What do you think of the Wheel of Time?
Through the first four books it was excellent, but it should have ended five books ago. Some innovation, some memorable characters, but not well written. It won't become a classic, partly due to its sheer size. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" is a lot better, though it won't become a classic, either, due to its relentless violence and nihilistic world view.
I'm actually done with fantasy and only read science fiction these days. But I find the takeover of free inquiry in SciFi by the "Green Mafia" to be a disturbing trend. Many very talented authors (Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind) have succumbed to it.
Pardon me for butting in.
Wheel of Time is actually not in compliance with the author’s theory that fantasy writing is by definition anglophilic. It’s based on a wide variety of mythologies, including Sumerian and various eastern religions. The central image of the Wheel of Time is about as unchristian as one can get. The names of many of the chief characters are drawn from Norse and Slavic legend.
One of the things I’ve liked best about the series is the unpredictability that springs from this. It doesn’t “feel” as much like a LOTR clone as most fantasy. While I cede precedence as a Tolkien fanatic to nobody, poor imitations do get boring. As others have pointed out, the WOTseries is presently about 5 books too long, with two more to go.
BTW, Tolkien’s works drew heavily on Welsh and Finnish as well as Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythologies.