The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

[Shevchyk]

Wheel of Time was my entry drug into speculative fiction. Wouldn't be here now were it not for Jordan's books.

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='therion' post='1421839' date='Jun 30 2008, 17.56']I have read New Spring in the Legends short stroy collection edited by Robert Silverberg and while I felt it was weakest of stories included in the anthology I found the introductory description of the world to be interesting and the stroty itself was all right. What do you guys think about this series?[/quote]

The Wheel of Time is the best of what I call the Massive Arc Fantasy Series...such as The Lord of the Rings...

Sanderson is finishing up the 12th and last book in the series....he hopes...he has thrown some doubt that he will be able to finish it in just one more book...he has promised it will not take more than two more books though...

You would be missing out on one of the best experiences of your life not to read this series...

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='Colder Hands' post='1421861' date='Jun 30 2008, 18.07']i hate prophecy books. especially when they are gone over so much and always come out true. i don't feel thats a spoiler. its how the series goes for the most part.

that said, like many will will echo and what lord bloodraven stated. books 1-4 are very good. some throw in 5, i don't happen to. i got a little sick if it by the end of book 4. but it was still worth the read.

so yes, start it and go until you can't go any farther.[/quote]

I am surprised at this since the absolute three best books in the series are books 6,7 and 11

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='Arichamus' post='1422450' date='Jul 1 2008, 02.05']I've read the first one, and I could not believe how many names were taken from Arthurian legend, haven't read it a second time yet, though, which for me is a bad sign.[/quote]

True but that was only in the first book... the thousands of names after that are really astounding...Soralia...Salusia...Siuan Sanche...Sevanna...Semirhage... Jordan really had a thing for the S names...The names of Sea Folk and the Seanchan are truly tongue twisters...

[Trencher]

[quote name='HammerOfGod' post='1455358' date='Jul 24 2008, 18.33']True but that was only in the first book... the thousands of names after that are really astounding...Soralia...Salusia...Siuan Sanche...Sevanna...Semirhage... Jordan really had a thing for the S names...The names of Sea Folk and the Seanchan are truly tongue twisters...[/quote]


I also loved the Wheel of Time series, but felt the books slowed down a bit around #5 as if he was milking it a little. They were all good save Crossroads in my opinion. If I ever reread the series I will probably read the summaries of book #10. I actually started reading the series when only 3 books were out so I had to wait the 2 years or more between books. I envy those who don't have to wait. By the time the next book is released I probably won't remember who 98% of the Aes Sedai are.

[Fatuous]

[quote name='HammerOfGod' post='1455342' date='Jul 24 2008, 19.20']I am surprised at this since the absolute three best books in the series are books 6,7 and 11[/quote]

You left out 9 but then I guess that would be the absolute four best books in the series.

As for reading the series, either you get into it or you don't. The worse problem with gauging personal tolerance of the Wheel of Time series is that Jordan didn't really find his "voice" until the third book and that's the equal of most normal fantasy series.

[the silent speaker]

S+R+N names, which I personally think is kind of funny. Sarene, Saerin, Serancha, a town named Serana, plus your Siuans and Seaines and Sareithas and more besides. But that can always be handwaved by phonetic patterns of the Common Tongue.

As for the prophecy thing Colder Hands speaks of:
1) I find it odd that you say that, since Rand comments at one point that his take on prophecy is that it sets out necessary but not sufficient conditions for the saving of the world.
2) And yet here you are on a board for a series about the Prince that was Promised.
3) Also, bear in mind that the particular prophecy in WOT is, "This guy is the only hope of the world's salvation against the Dark One. Did I mention he's doomed to go terminally omnicidally* insane and die horribly?"

*see [i]World, Breaking Of The[/i].

[Gabriele]

I wonder if Jordan was synesthetic.

