The other night an editing client and I traded a bunch of text messages over what to title his next fantasy novel. Since a fan of Robert Jordan was sitting by me in the room, I asked him to rattle off some of the fourteen titles in Jordan’s Wheel of Time series—but off the top of his head, he couldn’t remember a one. My ensuing search for Jordan’s titles yielded some pretty generic results. It’s no wonder they’re hard to remember. I thought it might be fun to compare Jordan’s titles to those of authors who, in my opinion, came up with more memorable titles using a similar keyword. Before Jordan’s numerous fans go all rabid on me, I want to acknowledge the substantial storytelling skills of Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney, Jr.), that The Wheel of Time is an awesome name for a good long series, and that I’d be more than happy to achieve this author’s sales numbers. While this post will at times compare dragons to teacups—a title should suggest genre, after all—this exercis...