On May 11, 2004, at 4:15 PM, Gaertk at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 5/11/2004 11:43:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time, > matthew at infodancer.org writes: > >> It is widely speculated that one of the reasons Jordan's series >> degenerated so rapidly was because the online fan base engaged in >> such extensive (one might even say "rabid") analysis of the >> books. The author noticed this and seemed to become annoyed that >> we were unravelling a substantial fraction of his mysteries >> before the story did, and so he started obfuscating them even >> more (some would argue that he even changed his plans to avoid >> giving the "accepted wisdom on the net" answer to some). >> >> This resulted in a lot of wasted effort, not to mention a lot of >> bad writing that could have been avoided. > > It does have a good side though: the cuendillar idiocy in book ten > cured me of wanting to find out What Happens Next (and has saved me > about $40 so far). I what cured me was the blatant plot manipulation at the end of Path of Daggers: who in their right mind goes falconing in a war zone? I rented the audio books from the library from then on.