My Thoughts on the Wheel of Time:
or Bashing 101

Before we begin the class, let's take a look at what some of the "pros" in the biz think of these books...


"Robert Jordan has come to dominate the world Tolkien began to reveal." -- The New York Times

hmmm...hmmm...uhm hmmm...


"The Wheel of Time . . . is a fantasy tale seldom equalled and still less often surpassed in English." -- Chicago Sun-Times

surpassed or equalled as what? The worst fantasy tale?


". . . colossal, dauntingly complex storytelling . . ." -- Publishers Weekly

I wonder what came before this phrase? "Its incompetence is..."


Well there you have it. The critics whom,I believe, assume that if a story is ridiculously long and absurdly convuluted, it must be an "epic". At its best, the Wheel of Time is an average story. It is cliche epic, high fantasy adventure. At it's worst, the story is merely hack-work: brutal, bloated, ugly writing. Jordan hasn't dominated the world Tolkien began to reveal. It's more like stumbling drunk into Tolkein's house and throwing up on his sofa.

Where to begin? The story for those of you who have been blessed with pure ignorance of the plot, is something like this: A group of young people in a backwater village are drawn into a battle with the supreme evil being, Shaitain, or "The Dark One". One of those lads is the "Dragon" the reincarnation of a guy who is fighting the dark one through the ages. This group leaves their village, escorted by a woman wizard and her swordsman companion.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I think so too. I'll talk more about that in my Comparison section. Anyway, it goes on from there. The group splits up gets back together, fight some dudes, go out in the desert, get married, fall in love,look for some bowl, bang, get captured, have battles....blah blah blah. The main point I will make here is this: What the hell happened to the plot? This is a simple story, supreme Good vs supreme Evil. It should have been finished it no more than four volumes. Instead, Robert "milk 'em, cowboy" Jordan has nude women running around in the desert somewhere, while the series goes on and on, without any sign of climax or resolution. The man has said himself that he doesn't know how many volumes the thing will last. Umm...has anyone told this fellow about plotting, or outlines? The basic starting point of all writing, but this dude is eight volumes into an endless story and doesn't know how long its going to last! Not a good sign.

I guess I wouldn't mind so much if it was well-plotted, with hooks and suspenseful, well-written chapters. RJ has no concept of spacing, plotting, or how to write suspense or intrigue. I don't care what anyone says: the man couldn't write a even, well-plotted out book to save his life. The wheel of time books are giant, with 600 pages of nothing to start out with, in which thinks he is somehow pulling readers along with his *masterful* use of intrigue and suspense. His sense of intrigue is so bad it's like he's begging:"Please keep reading my bad book. I know it sucks, but if you keep reading, you'll find out who Slayer is..." (ripping off the name of a band, there. How sad is that?) Then he gives out 50 or so pages of "climax" which doesn't come close to being worth the pages of tedious drivel it took to get there.

Same with the characters and the situations RJ puts them in. I get into them later, but one scene stands out, from book 4, I think. (I might have burned book 4 for warmth one night). Rand(y) is dreaming of these three girls, swimming in a pond. They start to disrobe...

What is that? Its a 14-year old boy's fantasy, thats what it is. Stuff like that is peppered throughout the series, things that would appeal greatly to a horny 13-year old. A woman coming to Rand wearing nothing but braclets and a veil, three women fighting over Rand...the stuff of male fantasies, my friends.

"Perhaps I shouldn't tell you this," she said. "Elayne didn't give it to me as a message for you but...She said she loves you. Perhaps you know already,but if you don't you should think about it."

 It's like these people are in 6th grade, with friends telling a boy, "she REALLY likes you!" They are in their 20s, you say?
It's just a massive turn-off to get into a series and find it so teenage-male-oriented, with the women fighting over the men like a dumb teen-drama on TV. (This coming from a guy, too)When the women characters are not fighting over these men, they are thinking or talking about how much they'd like to see another girl switched or whipped:

"How many years have we sworn away? Two? Five? I suppose you hope Gareth Bryne will spend them dandling you on his knee! Well, I hope he turns you over it! Every day!"
-"Fires of Heaven" pg.54
What is that? Both sex and spanking in one line. I think Jordan has some serious, kinky problems. I wouldn't mind if it only was mentioned once, but it happens dozens of times throughout these books, 90% of it coming from the women. I don't think Jordan respects women too much.

Ugh. What is with the characters as a whole? Every one of the village group is hard-headed, immature, whiny, and not very smart. All the boys are TALL (I'm getting to hate the stereotypical tall man hero). All the good little girls are short, and stubborn. They are so fake it's almost as if they were meant to be caricatures of people. Where are the real people, with the real feelings? Where are the women that don't fall head-over-heels in love with a male character?In a story with this many characters, you'd think there would be a few out there. Believe it or not, not every fantasy character has to, or wants to, bang the first member of the opposite sex that comes along, to put it bluntly.

