Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
I have noticed a number of series where the quality of the books went downhill. Some authors, like Piers Anthony, use to ride a series until it stopped selling. I think that other authors get caught up expanding a series and can't figure out how to end it. I call this Robert Jordan syndrome ...
|
Clearly you and I are very different readers.
I have read a lot of Piers Anthony, and I never saw him like that. Perhaps it might seem that way if you did not pay attention to him long enough.
I could not get enough of Robert Jordan, and don't see any syndrome at all. I think that is about expectations more than the reality of what he was writing, which was marvelously complex to me, and so needed to be fleshed out a lot. He did know how to end it, and it was written before he died. What he struggled with, was shortening what he wanted to say, and I believe that was only so, because he was trying to please as many as he could. He had a wide variety of fans, with different agendas. He was trying to be true to the overall story, while not alienating some of his fans ... a hard task by any measure.
One man's rubbish is another man's treasure.