A wretched, overblown, self-important hack. He should have stuck to writing Conan books. At least they had the virtue of brevity.

No comparison to Tolkien, amigos. No one comes close, except, perhaps, William Morris (who was Tolkien's inspiration). Jordan has a good story, but the later books are too much filler and junk. Takes too long between books, too. Someone told me he was seriously ill lately. Despite my negative comments, I love the story, and will read the whole series a few more times, in anticipation of the next part. Think it would make an awesome multi-part movie, so they could edit out some of the filler. .

WOT among the greatest fantasy epic series out there. Engaging charachters and multilayered plot in a complex and compelling world.

If you like a story that takes time to end(11 books) and has great depth this series is for you. I've read all 11 books twice. I liken the style to Tolkien just a slightly faster pace (mostly). The charaters are each unique and complex. There are a number of subtle side stories that weave in and out hinting to the purpose and intention. Excellent. For the patient readers out there.

Book 1 of the Wheel of time is drawn out. Takes several pages to tell what goes on while the characters are traveling into town. I really tried to stay along with the book but by the time I got almost half way I had lost interest. I doubt I could get through the whole series.

It is true that his books are long, but the good thing about his overdiscriptive paragraphs is that i can skip many pages at a time and still not lose my place in the story line. Is that a good thing?
i would love it if he could stop building the characters and start fullfilling their destinies. All good things must end Robert. Get on with it!!!

It is true that his books are long, but the good thing about his overdiscriptive paragraphs is that i can skip many pages at a time and still not lose my place in the story line. Is that a good thing?
i would love it if he could stop building the characters and start fullfilling their destinies. All good things must end Robert. Get on with it!!!

tedious, boring and pussy whipped thats how Robert Jordan's book come across after the first 4 books. If you have suffer from insomnia heres the bonafide cure.

great author

The series begins to falter after the first few books. Though it tends to drag, Robert Jordan was still successful at producing a wonderful setting with intricate scenarios. The Wheel of Time is truly a set for any avid fantasy reader, though not suggested if you are not ready for the sluggish text after the first half of the series.

A exceedingly complex series with realistic characters with just as realistic motivations and an intricately woven plot. Those who say these characters are 2D and unrealistic are undeniably incorrect. Some say that people almost never act purely "white" or "black" in their motivations, and that real people act in a shade of "gray." I regret to inform you that there is nothing between good and evil, else it would have a name, at the very least. Sure, most people are wishy-washy, they are unsure about whether they should do evil or good. Many influences can determine how a person feels concerning doing good or evil. Some may consider this "gray." Just because a person does good sometimes and evil another does not make their overall alignment "gray." Its not a combination! It cannot be viewed collectively! Its whatever they are doing at THAT SPECIFIC MOMENT that determines whether they serve good or evil, again at THAT SPECIFIC MOMENT. If you cannot comprehend this, then I applaud your feeble attempt to comprehend a series that is apparently above your head.

I know Robert Jordan poured so much time and thought into this series, and it is apparent is many, many elements of the overall story. There are also some that do not respect all the complexity that Jordan expresses in the WoT. Then there are some who enjoy simpler fantasy because it requires much less thought, and if you find tWoT boring or pointless in its complexity, please stick to your simple trilogies with each book 200 pages long.

After the Dragon Reborn the books diminished in stature successively, yet those first four are masterpieces. The gross overgeneralization of women's and men's character traits can grate on my nerves, but the premise of the magic, the premise of the history, and the interesting similarities and differences of the individual cultures is very well done.

Is absolute rubbish, after his 5th book the series seem to denigrate into episodes of hair pulling and nonsensical diversions as though he seem to be having new ideas into which to add to the mix. I fel sorry for you suckers who feel compelled to buy his books as its obviously now just a money making excersie now. I wish Icould have scored the estrogen ravaged goofball a lower score like negative 5 as thats what he deserves.

The series drags. Their are to many character descriptions to remember. By the time the next book comes out I have to pull out old books to remember who the characters are. Just center the story around five or 6 characters. That would of made the books more readable instead of 600 pages of traveling.

