17 September 2007

Another great

Is there a writing equivalent of dimming the lights on Broadway in memory of a famous contributor who's passed away?

If so, the literary world should do it again today.

Epic fantasy novelist Robert Jordan has died, leaving the 12th and apparently to be final volume of his Wheel of Time series unfinished. USAToday has the story here.

Word Nerd read the early Jordan books in the series in the late 90s. She was quite a fan of the very early volumes of the story, plowing through the 800-page tomes with vigor. In high school, one of Word Nerd's good pals was also a Jordan fan, leading to intense conversations over lunch about the plot and characters. Word Nerd took one of the Jordan books with her when she traveled to Russia in fall 1997 and remembers distinctly reading it there and being distraught when two characters hooked up and not being able to gossip about this over lunch.

In subsequent years, Word Nerd stopped reading the series as they got long and seemed to be drifting farther and farther from the original plot. Word Nerd lost interest, but the books sold millions of copies and she knows there are saddened fans out there everywhere.

2 comments:

liz said...

I got to book six of the series and my brain couldn't take it anymore. my husband has read 1-10 three times. I think he's insane. I decided I'll pick up the series again when the last book is finished which his wife is undertaking I guess.

It's always a fear with series. what if j.k. rowling had died before HP was done?? the world would've imploded i'm sure.

Bethany K. Warner said...

I think I made it through about book 6 before experiencing similar brain meltdown.

I have to say, anymore, I'm a fan of reading the backlists of authors and making sure all the books in a series are out before I start in to it.