Goodreads | Eye of the World, The (The Wheel of Time #1)

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Alex rated it:

03/06/08

bookshelves: books-read-in-2006

Read in February, 2006

THE WHEEL OF TIME SERIES BY ROBERT JORDAN: I tried. I gave it over two years of my life and I still couldn't keep going till the end. Of course, the real end will probably be book fifteen or twenty or, heaven forbid, twenty-five and up. I'm talking about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Currently there are eleven books in the series, the latest, Knife of Dream, came out last October. The first book, Eye of the World, started out really well and I felt like I'd discovered a great new epic fa...more THE WHEEL OF TIME SERIES BY ROBERT JORDAN: I tried. I gave it over two years of my life and I still couldn't keep going till the end. Of course, the real end will probably be book fifteen or twenty or, heaven forbid, twenty-five and up. I'm talking about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Currently there are eleven books in the series, the latest, Knife of Dream, came out last October. The first book, Eye of the World, started out really well and I felt like I'd discovered a great new epic fantasy series similar to that of Lord of the Rings. The first book proved this and I thought it was great; I was also very excited at the notion of there being so many books in the series, with the story still incomplete. The second book, The Great Hunt, while not as mind-mashingly great as the first book, was still a great read, as was the third, The Dragon Reborn, where we find out that the main character is the guy prophesied to save the world, essentially. Eight books from th ere and the big showdown still hasn't come, while Jordan has continued to drag out into the hundreds and thousands of pages scenes, descriptions, and characters bickering at each other about the same thing while repetitively employing their annoying habits, to the point where I feel like I'm reading a children's nursery rhyme. Then there's the whole deal with the main character, Rand, having his undeniable love for three of the women characters, which he is okay with, and which they are okay with, apparently, and are quite willing to share him amongst themselves. I may have kept sloughing through the series better if there'd been a lot less purple prose and books four to ten had been condensed into say books four to six, which would've made more sense and made the stories move along better. Around book five I began spotting the routine the books go through: a few hundred pages of sitting around talking, explaining and regurgitating what's happened in the past books, bitching at each other; then about four hundred pages of people painstakingly crawling from a starting point to a destination (and bear in mind that these people can "travel" through vortexes real fast), and then the last hundred pages is a big action scene. At book seven, Crown of Thorns, halfway through, I decided I'd wasted enough time on Mr. Jordan and his wordiness, so I employed a slow speed-reading method which got me through them a lot faster. In about three days I reached the end of book nine and decided I'd had it and it just wasn't worth any more of my time. At this point I'd been able to summarize each book into three or four sentences, and I'd decided that if I can do that, maybe it's just not worth it and I should put my reading time to something more important that I'd enjoy reading more.

So here I am Mr. Jordan, signing off on your series that held so much promise and crashed and burned like a planet falling into a sun. Oh, and you know what, I'm not the only one who thinks this way. There are other people I know who've given up earlier than me, and others who've not even bothered to start because they know it's going to end bad.

On the plus side, I get to sell all my Robert Jordan books and make money off him!

Sayonara.

For more reviews, and writings, or to buy yourself a copy, please visit www.alexctelander.com....less

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Kelly rated it:

07/31/07

bookshelves: fantasy, fiction

Read in January, 1997

recommends it for: fantasy fans, but beware, you may be in for later pain if you try to go on

The first book of this series is decent. I read this in my all fantasy all the time phase in middle school, 'cause it was big then, and why not? The world is pretty interesting, the concept gets the characters going. Some of the characters are great. Some of them at least /start off/ great in this book. The plot twists are pretty cool sometimes as well. Robert Jordan started this series with a huge vision in mind, and you can see it here as he tries to get it all out. I really feel like he had p...more The first book of this series is decent. I read this in my all fantasy all the time phase in middle school, 'cause it was big then, and why not? The world is pretty interesting, the concept gets the characters going. Some of the characters are great. Some of them at least /start off/ great in this book. The plot twists are pretty cool sometimes as well. Robert Jordan started this series with a huge vision in mind, and you can see it here as he tries to get it all out. I really feel like he had passion with this one and articulated it pretty well.

