Wheel of Time TV series officially in development


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Charon's Little Helper wrote:

I've gotta say - while there are things I like about Sanderson - his whole schtick is starting with a defined fantasy magic system. And then having the main characters take it up to 11. And then 13. And then 18...

It gets old. I think that an author can get away with breaking their own world's rules ONCE. Either that or make it less well defined/more subjective. (that's how Dresden gets away with always being just barely powerful enough to win a fight)

And he did the same with The Wheel of Time. While there were things I don't like about Jordan, he never really broke his own world's rules like that. Sure Rand pulled stuff out of his hat - but that was all foreshadowed & well explained.

If anything I thought he was holding back. Given the power of channelers as described A forsaken with a calandor + sa'angreal leading a circle of 50 should have turned their hill AND the 100 miles around it to glass and rendered the entire army superfluous: caster martial disparity cranked up to 13.

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Charon's Little Helper wrote:

I've gotta say - while there are things I like about Sanderson - his whole schtick is starting with a defined fantasy magic system. And then having the main characters take it up to 11. And then 13. And then 18...

It gets old. I think that an author can get away with breaking their own world's rules ONCE. Either that or make it less well defined/more subjective. (that's how Dresden gets away with always being just barely powerful enough to win a fight)

And he did the same with The Wheel of Time. While there were things I don't like about Jordan, he never really broke his own world's rules like that. Sure Rand pulled stuff out of his hat - but that was all foreshadowed & well explained.

My preferences seem to be opposed to yours. I was actually greatly annoyed at how utterly dumb everyone in Jordan's era was with their use of magic. Just as the easiest example (and, indeed, the one Sanderson did the most with) is gateways. Such an unbelievably powerful tool, so vastly under-utilized. Consider how about 95% of the conflict that isn't gender related in the Jordan books derives from lack of communication between factions, and how laughably easily such conflict can be resolved with instant teleportation. Another instance I strongly remember has a group of Aes Sedai wanting to travel to a far away city, but deciding they won't simply use a gateway to get there immediately because they might accidentally slice someone in half when they open it. I just set there staring at my kindle and mumbled "just open a gateway in the air deep in the night when travelers are unlikely, take a look around to make sure, close the "window" and then open the gateway on the ground".

Now compare that with the increasingly clever tricks the power was used for in Sanderson's books. To me, that's just much much better.


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"3000 years ago the Dragon's rage created the Dragonmount. Today, Your Majesty, I bring it to you.."

<opens multiple gates into lava of active volcano, kills entire opposing army>

That was a very amazing use of gateways.


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Gateway blades were neat too...


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Battle of Dumai's Wells

Scarab Sages

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Dumai's Wells would probably look something like this...


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I'm with LSnow, I thoroughly enjoyed Sanderson's finish to the series, even his amped up use of the Power to solve problems. Since you guys are all quoting your favorite lines

From a Memory of Light(Paraphrased):
Why must all heroes be men?

Seriously, just googling and reading the chapter again(When Perrin summons the Souls of the Wolves) makes me tear up. I'm a little bit of an animal lover I guess.


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I think following Dumai's Wells, the battle of Tar Valon vs the Seanchan was amazing. Egwene loves her some fireballs.

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Lord Snow wrote:


Now compare that with the increasingly clever tricks the power was used for in Sanderson's books. To me, that's just much much better.

The cleverness didn't bother me. I actually agree - they were rather dumb about it before. (My big thing was why did they worry about transporting foodstuffs by caravan etc.? Rand should have just had a central location with scores of tied off gateways to various locations so that even mundane people in his good graces could get anywhere in a few minutes.) But Sanderson jacked up the raw power too.

It's the same reason I didn't finish the Mistborn trilogy.

Scarab Sages

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The raw power was jacked up by Jordan when Rand cleansed Saidin and left a miles wide crater where Shadar Logoth used to be.

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Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Lord Snow wrote:


Now compare that with the increasingly clever tricks the power was used for in Sanderson's books. To me, that's just much much better.

