I am stuck, one might say, reading the Wheel of Time series by R. Jordan. Well, I can’t really be blamed. I’ve been reading it for 6 or so years, and I’m a junior in comparison to many others. After all, this series is over 16 years old — 16 years, and the story is not finished yet! — and after following it (however dreadful that journey has been at times), it seems Jordan manages to reach new lows in every publishment.

Since the books are released at such low intervals, I read other things in between. One of the books I read recently was “Shoogun”, by James Clavell, and upon returning to the Wheel of Time series again with “The Knife of Dreams”, I can’t help but think of how soulless it is. The content is repeating over and over, the same sentence, the same structured descriptions of how things are, how people behave, how they dress. It’s amazing how intensely repetitive it becomes to read about Sevanna wearing garments that “barely conceal her considerable bosom”, or the other hundreds — yes, hundreds — of standard phrases that permeate the thousands and thousands of pages. That any respectable author allows themself to sink to such levels, to copy-paste their way through volume after thick volume in order to tell a tale is unimaginable.

I can only conclude that R. Jordan does not care for the soul of his text, for it has none. He cares only for the overarching story, for the wholeness of the story, and as such it is in fact quite an accomplishment. But the accomplishment is like a flower ripped from its roots, crumpling and withering for each day and page spent.

I realize that I care more for the soul of a tale, than I care about the tale itself. I cannot read a good story unless it has a soul, unless the author wrote it with the passion that I know R. Jordan lost a long time ago, as he now, together with his assistant, sifts through the many plotlines of his life’s work, trying to wrap it all together before his audience abandons him completely. A person that writes with the intent of not leaving a single word unconsidered, a person that does not allow themself to ramble their way through volume after volume of dead words, that is an author. A real author.