Re: Uhm, NOTHING in that statement precludes an epilogue.
DomA Send a noteboard - 05/02/2012 04:26:23 PM
It just means that we aren't going to have all our questions answered. It's quite likely he'll resolve some little plot lines. After all, things DO get resolved in real life...just not everything!
Indeed. There was more from Jordan on the issue after that Q&A, because he got a lot of the more excitable people worried. He said (I paraphrase) he planned to bring all the main storylines and most of the secondary ones to an ending, but that he has included some points/issues to deliberately leave them unresolved. He hated those artificial endings were everything is neatly tied up and no issues remain ongoing.
First, the "biggest issue" we know about yet, that won't get a resolution in the series, is the civil war in Seanchan. After KOD, Jordan has decided he would actually return to that in a trilogy starting 5 to 10 years after the LB - but it sounds very likely what we were originally to get in the epilogue of AMOL were hints (or more) that Mat and Tuon would eventually set for Seanchan and fight to reclaim the Empire.
Already we can guess that the issue of the Shaido Aiel with Therava/Galina could very well be an example of Jordan's minor "open issues". That last Galina POV was really written as if this was her epilogue, with her final comeuppance and all, and Perrin made the Shaido irrelevant to the LB (or so it appears, anyway). It's not an unsatisfactory ending, it's a proper open resolution, one for which the reader is left to imagine how things will go for Galina from now on. I guess we might have to infer the eventual fate of the Shaido from what happens to the other Aiel at the end.
Brandon has also indirectly hinted that Elaida too might have gotten her "series'exit" with her kidnapping by the Seanchan. Again, she got a proper build-up and then a resolution and comeuppance. Actually, he had answered obliquely, hinting that more about Elaida fate could be known if the Seanchan trilogy gets written, which suggests but doesn't confirm we might not get anything specifically about Elaida in AMOL (it could just be Brandon thought admitting at this point there's more to come for Elaida would reveal too much about upcoming Seanchan scenes or developments).
TGS and TOM already brought to conclusions a great deal of the main/secondary issues.
For the most part, Jordan seems to have meant that some storylines would get an open resolution likely in the vein of what he gave the Shaido, and not a "neat and final" resolution. It doesn't sound like Jordan ever planned for us to put down the last book and go "eh, wait...whatever happened to X, and Y?". Their will be exit scenes, even if some offer an open resolution.
And yeah, he had planned for an epilogue, as he was writing AMOL he's made himself a long list of points he intended to include or leave out, and many points on that list have to take place after the "famous" last scene (which he has written in full early on. Jordan tended to start with the ending and beginning of each storyline, then put in some shape what he considered the book's important points - sometimes that meant he would draft important dialogue, or stage important scenes in outline form, and eventually he wrote all the in-betweens. That fits with what we can guess or know Jordan has written himself: most of the prologue, the ending, and several key scenes like Rand's epiphany, Moiraine's rescue, the forging of the hammer too, it seems to me, as well as many "first scenes" such as Rand's in the prologue, Egwene's first chapter at least in part, Perrin's scene in the prologue, Faile's, and - at least I guess - Mat's first scene in Caemlyn that personally I believe was to be his original re introduction in the story, the "prequel scenes" I think were invented by Brandon to get a few Mat scenes in TGS.).
What does that mean?
29/01/2012 09:09:53 AM
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Re: What does that mean?
29/01/2012 09:16:09 AM
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Look, Mr. Jordan said THIS:
31/01/2012 01:21:00 PM
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Uhm, NOTHING in that statement precludes an epilogue.
31/01/2012 03:51:37 PM
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Re: Uhm, NOTHING in that statement precludes an epilogue.
05/02/2012 04:26:23 PM
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