The cleverness didn't bother me. I actually agree - they were rather dumb about it before. (My big thing was why did they worry about transporting foodstuffs by caravan etc.? Rand should have just had a central location with scores of tied off gateways to various locations so that even mundane people in his good graces could get anywhere in a few minutes.) But Sanderson jacked up the raw power too.

It's the same reason I didn't finish the Mistborn trilogy.

The power in the mistborn trilogy is cranked up, but in the Wheel of Time it is a common complaint that Sanderson actually made the channelers much much weaker than what Jordan presented them as. In Jordan's time we've seen that armies are obsolete if there is a significant number of powerful channelers around - numbers were supposed to be close to meaningless. But they weren't in the last three books.

By the way, there's an interesting plot thread in the last two books about the Aiel fighting to maintain a purpose and meaning after the Last Battle - when in fact, the Sea Folk have a much bigger problems - their entire culture is centered on ships, which are going to be a thing of the past once gateways become more common. If you can transport goods across continents in seconds, bothering with a ship is an atrocious idea.

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Imbicatus wrote:
The raw power was jacked up by Jordan when Rand cleansed Saidin and left a miles wide crater where Shadar Logoth used to be.

Channelers have been leveling (or raising) mountains and shattering cities since the first chapter of the series. A couple thousand insane males were enough to literally break the world and plunge what was a super advanced society even by modern real world standards into thousands of years of ignorance, doom and gloom.


Yeah, there wasn't much "amping" done by Sanderson himself, he merely had the privilege of presiding over the three books that proceeded the amping developed over the previous 11.

Jordan made sure to sprinkle in A LOT of stories of what powerful Channelers were able to do, while calrifying that Channelers today are MUCH MUCH weaker than those during the Age of Wonders.

And then the main characters are genetic throwbacks/destined heroes that have the same monstrous power those Channelers had.

Now, it takes them a while to learn how to USE that power, but ridiculous acts of super powerful magic are to be expected from these people given that a single powerful Channeler can literally reshape his local geography if he gets pissed off enough, as shown in the very first scene of the very first book.

As for Sanderson in general, I've never seen him "break his own rules", though I've only read Mistborn and the Way of Kings series.

Unless stuff like introducing new metals counts as rulebreaking? It was said pretty early on in that series that the ones they were using were the metals that had been DISCOVERED to have powers. New discoveries are advancements, not rules changes.

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Sundakan wrote:


As for Sanderson in general, I've never seen him "break his own rules", though I've only read Mistborn and the Way of Kings series.

Unless stuff like introducing new metals counts as rulebreaking? It was said pretty early on in that series that the ones they were using were the metals that had been DISCOVERED to have powers. New discoveries are advancements, not rules changes.

I think Imbicatus meant to say that the characters are going much more powerful things as time goes on - in Mistborn, for example, each book has the characters performing much more incredible things with their magic than the previous one. Of course, as you say, it is always within the limits of the rules Sanderson lays down in the beginning. Also, I read most of his books (Haven't got around to Way Of Kings yet, but other than that pretty much all his non-kids stuff) and in most of them the scaling up in power is not nearly as blunt as in Mistborn.


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Way of Kings is amazing.


TheNine wrote:
Thomas Seitz wrote:
Sundakan wrote:

Calling that a "battle" always seemed too much of a glorification to me. That was a f$##ing SLAUGHTER.

So yes, yes I do.

Slaughter of a grand scale. :)

Also to quote my favorite line "Kneel! Or you will be made to kneel!"

That was a good line indeed, though to be fair The battle of Dumai wells started out as a battle... well until Some dudes in black shirts arrived and started a ruckus

True but that's when shizzle got real.

Sovereign Court

You mean shizzle started to "meat grinder"

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Man! First there was "Wizard's First Rule", then "Game of Thrones", and now "Wheel of Time". Three awful book series of which I could only complete reading the first book of one of them.
All of these get made into TV Series, while the "Dragonriders of Pern" series got shelved.

Just goes to show that the public cares more about watching people killing other people than seeing a good story about people struggling to overcome adversity.

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Charles Scholz wrote:

Man! First there was "Wizard's First Rule", then "Game of Thrones", and now "Wheel of Time". Three awful book series of which I could only complete reading the first book of one of them.

