Ⓐaron
Factiō Rēpūblicāna dēlenda est.
- AKA
- The Man, V
One thing I have to keep in mind when reading WoT is that the gender politics in that series are basically, in a lot of important ways, an inversion of gender politics in our world. Due to the taint on saidin, women have basically been stronger than men for three thousand years. This means that while our society is a patriarchy, Randland's are a matriarchy. It is very obvious that Jordan does not intend this in the slightest to be an accurate representation of gender politics in our world, and as a result this makes it way easier for me to take the gender politics in Randland with a rather large grain of salt. He isn't commenting on our own world directly - he's saying that, if the imbalance between genders had been cemented the opposite way, we probably would have just as many problems of the opposite nature, because the gender supremacists of either stripe are Not So Different. Given the fact that a rather large theme of the series is the importance of balance (to an almost Taoist extent) I doubt he's hostile to the goals of mainstream feminism (i.e. insofar as the movement aims for equality for the genders) - he does, however, seem to be saying that if the more militant radical feminists had their way, things would be bad in different ways.
One could question why Jordan felt it necessary to build his setting in such a way, but I've always considered it at least partially a Take That at how overwhelmingly male-dominated epic fantasies had been before Jordan wrote his series. A number of better-read commentators than I have commented on how sparsely populated the female casts were in fantasy series before Jordan came along. A number of aspects of his setting, the gender politics among them, seem to question what society would be like if certain things we take for granted were radically different. The gender dynamics are obviously one of these.
None of this counteracts the fact, of course, that a number of his major female characters have rather unflattering flaws, and while a number of them are surely intentional, it is quite likely that not all of them are. But, that said, a number of his major male characters have major unflattering flaws too. Reading it again ten years older I'm amazed by how whiny Mat was early in the series. He gets better later, of course. At least at this point, I find far more of the characters of both genders likeable than unlikeable, and this even extends to some of the villains. (Among the Forsaken, Lanfear, Asmodean, and Ishamael are given pretty nuanced characterisations, and with some of the secondary antagonists like Pedron Niall and Elaida it's almost pitiable how much they get bounced around by greater evils).
Anyway, like I said, the characters are almost secondary to the setting at this point. A lot of Jordan's best passages come when he takes a macro view of the history of his setting and examines how things got to where they are. The pair of chapters detailing the history of the Aiel in the fourth book are just masterful. Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is a real risk with the way this setting is built but then one of the characters will do something completely awesome and unexpected like
in the sixth book, or
in the ninth. I would say that to a rather large extent how much you can tolerate the series is closely linked to how important you feel the macro vs. micro view is. If you can deal with (and keep track of) a lot of sketchily delineated characters but a very clearly delineated setting, you may enjoy it; if you need all the characters to be well-rounded and/or don't care about how thoroughly the setting is developed, this might not be the series for you.
Sanderson is definitely a substantially better writer of women. Not without his flaws, either, but he doesn't use anywhere near as many of the annoying gender contrast tropes for starters.
I probably will enjoy the Liveship books (and hopefully the Tawny Man books as well) if I ever sit down and make time to read them. I actually got both series in their entirety around the same time as finishing the first Farseer book, and still haven't gotten around to reading them - I was so exhausted from the end of Assassin's Quest that I couldn't get around to starting more books in the same setting, even if they would be radically different in tone and content. I think I still have them in my room somewhere, but I have a gigantic pile of unread books so. I suspect I would also need to reread the Farseer to get the most out of both of those trilogies and I'm so depressed right now that I'm not sure that's the best idea.
One could question why Jordan felt it necessary to build his setting in such a way, but I've always considered it at least partially a Take That at how overwhelmingly male-dominated epic fantasies had been before Jordan wrote his series. A number of better-read commentators than I have commented on how sparsely populated the female casts were in fantasy series before Jordan came along. A number of aspects of his setting, the gender politics among them, seem to question what society would be like if certain things we take for granted were radically different. The gender dynamics are obviously one of these.
None of this counteracts the fact, of course, that a number of his major female characters have rather unflattering flaws, and while a number of them are surely intentional, it is quite likely that not all of them are. But, that said, a number of his major male characters have major unflattering flaws too. Reading it again ten years older I'm amazed by how whiny Mat was early in the series. He gets better later, of course. At least at this point, I find far more of the characters of both genders likeable than unlikeable, and this even extends to some of the villains. (Among the Forsaken, Lanfear, Asmodean, and Ishamael are given pretty nuanced characterisations, and with some of the secondary antagonists like Pedron Niall and Elaida it's almost pitiable how much they get bounced around by greater evils).
Anyway, like I said, the characters are almost secondary to the setting at this point. A lot of Jordan's best passages come when he takes a macro view of the history of his setting and examines how things got to where they are. The pair of chapters detailing the history of the Aiel in the fourth book are just masterful. Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is a real risk with the way this setting is built but then one of the characters will do something completely awesome and unexpected like
Healing gentling and stilling
cleansing the taint on saidin
Sanderson is definitely a substantially better writer of women. Not without his flaws, either, but he doesn't use anywhere near as many of the annoying gender contrast tropes for starters.
I probably will enjoy the Liveship books (and hopefully the Tawny Man books as well) if I ever sit down and make time to read them. I actually got both series in their entirety around the same time as finishing the first Farseer book, and still haven't gotten around to reading them - I was so exhausted from the end of Assassin's Quest that I couldn't get around to starting more books in the same setting, even if they would be radically different in tone and content. I think I still have them in my room somewhere, but I have a gigantic pile of unread books so. I suspect I would also need to reread the Farseer to get the most out of both of those trilogies and I'm so depressed right now that I'm not sure that's the best idea.
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