I have been reading fantasy since I was very little. This first book I ever got was Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone and since than I was enthralled. So I would say I’ve read quite a bit of fantasy and I have a pretty good pool of knowledge for the genre, but I’ve never even heard about The Wheel of time. That was untill I discovered Daniel Greene on YouTube (He’s a great content creator, who talks a lot about about fantasy, sci-fi and movie adaptations of works in those genres. I greatly recommend checking him out, if you’re interested in this sort of stuff.) and if you’ve watched a few of his videos, you know that meeting The Wheel of time is basically unavoidable. And so, as many others, I too was convinced to pick up this series.
For some context: The Wheel of time (WOT from now on) is a high fantasy series written by the American author Robert Jordan. It’s pretty famous in the fantasy circles and it has an incredibly dedicated fanbase. But here’s the catch – it has FOURTEEN BOOKS. And they’re not just some two to three hundred pages long pre-lunch appetizers, oh no. These are six to over a thousand pages long tomes, so the series is quite the undertaking. When I went to library I was shocked, because the series covered three whole shelves. That is, because the Czech printing splits each book into two or three shorter ones, depending on the length. But undeterred, I picked up the first book and started reading.
CHARACTERS
WOT is fabled to have over a thousand named characters, but that’s because every pub our heros enter has a named innkeeper and every random person they encounter on the way introduces themselves first, but there’s not that many important viewpoint characters, at least up to this point (though I’ve heard that’s gonna change). We mostly stick with our main five concisting of Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve. We also get a lot of Moraine, Lan, Tom and loyal, but they’re really fill more supporting roles, though very important ones. I have to say, that Jordan’s character work is really nice and especially the group dynamics are fantastic. Every pairing works incredibly well, revealing different parts of their personalities. But let’s check out, who out main five are.
Rand al’Thor.
Rand is clearly our main protagonist as we spend the most time with him both in the first and the second book and for a main character he is…….. kinda bland to be honest. His inner monologue mostly centres around confusion or anger and we get way too much of it. I enjoyed him the best in the third book, which is a bit ironical cause that’s where we spend by far the least time with him, but I really enjoyed the slowly creeping madness he experiences here and thought it was conveyed very well through the short passages between the main storylines. So in conclusion, he hasn’t won me over yet, but I’m warming up to him.
Egwene al’Vere
Now we get Rand’s counterpart, Egwene. Their relationship is set up right from the start, as something everyone knows about and it’s the main thing that characterizes her in the beggining of the story, but it never seems like a funkcional one. Right in the first chapter we get mentions of how doesn’t really want to see her and they never really act like a pair, but they still get envious and in Rand’s case a bit possessive and overprotective over each other. I’m not sure, if this is how Jordan intended the relationship to feel or if it’s just a case of his not so great romance writing. But once she and Rand split off, Egwene gets more interesting. I can’t say I like her though. She’s really annoying, acts very passionately and a bit carelessly at times and she just seems a bit like a child. I’m also not sure where’s her character going. It looks like she’s s coming out of Nynaeve’s shadow and stepping into more of a leader role and she has this thing with the Seanchan, so maybe that’s where the story will take her, but I’m really don’t know at this point.
Nynaeve al’Meara
Since I already mentioned her, let’s talk about Nynaeve next. Similar to Egwene, she has a really well developed character and she annoys me to no end. She’s the oldest out of our five protagonist and she’s set up as a protective and caring, almost motherly type, given that she was their town’s wisdom and she helped raise all of the rest. But the decisions she makes and the way she acts are quite dubious at times. She gets annoyed at everything and everyone, she’s constantly angry and she can’t listen to reasonable arguments. She hates Morain with burning passion for endangering the kids even though she saved them multiple times and they’re all way more powerful, capable and important, than they were at the begining and this hatred cannot be ascribed to the prejudice towards the Aes Sedai, as she ultimately decides to become one of them. I guess it could be for romantic reasons (more on that in the spoiler section), but it’s never framed that way. So I do think she’s a well written character, just one I don’t like yet.
Matrim Cauthon
Mat is the one character that improved the most for me across the three books. We don’t get much of him in the first two books and the little character development he receives, gets undercut by the corrupting influence of the Shadar Logoth dagger, which causes him to forget most of the time he had it in his possession. I think that’s a shame because his friendship with Rand is displayed beautifully in the first book, when they travel on their own and have to watch out for each other and to later learn that Mat didn’t really know what he was doing is quite disappointing. But he gets separated from the dagger at the beggining of the third book and he might just be the best character in that one. He was always described as a joker, a trickster and I really liked how Jordan leaned into that atchetype, but added a layer of magic and pure badassery over the top of it. He finnaly gets his own storyline and he’s by far the most proactive character, giving him his own agency and I like it a lot.