Minor Characters. A whole friggin' horde of them. Amys, Brean Taborwin, Suian Sanche, Colavere (a european cola drink, I believe), Couladain....on and on. I don't take notes when reading for liesure (most people don't, as a rule) and I sure to hell can't get these names with a vowel switched here and there straight when I stumble across them. I don't have faces to match to these names, I don't know who the hell these losers are. RJ goes and breaks another taboo of good writing: Keep only as many characters as necessary to tell your story. I know its hard, RJ, but Lamgwin Dorn has got to go. If you write about them at all, don't give them names. Instead, we get a wave of losers and are expected to remember them. "Oh yeah, Hi John! I remember you from Book 4, pg.325 when you served Mat some fish!" Epic doesn't mean you have to have 300 characters, folks.

I love some of the fans of this series, too. Most are just great, normal people who like reading long, poorly written, half-plagerized work. But then there is like this 10% rabid, cult following (and I mean that literally) who, for some reason attach some sort of spiritual meaning to these books and revere RJ as some sort of spiritual prophet who utters nothing but words of wisdom for them to ponder about the hidden meanings. People, the guy ain't a prophet. He isn't even an author as far as I'm concerned. Why do you worship this guy!? Here's an idea: try joining a real religion. That might help you get out of the cult.

And isn't it obvious to anyone that has the ability to step back and take in what's happening to see that this guy is drawing his "story" out to make money? I don't know if it is TOR books, himself, or his agent, but the term "sell-out" applies to somebody in the group. I imagine it is the publisher, exploiting Robert Jordan's absolute inability to edit his "stories", and throwing this stuff out every couple of years to pad thier bank accounts. It's like they are telling him:

TOR:"yeah, you are such a g-o-o-d writer!"(lying like mofos)"Give us more of this great epic tale!"

RJ: "Duh...I'm a good writer!" (slams down 900 pages of Elayne and Min wrestling nude over Rand)

I guess I shouldn't criticize that, though. The bottom line issales and unfourtunately, people eat this crap up (path of daggers on the top of the bestseller lists). I couldn't think of a worse series to represent the fantasy genre. What that means is that in 15 years, the young, brain-washed Jordan fans of today who want to write are going to glut the market with drivel like this. You won't be able to find an original story amidst the cheap Jordan wanna-bes with thier "epic" tales. Literary Agents will be jumping out of high-rises left and right. It will be a throwback to the 70s and 80s, when "high" fantasy was all you could find.

I believe comments made about RJ's brother, Michael Jordan, should apply to him too. "I'm glad he quit while he was on top, instead of hanging around until he embarrassed himself." I firmly believe that if RJ had just published the first three volumes of WoT, he could have gotten away with it. People would have ranked him up there as one of the greats in the genre. But instead of knowing when to bow out and end his story, Ol' Bob got drunk with his taste of success and insists on writing the literal never-ending story. And from what I've heard about books 7&8, the already sub-par quality is only getting worse (remember, I quit this series after #6. I'm not a masochist and don't enjoy paying to punish myself). Robert is obviously having delusions about his natural talent, and now he not only sees himself as a Tolkien, but as a Jane Austen or Thomas Hardy as well, with the ability to write about social, intra-personal conflicts. Let me be the first to assure you, Mr.Jordan (if that is your real name): You ain't the next Tolstoy.

His own inability to edit his story is revealing that he really has no idea what he's doing, just throwing scenes out, with his glazed-eye fans buying anything with his name on it and saying it's brilliant. He could probably slap his name on a roll of toilet paper with lewd limericks written on the side with a leaky pen, and it would break the best-seller lists because of these people.

Want I really want to do is take all of my Wheel of Time books, slap them in a fat cardboard box, run tape all over it nice and tight, and ship that load of crap back to his publishers with a simple note tucked inside: "Thanks for nothing. I was looking for a story not a long-term relationship. I'm seeing someone already. Yours, MK. "

Now, I'm not going to do that any time soon, mainly because the cost of shipping these books at once probably rivals my room and board. But the sentiment is there, regarding the never-ending trickle of foreshadowing and plot bones RJ has thrown out in his 8 volumes and counting. Who has sat around since 1990 and waited for these books to come out? Is anyone willing to devote that much of their life to a fantasy series? To give you an idea of the time span, I was 11 when the first book came out. I was into stuff like action figures and video games. Fast forward 9 years, and I'm 20 years old, in college, with a life that is completely different. The wheel of time is nowhere near to being completed, with what I see as a sad decline in quality. I firmly believe that there is a reason that an epic-scale series like this has never been attempted before: It will inevitabley collapse under its own weight of self-importance and pretension of greatness. As the author writes volume after volume, he forgets that he is no more than a storyteller writing something that must survive on its own merit, not on the fact that is part of an "epic" story, that readers have to find brilliant merely for that fact alone. Stories and novels are meant to be no more than a flash of escape: a temporary look at another world where, if only for a moment, characters and stories come to life. Books were never meant to be alternate worlds, realities where there is no plot: Don't buy that crap Jordan's readers use to defend his work. That's bull. Novels must have a story, and a constant drive to tell that story. Anything otherwise isn't a novel: it's the ramblings of some crazy, if not imaginative, homeless guy singing to himself as he baths in a public restroom somewhere, who's living in a fantasy world because he's OD'd on acid one too many times. (a lengthy, crappy analogy for you, there)

Back to the Cover Page