I just have a really hard time recommending it to anyone. If you're a fantasy fan, you'll know that the deal is that you read the first book and like it, and of course you're in it now, you NEED to know what happens to all of the characters. Unfortunately, this series gets SO BAD. SO BAD I AM PAINED THINKING OF IT. I think I need Advil just from remembering what Robert Jordan put me through later on with this series. SO BAD. He's trying to stretch it out to make as much money as possible, and to the UTTER RUINATION OF ANYTHING GOOD. NOT COOL, Jordan. NOT COOL. I'm sorry for all the caps, but I really need to emphasize how much pain I was put through. Because of course, I tried to keep going. I even made it until halfway through book six before I literally screamed "I can't do it anymore!!" and threw the book across the room. The main heroes get annoying, the fun sidekicks either get short shrift or bogged down with serious things so that they are no longer fun, the majority of the women SUCK and are either A) annoying, whiny bitches, B) demanding, emasculating whores with penis envy or C) I WANT TO SHOOT YOU NOW. The plot gets ridiculous, and really self important and overly serious. And more importantly? I no longer give a shit! The painful part is that it all started off so well and so interesting, too. I hate when authors do that.

So my recommendation? Don't read it! If you do, read with care. Don't get too involved. To be safe, don't read beyond about the fourth book (perhaps fifth for the brave), and just read the synopses online or something. Shudder.

Ahem. Yeah. The book was pretty good....less

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Eric rated it:

07/12/07

recommends it for: fantasy fans

Jordan's Wheel of Time series were the best fantasy books I had ever read*, the best pure stories. I wanted to live in the world he created. His descriptions of simple village life and interaction are so rich and wonderful, not to mention his treatment of city life, magic, technology, politics, romance, history, mystery, comedy, food, the battle of the sexes, military life and tactics, cultures and on and on. Just wonderful. I couldn't wait to get home from work and slip into that world. It was ...more Jordan's Wheel of Time series were the best fantasy books I had ever read*, the best pure stories. I wanted to live in the world he created. His descriptions of simple village life and interaction are so rich and wonderful, not to mention his treatment of city life, magic, technology, politics, romance, history, mystery, comedy, food, the battle of the sexes, military life and tactics, cultures and on and on. Just wonderful. I couldn't wait to get home from work and slip into that world. It was anguish waiting all those years for each new book to come out. When they did, I couldn't help devouring them immediately. For a while there, I'd go back and reread all of the existing books again in the run-up to each new release. They were that good. I'm sure I'll do it again at some point - read the books all the way through again. Fifteen years I've invested in these books! Reading them over and over.

I do it an injustice to oversimplify it like this, but it is essentially the "unassuming wholesome farm boy turns out to be the Chosen One and must journey with companions to confront the supernatural evil entity" model of story. But it's just massive. Like Star Wars, it has mythological archetypes buried deep within it. Think Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey idea plus character types and situations faintly reflecting those from various cultures' bodies of myth. That makes it so deep and rich and subconsciously resonating. I remember faintly entertaining the paranoid fear that I sure hoped the author didn't die before finishing the series because I couldn't stand not knowing how it ended**. It was that good.

*But then somewhere around book 6 or 7, the series started going down hill. It lost its way, ran out of gas. There were entire books where the various substories just didn't move much. And this one time, maybe book 9, the paper got thicker, the font got larger AND the pagecount went way down. It's like he was really struggling to advance the story. Slavishly I kept buying them and slogging through them. The writing wasn't any less good, it's just that it got frustrating that the story didn't advance.

Finally on the penultimate book in the series, the last one released, it started to pick back up and get better. And he said the following book would finally be the last (12th) one and he'd wrap it all up, though I don't see how he can do it in a single book. The story just got so huge and there are still so many unexplored and unresolved things, there's no way he can do them all justice in a single book.