Because I keep catching myself at using certain patterns for names because some combinations of letters just look better. Synesthetic brains are wired a wee bit weird. :)

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='Fatuous' post='1455514' date='Jul 24 2008, 22.06']You left out 9 but then I guess that would be the absolute four best books in the series.

As for reading the series, either you get into it or you don't. The worse problem with gauging personal tolerance of the Wheel of Time series is that Jordan didn't really find his "voice" until the third book and that's the equal of most normal fantasy series.[/quote]

Yes.

Winter's Heart...cleansing the ?Taint was the second best ending of a book in this series...and it was the best One Power battle between Forsaken and Aes Sedai-Asha Man a forshadow of the last battle I am sure...

Although the Last Battle will also include the Land Armies led by Mat and Perrin...

The best ending was Dumi's Wells...a real test of the One Power and men and women with steel in their hands!!!

Sanderson has to be thrilled that he gets to put this mighty engine to work that Jordan spent over 20 years of his life to build...

[Vestrit]

[quote name='dornish prince' post='1449855' date='Jul 22 2008, 00.33']i'll clue everyone in to something that most know but are afraid to admit...YOU aren't writing the books. the person that is writing them does not have YOU in mind while they do so. so please forgive them if they don't give you the story by using the fanfic ending that you were wishing for as you "claimed" to have known what they were doing all along...in the end, it's their story...not ours. the endless george doesn't know what he wants to do anymore, when is dance coming out threads on this board has totally soured me to all the fans "whinging" for this and that.

he didn't follow the tropes...he's not original...there is no way that should've happened...where is so and so...it can go on and on and on...[/quote]

So, how does any of that excuse just plain bad writing?

There's 'not following tropes', there's 'not using the fanfic ending', there's 'having their own story'.

And then there's writing a book (CoT, book 10) in which the only even close to interesting thing that happens in more than 800 pages is a [i]two-page-long[/i] description of someone taking a bath.

[HammerOfGod]

[quote name='Vestrit' post='1455893' date='Jul 25 2008, 08.31']So, how does any of that excuse just plain bad writing?

There's 'not following tropes', there's 'not using the fanfic ending', there's 'having their own story'.

And then there's writing a book (CoT, book 10) in which the only even close to interesting thing that happens in more than 800 pages is a [i]two-page-long[/i] description of someone taking a bath.[/quote]

678 pages CoT

Actually it is the start of the Romance between Mat and Tuon...and Perrin trying to get his wife back...I have to say that after dozens of reads the one book that caused me the most pain was tPoD...Mat is the man and this is the one book he does not appear in...

I have thought about it long and hard...I did not start this series until after Winter's Heart was on the sales counter...I got all nine books from the library and spent a good 6 hours every day for two weeks to read all nine books without stopping...even without having to wait between The Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart...I was still somewhat disappointed with tPoD...then I had to wait 2 years for Crossroads of Twilight...the long wait did not help because in my own mind I had already filled in a lot of what should happen in Crossroads...and unfortunately none of it happened...Perrin was still trying to save Faile...Mat was wandering around trying to understand Tuon...and Elayne was dicking around in Camylin...Egwene gets captured {again} Rand is a cypher that only makes a Cameo apperance

Then another two years to wait for Knife of Dreams...The Wheel of Time was like ashes in my mouth...what happened in KoD was what I thought should have happened in CoT...after another two reading of the whole series...I actually came to accept what was necessary in CoT... it is a bridge between the cleansing of the taint and culmination of several events that happened in KoD...many of the prophacies came to fruition in KoD which gave it a frantic sort of movement not seen since Lord of Chaos...

[Werthead]

The [b]Wheel of Time[/b] Wert Reread [url="http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2008/09/eye-of-world-by-robert-jordan.html"]has begun[/url]!

[quote]The Eye of the World is the first volume in Robert Jordan's best-selling Wheel of Time series. Originally published in 1990, this was supposed to be the first book in a six-volume series. Instead, the series doubled in size. The eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, was published in 2005. The author passed away in 2007 whilst working on the final book, A Memory of Light, which will be completed by fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson for publication in late 2009.