His first books were excellent, but as the series progressed, the quality disappeared.

I want my money back. For sale: Wheel of time books 1-6.

boring boring boring. Like reading a well written dragonlance. I read this along side Sword Truth by Terry Goodkind. I was hoping I'd enjoy this more. because I thought it would at least have the same feel as LOTR. i was dissapointed because the main characters were no different from characters from a Dungeons and Dragons RPG. Only the kid in me almost enjoyed the series. ALMOST.

I love the WOT series, but let's get on with it. I know he has some great ideas about the Forsaken, the Seanchan, the Age of Legends, and so forth, but we seem to be waddling a little too slowly towards them. Still, I really enjoyed 'New Spring' which gave me hope for the rest of the series.

Two stars because the first four or so books in WoT were actually readable. Through books 5 and 6 I still wanted to know what was going on, but after that I realised life's too short. I don't mind books where none of the characters is sympathetic, but I do mind it when none of them is even remotely believable! I heard an interview with Jordan in 1992, where he talked about how he has this really minimalist style, where not a word could be cut away. Riiight. The man is not only too verbose, he is also deluded. So the two stars is actually a much higher rating than he deserves.

I used to love his books, now i find myself counting the incessant pages until the end, when i can finally say "I think that about one in every five paragraphs relates to the story." He uses so much detail about completely irrelevant things, that he kills the story and makes me want to watch the five hour long documentaries on the history channel! He created an awesome world, and has now officially killed it by giving us more information than even the publishers want to know. I have to rate this a two, if anything, because i feel like he may still come through in the 12th book, seeing as the eleventh book is trash. He used to be a good author, but has now become obsessed with the surroundings, not the actually events which impact the REAL story.

One or two of the early books deserve more stars but the author and the series have spun into the pit.

Very bad form. To write brilliant works that hook readers and then leaving them in a fog. I compare WoT to a siren's call. I am very disappointed in Mr Jordan. There was great potential there...but i think he may have fallen in love with his world, to the point where hes subconsciously dragging the story out so that it doesnt end. Also, i absolutely hate the female characters, and i seeth whenever they succeed in manipulating Rand. i think many female fans would agree with me as well. theyre not strong women, theyre obnoxious women. To sum up, he deserves the 2 stars on account of his ability to write good fantasy, as shown in the first 5 bks.

Way way way tooooooooooooo long. His first books were good but when you hit 6 onwards they are sh**house. Hes just milky this now rubbish series for all its worth and giving fantasy a bad name. Jordan if you ever happen upon this comment your work suks u hear me. All the stuff in your books is basically recapping what happened in the earlier books. For all those fantasy fans out there i advise you to only read the first 3 or 4 books and then decide for yourself if you want to read the rest.... my advice DONT. See ya round fantasy fans this is Fantasy Man signing out.

Guys, even Tolkein had a certain amount of sense to keep the number of main characters to a minimum, and focus his writing on those characters. Jordan introduces more paper-thin, virtually identical characters with every book. His women are some of the worst- arrogant, manipulative, tempermental, secretive, and paranoid, virtually every single one. He's gone from writing books in a series that all have the same conclusion (another of the Forsaken bites the dust, yippee) to books that have little or no conclusion at all. The few significant events that happen occur in the last few hundred pages (heaven help us, dealing with an author about whom we can literally say the last few hundred pages!) Jordan needs to re-take basic creative writing, starting with the lesson that says: if it takes five hundred pages to get to the active part of the story, think how you can re-write that story to start with the action. Mr. Jordan: get back to your main characters, rein in your temptation to introduce more of them, and stop wasting your readers' time!

Nothing ever happens after the third book, thank you mr Jordan for wasting my time.

