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Hanal -> RE: Robert Jordan dies, Age 58 (9/19/2007 4:10:09 AM)
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Might as well paste my Wargamer comment here:
It is always sad when someone passes but I cannot refrain from being critical of the way Robert Jordan handled the Wheel of Time series. He was interviewed at about the time when the third or fourth book came out. At that time, the books were well structured and kept a nice pace. They were a very good read. In the interview, he was adamant that the series would end by the 6th or perhaps 7th book. He said that he had the ending already plotted out, and how to arrive there. He scoffed at the idea that the series would go on any longer than that.
Then something terrible happened along the way, success and money. Now it was not terrible for him, but for the readers it was. His writing style changed and he even became more protracted and disjointed in his storytelling abilities. He was never one to be concise (he could take 10 pages to get to a point that it would have taken Terry Brooks 2 paragraphs to reach) but it was becoming worse as each volume piled up in the series. Worse to come was his veering away from his main objectives, and writing numerous new plots, subplots, and characters in the story which would have made video game RPG writers blush. There is no doubt in my mind that he, along with the editors of TOR made a conscious effort of milk this cow for all that it was worth, and so his original creative vision was lost in the process and we the readers, who supported his series through our wallets, were left out in the cold.
Now I will admit that I probably would have done the same thing if lured by success, so I'm not passing judgement on the man, just expressing my feelings on how a potentially great piece of Fantasy literature, turned into pulp.....
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