Mat's first chapter was probably the worst of the book. Those of us males married could relate somewhat to him trying to prove to his friends he's still 'one of the guys', but it was over the top. However I think that improved as it went on - certainly I laughed out loud about at the whole 'you don't have a great aunt!' bit.
I agree with you here, the first part with Mat was over the top. It was too dialogue heavy and even Mat has never carried on like that about women before. I would say the same thing about his background stories from the chapter Legends. Somehow, I found that part funny and out of place in WOT at the same time.
The other one I didn't like, although it was a continued theme from earlier books, but seemed more extreme in this one, is 'Egwene is so much smarter then everyone else .... because everyone else turns out to be acting like 13 year old girls'. And the convenient 'one on each side will fall/captured/be manifestly incapable'. One almost comic tyrant Amyrlin captured - tick, one keeper black - tick, one mistress of novices left clearly incompetent - tick, Sitters incapable of solving anything without her advice - tick. Some realism were both sides had equally good holders of key positions (Amyrlin, Keeper, Mistress of Novices) and one decided to stand down for the good of the tower, would have made the whole Tower storyline not seem so deus ex machina.
I agree with you about the resolution of the tower storyline. I found something bothersome about it, although I can't say what exactly it was. The Seanchan carrying off Elaida seemed too convenient. It let the Hall in the Tower off the hook. One thing that did bother me about this was that BS did not seem to pay much attention to some of the minor details that RJ always did. Time had been taken in several books to talk about the oddities in the new Sitters chosen in the Halls. When Egwene first got the list of BA, I thought it was inferred that the new Sitters were BA. However, later it was clear not all the new Sitters were, and no mention was ever made to the resolution of Siuan's puzzle over the Sitters.
Probably the only character - after Mat's first rant and chapter - that really felt out of kilter was Aviendha. However this one I think Sanderson can be cut some slack. Unlike the other POV's with lots of screen time, there wasn't a lot of Avi POV's in the past to base it upon.
What's probably most encouraging though, is as I read through the book, it seemed to feel more 'WOT'. The first handful of chapters felt 'wooden', but the flow improved. Which bodes well for ToM and AMoL.
I thought just the opposite about the Aviendha chapters. I think because there was less experience with chapters from her POV, I wasn't bothered by the differences. I found her chapters to be quite enjoyable. I do agree that BS seemed to improve as the book went on at finding the correct balance between dialogue and discription to make it feel more WOTish.
General complaints about tGS
- 04/11/2009 05:24:01 AM
1323 Views
Don't entirely disagree, but I'm not sure how much of it is Sanderson and how much circumstances.
- 04/11/2009 06:35:49 AM
635 Views
Agree in part of the POV's and also Avi.
- 04/11/2009 08:35:40 AM
642 Views
Re: Agree in part of the POV's and also Avi.
- 04/11/2009 03:38:54 PM
552 Views
I didn't expect it this soon
- 04/11/2009 09:34:14 AM
655 Views
I did have a problem with the POV shifts toward the end, so I just read out of order.
- 05/11/2009 04:15:45 PM
476 Views