Is The Gathering Storm worth reading through Wheel of Time?

[Joyrock]

I have no doubts that The Gathering Storm is an incredible book. I've heard great things, and I adore Sanderson as an author - His involvement resparked my interest in the series, when I previously had only finished through the fourth book.

However, reading on the path I have to go has me wary - I'm halfway through the fifth book, which is fine, if a bit dry at times, and I've heard mixed opinions regarding the sixth book, and little good after that, with Crossroads of Twilight being abysmal. I don't generally put too much stock in things like this, but when a big name, 700 page book is summarized on Wikipedia(which is often pretty thorough) in 9 lines, I get worried <.<;

So, getting to my main point: Would you say it would be worthwhile to get through what remains of the series to get to The Gathering Storm?

And I really need to work on consistancy; I can get bored easily with books and often hop between several. Right now, I am halfway through The Fires of Heavan, Deadhouse Gates, and Summer Knight, re-reading Mistborn, and contemplating either picking up and re-reading an old King book(Duma Key, Needful Things, and It being major contenders) or starting one of the few I haven't read that I don't own just for the sake of collecting(probably Desperation or The Talisman).

[ChrisW]

How about just read until you don't like it anymore(which might not happen) then skip straight to tGS. Why stop reading now if you are still enjoying it?(that's rhetorical by the way)

[Joyrock]

Oh, I plan to at least finish Fires of Heavan and Lords of Chaos, I was just wondering if beyond then it's better to read the books, drop the series, or just read summeries of books between then and TGS.

[Evil Agent]

Well, it's a tough call. I read them all, and I'm glad I did... but yes, there are problems with 7-9. However, 10 is the only one that's really awful, and probably the only one that could really be skipped. Books 7-9 still have some cool stuff, and if you're enjoying the series you may still get enjoyment out of those volumes.

Plus, by this point (all the time you've invested) isn't it worth just continuing, especially now that the end of the series is actually in sight?

I'd say keep reading, and see how you feel by the end of book 6.

[C-1]

I guess it depends on the person, but to me books 1-8 and 11-12 are on the same pretty high level of quality. 8 is the most flawed of those, but its biggest problems comes mostly from the big climax of the book being somewhere around 3/4 into the book, and Mat not being in it.

9 has a lot of good stuff in it, the Rand and Mat chapters mostly, but it’s the slowest book in the series (except for book 10). The last 1/4 of it is great, and its not like I didn’t enjoy it, but it should have been about 150 pages shorter to work effectively.

Book 10 should be burned. There are good moments in it, but this book had so little development it could have easily been condensed into 100 pages.

Overall I do consider this to be the best fantasy series out there, and most off the flaws in it isn’t particularly apparent when you don’t need to wait 2-3 years between each book.

[silence_dogood]

There seems to be a trend, that the book that people hate the most coincides with the book that they had to wait for. I would keep that in mind when someone tells you which book they hate the most. Granted it's not a science, but it's close enough to be considered a rule of thumb. For me, I got to read books 1-10 back to back with only a short wait for book 11, and to wait the entire time for book 12. It slowed down a little in the middle of the series, but the books were still good reads.

I would warn you that at the end of A Crown of Swords there is a minor cliffhanger for one of the characters. That character is NOT in A Path of Daggers, so don't bother looking for that POV. That's the reason why I didn't care for that book. I spent my time anticipating a chapter that wasn't in the book.

Crossroads of Twilight is easily the weakest novel in the series, but I would suggest reading it anyways. Brandon Sanderson said somewhere that events in the final two books are going to shine a new light on CoT which will have fans rethink the importance of that book.

In short...just let it ride. You've got a minimum of two years before the final book is released, so take your time and enjoy the journey. That's my suggestion.

[imaster]

I would warn you that at the end of A Crown of Swords there is a minor cliffhanger for one of the characters. That character is NOT in A Path of Daggers, so don't bother looking for that POV. That's the reason why I didn't care for that book. I spent my time anticipating a chapter that wasn't in the book.

Ah, that´s why I dislike A Path of Daggers so much maybe, haven´t even thought about that. I just know that it is the only book in the series I truly dislike.

OnT: I haven´t read the entire series in some five years and I think most of the stuff were pretty clear to me when I read The Gathering Storm earlier this year anyway. Do as you like, I have no issues with any of the books—except A Path of Daggers—and chances are you might even like it...

[Bastard]

The best way is to just pace yourself. Spread the books around. When you get the itch for some WoT, read a book and then take a break. If you're still liking the series, but still finding that you struggle a bit a times, I think it's best if you don't go through them one after the other.

I read them all, and other than Crossroads of Twilight, I liked them all in some fashion. It's still a well written book, with plenty of good scenes in there. I bet most people that complain about the series, have a problem with how Jordan has written the female characters. If you don't mind them much, you should be more than fine. I personally have zero problem with them. My main problem with the books where when the book shifted to some characters that weren't the main ones for some chapters.

