I recently started reading the Wheel of Time series. I had a hard time getting into it in the past, but now finally had time to read an am on book five now. While reading book five, it dawned on me that so many things are similar that it's frightening.

To compare we'll ues the following equasions.

Wheel of Time = Sword of Truth


Aes Sedai = Sisters of light
Black Ajah (A sect of Aes Sedai that worship *gasp* the Shadow LOrds) = Sisters of the Dark (A sect of Sisters of Light that worship *gasp* a dark entity (can't recall the name))
There were 13 Black Ajah, 13 Sisters of the Dark
Both high lady's of each order were doing things that would get them in a lot of trouble with their respective groups.
Both high ladies knew of the Dark others in their groups but wanted it kept secret
Aes Sedai take young girls (and men to gentle them) to Tar Valon (virtually untouchable in the first books) to train them to become Aes Sedai=Sister of Light crossed the boundary to bring males and females across that showed magic potential to train them. The location is also virtually untouchable till the boundries fall.
Aes Sedai are ageless=Sisters of Light were ageless until the spell was broken
Prophecy heavily relied on and tried to be controled by both Aes Sedai and Black Ajah = Prophecy heavily relied on and tried to be controlled by Sisters of Light and Dark both.
Rand fights hand and tooth against prophecy = Richard also fights hand tooth against prophecy
Both realize the sword is just a physical tool, that they are the magic needed.
Both stories talk about, when working with magic, touching something similar to the "One Source" in the Wheel of Time
Both Rand and Richard discover that their father is not really their father.
Both have had their "real parents" die, forwhatever reasons
Dreamers....Jagang in the Sword of Truth, the Wise Ones/Egwene/Elayne in Wheel of Time.
How things can kill you in your dreams = Both books

And there's many many more. Coincidence?

I actually read the Wheel of Time series first, and it wasn't till about a year ago I read the sword of truth series. However, where Jordan had a huge idea of what he wanted to happen, and where the books were going, and they flow very well together, I felt that the Sword of Truth series was just... very watered down, thrown together, and did little to develop story, character, and feeling.

Prophecy says bad things, Zed says Richard don't be stupid, bad things will happen. Richard ignores Zed cuz he follows his heart. Everything goes bad. Random characters introduced, killed as needed. Zed is useless. Everything goes terrible. Last 20 pages of book, richard suddenly knows the problem and fixes it in a paragraph or so. Bad guys cleaned up, anyone left trying to "Get" richard is killed, Prophecy loses to richard.

I read wheel of time, and I get the "Holy crap! That happened!" and "ZOMG" and it's just a much better feel of a book. I hate characters for how weak minded they are, but they're great characters to hate. I love how they're written, I hate who they are. I don't think there's one weak character in the whole series, even the smallest character has their part and their persona and they are driven by who they are.

My one friend was all about the sword of truth, but when I picked it up, and by the third book, I flat out told him my feelings and how I hated the writing, he broke down and agreed. I gave him the wheel of time, and when he finally got into it, he was just like "Yeah... you were right, this is much better."

YEah....totally agreed so far.

But my thought is he based his "books" off the wheel of time just changed very little. Enough to not copyright infringe, but the idea was already in written form.

Yes, Goodkind is a jerk and I hate him. More because I think the ease of reading Sword of Truth gave it more publicity, while less people have read Jordan.

But my most hated part of Goodkind was how little he developed characters. Seriously!

rant[spoiler]There's that book with the chimes, and he spends a whole chapter explaining this women picking mushrooms and her whole life history and everything you never cared about and everything... and then she falls off a cliff! AUGH! Why did you just make me waste my precious time on pointless chatter...

Then there's that "epic" storyline of the kid who's brought in as a servant, and he gets sent to get the sword of truth for some reason, and then he comes back and they just brain him before there's any resolution to his character. And his girl friend just freaks out and runs away? End of story? What the hell, there should be some resolution to the conflict between the poor and the strong and what not. I hate him so much...[/spoiler] /rant

Yup.

And I started thinking about it more and more.

You have the Damme and Seanchan who are similar to the Mord Sith and their slaves (almost identical to be totally honest)
Then some of the names are so similar. Verin and Verna.
Elyas and Brophy. Elyas is one that can speak to wolves. Brophy is turned into a wolf by Kahlan's wizard because he was not guilty of the crimes he was accused of.

I'm sure more similarities will pop into my head as the day goes on

Seanchan! Good one, I didn't even think about that. But yah, they differ beyond that, but you have to get beyond that part of the story, and if you were stealing ideas, why would you?

They sorta differ yeah....but they both can sense when they want to bad things to their "master", the meer thought of hurting their master hurts the slave, they can force the slave to use magic but only in the way they want them to, and if the slave hurts the master it hurts them ten fold.

Huh...not much difference eh?

I swear, I hit the end of book 11 (wot) and I was dying for book 12... and then of course Jordan and his whole being mortal thing, grrr... I swear I will hunt Brandon Sanderson down if he bucks up this last book.

I am gonna have to respectively disagree with you people on this one. Although the books have some similarities i do not feel goodkind copied or even mirrored any of R. Jordans ideas.

The idea of female only magic groups where the ideas of much older fantasy novels and ideas. Witch cults were often "good" witch cults and the Sorcerers who were male were driven mad with power and were hunted down.

Robert Jordans novels where amazingly written up to around novel 7, in which case he started coming up with some odd filler stories that just droned on and on and on.

