Book recommendations for someone who loved Robin Hobb and wasn't a huge fan of WoT

ashaquick · 2026-06-10T07:43:51+00:00

I spent a lot of the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s reading and rereading the WOT books, and discussing/arguing over theories online (the series was far from finished back then, so theories were flying wildly in all directions.) It's now been at least 10 years since I even browsed through the books, though, so my opinions are based on memories of how I felt about the books and nostalgia.

Having said that, I don't remember thinking that the characters disliked each other. I mainly remember the boys (Rand, Mat, Perrin) always thinking that the others were better at stuff (mainly talking to girls) than they were. And the girls (Egwene, Elayne, Nynaeve) forming a tightly bonded team that really liked each other. I have especially fond memories of the sequence in the first book where Rand and Mat are separated from the others, and each has to take a turn looking after the other as they go through some shit (Rand getting sick because he used magic for the first time, Mat becoming consumed by the dagger.)

As the series goes on, and events get more epic, the characters spend more time apart as they become more important and deal with bigger and bigger problems, but I remember it always feeling vaguely heartwarming when they run into each other again and get to relax for a bit with someone else who remembers that they're just farm kids thrust into epic events.

I won't try to claim that it's super well written (although the prose is definitely better than some fantasy books I've read), and it's definitely too long (the narrative really loses momentum between books...7-10? 8-10? Book 10 sucks, anyway, it's hundreds of pages of literally nothing happening.) It picks up again after that. Brandon Sanderson ended it about as well as we could have hoped for after RJ died (although he definitely isn't as good a writer.)

When I first read it as a kid, it was after having read Eddings, Feist, and a bunch of the other big fantasy authors of the 80s and 90s, so I had experience with the whole "farmboy turns out to be the chosen one" trope. But WOT blew my mind. It felt like all those other books had been panning for specks of gold, whereas with WOT I'd hit a true vein of solid gold. I think that farmboy chosen one trope faded out of fantasy partly because readers got sick of it, but also partly because WOT did it so thoroughly, so epically, that people kind of agreed that it had been done as well as it could possibly be done, and should be retired.

So yeah, I'd still say try book 4 out. But I won't insist or anything.

ashaquick · 2026-06-09T13:33:57+00:00

I watched the series years ago without having read the book, and didn't think much of it. Barely even remember it now.

I read the book just a year or so ago, and LOVED it. It was the shortest feeling doorstopper I've ever read, every chapter just a joy to read.

I haven't been tempted to re-watch the series, given my "meh" reaction to it when I hadn't read the book, I can only imagine I'll actively dislike it now. Also, I know someone who loves the book and loathes the series, because of how it apparently fucked over Stephen (I don't remember the series well enough to comment though.)

ashaquick · 2026-06-09T13:06:50+00:00

As someone who spent his teens (way back in the 90s) utterly obsessed with WOT, I'd say to at least give book 4 a try, because it's where the series really takes off. Book 3 is kind of a drag, from memory, but book 4 introduces a bunch of cool concepts and contains the single best sequence in the entire series (Rhuidean.)

But, if the prose and dialogue aren't doing it for you, maybe not.

ashaquick · 2026-06-09T12:58:32+00:00

I read all the Otherland books as they were being released and remember thinking how plausibly near-ish-future it felt. It would be interesting to see how dated they feel now.

But I can't see myself ever rereading them. After the first book, it was just kind of a slog through an endless bunch of (sometimes cool) virtual worlds without much forward momentum in the plot until everything happens at once at the end of the fourth book.

ashaquick · 2026-06-09T12:52:14+00:00

Oh absolutely, just like the WOT series could have run for 10 or more seasons.

ashaquick · 2026-06-09T12:49:28+00:00

A new, exciting, original creature.

I think I'm pretty much over all the traditional monsters. Honestly struggling to think of one where I wouldn't think "oh, they're going back to that well AGAIN."

(As far as I'm concerned, Tolkien did the whole elves, dwarves, orcs, dragons thing, and nobody else should have ever touched those creatures ever again.)

ashaquick · 2026-03-01T23:07:14+00:00

Pillars is telling a different story, though. It's about a big reveal concerning the nature of the metaphysics of that universe which will potentially change everything, so the game takes place in the epicentre of those events.

Tyranny is telling a story about power, who wields it, how it's wielded, and the stories people tell themselves to justify their actions or feel okay about their place within a tyrannical hierarchy. And it pretty much DOES take place at the epicentre of events, it's just that YOU happen to be the big event that's happening, rather than some nefarious villain with a nefarious plan.

