I've always heard about this book series, I've never bothered, 14 books seems like a tall order even for my patience levels, is it worth my time ?
I've actually been following WoT a bit in the two years since I created this thread. I'm up to Book Six: Lord of Chaos, primarily because I've been reading them on and off just because I promised my girlfriend I would. My opinions still very much mirror the opening post. So my answer to your question is:
No; they're atrocious. Do you want to spend four pages being told about the patterns on the womens' skirts, and how the gold embroidery on the cushions is shaped like a heron? That's the "level of detail" they go into. It's not
fun detail, like the history of the nations and characters, it's shite like the colours they're wearing and how many legs the table has. The characters are unpredictable (in a bad way), and half the time just cliches. They're also universally irritating, and most of the time you'll just end up getting frustrated by how they act.
I've also never seen a book that so blatantly rips off
all of its ideas from other books. The Eye of the World is almost a paragraph for paragraph copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. Even RJ fans don't deny that; they just laugh and say it was a "deliberate tribute".
Sanderson has apparently added some much needed zing to the series, because under RJ it was languishing and slowing down. The final few books that RJ wrote - even by his standards - were bogged down in shite, and nothing happened. He even admitted as much before he died. Sanderson has given the series a good kick up the arse, and is actually a good writer.
Something RJ was not. I don't care what people say, but Jordan was a terrible writer. His dialogue is crap, he spends too much time talking about shite and not enough time talking about interesting things. It doesn't help that his wife was his editor, so she clearly wasn't anywhere near ruthless enough.
But, they're easy enough books to read. They're certainly not daunting; fourteen books is a lot to read simply because of the sheer number of words, and also because it's fourteen books of shite. Not because they're complicated. RJ liked to throw extra, random characters into the story without explanation, so that can be quite hard to keep track of, but that's not "depth"; it's just bad writing. Seriously, time is the thing that would stop you being able to finish WoT if you really wanted to, not that they were too complex or difficult. Someone who had lost half of their brain in a skiing accident would comprehend the tedious, predictable and utterly basic storyline.
Seriously, it's fourteen books long, and crap. If you're not already invested in it then don't waste your time.