With sales of 44 million and no less than four New York Times #1 bestsellers, The Wheel of Time is the most popular work of epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. However, it also one of the most divisive. The series has always attracted mixed reviews and has never won any major awards, but its fans love it, and some of the WoT fansites are the biggest SF&F forums and websites on the Internet. Jordan also became tremendously influential, with authors such as George RR Martin, JV Jones, Raymond E. Feist and Guy Gavriel Kay all attracting notice after Jordan recommended them to his fans or provided cover blurbs.

The first volume opens in traditional fashion, with a prologue set roughly 3,400 years prior to the main narrative. In the Age of Legends, the world was united in peace under the leadership of the Aes Sedai, men and women who could wield the One Power, the primeval force of creation which turns the Wheel of Time. In their hubris, the Aes Sedai carried out experiments to access greater forms of the Power, and accidentally breached the prison of the Dark One, the ultimate force of evil in the universe. The Dark One's touch plunged the world into a century of chaos and despair until the Aes Sedai rallied under their leader, a man nicknamed the Dragon, and re-sealed the Dark One's prison. At the moment of that victory, the Dark One cursed the male half of the One Power, driving all male channellers of the Power insane. In their insanity, they destroyed the world, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction and reshaping the continents through the three centuries of earthquakes and tidal waves they unleashed. With the ending of the Breaking of the World, the Aes Sedai, now consisting only of women, rallied and helped civilisation rebuild to a level of technology roughly equal to that of the Renaissance (although social customs and graces are much more akin to the late 18th/early 19th Century). This Age of history has lived in the shadow of the Prophecies of the Dragon, that state that the hastily-patched seal on the Dark One's prison will eventually fail and the Dragon will be Reborn to save the world, but in doing so will doom it for he will go insane and shatter the world for a second time. Which would be bad, obviously.

The Eye of the World opens in the backwater region of the Two Rivers, a bucolic rural landscape tucked in a forgotten corner of the Kingdom of Andor. Rand al'Thor - a shepherd's son - and four of his friends are forced to flee the Two Rivers when the monstrous servants of the Dark One attack, searching for Rand and two of his friends, Mat and Perrin. They are guided by an Aes Sedai, Moiraine, and her Warder (a sort-of bodyguard, but with souped-up badass qualities), Lan. Whilst hiding in the ruined, ancient city of Shadar Logoth our heroes are separated, and must undergo many trials before they reunite in Andor's capital city of Caemlyn and find out what it is that the Dark One wants with them.

Rereading The Eye of the World after thirteen years is a fascinating experience. Both the good and the bad elements stand out a lot more than when I read it as an engrossed teenager, but it's still a page-turning read with a lot to recommend it.

First, the positives. Jordan is an excellent storyteller and demonstrates full command of the numerous entwining plots in this first volume. He delineates each character quite clearly and whilst those characters are based strongly on existing archetypes, he makes them work, so the reader cares about what happens to them. He is also a strong worldbuilder. Few fictional worlds come as fully-realised as this one, with only Middle-earth and after three books or so, GRRM's Westeros coming close to matching both its depth and scope (Bakker's Earwa may also yet match it). Jordan also has some interesting things to say in this series. Whilst not averse to 'grittiness' in fantasy, Jordan expressed concerns about the idea that everyone is flawed and grey takes away from the nature of evil, that real evil exists in the world and must be confronted. Whilst Jordan's characters are certainly not saints or flawless, the forces of the Shadow are very clearly shown to be black-hearted, cruel and merciless, which especially now is refreshing from the notion that are no bad guys, just people with their own agendas which may or may not be as valid as the heroes'. However, this doesn't make for very interesting antagonists and it's a relief then that much of the rest of the series concentrates more on the struggles between different factions of the supposed good guys.

