the geek is not strong in this one
Against my better judgment, I went and borrowed a copy of The Knives of Your Mom or whatever the latest book is, in the never-ending, horribly endless Wheel of Time series, beloved and or hated by geeks the world over.
The whole series started out really good, got better, briefly became great, and then slid downhill with a rapidity that was breathtaking. The series is up to book a hundred and forty three, and I find I care less and less as each one comes out, and I did not understand a good three damn quarters of what the fuck was going on in the last two or three both because I did not exactly retain the increasingly intricate intricacies of the plot and I resolved that I wasn’t reading this stupid series any more, because I don’t care about stupid Rand and woolheads and Light this and Darkfriend that and yank on this, Nynaeve, or I’ll wrap your stupid braid around your stupid throat.
Sorry.
But I stumbled over a copy of the newest in a book store, and the really, really horrible cover art, in which the artist consistently produces people who look kind of like insanely disproportional retarded hunchback midget chimps, made me nostalgic, and I ordered it from interlibrary loan and it came, and I was excited to get it, and then I opened the brick and started to read it and realized I had no idea who any one was or why I cared about them or who I was, and hey! this isn’t backgammon! I tried to read a synopsis of the series so far that I found online, but I still had no idea what was going on. And it is a heavy, heavy book.
With a sinking feeling, I realize that if I want to read this stupid thing, I’m probably going to have to devote some study time beforehand. Study time! Like it is fucking Ulysses. That is clearly just wrong and bad. But I still found myself bookmarking the websites that have got chapter by chapter recountings of each of the books in the series, for slow moments at work when I just go ahead and lose my goddamn mind.
The whole series started out really good, got better, briefly became great, and then slid downhill with a rapidity that was breathtaking. The series is up to book a hundred and forty three, and I find I care less and less as each one comes out, and I did not understand a good three damn quarters of what the fuck was going on in the last two or three both because I did not exactly retain the increasingly intricate intricacies of the plot and I resolved that I wasn’t reading this stupid series any more, because I don’t care about stupid Rand and woolheads and Light this and Darkfriend that and yank on this, Nynaeve, or I’ll wrap your stupid braid around your stupid throat.
Sorry.
But I stumbled over a copy of the newest in a book store, and the really, really horrible cover art, in which the artist consistently produces people who look kind of like insanely disproportional retarded hunchback midget chimps, made me nostalgic, and I ordered it from interlibrary loan and it came, and I was excited to get it, and then I opened the brick and started to read it and realized I had no idea who any one was or why I cared about them or who I was, and hey! this isn’t backgammon! I tried to read a synopsis of the series so far that I found online, but I still had no idea what was going on. And it is a heavy, heavy book.
With a sinking feeling, I realize that if I want to read this stupid thing, I’m probably going to have to devote some study time beforehand. Study time! Like it is fucking Ulysses. That is clearly just wrong and bad. But I still found myself bookmarking the websites that have got chapter by chapter recountings of each of the books in the series, for slow moments at work when I just go ahead and lose my goddamn mind.
3 Comments:
I got them from audible as audiobooks, and found it much easier to keep the story straight. Granted, the last book is approximately 30 hours of narration, so you have to either have a boring job, or take really long baths to get through it in less time than it would take you to read it.)
On the plus side, Kate Reading and Michael Kramer do a really excellent job narrating - it's easy to tell the characters apart, and because they narrated all of the books, they sound really comfortable with the characters.
Two things:
(1) Every time I come here to see if you've updated (*ahem*), I read "The Knives of Your Mom" and I laugh and laugh and laugh. Since that was posted on January 23, and it's now, what, February 21? That's almost a month's worth of laughing. That's also very nice.
(2) Update. Like, now.
Oh! Right! Like, a blog thing. That I have. Which I write in. Okay then!
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