The Gathering Storm

So, here it is, weighing down and bulking up my rucksack, the latest monstrous installment of the monstrous fantasy cycle 'The Wheel of Time'. 'Eagerly awaited' does not even begin to describe it. This is book 12 and I've read all the others 3 times. This was supposed to be the last, but it's not just as simple as all that...

As literary tales go, this one is quite tragic. The author, Robert Jordan, began the books in the late 80s. He had wanted to write 12 about the journey towards the apocalypse in his fantasy world, undoubtedly the biggest and most painstakingly created I've ever come across. He finished 11, started 12 and died of a blood disease. Can you imagine? You would take it personally, wouldn't you? Not after 2, or 6, but 11. Just 1 to go. When I found out he was dead...

So when he knew he was dying, he told his wife the way he wanted it to go, wrote the final scene and then left it to another author to finish from his notes. But his notes, fully written up, were 3 books, not 1. So we have 3 final books waiting for us. This one, book 12, is the first of those.

So what's it like? By now, the characters and the cultures are so well-developed that the new author just has to pick up where Jordan left off. But the interesting thing is this - I had thought that Jordan didn't have much of a style: too many clichès, facile descriptions and excessive use of italics, to name but a few. Not personal, easily imitable. And yet this new writing is palpably inferior. On opening the book at random we have people 'cradled by blankets' and a character 'thick of neck and determined of attitude'. These are not happy sentences and Jordan would never have written them. The net result is that one feels a very definite nostalgia for a writer whose prose one never found particularly satisfying, which is a first in my reading experience.

With the best will in the world, and relatively simple as these characters are, it is clear now that they are 100% Jordan's and do not travel well. It is the confirmation of my feeling from the beginning with these books - that Jordan's love for his world animated the lifeless prose like a fish moving in stagnant water. It seems that passion, vision and earnestness in writing can occasionally substitute style; and these three things are so personal as to be inimitable, even when their expression is imperfect. I could mention Harry Potter here, another book where I had to willfully ignore the writing itself while acknowledging and enjoying the (occasional) genius of the characters and plot.

But am I going to stop reading it now? Absolutely not. After 11, would you?