I didn't read the novella - looking at the summary, I'd say you don't really need to. - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 29/01/2018 03:36:10 PM
View original postI will pick it up sometime this year and read it. Did you read the novella set between these two trilogies? - The Heart of What Was Lost
Viyeki and two other members of his family are important PoV characters here - basically the only ones among the Norns. Porto and Isgrimnur are also there though in more limited roles, especially considering how old Isgrimnur is by the time of the new trilogy.
View original postRegarding viewpoints, I wonder if there some maximum that the average reader prefers. For instance, since you mentioned WOT, how much better would the series have been had it only focused on viewpoints from Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve, Moiraine, Min, and Elayne and then maybe some of the Forsaken? It would have kept the story more focused. When I was doing my great reread I counted viewpoints and in some of the books it was over 40. Jordan suffers greatly from this as well. There needs to be a more concentrated amount.
The thing is that WoT started out as fairly straightforward fantasy with Rand as clear protagonist early on, but then gradually widened and branched out - people got annoyed not just because they dislike having too many PoVs, but because Jordan increasingly didn't live up to their expectations, with sometimes an entire book in which their main favourite character barely appeared, if at all.
I'm not sure I would agree that the series would've been so much better with only a handful of PoVs. That he could've cut some here and there, yes, of course, but if you read the books without the pressure of several years of anticipation, much of the multi-PoV stuff is pretty good, I'd say.
I haven't counted how many PoVs this book has, but definitely a lot. As I mentioned to RT, it allows Williams to handle the same storylines from multiple different angles, such as for instance the tension, even after 30+ years of ruling together, between Simon's approach to ruling and Miriamele's, considering he grew up a kitchen boy and she a princess. Or their broadly similar but still distinct ways of handling their wayward grandson.
View original postI like how Sanderson, in his Stormlight Archive, essentially keeps the viewpoints to about 4 characters per book and then also adds some interregnums that should small vignettes from the views of other people that expand on the story/world.
Still haven't actually read any Sanderson other than his WoT work... I guess I should, though as I mentioned I don't read much fantasy anymore.