The negatives sound pretty damning. The first half of the book is modelled very closely on the opening of The Lord of the Rings, but the novel stretches the line between tribute to parody to breaking point. We not only have analogues to the Shire (the Two Rivers), Gandalf (Moiraine) and Aragorn (Lan), but also the One Ring (the cursed dagger), the Nazgul (the Myrddraal), the Trolls and Orcs (the Trollocs), Moria (Shadar Logoth), Gollum (Padan Fain), Treebeard (the Green Man) and even the Argonath (the Arinelle statues). It's extremely hard to ignore these close parallels, although they do broadly succeed in giving the first half of the book some of the same atmosphere as the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring and, as bad as they are, they're not quite veering into Terry 'How the Hell Did He Not Get Sued' Brooks territory. As mentioned earlier, the Shadow's pure, irredeemable evil is also rather wearying and the Myrddraal and Ba'alazamon's tedious threats almost tip them into cartoon villain territory. The world building is excellent, but occasionally Jordan resorts to info dumping to transmit it to the audience, which comes across as awkward. And Robert Jordan's sense of humour is beyond tiresome. I was trying to count the number of times Rand or Perrin thought that the other was better at talking to girls and had to give up in the end. A good running gag is one that appears once per book and is varied a bit each time, not exactly the same gag repeated half a dozen times within a few chapters. This also runs into Jordan's problem of his use of stock phrases and recurring sentence structures, which occasionally come across as quite clumsy. Jordan is a great storyteller, but he is certainly not a good writer.

Yet these negatives, although rather annoying, are offset by the positives. The story is engrossing and the depth of detail refreshing, if overdone at times. The characters are interesting, the world building excellent and the fresh spins on old ideas are well-done. The book hints at countless more mysteries to come, and makes you want to pick up the second (and much better) book, which is its main goal, after all.

The Eye of the World (***½) remains a decent opening to a fascinating, if eventually rather troubled, saga. The novel is published by Orbit in the [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eye-World-Wheel-Time/dp/1857230760/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221412197&sr=8-1"]UK[/url] and Tor in the [url="http://www.amazon.com/Eye-World-Wheel-Time-Book/dp/0812511816/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221414155&sr=8-1"]US[/url]. The second book is The Great Hunt.[/quote]

I must admit, it's a little bit disappointing to be rereading a book I once thought was the dog's testicles with an older, more critical eye, and not being able to kick back and mindlessly enjoy it as I once did. One of the problems with getting older and more experienced reading, I suppose.

However, I was worried I'd end up hating it or something, and I surprised myself by enjoying it as much as I did, even though the many ([i]many[/i]) negative elements stood up a lot more notably than they did a decade ago.

[Ouroboros]

I'd have to agree with the above post, I had much the same experience as I was rereading it the other day. And for all that it is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings I think the Eye of the World succeeds in one place that Tolkien's books failed. It is much, much more readable than Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wasn't a particularly good storyteller, at least not in the same way Robert Jordan was.

[Shryke]

Honestly, all those LOTR parallels I never even thought of till you mentioned them right now. Mostly cause I think your really reaching.

I mean, the whole "Wizard comes to rescue back-water hicks who will save the world from Orc-Trolls" thing, but that's a fairly standard cliche by the time WOT was written. Alot of the other stuff you mention is a SERIOUS stretch.

[Galactus]

Mind, I actually come back and enjoyed the books more on a re-read. Mainly because the book is very much complex (as in, sheer number of characters and concepts) and it's fun to pick up on things you didn't notice the first time.

[quote]Honestly, all those LOTR parallels I never even thought of till you mentioned them right now. Mostly cause I think your really reaching.

I mean, the whole "Wizard comes to rescue back-water hicks who will save the world from Orc-Trolls" thing, but that's a fairly standard cliche by the time WOT was written. Alot of the other stuff you mention is a SERIOUS stretch.[/quote]

Quite frankly, I think EOTW was, at least in part, more homage than ripoff. There is just a sense of "awareness" of the LOTR-tastic elements in it.