All of these get made into TV Series, while the "Dragonriders of Pern" series got shelved.

Just goes to show that the public cares more about watching people killing other people than seeing a good story about people struggling to overcome adversity.

There's room for both kinds of stories, but you have to admit that GoT and WoT are both much better known than Pern, and when it comes to TV adaptation this is an extremely real consideration. Sword of Truth is by far the ugly duckling in this group, but the adaptation it got was so half assed anyway that I can't really include it in a serious discussion.

Quote:
Way of Kings is amazing.

I hear that it is, but I just won't go into an epic fantasy of such a scale until it's done. At this point I have spent almost half my life on an eternal "waiting for the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire" mode, and I don't have the mental reserves to do this with another series. I think the only ongoing series I currently read is The Expanse, and the major reason for that is that a new book comes out every year like clockwork.


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Charles Scholz wrote:

Man! First there was "Wizard's First Rule", then "Game of Thrones", and now "Wheel of Time". Three awful book series of which I could only complete reading the first book of one of them.

All of these get made into TV Series, while the "Dragonriders of Pern" series got shelved.

Just goes to show that the public cares more about watching people killing other people than seeing a good story about people struggling to overcome adversity.

I hear tossing shade at the readers of three of the most bestselling fantasy series of all time is what all the cool kids are doing.


Especially when the vast majority of Pern is hardly great literature.

I like it and all, but...


Hama wrote:
You mean shizzle started to "meat grinder"

Eh. Potato po-tat-to.


Sundakan wrote:

Especially when the vast majority of Pern is hardly great literature.

I like it and all, but...

If anything great literature is Moorcock and probably Tad William's Memory Sorrow and Thorn.

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Sundakan wrote:

Especially when the vast majority of Pern is hardly great literature.

I like it and all, but...

Look, it's much better than Sword Of Truth, that you have to grant it.

But adaptations are not strictly about quality, and trends also play a major role. Game Of Throne was a preposterous success - expect to see a lot more epic fantasy on screen as a result.


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I was under the impression that Sword of Truth was less fantasy and more of an essay on the evils of socialism. XD So, I'm not sure it really counts for ANY comparison...


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Charles Scholz wrote:

Man! First there was "Wizard's First Rule", then "Game of Thrones", and now "Wheel of Time". Three awful book series of which I could only complete reading the first book of one of them.

All of these get made into TV Series, while the "Dragonriders of Pern" series got shelved.

Just goes to show that the public cares more about watching people killing other people than seeing a good story about people struggling to overcome adversity.

Dragonriders of Pern is certainly far superior to fricking Terry Goodkind (one of the worst authors of epic fantasy to ever put pen to paper), but it's a bit of a stretch to say it's so much better than the other two. Dragonflight and maybe the next couple of books were decent, but Anne & Todd did ride that horse into the ground, flog it thoroughly after death, set fire to it and then tried to sell the ashes.

Funny think is that MacCaffrey has a cover blurb on all three of those other books saying how much she enjoyed them.

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Werthead wrote:
Charles Scholz wrote:

Man! First there was "Wizard's First Rule", then "Game of Thrones", and now "Wheel of Time". Three awful book series of which I could only complete reading the first book of one of them.

All of these get made into TV Series, while the "Dragonriders of Pern" series got shelved.

Just goes to show that the public cares more about watching people killing other people than seeing a good story about people struggling to overcome adversity.

Dragonriders of Pern is certainly far superior to fricking Terry Goodkind (one of the worst authors of epic fantasy to ever put pen to paper), but it's a bit of a stretch to say it's so much better than the other two. Dragonflight and maybe the next couple of books were decent, but Anne & Todd did ride that horse into the ground, flog it thoroughly after death, set fire to it and then tried to sell the ashes.

Funny think is that MacCaffrey has a cover blurb on all three of those other books saying how much she enjoyed them.

While I agree with the gist of this, I have long past learned that taste in book is not transitive - I can love the books by an author and be completely befuddled by their reading recommendations at the same time, and there's really no surprise there. It's like you don't expect to have the same taste in food as the chef in your favorite restaurant.


Temeraire should be good if they can make that into a movie/series. Napoleonic war, with dragons!


Lord Snow wrote:
Sundakan wrote:

Especially when the vast majority of Pern is hardly great literature.

I like it and all, but...

Look, it's much better than Sword Of Truth, that you have to grant it.

The bar there isn't set to high to surpass that series...


tbh all four series have some pretty dumb points


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Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?


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xeose4 wrote:
tbh all four series have some pretty dumb points

Yeah, I have to kind of roll my eyes at anyone who tries to prop up their series as much as fandoms tend to. Series like ASoIaF get showered with praise while "easy targets" (read: anything YA) get potshot after potshot taken at them. All book series have flaws. Harry Potter had plenty of goofy moments, Game of Thrones has a tendency to get cramped and dry, Lord of the Rings can be incredibly tedious at points, and Wheel of Time has been the subject of this whole thread so I won't bother getting into it now.

Too many people, too, take criticism really personally and really seriously. "You said one bad thing about my favorite movie/book series/video game? Why do you hate it?"

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Thomas Seitz wrote:
Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?

Confusing more likely. Plus the quasi-historic earth always pissed me off.


Hama

Really?! Confused?! Compared to what?

Liberty's Edge

Thomas Seitz wrote:
Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?

Probably?

I loved the Elric books when I was 13. Went back to re-read in my late 20s and was totally underwhelmed. Tried again in my early 40s and was repulsed.

That said, 'The Warhound and The World's Pain' holds up pretty well.

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Thomas Seitz wrote:

Hama

Really?! Confused?! Compared to what?

Not compared to anything. The plot is confusing and all over the place.

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Since both Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings have been discussed here - anyone see the latest Epic Rap Battle of History? George RR vs JRR - lol.


BigNorseWolf wrote:
Temeraire should be good if they can make that into a movie/series. Napoleonic war, with dragons!

Peter Jackson has the rights (seriously) and has been working on a TV adaptation for a few years, since he became too busy to work on it as a movie. I think it'd be a great hook-up with HBO for a post-GoT fantasy series, and would keep the CGI dragon people happy.

Quote:
Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?

It's certainly in the canon of influential and important fantasy series, but it hasn't aged very well. Elric always felt like more of an interesting potential character but the execution made him often come off as a prototypical Drizzt. I think Steven Erikson nailed that archetype more successfully with Anomander Rake.

Scarab Sages

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Thomas Seitz wrote:
Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?

I had trouble with the Elric books. They were a very hard read.

When Marvel Comics adapted them, I gobbled them up like candy. I was able to follow the comics and understand things I had missed in the novels.


Okay I will agree, Anomander Rake was a better version of Elric, but that's only because he had more magical juice to him.

Still waiting to see how the Battle of Dumai's Well goes before I make any judgments on this show. If it ever gets made.


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So, season 6?


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Lord Snow wrote:


Quote:
Way of Kings is amazing.
I hear that it is, but I just won't go into an epic fantasy of such a scale until it's done. At this point I have spent almost half my life on an eternal "waiting for the next book in the Song of Ice and Fire" mode, and I don't have the mental reserves to do this with another series. I think the only ongoing series I currently read is The Expanse, and the major reason for that is that a new book comes out every year like clockwork.

Understood, but I think you're missing out. Some of the magical concepts are fresh and amazing. Not that this is surprising from Sanderson.

I just wouldn't want you to miss the stuff in this book simply to wait till the series is finished. I feel I'd be doing you a disservice not asking you to reconsider. It's pretty amazing.


Sanderson cranks out books pretty quick too, but he tends to rotate his series'. I think a new one in that series is supposed to come out next year or the year after?


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This year I think.

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Sundakan wrote:

Sanderson cranks out books pretty quick too, but he tends to rotate his series'. I think a new one in that series is supposed to come out next year or the year after? [/QUOTE

Book 3 will come out this year, but book 4 is not expected before the end of 2018 IIRC, and that's assuming no holdups (which there were previously in this series - even the normally infallible Sanderson has trouble with a project this big).

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BigNorseWolf wrote:
Temeraire should be good if they can make that into a movie/series. Napoleonic war, with dragons!

I never heard of this but I'll have to look it up!

I'd like to see Feist's RiftWar series, at least up to the SerpentWar Saga. And something on the Tsurani Empire trilogy would be awesome too.


Charles Scholz wrote:
Thomas Seitz wrote:
Am I the only one here that think Michael Moorcock and/or Elric Saga is great literature?

I had trouble with the Elric books. They were a very hard read.

When Marvel Comics adapted them, I gobbled them up like candy. I was able to follow the comics and understand things I had missed in the novels.

I first read the Elric books a long time ago -late 70s maybe? I didn't have any real trouble with them and enjoyed them quite a bit. Along with the rest of his basic Eternal Champion stuff.

Some of his other stuff is hard to follow - Dancers at the end of time & Cornelius are much more challenging and I don't really get them, though I do like the Cornelius books a lot. His later Elric books often fall in that category. And then his more historical fiction is good, but a lot slower.

Part of the thing with the original Elric series is that much of it was written for the magazine market and then had several separate stories packaged up together for the novels.


Quote:
I just wouldn't want you to miss the stuff in this book simply to wait till the series is finished. I feel I'd be doing you a disservice not asking you to reconsider. It's pretty amazing.

I think Brandon's encountered a big problem with this series in that it's all taking much longer than he expected. The delay between the first two volumes was down to him having to finish WHEEL OF TIME, so fair enough, but the gap between Books 2 and 3 was supposed to be maybe 18 months and now it's looking like closer to 3 years. And if that continues for the remaining seven volumes of the series after Book 3 then it will not be finished until close to 2040 (!). And that's not including the fact that he'll be rolling the second MISTBORN trilogy into the mix and he's still got the seven-volume DRAGONSTEEL series and then the final MISTBORN trilogy and the HOID wrapping-up book/series after that point, and that's not even including WARBREAKER II and ELANTRIS II and III.

I think Brandon might be having to have a rethink about how he's going to handle things going forwards, including just making the books a lot shorter, otherwise the project isn't really going to be practical.


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According to his website:

Brandon Sanderson 12/2014 wrote:

Next Projects

I’ve now begun Calamity, last of the Reckoners series. My goal will be to rough-draft it over the next three months. I have a tour between now and then (for Firefight) and a trip to Taiwan as well, so who knows if I’ll make that deadline. We’ll see.

Once that is done, I will dive into Stormlight 3. I’m still waffling on whether this will be Szeth’s book, Eshonai’s book, or Dalinar’s book. The original outline calls for book 3 to have Szeth’s flashbacks, but I am feeling that another character might match the events better.

I did some exploratory scenes for it this summer, though these may or may not end up in the actual book. I have been tweaking the outline, and am starting to feel very good about it. Writing the book should consume the entire rest of 2015, with a 2016 release. I do plan the Stormlight books to be an every-other-year thing.

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Werthead wrote:
Quote:
I just wouldn't want you to miss the stuff in this book simply to wait till the series is finished. I feel I'd be doing you a disservice not asking you to reconsider. It's pretty amazing.

I think Brandon's encountered a big problem with this series in that it's all taking much longer than he expected. The delay between the first two volumes was down to him having to finish WHEEL OF TIME, so fair enough, but the gap between Books 2 and 3 was supposed to be maybe 18 months and now it's looking like closer to 3 years. And if that continues for the remaining seven volumes of the series after Book 3 then it will not be finished until close to 2040 (!). And that's not including the fact that he'll be rolling the second MISTBORN trilogy into the mix and he's still got the seven-volume DRAGONSTEEL series and then the final MISTBORN trilogy and the HOID wrapping-up book/series after that point, and that's not even including WARBREAKER II and ELANTRIS II and III.

I think Brandon might be having to have a rethink about how he's going to handle things going forwards, including just making the books a lot shorter, otherwise the project isn't really going to be practical.

Wait, I thought that the Stormlight Archive is a five book series, to be followed by another five book "sequel series" - but that the five books should be readable as a complete series of their own.

Right?

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