Massive Nerd

I don't think I've ever been happier to have a book in my hands than The Gathering Storm. Especially considering it was almost never written.

For those who don't know, Robert Jordan, the author of the previous 11 Wheel of Time books, passed away in September of 2007. Jordan's wife and long-time editor, Harriet, chose Brandon Sanderson to finish the story, giving him all of Jordan's notes and unpublished chapters to the proposed final book, A Memory of Light.

Realizing that Jordan still had too much story to tell, Sanderson and Tor Books decided to split A Memory of Light into three books, The Gathering Storm being the first.

Bottom Line: Egwene al'Vere saved The Wheel of Time.

Writing the series, Jordan became a victim of his own creativity. Around the 4th volume, The Shadow Rising, Jordan started expanding the cast to critical mass. With all these characters running around, some got lost and some just ate up chapters. After 3 books of huge plot developments, book 7, A Crown of Swords started a small decline for the series. Now, with all these characters, they all have to DO something, GO somewhere.

Jordan spent so much time explaining what each individual character was doing that the main plot slowed down to a crawl. The focal point of the fan's anger: the Aes Sedai.

Egwene, Nynaeve, Elayne, Suian, Leane, Elaida, Alviarin, Cadsuane and so many others just brought the plot to a crawl. Nobody cared about the women plotting how to control (and hopefully save) the world. They cared even less about the girls running around like idiots trying to clean up their own messes.

The fan favorite characters Mat, Perrin, Thom and The Forsaken all shined in their too brief and infrequent segments, which made it even more maddening.

Book 10, Crossroads of Twilight started bringing the story back in line and Book 11, Knife of Dreams brought the pace up to a comfortable level.

So, with a large portion of The Gathering Storm focusing on Egwene and the other Aes Sedai, it looked like we were in trouble. Miraculously, Sanderson made this part of the story very engaging and entertaining, by the halfway point, I was actually upset when the focus went back to one of the other characters!

So, yes, Egwene al'Vere saved The Wheel of Time.

The rest of the book is Sanderson setting up Jordan's chess board. All the pieces are in place for the endgame to begin. The Aes Sedai have found direction, Rand has gotten his head out of his ass, and long-dangling plot threads are being picked back up.

For those who have avoided the series for the past 20 years, now is the time to start reading. There are only 2 books left, to be released later this year and next. Robert Jordan's writing has influenced every fantasy author of this generation, it would be a shame to miss out on it.

There is very little I can say about this book without giving anything away, so this will be a short one.

The Lost Symbol is not a bad book.
The Lost Symbol is not a bad Dan Brown book.
The Lost Symbol is a bad Robert Langdon book.

Brown has a great tradition of taking 100% factual evidence and creating amazing fictional stories out of it. The Lost Symbol has everything you want from a Brown book: shadowy conspiracies, secret organizations, bizarre plot twists and stunning revelations.

However, we've come to expect more from Brown's Langdon novels. I, personally, love trying to solve the puzzles along with Langdon and reveling in his knowledge of obscure references. However, The Lost Symbol has very little of this. Langdon only solves about 2 or 3 riddles across the story, and even then, he has his hand held through it.

Honestly, you can't even call this a Langdon novel, since most of the story is told from the point of view of other characters. Sure, it's nice to see different points of view on the story, adding depth to the mystery. However, when half of your book doesn't involve the main character, that's a problem.

Lastly, it almost feels as if Brown is overly preachy as the book winds down after the climax. The constant repetition of the potential of the human race just gets annoying, especially after the disappointing story.

Again, it's not a BAD book, I was just expecting much more.

I'm a patient person. I will always gladly wait for a quality product. Diablo III going to take an extra year? No problem. It's going to be worth the wait.

I love my books. As an avid reader, I'm accustomed to waiting for the latest installment of a favorite series. You can't rush creativity.

For a perfect example, look at The Dark Tower series. Stephen King wrote The Gunslinger when he was 19 years old. Fifteen years later, the FOURTH book, Wizard and Glass was published. Then there was that little jogging incident, and King decided to finish the saga before he died for real. He knocked out the last three books in a comparatively short amount of time, and the quality seen previously just wasn't there. I'm glad I got to see out heroes reach the end of their journey, but I didn't really enjoy it much after a point.

Recently, I started reading George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. I absolutely LOVED the first two books. I read the first three books, and all was good. I LOVED them. Political intrigue, deception, betrayal, all kinds of good stuff. The fourth book, however... I really did not enjoy the third book. It focused on characters that I really didn't care about, plot lines that really didn't lead ANYWHERE. I finished it off, wondering what the heck happened, where did all my favorite characters go? I was having flashbacks to Perrin disappearing from The Wheel of Time for several books.

Then, I got to the end. To quote Martin himself, "Tyrion, Jon, Dany... and all the rest of the characters you love or love to hate will be along next year. (I devoutly hope)" Basically, he wrote the whole story, realized it was too bloody long and decided to split it in half.

You know what? No problem. I can accept that.

This brings me to a post on Neil Gaiman's blog that I happened across a while back. At the time, I totally agreed with it. Martin will get the fifth book out when it's ready.

After finishing A Feast for Crows, my outlook changed dramatically. Back in May, when I read Gaiman's post, I had no idea the status of Martin's next book. After catching up, I did. The fifth book is basically already written. There is no conceivable reason it should be taking 4 1/2 years to get it out. Yeah, that's right. That quote about getting the next book out in a year was written in June 2004.

If Martin had merely said "The book was too long, I decided to split it up," I would have been happy. Christopher Paolini did that recently with his Inheritance books, and I was okay with it. But, no, Martin had to go and tell everyone that the next book would be done in a year, that the story was already written. Then, over four years later, here we are with nothing.