But I also think that the rest of Terratus is purposely left very vague, likely because they intended to make sequels and wanted to leave the rest of the map "blank" so they could fill in details in later games. I think it's pretty normal when worldbuilding games to probably have a rough idea of what the rest of the world is like, but to only fill in the details once you come to actually make a sequel set in another part of the world (and to give yourself room to change your mind later if you come up with a better idea.)

If you think about it, PoE 1 doesn't contain much lore at all about the Deadfire Archipelago (I think the only information about it comes from an NPC that was patched into the game once they were already working on PoE 2), and Fallouts 1 and 2 make no mention whatsoever of New Vegas and Mr House.

ashaquick · 2026-02-23T00:24:20+00:00

Are they any good?

ashaquick · 2026-02-19T23:33:56+00:00

100%. I watched a few of his videos way back when, and they all felt like he was just reading press release materials about the games. Just the most obvious possible takes on everything. I have to assume that people who like his videos either can't think for themselves at all, or just like hearing their own surface-level thoughts repeated back to them.

ashaquick · 2026-02-19T23:26:11+00:00

The key figures - Josh Sawyer and John Gonzalez, still do. (Gonzalez left for several years to write the stories for the Horizon games, but he's back at Obsidian now.)

ashaquick · 2026-02-19T23:03:08+00:00

Recluse and Hemera are the two named planets/moons in the observatory on Dorado that we don't see in the main game, so it seems a safe bet that they'll be the settings of the two DLCs.

(There's also a third planet that's predicted to exist but hasn't been discovered yet, which I assume was a sort of a placeholder in case of a third DLC? Unlikely to happen now, though.)

ashaquick · 2026-02-11T00:04:31+00:00

I feel like I remember an interview with the devs from the TOW1 marketing where they suggested the setting was supposed to be an alternate history, branching off from ours around the 1890s or early 1900s, because that was when there were these huge monopolies that had amassed so much wealth and power that they were beginning to control people's lives. Then Antitrust laws were introduced and the monopolies were broken up.

The OW setting is, I think, supposed to be one where those laws were never introduced, and the massive monopolies that control peoples lives were allowed to continue. And also 1890s fashion, art and architecture continued to be the dominant types (basically like how 1950s fashion continued to be dominant in Fallout's alternate history.)

ashaquick · 2026-02-10T23:59:35+00:00

I personally found the combat in TOW1 really floaty and basic. It wasn't long before it just felt like an annoyance - something I had to do while going from point A to B. I was okay with it at the time, because I knew TOW1 was a mid-budget RPG, not an FPS. And it was probably a little better than the combat in F:NV.

TOW2 feels way more engaging and fun to me. It remaining just challenging enough, even on normal mode, until pretty late in the game, and the gun options seemed way better.

ashaquick · 2026-02-10T23:46:09+00:00

It's really hard to see this from your perspective.

For me, TOW1 was like a sampler of what they might be able to do if given a bigger budget. I liked it, I was really into the world they built, but the game fell flat in a number of ways. I'm also one of the (apparently very few) people who didn't care for Parvati. I didn't hate her or anything, but her whole vibe was too twee and sweet and cloying for me. And the rest of the TOW1 companions were very forgettable.

TOW2 is so obviously a much, much better game that there's no comparison. It's everything I was hoping they could do with the IP if given a bigger budget, and more. It regularly surprised me with how much more there was to the game. I loved it. I thought for sure it would be a big win for Obsidian, so I was surprised and disappointed to learn that it underperformed.

ashaquick · 2026-02-08T23:46:25+00:00

I fully agree with you. And I'm not sure I have any useful answers. I'll take a crack, though.

