Amen to all that.

The only tendency he shares with Anderson is to repeat himself in different words along the way (how many times can he say the plants have not grown, really?), and to explain a little too much.

Minor quibbles. I'm with you that he's most defintely no Anderson in the way you meant it. (*shudders. Anderson doesn't write novels, he writes bloated outlines. Bad ones, with a lazy approach at plot progression. He can barely advance more than a single element in any given scenes and ends up with ten times too many two pages scenes which he goes and calls 'chapters". This guy should write screenplays, not books.

An irony is that because of Brandon's own style, his descriptive paragraphs are actually longer than Jordan! The long opening survey of Tar Valon, for instance. Jordan would have been more succinct, perhaps much more. The grammar and prose are different, but - at least in the sample of one chapter only - Brandon defintely got the spirit of Jordan's descriptions. It reads like the way RJ uses descriptions, but written by someone else. Which is fine. Big fans of the prose (as I am, so is Cannoli) have undeniably lost something big (and not because Brandon isn't good, but because for it's not Jordan) but it's not something we had expected to get with AMOL after RJ died. Reading pseudo-Robert Jordan would have been terrible, anyway. After a few chapters, when the story intensifies, that should be barely noticeable. It may get more irritating on multiple re reads, once you're less captivated by the story itself - especially full ones preceeded by 11 books by RJ.

So, Brandon creating a new hybrid style by adapting his own to something suitable for WOT without falling into the trap of mimicking RJ? Challenge met, as far as I'm concerned. In the circumstances that there won't be (much) more of Jordan's prose I like because he's dead, and that I want to read the story and that it's well written enough to be enjoyable, and faithful enough of RJ's intents for the novel, we are definitely off to a good start. Brandon delivers, so far. This is actually "better" than I expected - Brandon has altered his style a lot more than I thought he would. Not that I didn't like it, in his books, but I didn't think it'd work in WOT. He seems to think the same, as he's altered pretty much everything I thought wouldn't be at home in a WOT book.



Out of "voice" here and there, but not out of character. Nothing major. Rand pays too much attention suddenly to things he hasn't in some time, that sort of things. The only line that came off really weird to me is Cadsuane using a metaphor about painting when speaking of torture. The association felt odd in her mouth. Too Questioner-like.


But he's doing well enough. I didn't expect Brandon to be able to study everything to the most minute details, for instance study the subtleties in the progression of Rand's voice through the books to the point he can reproduce it to perfection. He would have needed not a few months but a year or more of research and analysis to get there. Between his re read and Harriet's guidance, he's done more than well enough as it is. So Rand is not exactly as distanced as he felt from his entourage in recent books, and speaks of clothes like Elayne or Mat would do. Big deal. The plot points, the core psychology of the character are all there. That was essential, and it's there.




Exactly. My only remaining little worry,really, is how the parts written by Jordan and chapters like this will flow together.



Totally Adam. The irony is that quite a few of those who have made those accusations don't even know their Jordan well enough to know what they're talking about (eg: saying it reads like FF because Cadsuane speaks of paintings and painters and it's barely in the series at all. Jeez. A simple keyword search show there are dozens and more references to art, painting, the new style in favour (oil on canvas)- there is a fledging 'renaissance' ongoing in fine arts in the series - RJ just mostly kept it to background descriptions or minor plot point (like Elaida commissioning a painting) etc. But it's there. Fan fiction, indeed.