**Aaaand now he has some super-rare disease, the meds for which make him so fatigued that he can't write much, and the survival rate for which is about 4 years with treatment. So it's not certain that he will live to finish the last book. Arrrrgh. You can't really be selfish about it - I mean, this is a person's life we're talking about. (But still, kind of, arrrgh.)...less

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Trevor rated it:

06/28/07

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: fantasy fans who haven't read Tolkien

I really liked this book when i read it, but at that time i had never read anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, except for the first half of The Hobbit, which i have read four times now and for whatever reason never finished. I guess i just didn't like it all that much. So i had planned to spend the next year or two reading the entirity of The Wheel of Time, and this seemed like a strong start. Then Book 4 (The Shadow Rising) sucke...more I really liked this book when i read it, but at that time i had never read anything by J.R.R. Tolkien, except for the first half of The Hobbit, which i have read four times now and for whatever reason never finished. I guess i just didn't like it all that much. So i had planned to spend the next year or two reading the entirity of The Wheel of Time, and this seemed like a strong start. Then Book 4 (The Shadow Rising) sucked and i stopped, and read Lord of the Rings, and now i just view this as a huge Tolkien ripoff. The creatures + characters are all the same, just with different names: the orcs + Uruk-Hai became Trollocs, the Witch-king himself became a Draghkar, Saron became Ba'alzamon (or, for further cheesiness, his real name is Shai'tan, a terrible pun), Gandalf got split into two as Thom and Moiraine, Aragorn became Lan, Merry + Pippin became Mat and Perrin, Sam became...well, Perrin again, i think, and so on. The first book has a roughly similar plot, what with Frodo trying to get the ring to Mount Doom and Rand trying to get himself to The Eye of the World, in both cases for the purpose of defeating Sauron/Shai'tan.

At least it was well written. The characters were mostly likable (Thom, in particular) and unique. This is one of the main reasons i hated Book 4 so much: all of Jordan's characters became flat. By the time you finish Book 4, there is one male character and one female character, they just have a number of different faces. The men are ignorant morons and the women are irritating bitches. I hate the way that Robert Jordan writes women.

Eh. I guess i haven't really much else to add; my memory's pretty foggy on what happens in which book. But, Book 1 is well enough written, and if you stop at the end of it, there are no loose ends to worry about. Hell, you could probably do the second book and stop there, if you don't mind ignoring a few unanswered questions. But, and i know a number of people will disagree with me on this, however i personally know at least three that will agree, do not go past the third book. Read Lord of the Rings instead....less

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epoophoron rated it:

(review of isbn 1904233198)

01/10/08

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: hardcore fantasy fans with A LOT of time to kill.

This series is both entertaining and hugely frustrating. At 11 books averaging 800 pages apiece, it's quite a time investment.

The plusses:

+ Robert Jordan has a knack for compelling plot. I really, really wanted to know what happened next at nearly every turn.

+ The concepts are original - excepting of course that he takes the same stuff from Tolkien that everyone else does - and pretty nifty. I especially like the Yin/Yang idea of the one power and its male and female halves.

...more

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Paul rated it:

04/18/08

bookshelves: high-fantasy

Read in August, 1997

The Wheel of Time saga starts off with a very tried and true formula of meager beginnings. The book "The Eye of the World" is the first part of this series, and Jordan does a fantastic job in hooking a reader. I'll admit the first 50 or so pages were rather dull to me, but that gets solved relatively quickly as Jordan jumps from slowly building suspense to absolute peril. His three protagonists (Rand, Mat, and Perrin) are drawn into a world outside of their safe little haven, and th...more The Wheel of Time saga starts off with a very tried and true formula of meager beginnings. The book "The Eye of the World" is the first part of this series, and Jordan does a fantastic job in hooking a reader. I'll admit the first 50 or so pages were rather dull to me, but that gets solved relatively quickly as Jordan jumps from slowly building suspense to absolute peril. His three protagonists (Rand, Mat, and Perrin) are drawn into a world outside of their safe little haven, and the reader is instantly drawn into it as well.

Jordan keeps a very keen attention to detail throughout his series. There are very few errors in the general canon of the books, and of the few I've found I was forced to actively search for them. Jordan paints a vivid mental picture of his characters and their mannerisms, yet doesn't set the physical characteristics in stone. Instead the reader has the chance to flesh out Jordan's general descriptions in their own mind, which believe me is a blessing.

The only detractors from the book are not severe enough to spoil the experience. Jordan has a tendency to deliver exposition either in the characters thoughts or through dialogue. That's common, but because it is a high fantasy with a very detailed world there is quite a bit of it. Luckily he takes the time to break it up throughout the book so that it doesn't come out lopsided.

Lastly, and this is more noticable in a few of the later books, Jordan tends to emphasize the differences in opinions between men and women. The "comedy of errors" motif is used often, and it adds to the story and detracts from it at the same time. There are moments when the characters are so entrenched in sexist views that they lose credibility as actual people. Often times Nynaeve will come across as a fairly dedicated feminist. Small flaw, but it is there.

