[Rillcaller]

Okay, it's hard not to notice how successful Robert Jordan's books have been. But I've tried (unsuccessfully) to get into The Eye of The World about three times. I always get bogged down and stop after about 50-75 pages. At what point did it grab any of you who are big fans of his, and why?

Even though readers have compared my own writing to Jordan's (which I take as a compliment), I must be missing something.

Same with Terry Brooks. I read The Sword of Shannara many years ago (because I was dying for anything in the Tolkien vein), but I've never picked up another of Brooks' books. I thought SOS was rather "linear." How do the subsequent books compare to the original? I'm thinking of starting The Elfstones of Shannara...

Thanks for the input.

Robert Halmo
Author of CHILDREN OF THE GROVE, Book One of LORDS OF DARKNESS, LORDS OF LIGHT http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/7056

[Habeed]

Ok, Eye of the World was the very first adult fantasy I ever read. It was about a year ago when I picked it up. It was about 6am in the evening. I had my doubts (is this going to be boring? Horses and swords are slow compared to machine guns and jet fighters). I decided I was going to read the first 50 pages, and if nothing happened I'd put it down.

It REALLY sucked me in. The moment Rand and dad get attacked my Trollocs it was intense and exciting from that point on. I hadn't read any other adult fantasy so it was all fresh, new, free of cliches. And it was actually pretty exciting. You suspect Rand may have the forbidden power, you dislike Moraine, I thought Lan was very, very cool...

I read until 9 am the next morning. The plot was full of action (the Party is mortal...they have help and Moraine has special powers but they are still very vulnerable), there were lots of new and interesting locations...it was great. The second and third books were just as good.

It was only after the heroes start becoming invulnerable (since noone ever dies you figure out they won't be dying), and everything starts to become really repetitive (with little in the way of fresh new ideas and slow slow action) in the later books that the series started to get dull.

Try it, you'll enjoy at least the first of the series...and the books are very very long so even the first trilogy is an epic unto itself.

[Habeed]

Anyway, Jordan was really, really good at first. So was Terry Goodkind (The Sword of Truth). Same with other fantasy authors. Its just that they started trying to "cash" in on their earlier success with loads and loads of paper wasting sequels. So far Martin has avoided this : the third book in his series is even better than the first 2! And since with all the dying of main characters, his series stays fresh and interesting.

[FitzChivalry]

Actually, i and other people according to net polls i saw on the net and conversations i had with people think that the best wheel of time books are 4-5.
I can't say that i understand what's the success of Terry Brooks, it's not original and i didn't like it.
About Jordan, he has the elements that i love the most, big battles, many-sided politics and wars, and lots of sub-plots and mysteries. Those thing seem to be covering for him on his annoying sides which are pretty annoying characters (especially the female ones and except for Mat) and pretty longish descriptive and boring writing style that repeats itself many times.
When was i sucked into it? from the beginning.

Btw, i don't read e-books, any chance we'll see this series on amazon.com soon?

[This message has been edited by FitzChivlary (edited June 01, 2001).]

[Metosblat]

Before reading The eye of the world I was totally convinced that David Eddings was the greatest writer in the world. So it's kind of an understatement when I say The WOT books totally blew my mind. They were so much more complicated and adult than the other books I had read beforehand.
My opinion fits in with the majority, my favourites in the series were 4 and 5 also.

[Rupert Avery]

Jorden has about 3 very good books and 6 that suck.IMO
I have only read all the books just to see how and if they ever end.

[Lady Fox]

I'm a huge Wheel of Time fan, so anything I say about Jordan must be viewed in that light. However, I think you could safely assume that if you can't "get into" Eye of the World that you probably wouldn't like this series. I was captivated around page 20, if I recall correctly. The first book does move kind of slow in places, but Jordan is building a world and a power system throughout this book, so some descriptive and background info is necessary, IMO.

Brooks is another situation all together. I enjoyed SoS, and even read the next couple of books in this series, but I think SoS is the best of the bunch. To me the series is like a complicated fairy tale that ran out of material. I have seen good things about the newest book he has released in the continuing Shanarra saga, so I'll probably give it try when it is released in paperback. I did really enjoy Brooks's Demon trilogy. They are very different from the Shannara books and worth checking out.

[drakon]

what I liked about Wheel of Time and the next three or four books in the series was the world and the characters. Rand and his friends were plucked out of their easy life and thrown into what was probably their worst nightmare, Aes Sedai politics. I was also curious to see how they will develop and deal with their future ( yeah, very much like what I liked about LotR) the world Jordan created and the magic in it were also iteresting. Unfortunatly after the fourth ( my favourite) or fifth book the world became dull and the characters I liked just stopped developing and the ones I didn't like became even more annoying.
so far I have failed to bring myself to read the eighth book , eventhough I hear that Winter's Heart is very good.

[Lady_Linda]

I hate brook's shannara-books.

Sorry, I just wanted to shout out my frustration, I don't really have any constructive points in why I don't like them - they are just awful.

~Linda~

[Rob B]

Brooks gets a lot of flack because The Sword of Shanarra is a blatant (and I *think* to an extent purposeful) copy of LoTR. However, it really helped popularize fantasy in the late-70s/Early-80s. It was many people's first exposure to fantasy--people like to go back to what got them into fantasy, I guess.

Elfstones was a quick read. I guess it would be a good summer read. Hmm...topic idea..

From what I've seen in places like this, the Heritage of Shanarra series is an improvement on the first three books, and is not such a blatant spin of LotR

Jordan helped to kick of a boon in fantasy in the 90s. The first 4-6 books were really great, great character developments (before some of them got annoying significant others {See Lan and Perrin}).

The magic was pretty cool, before everybody got too powerful.

The moment Rand and dad get attacked my Trollocs it was intense and exciting from that point on.
Me too, Habeed.