The Wheel of Time: A Memory of Light SPLIT into 3 books

[Lunan]

http://www.dragonmount.com/News/?p=483

NOT HAPPY!

[raw_bean]

If Jordan hadn't meandered for so long in the middle of the series the last book wouldn't have been left with so much to cover. Even with the incredible pace of important developments in the last book or so, I still was dubious about how everything was going to be tied up in one volume. Well, Sanderson says he's still writing the three volume piece as one novel and he's emphatic that he's not padding it to fill more volumes than it would otherwise, so I'm fairly resigned to this. At least it's getting finished.

EDIT: His blog post linked from the announcement is well worth a read.

[jonodan]

If Jordan hadn't meandered for so long in the middle of the series the last book wouldn't have been left with so much to cover.

I agree... there were 2 or 3 books in the series that I felt could have been greatly condensed (very slow reading...). I seem to remember it felt likes pages were unnecessarily being devoted to describing scenery or what people were wearing... But the other books were all fun and enjoyable.

Although I am disppointed to learn that the final book will be released in 3 increments, I agree with the authors reasoning that its better to do the story justice - and do it right - then simply try to cram it all into one book simply to get it done.

The story is an epic and deserves to have a satisfying conclusion.

I remember asking Robert Jordan at a convention (when the fourth book had been released) how many books until the series would be over and he simply said, "It will be done when its done".

[raw_bean]

I don't even think it was just on the level of overly descriptive prose, but the fact that each book in the middle of the series added several more 'point of view' characters to follow, even though their story lines were tangential to the main characters at best, and multiple extra subplots that really added very little to the main developments of the series, or at least didn't need to be followed in such detail.

[SmileOfTheShadow]

Agreed on all of the above. The first three books really just had this great feeling of journey and devlepment that felt like it was something out of a Joseph Campbell analysis. I think the sales and money that was coming from the publisher then took hold saying "split this up even further!' and it botched the series quite a bit. It's to the point where I barely care about the characters anymore, and what this REALLY had going for it in the first few volumes was that it forced you to be concerned about these people. I hope it finishes strong anyway.