Dark, The Seanchan empire has existed, not since the breaking, but for I think at least a couple thousand years since Ardur Pendragon conquered. Also, we never learn about the islands of the seafolk or Shar, and the peoples across the waste, much beyond glimpses here and there, and what we do know is more rumor than fact. We don't even know how much more the world is since we never circumnavigate it.
For all intents and purposes we mostly focus on the western part of one continent, and that part we get to know a lot.

One thing I like is also that the forsaken aren't all the strongest from their time, although some are. Some are just teachers or scholars, or even just musicians and their motivations were more than just, "I want power for the sake of power."

Jordan's stuff is definitely lighter, as far as the good guys getting the stuffing knocked out of them, than some other stuff I could point out. Oh, some characters go through the wringer, but many just don't. Or they do, and then get a free level-up after it's done. Using that term loosely, of course, but yeah, there's definitely stuff out there way darker than WoT, and I'm okay with that.

Another good solid series to recommend is Daniel Abraham's Dagger and Coin series. It's five books, the porse is tight, the characters are well-drawn, and while there is magic in the world, it's not huge and shoved in your face. It's actually sort of subtle.

On the grimmer side of things is Brian Staveley's Unhewn Throne series. Much more brutal, closer to grimdark honestly, and with some weak characterization here and there, but it also has some excellent character-building, pretty good dialogue, plus it's full of action. And it's only a trilogy.

I have heard of another series I've yet to try, by Melissa McPhail, called A Pattern of Shadow and Light. I honestly don't know how good it is yet, but I've been meaning to take a peek.

Would actually argue that the first three books are more definitive of WoT than just the first two. Once you hit book 4, the series really starts to spread out and settle down and get comfy. Everyone goes haring off every which way, and stuff gets huge. For this reason, The Shadow Rising is one of my favourite books in the series. Though that moment in The Gathering Storm that Dark mentioned is quite a good one, and kind of ends the "Emo Rand" thing that had been going on for awhile. There are many good reasons why, even though Wheel of Time has many issues, it's still one of my all-time favourite comfort reads. If I'm sick in bed, for instance, I'll often chuck one of those books on and just doze. If I'm playing a browser-based game and grinding like mad, same deal. It's a series I will probably reread off and on for years, so in that sense, Dark, your lady and I would get along famously.

well in asoiaf we have something similar called the age of heroes, where we have character like simion the blind knight, and such. Of course, there are misteryes in asoiaf like the relation between the white walkers and the children of the forest, and not just that , but even many of the children's real power is unknown, bran being the only one who can comunicate with them in centuryes.

We also had the things, with dragons, but in this regard we have many dragons names, and such so that part was a bit documented. now, that you mentioned the breaking the doom of valyria came to mind, they are quite similar in a way accepting the fact the valeria turned to dust after the doom. may be as you sad , dark, in WoT the other continent is mentioned but not expanded upon.

Martin did suggest that he wanted to make something like a inuniverse history, in order to be more realistic as our history there are some unknown things, which is perfectly fine. it makes the thing much harder, and don't forget that there are also many speculations by fans. is there such intrest for WoT is well?
I find this comparqason very interesting indeed.

eddit: Oftopic  dark, but how did you arive in the book of records?

@Wing of eternity, short answer, nope, the age of legends and age of heroes are entirely %100 different concepts and are treated differently in their respective series

In song of ice and fire, you say for example that thing ex, like the forest children is mysterious or unknown, but these are things we actually see in the series and which might be explained (Martin himself has confirmed that winds of winter will go further north than any other book we've seen so far).

in WoT however, the age of legends is literally unknown to most people, there are still devices kicking around that people use with the power, but nobody is sure how they work, indeed it's one major point in the series that while we do see some people from the age of legends, they tend to regard the world around them as a mess of ignorant savages (though admittedly, since they're usually completely evil, this isn't so surprising).

The doom of Valeria in song of ice and fire is also not comparable, since westerosi history started after that, where as in WoT the breaking really shattered the world, including making all male channelers I.e not a small part of the entire male population insane!

Also, note that another major issue in WoT, is the idea of rebirth, reincarnation and things repeating, which becomes both a theme in the series itself, and it's cosmology, where as Song of ice and fire doesn't tend to be quite that extreme with it's metaphysics, since Martin was more concerned with history, than philosophy, indeed in very early draughts Ice and fire had no magic whatsoever and was essentially an alternative history telling of the wars of the roses with Stark and Lanister replacing York and Lancaster.

woooow! now I found a better analogy
the one power is similar to the force
the jedi are close to Aes Sedai, and as in sw the force has light and dark, and in WoT the one power is split in saidin which corrupts like the darkside of the force. sedai , and , the oonly thing is that the force soesn't have male and female halfs, but the darkside it's like a taint of seidin.

And in addition, the Aes Sedai,  also have different color fractions specialisations that have completely different personal value systems.
Sure, they have nothing to do with  Saidin  itself, but they still differ in their capabilities.