Someone should have told Mr. Jordan that the expression is a picture is worth a thousand words not two thousand. I also got the impression that Mr. Jordan has a brest fetish. If I had a dollar for every female character that folded her arms beneath her brests Mr. Jordan's books would have ended up free as well as a few other authors as well. But still, I enjoyed his books. He's a great storyteller. I just wish he would have made the WOT series 5 or 6 books and not 10 (soon to be 12)

Great premise for his WOT series, but he needs a mean editor to cut down his word count.

I think the majority of people like the first 6 books cause it moved along and at the end some type of conclusion happened. What i think most people hate is the fact that these last few books seem as though he is dragging it out in hopes of more money. Maybe he isn't but i just hate how he rehashes everything and then describes looks and jestures for four or five pages and no dialogue. Over all i like it cause its a fun series plus i would hate to have read all these books for nothing.

Interesting at first, but terrible at this point. And even when the books were as good as they got, they were very unoriginal. Everything is black and white in this universe. The main characters are undeveloped, the endless, unnecessary tangential stories make me grind my teeth.

What a scam! I'm four-hundred pages into the book and I feel like it's still only an introduction, or at least a refresher of who's who of the two-dimensional, typical-man/typical-woman loser archetypes that do nothing except engage in colossal pissing contests! I hope the Citadel is pumping out adults these days, but I wouldn't bet on it. From now on, I'll be borrowing the Wheel o' Time books from the library. On second thought, I think I'll pass all together! I'll get more lively wntertainment out of the Wall Street Journal.

Jordan's Wheel of Time series could have been quite a masterful work but it required only three books for its story to be told....from then on mindless , repetitve dribble.

*just BO-ring. sorry but inflict half a dozen tome and more of a thoroughly un-original epic is something I consider with severity.

Entertaining but soooo generic. Seriously, the structure is ripped straight from LOTR, and the characters are cliched. It's almost as if Jordan spent twenty years studying the fantasy genre and the psychology of teenage boys before embarking on this ridiculously long series (more than ten thousand pages so far). I stopped reading this series after four books or so, because I simply stopped caring what happens next. I also have the suspicion that Jordan has no idea how to wrap things up, so he'll probably die around nineteen books in, leaving his fans feeling like they wasted years of their life without some kind of climax or conclusion. Serves 'em right.

END IT DEAR LORD CAN YOU DRAG THAT CRAP OUT ANY LONGER???

I absolutely loved the first book, but that was the only one I liked. Robert Jordan would be a very talented author if he wasn't such a sell out. As I got further into the series, the reading got slower and slower. If he took out all that random b/s in his novels, I would be suprised if he ended up with 50 pages a novel.

Books 1-5 were some of the best ever, 6-10 are still well above average. Jordan, Goodkind and Martin are the best fantasy writers ever. All of these are better than tolkien, who is only above average and popular because he started the genre. Jordan is a great story teller, you really care about the characters and see them well because of his detail oriented mind.

I just finished Crossroads of Twilight after rereading the first nine books in the series. With at least the last four books, I haven't been able to ignore the feeling that Robert Jordan has either run out of ideas or is exploiting his fans bigtime by dragging out the story to fill as many books as he can sell. Much of Crossroads of Twilight was redundant and boring, a great disappointment.

Ok, here it is... The first 5 books were ok. Those after is when Rand is getting a hard time and gets more sinister. Those who like the first 5 books should read Tolkien, cause there the hero is small hobbits who doesn't have an evolving personallity. You maybe like that kind of stuff (small hobbits, good Wizard, Bad Wizard,Oh My God...). Don't say that Jordan just does it for the money..He has developed and you don't like the direction. But I can tell you that as an adult I prefer the books after the fifth..

Can you say, "Moo!" Robert Jordan is milking The Wheel of Time series for all its worth. It would have been a great series if had ended it after 6 books. Come on, and have some closure, please. Very overated writer. Read George R.R. Martin if you want to read some fabulous stories.

Boby is really great authot but he must finish Wheel of Time right now. It's currently out of control, the last books are boring - pity, because the first are outstanding.

