Hitting the Books

New Spring Robert Jordan

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a total waste of time. But why go back and write a prequel before finishing the series? There are readers out there who are gnawing their fingernails, sleeping outside of Borders, waiting breathlessly to see how The Wheel of Time ends (a slight exageration, perhaps, except for those poor fans who don’t have a life.). Finally publishing Knife of Dreams helped ease the pain of the wait, but until that came out in October, I was very annoyed with Robert Jordan for writing this bland little book first.

Anyway, New Spring tells the story of how Moiraine Damodred and Siuan Sanche become Aes Sedai. As Accepted of the White Tower, they hear the Foretelling of the Dragon’s birth, and task themselves with finding and protecting him from the Red Ajah, the Black Ajah, and himself. It also tells how Moiraine meets al’Lan Mandragoran, the uncrowned king of the Malkeri, and bonds him as her Warder.

While this backstory is interesting, I very quickly became bogged down in all those Aes Sedai. As I asked in my previous post, how the heck does Jordan keep all those women separate? And why do I care that 6 of Moiraine’s dresses had embroidery and the rest didn’t?! Jordan again shows that he is a fashion writer at heart.

Also, I believe New Spring started out as a short story for an anthology of fantasy called Legends (I should know–I got it for Christmas a few years ago. Wasn’t really worth the money. I donated it to our library booksale this year.). New Spring feels like a short story streeeetttccchhhhed out into novel-length. Maybe that’s why he includes so many extraneous descriptions.

All that aside, New Spring was an o.k. little read. Nothing that I’d rush out and buy, but if I found it used somewhere, I’d probably add it to my collection. Just because I like to have all the books in a series.

But if Robert Jordan writes another unnecessary prequel before the last book in The Wheel of Time comes out, I’m going to be a very unhappy camper.

for finally starting to tie up all those loose ends you’ve left dangling for the past umpteen novels. I finished Knife of Dreams last night–a nice day’s read. Reminds me more of the first two or three, the ones that hooked me on the Wheel of Time. For one, KoD moves. Gone are the ponderous pages of details that really have little to do with the story. Most of the chapters pull the story together, not spread it further apart. Also, the number of major plot lines is managable. If I remember correctly, there are basically 5–Rand/Min/Cadsuane, Mat/Tuon/Thom, Perrin/Faile, Egwene, and Elayne/Aviendha/Birgette–compared with 10 in Lord of Chaos. Finally, KoD has more of Mat’s story than anyone else’s. Mat’s slowly become my favored character (used to be Perrin, until Faile came into the picture. I would have prefered to leave her with the Shaido, but oh well).

Jordan also didn’t seem to spend as much time dwelling on who wore what clothes and jewelry. Or maybe my eyes just kinda skimmed over those sections. Like they do when he starts introducing new Aes Sedai. Few of those names are pronounceable and after a while they all start to sound the same. I personally wonder how he keeps them all straight. Must be some database. Does he catagorize them by Ajah? By looks? (Hmmm, let’s see how many I have under “slim, short, Cairhenien noblewomen.” Only 27? Okay, then let’s add in a new one…I’ll call her Mxyzlptlk Darnitall. She can be a Green. Yeah, definitely a Green.)

As for the actual storyline, I don’t want to say too much, lest I spoil anyone’s read, but I’m looking forward to Mat and Thom’s upcoming rescue attempt (thanks Greg, for pointing that out back in October–I almost missed Thom’s part in this), Lan’s new quest, and how the heck Egwene gets out of her present situation. Oh yeah, and Tarmon Gai’don, I suppose. I wonder how Jordan’ll pull off the ultimate battle for this age and all ages.