But Knife of Dreams and The Gathering Storm are quite good, and maybe even more appreciated because of going through the other books.

You can always just speed read as a last resort through passages you don't think are interesting to you, but you would still pick up a few things that should come in handy later on.

[murf99]

This is one series I plan on re-reading when it's finished. I read the first nine books in a row back in the early 2000's. Although I can't remember much about the story I do remember liking all the books with book 6 (Lord of Chaos) being my favorite.

[metalprof]

It depends on how you like to manage your time. If you don't want to spend any time at all on books that you may not enjoy, since life is short after all, then reading summaries of the latter books would be fine.

On the other hand, if you're like me and you also consider that you've already committed yourself to the series, and have spent lots of time reading the first books, then I'd say suck it up and plow through them all! If you've made it through Book 6, then the rest is easy. Books 7-9 may not be all that good, but you can read them quickly - they're not nearly as long as 4-6. To me, things started picking up again in Knife of Dreams. And after you've suffered through, say, Crossroads of Twilight, then Book 11 will seem even better by comparison!

Ken

[nquixote]

Man, I have never been able to read The Wheel of Time. I tried when I was 16, which was not too long after I had read and loved stuff like Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, so I don't think it's that I was too old for it. But The Eye of the World was just too mediocre for me.

It started with the most blatant Tolkien ripoff since The Sword of Shannara (note: I like The Sword of Shannara, which was a well-done Tolkien ripoff). The plot proceeded to ramble on without much narrative structure or tension.

The enemy was "The Dark One", also known as "Shaitan"...seriously??? The protagonist and all but one of the supporting characters were cardboard-cut-out boring. The female characters especially were insufferable.

The magic was done by drawing on a source of energy and basically hurling that energy in raw form at your enemy's face - it was basically The Silver Surfer, but without the pretty drawings and moral ambiguity.

Victory was accomplished by the fact that the protagonist, after overcoming slight trepidation, was able to draw on a basically unlimited source of raw energy to fling in the faces of his enemies. It was painfully clear that this was how victory would be accomplished in each book, up to and including the final climactic battle when Rand would hurl near-infinite amounts of energy into The Dark One's face and defeat him.

I wanted badly to like The Eye of the World, because a bunch of people I knew loved it, and it was about the most epic thing around, and I love epic things. But I just couldn't face the prospect of slogging through thousands upon thousands of pages of paper-thin characters defeating their enemies by yelling "RAAAAHHHH!!!" and blasting them in the face with raw energy. The book wasn't bad, it just wasn't good.

Of course, since I am an idiot, the next thing I tried was Wizard's First Rule, which was so much worse than The Eye of the World that I threw it directly into a fire. Those back-to-back epic fantasy FAILs put me off of fantasy for two years, until my mom insisted I try A Game of Thrones, and I reluctantly forgave the genre for its sins.

[Evil Agent]

Those back-to-back epic fantasy FAILs put me off of fantasy for two years, until my mom insisted I try A Game of Thrones, and I reluctantly forgave the genre for its sins.

Game of Thrones is alright... but it would have been so much better if Ned Stark had been able to fling raw energy into the Lannisters' faces.

[Dyloot]

Oh, I plan to at least finish Fires of Heavan and Lords of Chaos, I was just wondering if beyond then it's better to read the books, drop the series, or just read summeries of books between then and TGS.

I certainly wouldn't drop the series, and if you're sick of the books, you could try reading the plot summaries to jump ahead to the better stuff. I agree with Evil and the others than books 7, 8 and 9 were a step down from the first six and 10 was even more, ahem, average.

The problem Jordan has (that I hope Martin avoids) is he goes on and on with PoVs that really drift from the overall plot. I think all future fantasy authors should really avoid the temptation of continually adding PoVs, as they risk detracting from the story.

[Final07]

I'd say go for it. There are strong moments in books 7-10. I even enjoyed the tenth book, although I only read the Mat chapters

I agree, just keep reading until you don't enjoy it. Many people hear that after book 6 that things go downhill and they start nitpicking for problems when they read the books (this is just my opinion and you know what they say about those!!) which has a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy. Read and develop your own opinion, but definitely read Gathering Storm, it's a great renewal of the series (though Knife of Dreams isn't bad at all, IMO).

[Aktunka]

For me, the only period of time where the series really seemed to drag was during that whole period of the

drought

. Sure, there were some books that were better than others, but the part I just mentioned, which seems like it spanned more than one book, really seemed to kill the momentum for me. Luckily, I was unemployed at the time and had books 1 - 9 to read through so I was easily able to power through it.

Unlike many others I actually liked book 10 quite a bit. Yes, I agree that not a lot actually happened if you were looking for resolution to any plotlines, but it did set up almost every one of the plotlines on the edge where you knew in the next book there would be a lot of action taking place in the various story arcs. In that regard I think that book 10 worked very well. That is just my opinion though.