Goodkinds books were lots of fun up till around "Pillers" in which case, in my opinion he started adding WAY to many of his own personaly beliefs whether it was religion or politics into the book. So much so that it started to over shadow the story line.

Sadly over the years I have collected quite the collection of fantasy novels, Currently over 190. I have seen so many story lines repeating themselves. The fact that the main story line in these two novels are different makes it quite interesting.

as far as the sisters of dark and the black aes sedai, come on Any book that has a group of "The White" or "The Light" there will be the oppisite group. "the black" or "the dark". Same with life or death.

IF you havent read the Golden compass book line yet, I suggest it. The author comes up with some very unique ideas and even though there are some anti religous views in it, She manages to make it so it does not over shadow the story.

Edit: Btw my memory must be arse O.o who ended up being Rands father? I thought he just found out his father was more powerful then he let on being a swordmaster and all.

*Phillip Pullman is a He. Sorry... Just saying.

HAHA awesomes that was actually a spelling mistake if you look through the whole thing u will see MANY cause im at work and im rushing my typing!!!!

And BTW A Game of thrones is Way better then WOT or SOT. Now there is a series that doesnt mind killing off its characters.

His father was a clan leader of the Aiel. His mother was a Maiden of the Spear.

Aye. His mother had also been the former queen of Andor, before she became a maiden.

Hmm. I don't necessarily think Goodkind ripped Jordan off, so much as he borrowed a lot of ideas and used them as a foundation for his own series. A lot of fantasy writers do that.

Up to about book 5 or 6, The Wheel of Time was the best series of novels I've ever read, but it crapped out after that. Very few of the later storylines are worth reading.

I read Terry Goodkind's books on the suggestion of a friend. They were very difficult to get through, and eventually I just gave up on them.

As for Martin's a Song of Ice and Fire; it's definitely an interesting read, a lot of quality writing and decent plotlines. He does have a tendency to pick off half of his major characters though. I just wouldn't say its better than WoT. No book ever beat that feeling I got when I reached the end of the Eye of the World.

I think I read Sword of Truth, can't remember. Maybe I'm thinking Sword of Shannara (sp?). But as I find it difficult to read any of Goodkind's books, I don't bother. I've never even heard of Jordan.

*in the process of mailing you the first book*

I've not read WoT yet. Someone suggested it a few months ago, so I checked out various articles on Wikipedia to see what it was about. When I read those articles, which seem to give a good, quick description of just about everything in WoT without all the fluff, I noticed just how much Goodkind "borrowed". A better term would be "blatantly stole". It's more than just similarities and ideas he's used as a foundation; it seems he copied nearly everything from WoT and just changed around names and part of the plot. He didn't use just a few ideas from WoT, he used nearly everything, as far as I can tell from those wiki articles.
SoT is more than similar; it's just a rewritten version of WoT, with an extra-large helping of condescension from the writer.

Agreed on the second part of that quote. Goodkind started out OK, even though he really needs to come up with more of his own ideas, but as the series went on, it was becoming a chore to read. He'll spend a few pages hammering the same damn point into your head with lots of big words when he could have done it neatly and concisely with maybe half a page. To me, it feels like he's talking down to his audience, as though we're all mentally supbar.
I stopped reading around book six or seven, when I realized I had read the last two or three books just because I have a habit of trying to finish a series. I decided it wasn't worth the effort; it's just not entertaining.

Seven and Eight were definitely the weakest in the WOT series, at least the first time through. You can really tell people who haven't hit book 10-11 because they just get frustrated with the series. But after reading them, and everything clicks, you get a whole new viewpoint of what's going on in 7 and 8.

First time through, yes, I was horribly frustrated, but now I read them for fun (and insight). The trick about the piece for Jordan, is it was never just a single story in a book, it was one story split up into really large chapters.

I think (asides from the fact that I strongly dislike Goodkinds writing style), that is the blaring difference between the two series. Goodkind writes each book singularly (they can be read without much introduciton on the earlier series, they contain a new dilemma, a new plot, and new development. Jordan only ever meant the books to be read in order, it's one hugely epic story.

what i disliked, is getting to Chainfire and how all of a sudden something has happened that totaly screws everyone u p.

That book fucked with my mind so much I can't get past it to read the rest.

However, the first book gives you the good summary of the rest. "Wizards first rule: People are stupid". In the end, Richard, Kahlan, Zedd, all of them are just as stupid as regular people as they make mistakes over and over agian....in some cases the same mistakes made in the past.

I'm glad someone agrees that though 7&8 appeared a labor at first, they really tie in later on in the series. Winter's Heart could never have succeeded without all the loose ends being left in 8 and 11 draws references from every book in the series. RJ did an excellent job in writing the series. Brandon better not screw it up, Mistborn was really good and has left me with high hopes

I dunno, I actually enjoyed Crown of Swords (book 7), but I'll agree that Path of Daggers (book 8) was boring. So was Crossroads of Twilight (book 10), though it made up for being boring by having one of the coolest titles in the series. The thing with them was that all the little things that RJ mentioned in those books were critical in making later events in books 9-11 make sense.

As for Goodkind, I've tried reading him, and I couldn't get past the first 40 pages.

(PS: I read an interview with RJ once, and somebody asked him about the whole Goodkind thing. His response: "I'm aware of Mr. Goodkind." It amused me.)

"Delmar, NY: Have you ever read or heard about the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind? After reading the series it is obvious many of the main ideas are copied from the WoT.

Robert Jordan: I'm aware of Mr. Goodkind."