One related comment–the artist who does the covers to these books obviously hasn’t read them. I’m assuming that the picture on KoD is of Perrin and Galina. A very small part of the story. Perrin, of all the men, has a right to the rippling muscles and broad chest. But some of the other covers of Rand just make me hoot. Especially Lord of Chaos. That one looks more like a scuzzy bodice-ripper than a high fantasy adventure. I’m assuming it’s a picture of the battle at Dumai Wells, but it really seems that poor Aes Sedai is mooning over this Rand Schwartzenegger dude. I mean, Rand’s a shepherd for goodness sake, a country boy. Even with the sword training and becoming the Dragon Reborn, I really don’t see him looking like a cover model for Muscle magazine. Oh, and if that’s supposed to be Gaul on the front cover of KoD, he going to be extremely angry–the artist has strapped a sword around his waist. No self-respecting Aiel would ever touch a sword, let alone carry one.

Okay, so here’s the excuse of the week. I volunteered to make a baby quilt. Our church makes memory quilts for every child born to (or adopted into) church families. Members make a quilt square (usually just a 6″ x 6″ square of white cotton), then someone puts them all together to make a quilt. Most of the time these are little baby-sized wall-hanging decorations, about 3 foot by 4 foot.

I said I would make the quilt for our bell choir director. I got a bit carried away. The final product was a 6 foot by 7 foot bell-shaped quilt.

And that’s why I haven’t posted all week.

Next week I’ll either have to post more often, or find other excuses (ah, Procrastination, thy name is Nessili.)

Ever notice how writers have pet phrases that show up all too often? For example, Robert Jordan is partial to “good stout Two Rivers wool.” Well, I’ve found that the romance industry has its pet phrase too.

I recently received my first issue of Romance Writers Report, published by–surprise!–Romance Writers of America.

Back cover has an advertisement for Janice Lynn’s novel Jane Millionaire. In big red letters, it proclaims “Sassy, sexy, & Simply Irrestible!” Inside front cover: Kelley St. John’s first novel, Good Girls Don’t. On its front cover? “A sassy, sexy romance about compromising positions.” Page 41: The cover to Susanna Carr’s Lip Lock. “Sexy, sassy, delicious fun!”

That was just in one magazine. If I went to Borders and randomly pulled romances off the shelves, how many more instances of that phrase do you think I’ll find? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? Perhaps the blurb writers need to acquaint themselves with that marvelous little book called a thesaurus.

And I guess those of us who wouldn’t catagorize our novels as sassy and sexy are plumb out of luck.

…so are the days of November. Well, NaNoWriMo is over. Congrats to all of you who reached your goal. Congrats to all of you who actually got any writing done. I think I managed a whopping 2000 words. I shan’t gripe about all the things that suddenly snowballed onto me (Golden Heart, Punkin, new office, Thanksgiving). Perhaps a petition to move NaNoWriMo to another month? One not so chock full of holiday preparations. Something like August. Nothing happens in August. Except back to school, but that’s a good thing, yes?

But I did get started on another book in preparation for NaNoWriMo, so hopefully I will be a good girl and keep writing on it. Or on the 4 other books I couldn’t do for NNWM because I’d already started them. Or something else totally. Just so long as I keep writing, right? We’re not going anywhere for Christmas, so at least that’s not an issue.

The big excitement here is the coming of Narnia to the big screen. Unfortunately I won’t be going opening night, but I wanted to wait until I could see it with my dad. Dad read all the books to me back 25+ years ago. It’s his fault I’m fascinated with fantasy (he got me started on Lord of the Rings too), and have a thing for dryads. I read through the Official Illustrated Movie Companion last night, and it looks good. Real good. Possibly better than LOTR (but then again, LWW is a much much smaller book–Peter Jackson had to cut things from the books just to get them to fit, though I’m still not happy that he left out the Scouring of the Shire. Still, the movies were superb, so I guess I shouldn’t complain about that either. At least we’ve got something way better than the “where’s there’s a whip, there’s a way” cartoon version.).

And hopefully now I’ll get a chance to finish New Spring and read Knife of Dreams and write up a review on them. Can’t remember the last time I read for reviewing, not research. But then again, I can’t remember most of what I did last week, so that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Diaper brain is hard to recover from.