I love the main characters but I'm drowning in all the others.The first three books moved the characters thru the story and in turn created a vortex which pulled you along with them. Since then we've been meandering thru morase. Focusing on all the other characters and reducing the lead characters to cameo roles at best instead of zeroing in on them. It's like writing from a soap opera lately. I buy these books in hope that he returns to his early form and breaks out of this slump.

The story and characters are created exquisitely but little is done after that. The books are written with less flair and intrigue as they go on in the series and Robert Jordan has a tendency to dwell on trivialities and little is accomplished in the latter texts. The characters become more and more stereotypical and bland in nature and their habits are so similar only their names and rank tells them apart. Thoroughly disappointed as I was impressed by the first few books. BTW I have read all 10 numerous times and am still unimpressed.

I'm tired of the descriptions of jewelry and dresses! Is he even writing this anymore or is it some understudy from the publisher? The world has become small as the kids take over all the positions of power and teach the old folks (over 20) how to run things as they force every one to their will. I'm tired of this same old same old. 8,9 and 10 should all be sent back and re-written. Thank God for Martin and Erikson.

I've given this a 1 out of 5 star rating for several reasons: 1. The female characters are all exactly the same cardboard brat, but given different names and levels of fighting skill. 2. All the couples (and yes, everyone gets paired off) behave the same way, ie female folds arms under breasts, snaps at the male for thinking with the hair on his chest, while the male scratches his head wishing he understood women better. 3. Every female that is under 50 falls in love with Rand, unless they meet Perrin or Matt first. 4 (and most important reason): Too much detail, considering how little the story has progressed, and how little depth characters show. Detail doesn't = quality. So what's the 1 star for? I think books 1 to 4 were good. They were built up to nice climaxes.

This is truly about being good or bad. No character lives in both worlds. This becomes a bit annoying when you are coming to a certain age (and I am not even that old!) better try Hobb or Modessit

Jordan had the potential to be a decent to mediocre author, but then he found out that if he extends his series indefinitely he can just rake in the dough.

Okay...not that good. He doesn't compare to Tolkien.

Eye of the World taught me what a good book was. The Great Hunt was an excellent book as well as The Dragon Reborn. I have never seen the likes of The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven (which are really the same book). Lord of Chaos was the best book I've ever read. A Crown of Swords was only fair. Path of Daggers was OK. Winters Heart was about as good as The Dragon Reborn, but there was a lot missing from it. An excellent series, regaining ground. There is no author I prefer, or like as much. His characters do have something missing though, especially the women. And his women are not all the same. There are about five molds, which he gives each new female character a trait to distinguish them. Example: Nynaeve- braid-tugging; Elayne- nose-raising; Cadsuane- patting her hair bun; Verin-staring. If you can get past the five men-hating women, there is nothing better.It is getting better, but I wish he wouldn't hurry so much- his writing suffers for it.

Well, I'll tell ya, it's not bad, yet bear in mind I'm only starting #5. The positive points: The world is fairly fresh, intricate with lots to explore. Conceptually well done in regards to rules of magic, political interplay (well done Game of Houses!), history and some of the cultural personalities (Seanchan, Aiel...though they have a decidedly "Fremen" flavor...and the Tinkers.) I'm leaning towards agreeing to the flatness of the characters, but would like to point out that the women are developing somewhat, Egwene in particular. I like them far better than the majority of the male cast (Thom Merrilin excluded!) who spent most of the 1st 3 books whining while the ladies were at least eager to learn and accepting of responsibility (and how much more interesting would it have been had the Dragon Reborn been one of the ladies!!! Wonder if Lanfear would have still kept such a torch for Lews then?) Pity more hasn't been revealed about Moraine. Most of the other characters have destiny to guide and protect them, but her decisions were made without the benefit of that assurance, leaving lots of juicy motivational history to be revealed. Also in regards to dimensionality of characters, I think Jordan spent too much time describing the time they were on horseback instead of letting us hear the conversations between characters that might have evolved some believable motivations for subsequent decisions. Also, this whole thing with people falling so dramatically in love with each other is weak, most of it being attributed to the boys being a ta'veren or whatnot. Nynaeve's over Lan would be much more interesting if I suspected Moraine might be interested as well. Ah well. I'm just a little frustrated at all the "why's" I have in regards to why the characters are behaving the way they do, but I do enjoy Jordan's world and how it works. Overall, not bad or awful, but not exceptional either. Good enough I'll keep reading to see what happens, the books were gifts anyway, LOL.