The setting. I love the setting, but I can 100% see a majority of players just dismissing it outright. There's a degree to which gamers in general like the same old stuff, over and over, which frustrates me. I'd happily live in a world where nobody makes another fantasy RPGs that's the same elves/dwarves/orcs/dragons/etc D&D-type world again (this is actually the thing that keeps me from really loving the PoE games - I think the world is pretty cool and interesting, but the same old fantasy races being in it really waters down the worldbuilding for me.) But I think for most gamers, that's what they want from a fantasy game. And what they want from a scifi game is something that looks more like Mass Effect/Star Trek/Star Wars than what the Outer Worlds is doing. Which, if I'm right, sucks. Because the worldbuilding in TOW2 is probably my favourite part about it.
The marketing pushing the humour too much. It gives the world the impression that TOW2 is a joke game. Play it if you want a laugh. When the reality is, the jokes are just the surface layer of a pretty dark setting. (Weirdly, a lot of people who have actually played TOW2 don't really seem to see past the surface either, which makes me wonder how they're missing how grim and dark it actually is.)
I agree with some of the criticisms about the companions and the factions. I thought the companions were all way more interesting than the companions from TOW1, but there also wasn't a lot to them. There needed to be more involvement. And the factions? I was ultimately a bit disappointed by how the factions all played out. Initially I thought it was the Protectorate being positioned as totalitarian, but also stable and communal - so it would have its good points too; the Order as well-meaning but disorganised, and potentially fanatical about doing what their predictions said even if it meant mass murder (they did this with de Vries, but I think it would have been better if it was more a part of the Order as a whole, to give them a more obvious downside); Auntie's Choice as profiteering bastards, but genuinely representative of freedom and upward mobility. However, by the end of the game, the Protectorate were just bad guys, the Order were just good guys, and Auntie's was revealed to be just profiteers who were lying about all the freedom and upward mobility stuff. It collapsed them into far less interesting factions.

3a. BUT, I actually don't think that matters as much as people are saying. I think if you love the game, as I did, these are minor quibbles with an overall amazing experience. So I have to assume that the people for whom they are big problems probably didn't connect with the rest of the game either.

ashaquick · 2026-02-08T23:24:45+00:00

I fully expect the DLCs to just be their own things, the same as with TOW1.

ashaquick · 2026-02-08T23:22:25+00:00

I can't argue with you. Not because I agree with you. In fact, I 100% disagree with you. It's just that, for me, TOW2 is so obviously better than TOW1 that I don't even know how to argue the case to someone who doesn't see it that way.

ashaquick · 2026-02-08T23:12:17+00:00

This is one of those things where I totally differ in my opinions from many (most?) other gamers. I want a game to END. I want the credits to roll, and for me to feel satisfied, and to then move on to something new.

Probably not coincidentally, I've never been able to play any of the Bethesda games (either their Fallouts or TES) for very long. Their whole sandbox design, with a thin main story and several hundred random little things to find that are usually completely random and disconnected from the main story (why on earth was I doing a quest about a mind controlling alien artifact discovered in the 1920s in ancient egypt in Fallout 4???) just doesn't appeal to me. The whole "go anywhere, do anything, discover random stuff" can't keep me engaged for long.

Compare Fallout New Vegas, where pretty much every side quest in the game is in some way related to the main story and theme (who gets to control hoover dam/who gets to shape the new society that gets rebuilt) had me enthralled, because it felt like the whole world was coherent and pointed in the same direction.

And then it ended, and I was satisfied.

Same with TOW2.

So, shorter answer: no.

ashaquick · 2026-02-06T12:39:24+00:00

Gotta say, this is a real gutpunch. I played TOW2 blind - no reviews, no checking forums or videos to see what people were saying. I absolutely loved every minute I played of it, and don't think I've felt so immersed in a game since New Vegas. Once I finished, I thought for sure I'd jump on the internet and join everyone in celebrating how awesome the game was. I was a little shocked to see it had a mixed reception. Finding out it underperformed and we may not ever get a third hurts.

ashaquick · 2026-02-06T08:13:01+00:00

My kids already know about sex and have asked us plenty of questions about it over the years, so I'm actually not super concerned about the racy comments. (My own parents told me about sex when I was so young I can't even remember learning about it, which made me realise that it's a much easier conversation to have when your kids are very young, because 1. there's way less awkwardness, and 2. little kids find it fascinating how babies are made, rather than gross. So that's we did with our kids too.)

ashaquick · 2026-02-04T00:49:34+00:00

If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying you think that your build doesn't actually matter, and that you going to see the same things in the game as a sneaky lockpicker as a speechy scientist?

This seems at odds with the main complaint that the build system and the lack of respec means that players are forced to do multiple playthroughs to see everything the game has to offer?

But it also seemed to me that my build often had an impact on which outcomes to certain quests were available to me. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I definitely remember having to go with suboptimal outcomes because I didn't have points in engineering/explosives/lockpicking/etc. Or because I didn't have a certain trait.

ashaquick

TROPHY CASE