SPOILERS - Wheel of Time - SPOILERS

[alanp]

Okay, there are spoilers in this for the very end of the Wheel of Time book series.

Stop reading now if you haven't finished reading all fourteen books.

Shoo.

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One of the biggest problems I have with the finale is... Rand decides that the best option is to destroy the Father of Lies, the Dark One, the source of all evil in WoT-verse.

He goes to do so, and the Father of Lies tells him, if he does, humanity will destroy itself through it's own evil! Honest! Really! Would this face lie to you?

And so, Rand is like, well, you ARE known as the Father of Lies, and all you've done is cause death and destruction and basically be a boil on the arse of the universe, but I'm totally going to believe you! You can live!

Gaaaaah! 

Maybe WoT-humanity would have fucked up. Maybe they would have ushered in a new golden age. We'll never know, because they've been condemned to the same fucking shit that has already happened.

[somnif]

*Angrily-tugs-on-braid*

[mjg]

*Angrily-tugs-on-braid*

Hahahahahaha!

[jkokura]

It's so interesting how different people see the situation boiled down differently.

Jacob

[pickdropper]

Well, I finally finished the series, so I was able to read this thread.  It was much shorter than I expected. 

[mjg]

... It was much shorter than I expected. 

This thread, or the book series? 

[pickdropper]

... It was much shorter than I expected. 

This thread, or the book series? 

Definitely the thread.  The book series was looooong.

I thought the Brandon Sanderson books read much faster.  In some ways, I think he's the better writer.

[mjg]

I certainly preferred the pacing of the Sanderson books. 

I seem to remember one of the middle books was 700 pages of a character deciding whether to go into a town to buy some grain.  That's my memory of it, anyway.

[alanp]

I still maintain that the last book had a shitty ending.

[somnif]

I still maintain that the last book had a shitty ending.

I've never been a fan of how Sanderson ends any of his series. He's fantastic at setting all the plates spinning, but the end is always a pile of shattered pottery and awkward flailing about. Rapid fire POV shifts, muddied and muddled set direction, killing off characters left and right seemingly just because he can, with the time spent with each character being a completely random choice at times....

I'm hoping he can tighten things up a bit before he gets to the end of the Stormlight series, but I'm not expecting it really.

That said the last little coda was apparently written by Jordan before his death, so the odd tone shift (I'm leaving three unwed mothers to raise my kids alone, time to cheerfully light my pipe and whistle off over the horizon! do de do) is a little understandable.

[pickdropper]

I still maintain that the last book had a shitty ending.

Perhaps it could've been executed better, but the overall notion that you cannot create an idealistic world while destroying freedom of choice is consistent with a lot of philosophies that have been kicked around through the ages.