The Gathering Storm…
Okay, so I went to Target with Terrie yesterday and after about an hour of browsing around, I picked up two things that I could’ve gotten elsewhere – a big bag of Sun Chips (French Onion), and the latest book in the Wheel of Time saga, The Gathering Storm.
I’ve known about the book’s impending release for a few months now, but when it was finally released last week, I had a somewhat lukewarm enthusiasm to run out to the nearest bookstore and buy it. This was a far cry from several years ago, when I was even waiting for the bookstore to open so I can be one of the first to read it. A lot of it stems from the way the series has progressed in the last three to four books. The pace had slowed down to a crawl, there were more characters being introduced that it almost rivalled War and Peace, and the “beginning of the end” was nowhere in sight. While I appreciate long, rich tales like The Lord of the Rings, The Sword of Truth and The Dark Tower series, I somehow felt that more than ten books and almost twenty years of telling that single story is really pushing it…
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I started reading The Wheel of Time in my second year of college in the Philippines (1992), and back then I had to take a long, hard commute to National Bookstore in Baclaran, which was the closest bookstore that carried fantasy books. Back then I was deeply immersed in the works of Stephen King, Clive Barker, Dan Simmons and Brian Lumley (to name a few), and the only “hard” fantasy fiction I have encountered was Tolkien’s Lord the Rings and Joel Rosenberg’s Sleeping Dragon. Being someone who liked tales that spanned more than one book, I quickly took notice of a group of paperbacks at the bottom of the fantasy/horror shelf that had very interesting cover art.
The three books that I saw were The Eye of the World, The Great Hunt, and The Dragon Reborn – the first three books of the Wheel of Time series, written by someone called Robert Jordan. Thinking that it was a trilogy a’la LoTR, I read the synopsis at the back, found it interesting, and quickly grabbed those three books and headed for the cashier. When I got back to my dormitory in Cavite more than two hours later, just in time for dinner, I wolfed down my “college dinner”, quickly nabbed the first book, lay down my bed, and started reading… and reading… and I continued to read until I saw that the clock on the wall was telling me it was already 3am in the morning. So I guess it would be an understatement to say that I was hooked – like a bad habit.
Suffice to say, I finished all three books in less than a week, and I had mixed feelings of fear and anticipation when I discovered that it was not really a trilogy, but instead the beginning of what would be a long, arduous journey into a fantasy world where magic, love, history, politics and war are the norm. I waited later that year for the fourth one to come out, The Shadow Rising, and the following year, I was at the bookstore twice a week checking if the fifth book, The Fires of Heaven, is out on paperback yet…
(You would have to understand that I almost never bought hardcover books in college, mostly because [a] the bookstore only had fantasy fiction available on paperback and [b] even if they were available, I would have to use up a couple day’s worth of my measly college allowance just to be able to afford it… and I also had no way of knowing when a book I wanted to read will be coming out, coz there were no newsletters, and there was no Internet.)
By the time I graduated college in 1996, I had added Lord of Chaos to my collection, racking up the total to six WoT books in my ever-increasing shelf of fantasy/horror fiction (which included all, yes, ALL of Stephen King’s novels and story collections, about six of Clive Barker’s, and a whole cacophony of other books written by fiction writers that are too many (and some, too obscure) to mention. Lord of Chaos is still one of my favorite WoT books, because that was when all hell started breaking loose, and that’s when the shit started hitting the fan.
And that was also the time when Robert Jordan’s “one-book-a-year” rule started flying out the window…
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A Crown of Swords
When I worked for the Philippine Daily Inquirer in mid-1996, I was lucky to find out that there was a specialty bookstore just a couple miles from work. And lo and behold, in one of the shelves, there was a hardcover book with the familiar cover art style, and it said A Crown of Swords. That seventh book was the first fantasy hardcover book I ever bought, and since I was already working, I can now afford it… barely. And when the paperback came out later that year, I also bought it, coz that hardcover book didn’t fit very well with the whole army of paperbacks it was bookending.
