Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Gathering Storm

This is book 1 of what would have been Robert Jordan's finish to The Wheel of Time.

Robert Jordan died in 2007 leaving his fantasy epic unfinished. Brandon Sanderson a good author in his own right stepped in to finish Jordan's epic.

I am very impressed at how well Brandon Sanderson pulled off a very tricky job. Working with Jordan's outlines, notes and parcial scenes Sanderson brings things together amazingly well.

It doesn't have Jordan's ultradiscriptiveness but the Character's feel "right" as you read them. And plotlines are actually brought to conclusion rather than simply spinning off more and more pages of stories of terciary characters.

I finished the book last night and it really brought out a sense of lostness and nostalgia. I started reading these books when I was 17 and now I am 37. I remember I would save reading them for vacations where I could the new books strait through without much interuption. These books have been a thread running through my life and now it's almost over. I also feel like shouldn't I have accomplished more in my life than I have. I will never be able to go back to those times and while they had their own problems I miss them.

The world seemed a lot simpler back then.