i read the first 5-6 books in the wheel of time at a friends behest. don't want to go into detail, but i wasn't impressed. perhaps the biggest problem i had with the series was that it was too formulaic. run away from / to stuff, discover something new about one or two of the characters, encounter a bad guy and balefire (or whatever it was called) his ass. the other thing i noticed was that as the series progressed, the amount of "stuff" they accomplished in the individual books decreased exponentially. yet the books were the same length. seems to me that by the time the last book comes around, the adventure will consist of 500 pages of them rising from bed and getting to the breakfast table. and then the cereal gets balefired. speaking of fantasy, did you ever read the dragonlance chronicles? i remember reading them years ago, and absolutely loving them. i reread the series not too long ago, and well...i remember them being a lot better. but anyways, i ask because i heard they've started production on a dragonlance movie. not sure if it's just set in the world of krynn, or if it actually follows the books, or what. probably worth looking into, though.