wheel of time
the robert jordan books are pretty unique in my experience. i've picked up books and said, this is crap. and i put them down without finishing them. the wheel of time books are different. i skimmed many chapters. somebody did something uninteresting. characters did something predictable. blah blah blah. okay, on to something new and sufficiently less tedious. the man needed an editor. past tense. he's dead now. his wife found a much better writer, brandon sanderson, to finish the trilogy. ie to write books 12, 13, and 14. heh. did i say trilogy? anywho, book 12 was much better. much of what would have been an entire chapter is now a single sentence. thank the light. so one has to wonder why people read the series? it's not good prose. it's not good plot. it's an interesting imaginary world. one can disappear into it for hours. so if that's your thing, these are the books for you. otherwise, you should use the trick i suggested to the beautiful and talented alisa. skip the first book. read the recap at the beginning of the second book. stop as soon as it gets tedious. repeat for the third through 11th books. ie the robert jordan books. i've only read the first brandon sanderson book. but he's just what the series needed. the wheel of time turns faster now. yay.