Remembering a piece about the Wheel of Time and how Jordan prepared the books beforehand. He wrote that he had the whole storyline already before him. He only needed to fill the gaps so to speak. He didn’t bring much of his own style in as he claims. What I think is great about the last books not completely written by Jordan is that you don‘t feel it when reading all of them back to back.
I wonder if the source material from Tolkien is in a Format which allows to do the same. And also finding an Arthur that is willing to write in a specific style. But I would be happy enough if more parts of the world would be published in a normal novel like form. But then that was also the point of Tolkien to produce Folklore. So in essence he should be fine if another author retells his stories with a slight different way or take.
> you don‘t feel it when reading all of them back to back
Having just finished reading the Wheel of Time books for the first time about a week ago, I disagree with this statement. To me, the difference was stark - after going through so many of Jordan's books, you can clearly see a subtle but distinct writing style for each of the main POV characters. After the transition, the characters stay (mostly) the same but the writing style distinctions between them disappear; the worst offender being Aviendha's POV chapters (so! many! exclamation! marks!).
Sanderson also made a few mistakes in writing scenes involving the Aiel that contradicted lore laid down earlier in the series that really stuck out to me.
That's not to say Sanderson did a bad job, not at all. I really enjoyed the series, and I think Sanderson does a much better job at portraying emotional characters than Jordan did, which was crucial for the ending having the quality and impact that it did. they're both quality builders and writers, and both excel in different areas.
To me, though, it was if I had started watching something animated in the style of Arcane[0], and suddenly it switched to Moana[1]. Both fantastically animated and detailed, but the detail budget is spent in different places.
Hmm I didn’t feel it like this. Mainly because the writing style of the series had changed slightly already before. I remember vividly that the fist book had great fascination for fabrics and color:). I had a pretty good understanding about the fashion style in the world. Same as Tolkien with food and Martin‘s excessive name dropping of character names. Also because I actually had no idea that the series was finished by someone else. I didn’t pay much attention when buying the digital versions. I will read a little bit closer the next time I read the series again. Problem at the moment for me is the ugly taste that the Amazon series left with their take on wheel of time. I lowered my expectations to a bare minimum for the rings of power series.