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Monday, February 6, 2006

Will this book ever end?

I'm in a bit of an unusual pickle with my current reading material.

The Wheel of Time is an excellent fantasy series by Robert Jordan. In fact it's the only fantasy series I've ever liked enough to endorse. Keep in mind it's hard to recommend the series to someone new because each book is ~1000 pages, give or take a few hundred, and there are eleven entries so far.

Knife of Dreams, the latest installment, is a vast improvement from the tenth book. That one drrrragggged on, and was just a great waste of time. There was no plot or character development; you really could skip that mammoth killer of trees and not miss a thing in the series.

Now  the tempo is greatly increased, the end of the tale is in sight, the fate of the characters is soon to be revealed . . and I can't make any headway.

Seriously, I've read what, ten books in the last few weeks? Yet its taken more than a week to chug through 300 pages of Knife of Dreams.

Aside from the fact that the main character has yet to appear in the book 300 pages in I have no qualms with the story or the writing. Scratch that: after a two year hiatus it's too hard to remember which of the dozens of characters belongs where, much less who is secretly a two-faced agent for whoever.

A nice little 'previously in Wheel of Time' would have been a nice preface . .

I'm enjoying it, but I just can't make headway. With no intention of being a wiseass, I imagine this must be what it's like for a learning disabled reader. You love the material, you want to finish . . . but something holds you back.

Ugh.

Here's hoping I snap out of it.

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