Robert Jordan

[Carl]

I don't know whether he counts as "mythic fiction" or not, but I recently heard that Robert Jordan died: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gB...
Despite how unwieldy his series was getting, I thought he had created an original, intriguing, and deep world, however much he borrowed from Herbert, Tolkien, and others.

[Arun]

it's pretty mythic.

his borrowings from herbert brought in the very islamic/arab nomad way of life for some of his races.

the same with his borrowings from tolkien with the wandering rangers.

there is quite a bit of myth in WoT eventhough his works were a bit too boring for me.

[Rora]

I quit reading the series around book 6 or 7. I did enjoy the first four though.

[[deleted user]]

It's hard for me to see Jordan creating anything like a real myth (a story growing in the popular imagination from uncertain origins.) He certainly did create an imaginative world. To my mind, it's basically straight fantasy, much like Tolkien. Of course, no one, including Grandmaster T., can completely escape the heritage of real-world myths. I would say that the borrowing has to be fairly obvious for a book to qualify as mythic fiction.

Rora,
I had a similar experience, although I didn't make it to 7.

[Danielle]

I can certainly say that he wrote on an epic scale. However, I didn't make it more than 3 books in. I felt that the character list was becoming to dizzyingly long with too many loose ends for my taste. I also felt that he borrowed a little too heavily from Tolkien at first.

Again, I did only read 3 books. So I might not have given Mr. Jordan a fair shake. I can certainly appreciate that he has a loyal fan base and therefore must have struck some chord that felt right for many of them which is great.

[Becomingme]

My husband LOVE the WOT books...I like them too, but they become more a book that I have to be "in the mood" for, as you have to concentrate to keep up on where all the characters are and all the different plot lines that are going on at once...

Robert Jordan left an extensive set of notes to complete the series, and now Brandon Sanderson has been completing them, you can finds the latest here: Towers of Midnight

[Bill]

I quit after 4 or 5 books. I felt I was being scammed by the publishers.

I don't consider fantasy with totally made up mythology to be mythic fiction. To me mythic fiction/fantasy is based on a real mythology from current or ancient cultures on Earth.

In a similar vein, I require historical fiction to to be about real historical events, milieu and people , not just taking place in the past.

[Annah]

Hmm. I've read 'em all. I keep getting sucked into the interweaving stories...my husband quit on book 8. I had to agree, it felt like a 'placeholder' book - not much happens to move the overall story along in that volume.

Since Sanderson took over finishing the series, the writing is better, though I have to say that the editing could still be tighter. I felt this way about the whole series - these thousand-page monsters that really had about seven-hundred pages of great text. I guess I read fast enough that I can get through those thousand pages in a week, so I don't mind too much.

[Janet]

I didn't mind Jordan's Russian novel-esque list of characters, but I objected to the lack of individualized story arcs for each novel. I don't mind many unfinished questions from novel to novel, but I didn't feel like Jordan answered any in many of his installments. Also, many of the details felt like they weren't there for any descriptive or plot-related purpose; it was simply 'insert paragraph-length description of clothing here'.