I moved to the United States the following year, and in 1998, A Path of Daggers, the eighth book, came out. And bookstores in California were like restaurants in the Philippines – they were everywhere. So I easily found the hardcover and continued reading about the lives of Rand Al’Thor, Perrin Aybara, Mat Cauthon, and the rest of the characters. And that’s when I noticed the drastic change in pace… the story was starting to really slow down, and by the time I bought the ninth book, A Winter’s Heart, I realized that either Robert Jordan is at the mercy of his greedy publishers, or he doesn’t know how he’s gonna end his story and get out of the hundreds of holes he dug for himself. Even though there were a series of huge events near the end of the book, it was almost not enough to compensate for the “drudgery” that peppered 90% of it.
But I continued reading, because like everyone else who still followed the series, I wanted to know how it’s gonna end. I actually bought A Winter’s Heart during a book signing in a fantasy bookstore in Santa Monica, along with the first book so I can have Mister Jordan sign it for me. He and his wife were sitting behind a long table, signing books and talking with the many fans who attended the event (the line was so long that it was threatening to round the whole block where that bookstore was).
When it was my turn, I asked Mister Jordan to sign my two books, and then I asked him the question that he has probably heard a thousand times already: ”Mister Jordan, when will we see the end?”
He smiled, and his wife laughed beside him. After signing my books, he shook my hand and said, “I don’t know, but it will…”
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The snail-like pace of The Wheel of Time series didn’t improve with the 2003 release of the tenth book, Crossroads of Twilight. For the first time since I started reading The Wheel of Time, I was getting bored, annoyed and indifferent to the story. I wanted it to end right then and there. I was sick of reading about the PMS-like outbursts of the Aes Sedai, the dozens of subplots spanning dozens of chapters, and the lack of focus on the main protagonist himself, Rand Al’Thor. I was compelled to skip chapters, skim through dialogues and sometimes peek at the end. It was worse than pulling teeth or watching paint dry. Robert Jordan seemed lost, and it showed in his story.
(Heck, he even wrote a prequel, A New Spring. As if he isn’t busy enough already with the present, existing ones…)
I felt that there needed to be a fresh approach to the story, coz it appeared to me that Mister Jordan waded in too deep and was having a hard time swimming back, hence he was too busy tying off subplots instead of resolving the main plot itself. And introducing NEW subplots didn’t help, either. This was why, when I bought the eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, I didn’t get past the first three chapters.
Yeah, for the first time, I couldn’t finish a Wheel of Time book. It was just too convoluted for me. So I sat there, an unfinished hardcover on my lap, wondering when, or if, I should read it again. I vowed that it was gonna be the last WoT book I’ll buy and read if the trend continues.
And then, last year, Robert Jordan died… and when I read the news, I can almost hear a million voices suddenly crying out in frustration and resignation, and suddenly silenced…
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The Gathering Storm
So how do you finish a story that was nowhere near to being finished after its writer dies? You either write off the series as one of the most colossal disappointments in fantasy literature, or you get a new writer to continue it.
Robert Jordan’s widow chose the latter, entrusting the continuation to a little-heard writer named Brandon Sanderson. And the poor guy is now thrust into the shoulders of the 800-pound gorilla – how do you finish a story that even the original writer doesn’t want to finish? Luckily, Jordan left behind some notes on his thoughts about how the story should end, a compilation named “A Memory of Light”, and from this resource, Mister Sanderson began the craft the beginning of the end… at long last. The fresh approach has finally arrived, albeit under inopportune circumstances.
Because of the sheer size of the reference material, the last book was split into three, with the first one being named The Gathering Storm, the second one tentatively named Towers of Midnight, and the last one tentatively named A Memory of Light – all scheduled to be released one year after the other. Like the old times.
(Kinda funny that most disgruntled fans have said that the world would end sooner than the Wheel of Time saga… since the last book is slated for a 2011 release, it would beat the doomsayers’ predictions. That is, if you believe the world would end on 2012…)
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So ultimately, Tarmon Gaidon, the final battle, will commence and end in three books. Three last books that I’ll be reading with the same excitement that I had when I read the first three books in the series, almost thirteen years ago. My experience with The Wheel of Time will (appropriately) come full circle. ..
So, as I hold The Gathering Storm in my hand, I am filled with excitement and anxiety. The longest story I have ever read will finally come to an end two years from now. The satisfaction and contentment I had after I finished Stephen King’s last Dark Tower book, or the anti-climax I experienced when I finished the last book of the Sword of Truth series, will be brought to bear on the last three books of Robert Jordan’s magnum opus…
The storm is finally gathering, and I can’t wait till it’s finally done…
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