Jayde, A Pattern of Shadow and Light is probably the best series I have read. Great characters, great magic system, lots of action. She is also very responsive to her readers.

@Berenion, I've heard a lot of good things about Stephen Ericson. Fantasybookreview.co.uk list his series as in the top ten fantasy series of all time.
I'm always slightly put off by the length of the books, since these days as I said, in a lot of ways I prefer shorter series, but at some point I should just bite the proverbial bullet and give them a go, since I certainly don't mind series that give you a complex world to explore and expect you to catch up later.

@Wing of iturnity, nope, the one power is nothing like the force.
Neither saidin, nor Saidar, are good or evil.
Saidin, the male half of the source was tainted by the dark one, which corrupts men who use it, but this is like water with an oil slick, there's nothing wrong with the water itself, it's the oil slick on the water that makes it wrong to drink.

it is correct that Saidin and Saidar work differently, with Saidar requiring women who channel to open themselves to a power and surrender to it, like a flower bud opening to the sun, and men to leap into Saidin like diving into a river of ice and fire and use their strength to fight and control it.

Women also tend to be stronger in water and air weeves while men tend to be stronger in earth and fire, though this is not absolute (Egween for example is unusually strong in Earth).

I'll confess, this inherent Freudian nature to the universe is something that I do not like in the series, though to Jordan's credit he also shows clearly that the two halves of the source work best when used in collaboration, and also that both Saidin and Saidar can achieve a variety of results, and a woman using Saidar is just as capable of blowing the bejaggers out of things with blasts of lightning or fire, as a man is able to use Saidin to heal, a fact which pleasantly surprised me, since I did assume (wrongly), that WoT would be a series where women all got the fluffy healing magic and men got the big blasty magic.

In general, while I don't like the hole Women get power by surrendering, men get power by fighting thing, at the same time, Jordan is too good a writer to let him straight jacket it too much, indeed this is another respect where the One power and the force are %100 different, since the starwars films at least always make it a case of the cool, rational virtuous light side vs the angry emotional hateful dark side.

As to the Ais Sidai, they are like the Jedi in as much as they are an unaffiliated politically powerful faction free to do their own thingg who gain their power through their use of what is essentially magic, and who have their own centuries of tradition and underlying assumptions. however, the Ais Sidai are also split into a variety of different coloured Ajas each with their own personality, motivations and goals, indeed a fun game I often play with my lady is to try and guess the Ajas of people we know.

My lady as I said, is absolutely the quintessential green, she did have ideas of being a yellow because she liked the idea of healing, but she just doesn't have the spiky yellow personality, something which Jordan got absolutely write, me having met a lot of medics in my time.

Actually the only aja I think he got really wrong was the white Aja, since all of the logicians I've met tend to be the complete opposite of cool, rational and above emotions, and are more likely to threaten to come to blows about whether linguistic predicates in sentences are the same as existential properties in an objectless metaphysical system, or whether time has tenses .

I mean there are lots of litrpg books like that, where people basically become dungeons in video games. I get the feeling that isn't what you're looking for but if it is, here are a couple. not sure about spelling, but should be close ish.
divine dungeon series by dakota crout
bone dungeon, by Johnathan Smith? I think

OK, let's assume I'm going to plunge back into WOT. Am I starting with Eye, or that prequel novel?

It's cool to read all of this because for me, I'm a compulsive re-reader. I'm also dumb. It took quite a few re-reads of Eddings to hit the stuff I mentioned way back. I should add, I don't have  a problem with them, as such. Eddings is fun enough, I just think it detracts a bit when you realize he's essentially telling the same story over and over and over again. But I mean, I've read all the Conan stories a few times, no problem. I sort of figure hey, whatever problematic stuff is going on, that's how people were back then, or at least, that's how the author wanted the characters to be.

Stories are weird for me. They need to grab me, and that's about it. Everybody was super jazzed about the Pern stories. I started reading one, and I just got to the middle and went, man I do not care about these people or what's going on with them. I did read all of Eye, so that's something. That's what makes me kind of want to get back into it. On the other hand, I read all of Harry Potter and I'm just going, OK, read that, kind of fun, don't need to go back to it. But I love The Book of Three series, so go figure.

So some of the stuff you're talking about like, oh you know this character's going to be the good guy or whatever, eh, doesn't bother me much. I think that's because it's another story trope that you need ambiguous people, you know? They're part of life too, obviously. But I think that, by and large, most of the people you meet, you probably know whether they're decent people or assholes fairly quickly. So it doesn't really bother me to have characters conform to those types unless it just gets ridiculous.

Hi everyone. I've recently started reading fantasy books, and I've really liked the re-incarnation theme. (guy gets killed and wakes up in a new body with powers and etc). Any recommendations on good books like that?
one series I'm reading is the bad  guys series by eric ugland. It's LITRPG fantasy, and It's been fun up to now that I've read three books