Problems with The Wheel of Time

I was in a corner bookstore, back when such places still existed, looking for something new to read. I had recently read The Far Kingdoms, which I enjoyed, and I was searching for something similar. I stumbled on a stack of paperbacks by Robert Jordan. The cover art was possibly half the reason I was drawn to them, because they reminded me of The Far Kingdoms. I read the blurb of one, thought it was interesting, and then noticed it was “book X of The Wheel of Time series”. I explicitly didn’t want to get dragged into a series, so I put that one down and sorted through the other Robert Jordan novels until I found one that did not say it was part of a series. It was, of course, The Eye of the World, the first book in the series, but I didn’t realize that until I reached the end.

I eventually read the series up to what had been published, and then dutifully bought each subsequent volume as it hit the shelves. Before long, I began to despair. Would this story ever end? Instead of resolving the main story goal, other minor conflicts would be resolved, and multiple new ones would be created. One book barely mentioned the main story goal. Then rumors circulated about the author’s health. He stopped to write a prequel. (And more Conan the Barbarian stories? That’s what I heard at the time, but I can’t confirm it now.) I was sure he would die before he finished, and ultimately, that’s what happened. Fortunately, Brandon Sanderson was recruited to finish the series, which he did quite excellently.

While all this was going on, people would ask me if I recommended the series. I was torn about this, because while I enjoyed the series immensely, there were some things about it that frustrated me.

So Many Sub-Plots

If someone had told me, in the early 1990s, that the series was intended to be fourteen volumes and a prequel, that it would take another two decades to finish, and that Robert Jordan was immortal, I wouldn’t have worried. However at the time, I found the introduction of additional story goals to be quite frustrating.

The Eye of the World had one story goal up until the very end, when the ultimate goal of the whole series was introduced. In subsequent novels, after the bad guy is killed, we learn that he is just one of several. Then after being killed, they start coming back. The goal posts kept moving.

When new novels came out, instead of progressing toward resolution of the series goal, entirely different conflicts would be introduced instead. At any point in time, there were several brands in the fire, and they kept multiplying. Sometimes one goal would be resolved, but only after having created two or three others.

What bothered me about this (apart from the author’s approaching mortality) was the lack of payoff. A novel is supposed to bring you an emotional reward for your emotional investment. Instead of providing the reward I wanted, I was rewarded with the resolution of sub-plots I didn’t really care about and hadn’t wanted to read about in the first place. I found this quite frustrating. I’m not sure how much of this was my own fault, in obsessing over completion of the story, or the author’s fault, in not making me care about all the sub-plots he created as much as I cared about the main story goal.

After Jordan died, and Sanderson took over, this is one of the things that changed. I think Sanderson may have introduced one or two more sub-plots, but these somehow seemed necessary to reaching the overall story goal.

Too Many Characters

According to The Compendium of Wheel of Time Characters, there were ultimately 2,787 named characters in the series. That’s an average of 185 new characters per novel. Who can actually keep track of that many characters? What story actually needs that many characters?

A large number of these characters were introduced once and never mentioned again. When Jordan introduced a character, there was no way to know whether that character would be important to the story. You just had to wait and see. Sometimes, a character would be introduced, and then mentioned again three or four novels later. It was clear that we were supposed to have remembered who they were, but how could we possibly? Several times, I found myself resorting to web searches to remember who some character was.

It was a source of frustration for me as a reader. It also goes against one of the most basic rules of story telling: eliminate from the story anything that has no purpose in telling the story.

Having that many characters was entirely unnecessary to the story. However, it may have been done to support the author’s BDSM fetish.

BDSM

Yes, BDSM, as in bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism. I don’t want to kink-shame Robert Jordan, but it seems obvious that this story was an outlet for the author’s BDSM fantasies. This series was saturated with domination, and there was also plenty of bondage, sadism, and masochism as well.

Nearly every meeting of characters included commentary about their relative height, attractiveness, and strength in the power, and quite often differences in confidence, social status, wealth, and dress. Somehow, there was no mention of penis length.

Throughout the series, there were all kinds of punishment and humiliation, including forced nudity and spankings. Many of the characters (mostly female characters) were bound at some point. There were numerous examples requiring characters to learn and then demonstrate submission and obedience.

The Brandon Sanderson novels were refreshing in their lack of such nonsense, including or mentioning such things only as they were required to finish the story.