewhere around the line "But I was going into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!"). I found myself with an awful lot of sympathy for Nynaeve, of all people -- too young herself for so much responsibility in her village, but bound and determined to protect these "kids," because that's her job, and they just aren't getting how dangerous it is out there. Moiraine, too, gets a lot more slack, when she basically comes out and says "The amount I know and you don't about this situation would take years to explain, so you're just gonna hafta trust me for a bit, OK?"
Starting in book 4, The Shadow Rising -- and note that title, "Rising," which is a clear indication that this story is still on the early laps yet -- it's immediately obvious that something changed. I suspect, as I suspected with J.K. Rowling, that Jordan's success with the first three books was such that either the editors didn't feel confident enough to tell him to cut the prose down, or the author himself lost the feeling that the publisher might not support further volumes, and so he could put more stuff in. If you look at your copies, you can see that although the book is the same size physically as its predecessors, it uses a much smaller typeface, and almost no margins. In fact, the margins are probably the smallest I've seen in a hardback novel; you can't hold the book in your hands without covering some text. What? I'm in publishing; I notice these things. This is also the point where Jordan comes down with a bad case of "My world-building, let me show you it." Suddenly there's an explosion of minor characters, all of whom get names, international politics becomes a major part of the plot instead of background, and there are Aiel everywhere, with all sorts of exotic cultural tics and mores and history, because Jordan spent lots of time coming up with all this, and dammit, he's going to share it all with the reader, no matter what. Most telling, the beginning of book 4 is (I'm reasonably sure) the last time that all the A-list characters are together in one place. I'm going to keep an eye on this, but I think that Mat and Perrin don't actually see each other again once they leave the Stone of Tear.
Which is not to say that the series goes right off a cliff here, because wow, stuff still happens in this book. Rand goes to Rhuidian and discovers the history of his people, right Back to the breaking. Mat goes through both mysterious doorways, and acquires his staff-thing, medallion, and hat, and basically levels up. Perrin gets the whole Scourging of the Shire (excuse me, the Two Rivers) plot and ends up married to Faile (no comment, yet). Egwene learns to dream-walk. Nynaeve and Elayne fight Black Ajah in Tanchico. And that's not even counting the climax, because I'm not there yet. If you'd asked me before, I would have sworn a lot of that stuff happened in books 5 or 6 (especially the Two Rivers stuff).
So I'm sticking to the theory, for now, that books 1-3 are fun, episodic, engaging, and enjoyable; books 4-6 are heavier and more exposition-y, but still involving; and books 7-9 are where things start to fall apart. After that, who knows? I haven't read those yet. We'll see how that theory holds up.
So, with all that in mind, and knowing that I had about a year until the series concluded, I decided to embark on my own Wheel of Time Re-Read. I started at the end of February, with New Spring, and I figured that if I read one book per month, or a tad faster, I could probably just make it under the wire. So here we are, at the end of April, and I'm most of the way through book 4. Hey, guess what? These early books, they're engaging! Also, apparently, kinda short.
Back when we were in high school, my friends had somewhat unusual ways of getting me to read certain books. shiny_bauble's favorite method was to simply bring the book to my house, leave it on my shelf, and refuse to take it back until I'd read it. To be fair, he was usually justified in doing that. It worked for the Belgariad (which, whatever you may think of it now, is completely awesome when you're 15), and he did the same thing with The Eye of the World, just before I went off to college. I didn't really need to be urged to read it; I liked it almost immediately, as I recall. I'm pretty sure I borrowed The Great Hunt from him as well, although I don't recall the particulars. I do know, though, that I convinced him to turn over his copy of The Dragon Reborn almost as soon as he'd finished it, and then I held onto it for an entire semester before returning it. Sorry about that. The thing is, and I swear this is true, at the time, I thought it was a trilogy, and I was really excited to read the final volume. Worse, I got all the way to the end of the book before realizing that although that book had a strong ending, the series itself wasn't finished yet. I distinctly recall slamming the book shut and saying something nasty out loud, although I don't know why I'd been so certain it would end there.
