http://www.readandfindout.com/wheeloftime/messageboard/167356/

 

Bár az előző hozzászólásomat még válaszra sem méltattátok, azért csak regisztráltam, hogy ismét kérdéseket tegyek fel a Sanderson-féle könyvekkel kapcsolatban.

 

Nem tudom, hogy tényleg a saját véleményeteket fogalmazzátok meg, vagy csak birkamódra mentek a nyáj után.

 

"Már az első Jordan könyvek sem voltak valami nagy durranások, de az utolsók végképp szarok." (Hasonlóan az SW-hez. Csak a negyedik a jó stb.)

 

Ez a mantra rettentően elterjedt a neten, de az elmúlt 14 évben ezt leginkább azoktól láttam levlistákon, fórumokon, akik a divatot követték: Jordan a király, nem Martin a király, Jordan szar, mindkettő szar Erikson a király, Bakker a legújabb király  stb., míg ma állítólag Sanderson a király.

 

Egyszerűen nem tudom elhinni, hogy olyan íróról áradoztok, akinél az összes karakter egy embernek tűnik, aki teljesen érzelemmentesen ír, oda-vissza ugrál a történetben stb.

 

Érdekes, hogy nem egy fórumban azok akik első olvasás után még ájuldoztak a könyvtől, a 2. vagy 3. olvasásnál már inkább a negatívumokat látták benne.

 

Jordan és Sanderson kb. úgy viszonyulnak egymáshoz, mint Ranschburg és Csernus.

 

Az alábbiakban megint beteszek néhány véleményt, jó lenne, ha végre egy magyar olvasóktól is láthatnék reakciókat ezekre a felvetésekre:

 

 

I've been having the same problem with TGS And TOM that I had with Mistborn. I really liked the Mistborn premise but I simply couldn't make myself care about any of the characters, when people died I thought "meh" and kept reading which is not what you want in a book. I now find myself feeling to some degree the same way about his WOT books. While there are still scenes that moved me they all fell a little flat, the only reason I had any emotional investment in them at all is down to the long standing relationship I have with the characters involved through years of reading and re-reading WOT. You could say I was moved in spite of Brandon's writing, not because of it. There are bits I found funny and laughed out loud at too but excited for the end? Not really. I'll keep reading because I want to know what happens and how it ends, not because I've been drawn into the story and absolutely *have* to turn one more page.

 

What was missing? Well, for one thing, characters blur. Sanderson is not as gifted at inhabiting the multiplicity of voices in the series that Jordan was. One page of discourse sounds much the same as another, and the reader is left to draw distinctions for the characters almost entirely from their history, ignoring their present characterizations. I, the reader, supplied the distinctions and depth of characters from my memories because in Sanderson's prose they are almost, and very nearly, lifeless.

 

we must note that what we are left with in these final novels is pure plot--character, characteristic and the world itself are essentially dead. We, the readers, are reading only to find out what happens. And while this is a welcome thing for the longtime reader of Jordan, let us not confuse it with being good.

 

 

 

 When I reviewed the twelfth volume, I perhaps was a bit too forgiving of that book's shortcomings because I reviewed the book after not having read most of the other volumes since 2000. Interestingly, my initial reaction was mostly a sort of backhanded compliment, something along the lines of "Oh! Sanderson has eschewed having faux bondage scenes in here! And hey! I don't have to endure the repetitive thoughts on how this male or female PoV character states their bafflement at the opposite sex! Sweet!" rather than being wowed by the mechanics of the story. However, in the interim of nearly three weeks between me receiving a review copy and the writing of this review those initial positive reactions have faded while my unease at the structure of this novel increased.

 

 Doubtless, most fans of the WoT series are just excited to discover that "stuff happens!" It is true that on a plot level, there are several important reveals that either further or conclude several plot threads, some of which had been left hanging since the earliest volumes of this series. For those that treat this series as merely an extended Wikipedia summary, doubtless the developments here (from the starting of major combat operations up north to battles in the world of dreams and one male character growing a pair and admitting his own nature to a long-expected rescue of a character left for dead eight volumes ago) make Towers of Midnight an exciting must-read for them

 

 

 

 

 

 http://www.readandfindout.com/wheeloftime/messageboard/167356/

 

TOM has to be one of the worst novels I've read in many years, and by a fair margin it's Brandon's worst published novel to date. Though it's not necessarily the truth (based on his previous book, it isn't), it reads like the work of a very average writer, with very poor understanding of dramatic structure and very bad planning of his novel, coupled with a lazy editor who let way, way too many major and minor problems slide.

