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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

TBH, after the first 3 books WOT is mostly boring trash that largely consists of female characters standing around tugging on their hair or smoothing their dresses while the male characters mope around.

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> female characters standing around tugging on their hair or smoothing their dresses

Or folding their arms under their breasts. Or commenting on one another's cleavage. Or really any excuse for the author to mention boobs out of the blue for no reason at all.

This seemed to start somewhere around book 4, and it happens WAY more than in any other books I've ever heard of. Super awkward once you notice it. WTF man?

It's like they did some market survey and found that their average readers were all 13 year old boys who wanted to hear about... you guessed it.

^ this guy clearly read the whole series!

I got through the first five (maybe 6?) books and then just totally lost interest because nothing was really happening, and then the main character spends most of a book wandering through "the between world" or whatever. Perrin who had been one of the three main original characters (spoiler) turns out to be sort of a werewolf gets one totally random, token chapter about wandering through the forest on a snowy night or something.

Very strong start, along with the next two books but yeah, I agree with GP just kind of wanders off and the plot stalls out. Maybe some day I'll have time to pick these books up and see if the other guy was able to tie things together.

Robert Jordan's wife was his editor. Once you understand that, you understand why his books are so poorly edited. A competent and empowered editor would surely have insisted on literally thousands of pages of cuts across the series.

His wife was a “real editor”. She did Enders game

I'm sure she was, but her work on Jordan's novels wasn't effective. Under normal circumstances, a writer wouldn't be able to get away with releasing 5 or 6 books in a row in which almost nothing of consequence happens.

I kind of wonder if this "extra pages" was by design. I remember in elementary school WoT books were kind of a status symbol simply because they were absolutely enormous tomes of work, weighing in at 550, 600, 700 pages. Every other book that kids were reading were 250 to 300 pages. Eye of the World really catches your eye when you see someone casually thumbing through that 700 page monster.

You seem to have asserted that because she was his wife she was not competent and empowered though.

That point stands. Without speaking to her qualifications, being his wife poses a conflict of interest. She is his Wife before she is his Editor.

Any other rando editor wouldn't have to cohabitate with the resentment caused by unflinching criticism of their spouse's creative output.

A conversation I overheard at work back when WOT was only up to maybe 6 books, between a coworker who brought the latest book to work to read at lunch and on breaks and another guy:

OTHER GUY: How can you read that series? It is sooooo boring!

READER: But it's so long!

Oh my god the hair tugging. I fucking hate her braid. (I never could finish the series).

That's overstating it more than a little.

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