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There's even stuff that just flat out does not make sense, regardless of characterization Cannoli Send a noteboard - 12/08/2016 11:35:25 PM

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Brandon Bloody Sanderson is my biggest. I just posted on another messageboard that if the topic of "wishes" ever comes up one of the first things that always comes to mind (you know, after peace on earth and health and security for my loved ones) is "I wish Robert Jordan was able to complete WoT".
Imagine how much more I wish that, since I am amused by global conflict and care more about WoT than your loved ones' health and security. Even my loved ones are a near-run thing.
After being picked to finish WoT Sanderson wrote about having read the books when he was younger and declared what a big fan of the series he was. He then posted his thoughts about the characters and the worldbuilding while praising RJ's attention to detail as he re-read each book when preparing himself to start his writing. All of that actually gave me hope that WoT was in good hands. It took reading all of a few chapters of TGS to realize how wrong I was.
What was even more infuriating was the promises of people who read it in advance that it was just fine. Apparently they didn't give copies to anyone objective, just people who were too tight with Sanderson or Team Jordan to be honest in their assessment or reviews, like Jason from Dragonmount or Leigh Butler. Jason actually had the temerity to say that he couldn't tell which parts were written by RJ or by B-Sand. I didn't need more than a couple pages to know that RJ had absolutely not written it.
His depictions of the characters were so far off I wondered if he had actually read any of RJ's books at all. Since when did Mat become illiterate?!?

What's even more galling, is that we actually had a sample of a similar note he had written to Nynaeve! How hard is it to remember that? How hard was it for Teresa or Harriet or whoever to point out that Sanderson's version of Mat's writing was nothing like the note he left for Nynaeve in aCoS?
He may have been foolish at times, but never did RJ portray him as stupid! This so jarred me that I actually had to put the book down for a spell. To this day I can not grasp how anyone who has read WoT, let alone a professional writer who claimed to so appreciate the source material, could be so remarkably amiss with their interpretation of it's characters. Was Harriet not RJ's editor as well as his wife? Did she not proofread Sanderson's books? Could she not see how profoundly altered the behavior of some of her late husbands main characters were now being written? I was dismayed.
I think that some of the stupidity might have been Sanderson thinking they were being smart. For example, when Perrin & Rand are talking in the beginning of aMoL, Rand explains something to Perrin using a simplistic metaphor, and the conversation turns to how Egwene disagrees with Rand on that topic. Perrin suggest Rand explain it to Egwene the same way, and then goes on to reassure Rand that she'll get it because she is smarter than either of them. "She's so smart, you need to break it down to a juvenile analogy." Forget whether or not it fits with the established characters or world-building of the story...how does that sentence even make logical sense? You don't need to know WoT to know that's dumb. Then there were things like characters saying stupid stuff in arguments, or being convinced by nonsense, as in much of Egwene's arc.
Yes, he did improve somewhat during the concluding two novels

I didn't see it. Actually, as far as I was concerned, the stuff in those novels only highlighted the mistakes he made in breaking the books apart, and how he erred in his characterizations and pacing in tSR.
thankfully but never to the point where I could imagine that these were the same characters I grew to love over the course of RJ's eleven plus WoT books, and believe me I tried hard to pretend they were.

That's all I want to write now.


Thanks.
Cannoli
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
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