The Wheel of Time (book wankery OK, see OP for rules)

I do think that they could have done a better job of explaining (for example) who the Seanchan actually are, though, they just sort of turn up and start enslaving people. Which tbf is kind of their whole deal, but I think S2 throws you in the deep end a bit. Ditto with the Forsaken.

Good luck with all the books. The first 3 are pretty good iirc. Then it gets to be a bit of a slog.

I think I made it to about book 10 before the author died. By the time they finally finished the series with a new writer I'd entirely forgotten what was going on and I've never managed to go back to it.

If I could remember which book I'd gotten to I should probably read a recap and then finish off the last 2-3 books, so I feel like I haven't wasted all that sunk time.

I got up to about book 8 before getting horribly bored. So I read summaries of the next two or three, and picked it up again when Sanderson took over. No regrets whatsoever.

I suffered through (most of) the books as a mate kept banging on about them and I borrowed his. They are very poorly written in places, and a hell of a boring slog in others...and often both at the same time.

But many people love them.

Which is pretty central as far as I remember. Watching the series - which I'm enjoying - reminds me how much I've forgotten from the books.

Ha, that I'd forgotten. Yeah, I wouldn't call the show hugely nuanced but it does feel like a major step up.

I thought the books were decent. It'd have made a decent series of about 5 books. But it was just dragged out and repeated over and over.

I dunno how they'd read now, but at the time it seemed pretty progressive in terms of having lots off powerful female characters. I read them as feisty father than shrewish. But again it lost its appeal in the repetition.

Why would you not have? They were deeply embedded in everything, and in many cases still are. It's only really in the last couple of decades that pop culture has started to widely shake up those traditional gender roles.
And even then.. how long did it take to get a Black Widow movie?

Sci-Fi has often been more ahead in such things, but Fantasy is often very closely tied to the traditional Knights rescuing Princesses trope.

I'm struggling to think of any classic Fantasy books that didn't largely fall into those traditional gender roles. LotR basically had no female characters (though I guess you could say Eowen was ahead of her time.. though also paired off quick). Pretty sure Wheel of Time was lauded for being tolkien with strong female characters at the time.

All the Eddings books have blurred into one for me. I remember loving them as a teen on first read, and then finding them much weaker than I remembered only about 5 years later. But wasn't there a princess leading an army at least?

Ok, well that last episode fucking ruled. I hope they get to make more!

Season 2 is a definite step up in quality, still got a couple of episodes to go.

I nearly bailed on this after the slow first couple of episodes of S2, mopey powerless main characters split up and who are all the people and names I can't remember from S1 it didn't sink in. Glad I stuck with it this season has been excellent once it hit it's stride.

No knowledge of the books but there's some impressive world building going on here, are Amazon really going to keep this going for the long haul of seasons it deserves?

Yeah it was pretty funny seeing Nynaeve there. Perrin a bit too; it felt like his main purpose this season was to tag along to introduce the Aiel, and get in a bit of a strop for the final battle.

I dunno, maybe I'm being too generous. It's still probably a B, 7-8/10 show. I guess there's precious few high fantasy things on TV these days, so maybe I'm just lapping up whatever I can get.

I also enjoyed Lan strategically creating what must have been an invisible chokepoint to protect Moiraine on a wide open beach with no cover.

At least I assume that's what he must have done, the dozen or so swordsmen seemed pretty intent on zerg rushing him while ignoring everything else.

Just fucking brilliant! Heroes of the horn unite!

This is properly in its stride now.