Some of the best Fantasy Writing out there!

Would have gotten 5 if he could only stop repeating himself. He has made a whole world into which one may dive and study

He has many good reviews, and is marketed well. However, he is actually NOT a good author, or certainly has gone downhill since the beginning of the series. The only original idea he had was his magic ideas. The characters are all flat with one overlying characteristic then filled up with typical male/female B$, the countries have no blending of cultures...if you're of one you fit perfectly with the stereotypes, I could go on all day....It's a rather pathetic comment that he's at the top of this stack...then, looking at the number of the votes, it shows that many more people rated it lower than other high ones....

Personally I think that Robert Jordan is one of the greatest fantasy authors of all time.

I used to like RJ a lot up until his 6th book. The last three has in few words disappointed me. What has hooked me once - the fine plot, the nice mysterious set-up, the original background - all this has gone. The chars have become annoying, especially the female ones, and personally in the last two books (POD&WH) i can't find a scene to call "breathtaking". Maybe it's all up to my taste having change from classical fantasy to satire one but i think not. I think RJ suffers a commersionalism syndrome. I hope the 10th books will change it all...

I have read these books for a while and I´m now waiting on book nr 17. I think that the first book was the best. Jordan is a great writer and he is almost better than J.R.R Tolkien. Maby he is better...I haven´t read the english books yet, but when I´m finish with the swedish ones, I will. Maby someone can tell me when nr 17 comes to sweden? bye/StoneColdEmma

The reason that my review is only 4 rather than 5 stars is only because books 7-9 have read like time-killers. The plot has barely advanced, there has been very little character development, and any major events that have occurred seem rushed, a little forced, and anticlimactic. Books 1-6, however, are definitely the best fantasy novels I have ever read. The sheer level of detail, the complex plays on history and historical societies represented in the various cultures and chacters, and how carefully constructed everything seemed to be all won the series for me as much as the storyline did. One reviewer felt that the lack of 'grey' issues, as oppose to straight 'good' and 'evil' was a problem in the series, and while I'll admit that RJ has strayed more towards this end, the intial books had a plethora of 'grey' figures. The Children of the Light were certainly a fascinating group, although admittedly they could have been much more than the simple band of thugs that they were portrayed as in later books, and with the Aes Sedai, I was intrigued by the way my feelings towards them swayed back and forth between sympathy for an unjustly stereotyped 'witch', and the occasional suspicion that the slander against them was justified. Hopefully, book 10 will bring back the energy and complexity of the intial books.

I've been reading these books for 8 years. They are my old favorites, the books that I go back to whenever I come up short on reading material. I find the world that Jordan has built to be a very complex one, especially compared to other contemporary fantasy writers. If you want to read one-dimensional character development, read Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule." Jordan's structure of these books is fantastic, with convoluted storylines, "plots within plots," a hero who is destroying his own humanity for the sake of the world. Granted, some of the characters are not as developed as they could be, but with as large a cast of characters that Jordan uses, I feel that if he fleshed them all out there would be double the number of books. This series ranks among Lord of the Rings and Dune as some of the best sf/f of all time.

I found the books at my sisters boyfriends house and he adviced me to read one, as i am a Tolkien fan i thought that nothing could be as good or so vivid, but i was wrong, I read through the hole of the series (1-9) in one week and three days. He tells the tale of an magnificent adventure in such funny and living words, also catching the reality of lives and worlds, it is not just a story with fabled creatures in it, it is a story where you can see them before you and belive their real. The only thing i dident like is that you cant be there and have your own adventure. I loved the books, and they learned me to think in english. (i am swedish)