His completion of WoT was fine, and my favorite part was original to him, but it was pretty clear he’s the squarest man alive and has never been in the same room as the concept of sex. And one or two of the added characters were clearly there just to have extremely plot-convenient special magic talents. But that did lead to some very efficient KPI-meeting books. So if you’re a systematizing turbonerd, go wild.
Can’t say families with large numbers of children are typically better at writing romance just because they’re having Christianity-approved sex after marriage for the purpose of procreation.
His Tuon/Mat writing was pretty cheesy. Less weird about women than RJ obviously, but in the opposite direction, so it didn’t quite fit.
(And the Thom rescuing Moiraine plot wasn’t good, undercooked and too short. My guess was it was an early beta RJ wrote, but he just kept it when RJ would’ve rewritten it.)
He was completing WoT, which had a truly bizarre concept of sexual relationships. As far as I’m concerned, he did an amazing job completing a series that had largely fallen apart.
WoT has a “boomer feminist” view of relationships, which is when you rebel against the prevailing boomer relationship view (seen in those newspaper comics where every joke is how much you hate your wife) but still are only capable of viewing women as sex objects for men and so your attempt at healthier writing instead turns into femdom.
It’s wrong but it’s not that unusual. Whedon basically does it and he used to be popular.