 

Brandon's chapters are full of annoying redundant elements (reminescent of KJA's annoying habit of repeating the same things from POV to POV as if these were mantras or something), and he really isn't very good at developping multiple plot points in a single scene by allusions to events etc.. He's not as bad as Kevin J. Anderson, but he still has way, way too many too short scenes that end up being longer in total than fewer multi purpose scenes would have been.

 

 

Opinions varied widely as to Jordan's skills at creating characters and fleshing them out (I think he was a master at creating iconic figures in a few traits, for myself, though it was never his style to create characters with psychological depth - and he always said it wasn't a goal of his to do that), but whether his more iconic than psychological approach pleased you or not, his skills at keeping track of the details and keeping even his minor players coherent (and also, unique) were great. In Brandon's hands, all the secondary cast has either become completely generic or else weas turned into caricatures of their former selves (everyone from Lelaine/Romanda to Talmanes, Morgase, Galad to Cadsuane), even Jordan's more succesful villains, he didn't have a whole bunch he handled that well, have turned into cartoons (especially Graendal). Even with the major players, Brandon has massive problems. Mat is half the time completely off character, Lan was totally flat, Egwene and Elayne are but a pale shadow of their former selves, and their intelligence so undermined you just can't suspend disbelief and think their scenes make much sense. All the characters have taken some mysterious brew that dropped their IQ massively (and for all the complaints about the stupidity of this and that character, Sanderson makes apparent how intelligent Jordan was. There are things he wasn't so good as conveying, but intelligence/cunning, he was). From his own novels it was apparent that one of Brandon's weaknesses as a Fantasy writer is with politics/cultures/social classes. In this regard, his world building and plots are very naive, but then, he doesn't focus his books on this, so it's not that bad. In WOT, it becomes a major annoyance. Brandon makes Jordan look like a master political writer in comparison, which Jordan hardly was. I felt like I was reading the work of an arch-caricatural American high school student whose only understanding of nobility and socially stratified societies from older eras and different from the US seems to come from Disney's fairy tales with Queens and princes). A scene like Tuon's was a string of unintended humor (or frustrations, depending on one's mood), reading like a bunch of 5 years old playing at being nobles after watching Lady Di's funeral on TV. Elayne contradicts herself from page to page - pile up unsound political reasonnings before going in the very direction she claimed a few scenes earlier she ought to avoid; anachronisms abound, the various forms of address are constantly misused (servants referring to AS by name to other sisters and what not) or pushed to caricature ("Highest Empress", I mean... give me a break) the formely devious WT Sitters have become simpering idiots and Brandon's attempts at making Egwene sound "wise" and the voice of reason among them is disastrous, turning her into a superlative pontificating bore spouting evidences her various audiences know from A to Z as if this was great thinking of an original and deep significance, and who seems to be schooling a kindergarden in politics without realizing how naive and idiotic she sounds, when in fact she's talking to women of authority and experience who would never stand for any crap like this, at least not without laughing out loud. Brandon's scene where Egwene convinces the Windfinders and WO to join a kind of alliance was one of the worst in the whole series (what about a simple "let's ally for the LB, agree to train one another and exchange envoys for the duration of the LB and see if we wish to make this a more permanent alliance aftweard"?). The "negotiations" between Perrin and Elayne were pathetic as well (though that "protocol" being a law about mercenary was kind of hilarious). On the whole, the WOT social structure in Brandon's hands has become totally incoherent (sorry Brandon, but only a few WOT characters cross the lines constantly, all the others remain in their proper stations in life...). Brandon's "feel" and understanding of the period that inspired Jordan (17th century, mostly) is really appalling and naive at best, his "period" vocabulary and realities (as altered by Jordan) and his grasp of pre-modern political and economic concepts are deficient to the point of being childish at times, and his skills to translate these real world elements into fantasy world building for WOT is even worse (and don't even get me started on his crackpot notion that in merely two years street mummers recently appeared in the Cairhien Foregate, destroyed almost immediately by civil war, have turned into something like opera fit for royal Halls. Keep it simple stupid... hint: Caemlyn had not seen a Royal Bard performance in some time....).

 

I will read AMOL, because my interest in getting the full story remains, and I doubt my interest in discussing the story will vanish because I'm nassively disappointed by TOM. As for enjoying WOT as literature/fiction and having a good time reading it, I'm very much afraid this will forever stop at KOD for me. Brandon will have satisified my desire to know how it ends, but that's pretty much it. His trilogy will hardly become memorable to me.