[Chernabog]

I was saddened to hear about Jordan's death, especially since he was working on the last (12th and promised final... he said even if it were 1500 pages long it would be the last) book of the Wheel of Time series. He DID leave notes on the chapters (and it is partially written), however, so whoever picks up the reigns and "ghost writes" the last book will have it end the way Jordan wanted it to. According to Wikipedia, the decisions on making that happen are with Jordan's wife and head of his publishing company.

As far as the Wheel of Time itself goes - sort of a love/hate thing there with me (and many MANY other readers). Look at some of the Amazon reviews of the first 5ish books of the Wheel of Time, versus reviews of the last 6ish. People got angrier and angrier as time went on.

The world Jordan created was wonderful, on par with Frank Herbert's Dune, IMHO. However, he got greedy. He got bogged down in so many side-stories that there was one book that the MAIN CHARACTER didn't appear until page 600 or something. He starting describing the grass and the trees to such extent that his readers just went... "Get ON with it already!!!"

My wish is that he had written more about the main quest, making tighter novels in the end with better storytelling. He did wonderfully in the first 5 books, where the plot advanced and people grew. But the last books were not like that. For instance, when one character started a rebellious march towards a particular city, and 3 books and thousands of pages later she hadn't even GOTTEN there yet... the book is too bloated.

Robert Jordan got me started on reading George R. R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series, another epic fantasy with a huge backstory and copious amounts of characters, but each chapter has a point. Each chapter advances SOMETHING. Robert Jordan went from well-edited and fast-paced, like Martin, to slow and bloated. Jordan publicly recognized that he made a mistake in doing so, however. By telling the story in 12 books instead of 7-8, he sold that many more books, at the expense of good storytelling.

Personally, I stopped partway through book 9. I just couldn't take it anymore (having been bored to tears with major sections of books 6-8, all those side-stories that should have been in different volumes after the main story was completed). I loved the characters but I vowed not to even go back until the whole thing was done.

With each book, the die-hard fans kept saying "oh, it is just setting up the final battle, the final book, the ending to this long and wonderful journey", just to justify slogging through. Unfortunately, the journey is more important than the destination. We KNOW that Rand is going to win already, we've known it since Eye of the World. It just didn't have to be so slow going getting there, because the world he created was truly awe-inspiring.

RIP Robert Jordan.