I’m Told There is a Storm, and That It May or May Not Be Gathering

I bought Knife of Dreams the day it came out in 2005.  Even though I was in graduate school, and should have been reading my homework, I finished the book in just a few days.  I had been waiting for its release, literally, for years.  To prepare, I spent dozens of hours, in the weeks leading up to its release, re-introducing the Wheel of Time series to my memory with the help of EWoT (the Encyclopedia Wheel of Time for the unintiated).

When I was done with the book (#11, mind you, in the Wheel of Time series…not counting the one prequel) I realized that almost nothing, save for in the last 50 or so pages, actually happened in that damn book…and it was 800 fucking pages! Even the actual Knife of Dreams, the item for which the BOOK WAS NAMED, only made a minor appearance. I mean, seriously!?

I vowed, then and there, to never again subject myself to pain of reading a Wheel of Time novel.

And then Robert Jordan was diagnosed with a rare disease.

I’ll admit that my first thought wasn’t “oh god, I hope he’s OK” so much as it was “oh god, how will he finish the series.” I’m not exactly proud of that, but you know, I doubt I was the only one to think it. Yes, it is tragic that he died just a year and half after publicly revealing his diagnosis. I like to think, though, that my reaction was in no small part because of how much Jordan’s work had cemented itself in my mind. Yes, I had “sworn” not to finish the series, but when presented with the actual possibility of not being able to finish the series I freaked the fuck out.

I’m not saying there is a causal link between my worship of an author and serious health issues, but I will say that after Douglas Adams, Jordan, and Terry Pratchett, well…Neil Gaiman, Tim Powers, and James P Blaylock should all see the doctor.

By all accounts, Jordan fought the disease hard, but in the end, as these things generally turn out, the disease won.

So this guy Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series.

Jordan, apparently, left very detailed notes on how the story was to finish. His claim that he would finish the series in 12 books, even if he had to write a 2000 page book for installment 12, was not far from the truth and Tor (the publisher) and Sanderson, decided to break the final arch of the story into three average size WoT books.

And so, as I write this, I’m just over 200 pages into the 766 that make up The Gathering Storm.

There was quite a bit of consternation amongst WoT fans over who would finish the series (before Sanderson was chosen). I, too, worried about who would step in to finish a 10,000 page series with 3000+ named characters.

Is Sanderson the equal of Jordan?

Shit, I don’t know. 200 pages in and I’d say the book reads like the rest of the series, all the main characters have, thus far, not done a whole lot and annoyed me with their overly complicated thought processes.

Sometimes I wonder why I kept reading past book 2.

On the one hand, every single character, even my mostest favoritest in the series (Mat, in case you were curious), is his/her own greatest obstacle.  No two characters ever seem to have any meaningful communication.  Even those who are all working toward the same goal…like defeating the Dark One in the Last Battle…work at cross purposes more often than not.  After nearly 10,000 pages it can get really, really, really, fucking annoying.

But then again…isn’t that just how people are?  I probably communicate effectively with my wife like 30% of the time and we aren’t on separate ends of the continent, being tortured, running into battles, fighting dark and foul monsters from the north…we just deal with dirty diapers and temper tantrums.  The real genius of what Jordan did was take actual people that you might know in real life, the good and the bad, and throw them into some crazy ass fantasy world that is near its end.  Even the most well intentioned WoT characters are selfish at times, make mistakes (even when trying to do what is right), and fail.  But they also do some drastically heroic things, sacrifice (even their own lives), and fight and scrape.  As a complex psychological study of humanity, I doubt I’ve read anything even remotely equal, in fiction, to the Wheel of Time.

It occurred to me, recently, that books are possibly the only form of entertainment where we, as fans, would worry so much when a new author takes over a series.  There are, of course, things like D&D and Star Wars that are just written by loads of people by default.  But something like WoT, which came from the mind of a single writer, and was shaped by that writer over the course of 10,000 pages, becomes less a series of fictional works and more an extension of that person.  Novel writing in general, but long fantasy series writing in particular, is an iconoclastic endeavor the likes of which exists no where else in art.

Would the series be more satisfying if Jordan had finished it himself?  I don’t know.  At some point I believe works like this belong more to the fans than the creator and so we, the fans, are owed are closure.