Waiting on Robert Jordan

Dang that Robert Jordan! How could he create a compelling series with such great pace to begin with and then degenerate into nothing! I agree with those who say that with "Crossroads of Twilight," the tenth volume of The Wheel of Time Series, Robert Jordan has managed to sandbag the pace of the series to a halt with the number of plots and sub-plots.

It was really fun until "The Dragon Reborn" and despite the drop-off in volumes 4 and 5, volume 6, "Lord of Chaos" has one of the best magic and metal fight sequence. Now the series is pitifully dragging out, begging for an ending. Jordan should just finish the series and come out with separate books on the sub-plots.

Even one of the most verbose of writers, Stephen King, took a jab at Jordan in his auto-bio/how-to book “On Writing.” Jordan is simply not getting to the point. I loved the series all the way to “Lord of Chaos.” “A Crown of Swords” was the first indication that the series would start to suck, especially the darned ending.

Obviously, TOR and Jordan are milking the series for the cash cow it is. The complete novel “A New Spring” came out and now Jordan will complete a three-book series on how Moiraine and Lan came to the Two Rivers just in time to take the ta’veren in hand. What a sell-out. I would have been happier to see that Jordan wrote the story of Rand (a.k.a. Tyr/the Fisher King) as one whole and give Mat (a.k.a. Odin/Heimdall/Rig) and Perrin (a.k.a. Thor/Perrun) their own book series to complement Rand’s story. Hell, you can throw in one whole book each for Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve, the history of Aes Sedai, how the Seanchan became Seanchan, the rise and fall of Artur Hawkwing, and the War of the Shadow. The last I would have enjoyed had Jordan written it as a separate series instead of making footnotes or references to it everywhere in WoT.

But I'm sure once the next book comes out, I'll be among the first in line to buy it. I'm such a sucker. It's worse than being whipped by your woman, not that I would know anything of that right now.