Can I claim RJ is known for his long winded stories, and that should be evident given the lengths of the books?

Snark is all very well, but when that all there is, calling his pieces reviews or commentaries seems silly to me. Its like submitting all those Goodkind threads on Westeros (I don't know why, but that comparison just keeps coming back to me) as a PhD thesis on The Sword of Truth!


Of course there are criticisms that will run common to all the books. If I were to review them, I'd have positive things to say that will repeat too. But the overall structure of review is more or less the same, with more or less the same set of complaints, with barely anything new being added by the reviewer. If the point being made is that all the books are padded, full of clumsy prose and completely lifted-off from various authors the reviewer has read, then why have 12 reviews? Wouldn't one review after all the books are done with be better?

It isn't like there aren't other elements he cannot comment about. Even if he wants to be exclusively negative about the books, there are issues he has barely raised which many other readers have complained about. What about a look at the gender imbalances portrayed in the books? That is pretty glaringly obvious by this book. Is Jordan's whole premise ridiculous? Or is it just shoddy execution?

What about the whole savior-as-destroyer aspect of Rand that becomes so obvious in this book? Far from Jordan's invention or anything, but certainly a departure from the Tolkein-spawn fantasies of the time.

Come, this is a ridiculous argument. If you gave a student a copy of the Silmarillion to review, and he skimmed through it and all he could say is that the whole fall of Morgoth story was similar to Paradise Lost, you're not going to excuse him are you?

The Dune parallels are there. So are the parallels to the Jains, and a host of others. Almost certainly, some of these also played a part in Herbert's own portrayal of the Fremen. But Robert's chose the intellectually lazy way out and simply pointed out the easy parallel.

Why then is his review in any way worthy of reading or commenting upon? The author clearly has no time for the book, no time to read it, no time to think about it a little before commenting. What then makes it different from the host of Amazon reviews out there except the length and the admittedly better language? Are we to read this because it is a good review, or because a Cambridge professor and author with a penchant for snark decided he needed a book to deride?

Not really, because, as FT pointed out, in the new era of "gritty" fantasy, the Wheel of Time is fairly tame when it comes to violence.
The few times there is sex on screen, the issue is skirted about, yes. While it is certainly worth exploring why Jordan felt he needed to do that, while showing a greater (but nowhere close to gratuitous) level of detail with the violence, that is not what Robert's talks about at all. He is evidently bored by the fight scenes, which are way below the lofty levels in which his nose resides. But some raunchy sex would do very well, thank you.

It seems to me you are almost projecting your own (reasonable and more authentic, because you actually read the book) critique of the book on the Robert's review.