And mind, I rather like Ba'alzamon's cartoon villainy. Especially when we later in the series find out that the Forsaken view him pretty much that way. He has a very neat "large ham" quality to him.

[Werthead]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1518193' date='Sep 15 2008, 09.23']Honestly, all those LOTR parallels I never even thought of till you mentioned them right now. Mostly cause I think your really reaching.

I mean, the whole "Wizard comes to rescue back-water hicks who will save the world from Orc-Trolls" thing, but that's a fairly standard cliche by the time WOT was written. Alot of the other stuff you mention is a SERIOUS stretch.[/quote]

Well, since Jordan admitted and acknowledged he was trying to evoke the atmosphere and feel of LotR with the first book, I don't really see how it's a stretch.

[Joanna vander Poele]

[quote name='Ouroboros' post='1518186' date='Sep 15 2008, 00.44']I'd have to agree with the above post, I had much the same experience as I was rereading it the other day. And for all that it is reminiscent of Lord of the Rings I think the Eye of the World succeeds in one place that Tolkien's books failed. It is much, much more readable than Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wasn't a particularly good storyteller, at least not in the same way Robert Jordan was.[/quote]
Blasphemy! :spank:

Or something. I never really got how LOTR was supposed to be hard to be read: I actually read it very easily when I was eleven. Then again, I really love Tolkien's "epic saga" style of writing and at least he's not typing down shit like "No matter what the men [i]thought[/i], Elayne was [i]not[/i] a lightskirt! [i]Men[/i], she thought scornfully, crossing her arms over her breasts. What woolheads!"

Speaking of that, I should re-read LOTR soon...

[Shryke]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1518264' date='Sep 15 2008, 07.44']Well, since Jordan admitted and acknowledged he was trying to evoke the atmosphere and feel of LotR with the first book, I don't really see how it's a stretch.[/quote]

Atmosphere and feel? Sure.

the One Ring = the cursed dagger, Gollum = Padan Fain, Treebeard = the Green Man? Now your just stretching.

"OMG, their both made of plant, one must be a rip-off of the other!!!!"

[Werthead]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1518772' date='Sep 15 2008, 19.46']Atmosphere and feel? Sure.

the One Ring = the cursed dagger, Gollum = Padan Fain, Treebeard = the Green Man? Now your just stretching.

"OMG, their both made of plant, one must be a rip-off of the other!!!!"[/quote]

If I'm stretching, so are a [i]lot[/i] of other people. These similarities have been pointed out, repeatedly, plenty of times before in the last decade that I've been looking at WoT fansites.

There's even strong odds being laid on Fain inadvertantly 'helping' Rand win the Last Battle somehow, a la Gollum grabbing the Ring and falling into Ororduin.

[L'Sana]

[quote name='Werthead' post='1518874' date='Sep 15 2008, 13.42']If I'm stretching, so are a [i]lot[/i] of other people. These similarities have been pointed out, repeatedly, plenty of times before in the last decade that I've been looking at WoT fansites.

There's even strong odds being laid on Fain inadvertantly 'helping' Rand win the Last Battle somehow, a la Gollum grabbing the Ring and falling into Ororduin.[/quote]

If it actually happens, then I will give you "Fain = Gollum," and maybe even by extension "cursed dagger = one ring," though the second one is more of a stretch. Until then, though, I think those comparisons are reaching a bit too far. I would agree that the Green Man is awfully similar to Treebeard, though.

Other than those, though, I think you have the first book more or less nailed. I re-read the early part of the series recently, and my thoughts were pretty similar to yours. There were so many cool hints tossed out about the world, and many of them are even better on a re-read. On the other hand, the signs of the rot are already there, and they become even more glaringly obvious on re-reads. I was far more annoyed by Nynaeve's chapters, for example, knowing that she is a typical example of a woman in this world, rather than a bitch who was going to get her comeuppance.