But that really does say something interesting about the first three books -- they all have strong endings. The battle at the Eye, the battle at Falme, the battle at Tear. They've got a nice episodic structure that I've noticed in Jim Butcher's writing, and Brandon Sanderson's, just to pick two recent examples. Sure, they're part of a series, but when the book's done, it's done, and you're looking forward to the next adventure, rather than wondering about the cliffhanger. And when it could be years before the next installment, I think that's the better way to go about it.
You know what else? In these first three books, stuff happens. Time actually passes. In Eye of the World, it's weeks between the party splitting up at Shadar Logoth, and their being reunited in Caemlyn, and that's just the second half of the book. The Great Hunt memorably has half of the main characters magically slipping forward in time by four months, during which the rest of the characters...get on with their lives! They learn stuff, they acquire skills, they advance their own subplots. The third book skips days, even weeks at a time while the characters cross the continent. It's funny, given that this series is the poster child for having too much plot and not enough passage of time (I think it's one of the later novels where only a few days pass in 700 pages, isn't it?)
The other really odd thing, which I should have expected, but didn't, is that I'm seeing the characters differently now than when I originally read it. The first time through, the protagonists were "my age," at least socially, in terms of being considered near-adults in their culture, even if they were chronologically a bit younger. Now it's 20 years later, and it's the same phenomenon as when you suddenly realize that Luke Skywalker (in the first movie) is less a dashing hero and more a whiny kid (somewhere around the line "But I was going into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!"). I found myself with an awful lot of sympathy for Nynaeve, of all people -- too young herself for so much responsibility in her village, but bound and determined to protect these "kids," because that's her job, and they just aren't getting how dangerous it is out there. Moiraine, too, gets a lot more slack, when she basically comes out and says "The amount I know and you don't about this situation would take years to explain, so you're just gonna hafta trust me for a bit, OK?"
Starting in book 4, The Shadow Rising -- and note that title, "Rising," which is a clear indication that this story is still on the early laps yet -- it's immediately obvious that something changed. I suspect, as I suspected with J.K. Rowling, that Jordan's success with the first three books was such that either the editors didn't feel confident enough to tell him to cut the prose down, or the author himself lost the feeling that the publisher might not support further volumes, and so he could put more stuff in. If you look at your copies, you can see that although the book is the same size physically as its predecessors, it uses a much smaller typeface, and almost no margins. In fact, the margins are probably the smallest I've seen in a hardback novel; you can't hold the book in your hands without covering some text. What? I'm in publishing; I notice these things. This is also the point where Jordan comes down with a bad case of "My world-building, let me show you it." Suddenly there's an explosion of minor characters, all of whom get names, international politics becomes a major part of the plot instead of background, and there are Aiel everywhere, with all sorts of exotic cultural tics and mores and history, because Jordan spent lots of time coming up with all this, and dammit, he's going to share it all with the reader, no matter what. Most telling, the beginning of book 4 is (I'm reasonably sure) the last time that all the A-list characters are together in one place. I'm going to keep an eye on this, but I think that Mat and Perrin don't actually see each other again once they leave the Stone of Tear.
Which is not to say that the series goes right off a cliff here, because wow, stuff still happens in this book. Rand goes to Rhuidian and discovers the history of his people, right Back to the breaking. Mat goes through both mysterious doorways, and acquires his staff-thing, medallion, and hat, and basically levels up. Perrin gets the whole Scourging of the Shire (excuse me, the Two Rivers) plot and ends up married to Faile (no comment, yet). Egwene learns to dream-walk. Nynaeve and Elayne fight Black Ajah in Tanchico. And that's not even counting the climax, because I'm not there yet. If you'd asked me before, I would have sworn a lot of that stuff happened in books 5 or 6 (especially the Two Rivers stuff).
So I'm sticking to the theory, for now, that books 1-3 are fun, episodic, engaging, and enjoyable; books 4-6 are heavier and more exposition-y, but still involving; and books 7-9 are where things start to fall apart. After that, who knows? I haven't read those yet. We'll see how that theory holds up.