Perrin Aybara
And saving the best for last, we have Perrin. He’s the most consistent and my favourite out of our protagonists. He clearly very talented and clever (yes, I know everyone aperently think he’s stupid, but Jordan clearly says that he’s just careful and I mean c’mon he can calculate horse speed in his head just from looking at how their pursuitors are getting closer, he’s clever allright) making him very human and easy to empathize with. He probably gets the second highest amount of page time after Rand, but I suspect that might change for some of the future books, because he has a bunch of super interesting things set up for him. The biggest and most obvious is his connection to the wolves, which wasn’t really explained yet, but there’s also all of the Min’s semi-prophecies, the freed Aiel, Zarin, his connection to the Tuatha’an and the conflict between agresion and pacifism, between destruction and creation, between the axe and the hammer, so more than enough to fill at least few more books and I’m really looking forward to it. (from now on there may be spoilers)
THE EYE OF THE WORLD
I’m had a bit of a hard time getting into this one and I believe it was a case of differing expectations. I didn’t expect the 14 book behemoth of a series to start so small. I expected multiple storylines all across the land right from the beggining, but instead we start off in one little village with five kids who are forced to go on an adventure. It isn’t bad it’s just very contained and when you get teased by the epic prolougue, (of which you understand about half, because Jordan throws a whole bunch of names that you don’t know into your face, but it’s still really cool) I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. The beggining of the story draws a lot of inspiration from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but once the characters split off after Shadar Logoth it becomes its own unique thing. That’s also the point where the book really started clicking for me. I still didn’t care for the Nynaeve – Moraine – Lan group, but they mostly chased the others around anyways and both Mat with Rand and Egwene with Perrin were really enjoyable, the former centered more around character and friendship development and the latter more plot driven. WOT is a chosen one story, but I liked the little variation on the trope, with the identity of the chosen one not being clear at first and I would have liked Jordan to run with it a little longer devoting more time to Mat and Perrin. Two other characters that really should have gotten more attention are Nynaeve and Lan, because their feelings for each other come out of nowhere. This is unfortunately a continuing theme with Jordan’s romance writing. It’s incredibly „insta-lovy“ and not very good. Rand is aperently the ultimate heartthrob, who every young girl falls in love with at first sight and Egwene has a similar effect on boys. The three boys also keep remarking, how the other two are great with girl and they are not. The best relationship we’ve gotten so far is probably Perrin a Faile and that one is set up by her thinking he’s hot and him being really annoyed by her, but back to the Eye of the World. The rest of the book is really solid, even after the group gets back together. It has a bit of Pacing issues in my opinion with some parts feeling very slow and the ending is a bit confusing, couse I still don’t really know what was the Eye of the World supposed to be or do (and it’s not even mentioned in the following books). But all in all a solid begginig, good but not great.
THE GREAT HUNT
The second entry is once again a Rand-Fiesta, but this time a lot better. Where the first book was a bit slow at times, this one sets a break-neck pace right from the start and keeps it up through it’s entirety. We are constantly being thrown into unexpected and exciting scenarios and I love it. Uncharacteristically, I enjoyed the girls and Rand the best this time around (mostly because Perrin and Mat didn’t have much to do). Tar Valon is really cool and I especially liked Nynaeve’s initiation ritual, but the true fun begins once the girls get kidnapped. The following Saenchan storyline sets up a lot of stuff for these characters, be it Nynaeve’s inability to channel without anger or Egwene’s hatred towards slavery. This is also the first time Jordan shows off his foreshadowing skills. Lanfear was set up greatly. I was about 80% sure Selene was her, but I was left with just enough doubt that the eventual reveal felt satisfying. A lot of stuff in here feels like set up actually. We got our first glimpses of Tel’aran’rhiod and the Forsaken, who we know will play a bigger role in the future, and we’re also introduced to the Saenchan and the Aiel who I assume will also show up again (it would be really weird, if they didn’t). This is only apparent in hindsight though. When you’re reading, you’re just enjoying the story, without thinking about the consequences. I have some issues with Jordan’s characterization here especially, but in all the books so far. When he wants you to know something, he’s gonna really drive it home, by repeating it every time we meet the character. Rand is confused about his father and his responsibility, Perrin is believed to be stupid, but he’s just careful, Mat is a prankster, Nynaeve….. really likes tugging on her braid. I get that these are important features of the characters (well, maybe not the braid one), but repeating them so often makes the audience feel like their inteligence is being underestimated. I don’t need to hear it seven times, I got it after the second one. But that’s the only real complaint I have about the book. Otherwise it’s great all around and my favourite of the three.
The Dragon reborn
I was a bit worried, when I saw the title, that we were going to get another Rand-filled book and maybe even more so this time. I mean, it’s literally named after him, but to my surprise, he’s barely in here and I love the choice to do that. We only see Rand in very short glimpses, but those are very raw and powerful. We see him unable to sleep, afraid of his dreams, unable to cut himself off of the one power, killing people with it and raising their corpses. We see him being so driven to find callandor but struggling with his own sanity. It pushes his character into a darker territory and I’m intrigued to see what comes next. Mat goes from being a non-factor to being the best character in this book. He’s funny and confident, his storyline is interesting and his dynamic with Tom is one of the best we’ve gotten so far. Perrin remains as solid as ever, even though I feel he has a lot of stuff set up at this point and some of it should really start getting resolved. The third main storyline (Rand’s really doesn’t count) is the centered around the girls and this one really drops the ball, unfortunately. Firstly, the premise, that Amyrlin would send three unexpierienced young girls to hunt down a group of THIRTEEN fully trained Aes sedai just doesn’t make any sense, but even if we put that aside, their journey to Tear really isn’t interesting and the introduction to the Aiel could have easily been accomplished with Mat or Perrin. Nynaeve and Egwene hit new levels of annoying as they argue and bicker the whole way. Elayne is the only one, who actually slightly improved for me, but that might be simply because she’s constantly contrasted with Nynaeve and Egwene. I really hope they improve for the next book, because the rest was great, but their passages really dragged and consumed way more page time than necessary. The ending once again shows us Jordan’s great foreshadowing. I was almost sure that Ba’alzamon wasn’t actually the dark one, from the interactions he had with Lanfear in Perrin’s dream and I was proven right once again, which just feels really nice. The same goes for the rest of the forsaken infiltrating governments around the world. Overall a good book and falls in the middle for me so far.
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