For parents worried about any violent or sexual content their children may experience by reading this book I offer the following. Relax. Jordan is almost puritanical in most of the writings, having the men occasionally note a woman's pretty ankles, or full pouting lips. The violence isn't horribly graphic, and what violence does exist Jordan paints with a very broad brush. Horrifying details and morbid subjects are not fleshed out. This makes it a fairly "family friendly" read....less

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Keely rated it:

12/01/07

bookshelves: fantasy, novel

This book is a slow train back home: it takes forever to get anywhere, and by the time you do, you realized that you liked it a lot more the first time.

In Tolkien, the first hundred pages takes place in Hobbiton, and it sets the mood, creates the characters, and prepares the story, in a sort of mirror to the dénouement. In Eye of the World, you spend the first hundred and fifty pages in whatever small farming community so that when they finally leave, it will seem like something is happenin...more

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Tina rated it:

01/13/08

bookshelves: sci-fi-fantasy

Read in July, 1998

Robert Jordan has created a group of sympathetic, confused, naive, brave, proud, wrongheaded (sometimes), and very human protagonists. He whisks them away from their comfortable home, a small rural village called Emond's Field, and thrusts them out into an adventure. He makes you like them and root for them and hope that, in the end, all of them -- Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Nynaeve -- make out ok. You wonder if you can really trust Moiraine, the inscrutable Aes Sedai who promises to protect ...more

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Christian and Amy rated it:

12/07/07

bookshelves: finishedreading

Read in January, 2006

recommends it for: Fantasy readers who will see things through

Chris - Greetings all, I'm writing this to collect my thoughts on the Wheel Of Time series of books.
I've read 11 books in the wheel of Time series (12 if you count New Spring (A Wheel of Time Prequel Novel)) and over all, I've very much enjoyed being captivated by the series.
I'm not going to sugar coat it, there are books like 1-5 that are pure gold, then there are books like 7? where you finish it, and you are wondering why you care about the people traveling with the faire, and wonder w...more Chris - Greetings all, I'm writing this to collect my thoughts on the Wheel Of Time series of books.
I've read 11 books in the wheel of Time series (12 if you count New Spring (A Wheel of Time Prequel Novel)) and over all, I've very much enjoyed being captivated by the series.
I'm not going to sugar coat it, there are books like 1-5 that are pure gold, then there are books like 7? where you finish it, and you are wondering why you care about the people traveling with the faire, and wonder why one of the main three characters wasn't even in the book. Or book Ten, Crossroads of Twilight, wondering why Robert Jordan spent 1000 pages telling you everything the other characters were doing during the climactic scene at the end of the previous book. [Granted there are three chapters at the end that actually move the plot forward, but talk about the diamond in the rough after 1000 pages.....]
But I digress, Robert Jordan has created a wonderful world full of vibrance, history, and complexity; and I'm glad to have been along for the journey, and most of the books are quite excellent. But you do need to have a bit of drive to get through the dull parts of a few of the books. When you perservere, you find that he he does eventually tie every little detail in, it just might be in the next book. [This is rewarding, as well as frustrating, as you run into characters that you liked in one paragraph from three books ago, but then at other times you are wracking you brain trying to remember who the heck some folks are.
Luckily they do have a glossary at the end to help refresh one's memories.]

Hypothetically, the next book will be the last in the series, and I'm very much looking forward to reading it.

Chris

PS:> For those who couldn't get through book 10, read 11, you'll be glad you did.
PPS:> The prequel book was good, but I was more interested on where the story was going in the future. With ~1000 pages a book, I felt there was normally plenty of backstory. : )
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'ro rated it:

12/20/07

I really enjoyed this entire series (as far as I've read into it, at any rate). But then I read the essay "Quality in Epic Fantasy by Alec Austin in Strange Horizons magazine (http://www.strangehorizons.com... and I found out why I was so drawn into it...and then I was just kinda sad....

Here is an excerpt (emphasis mine):

I will refer to the two easiest means of extending a fa...more

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Adam rated it:

12/31/07

Read in December, 2007

My beloved tells me that I really need to take a break. A break from The Wheel of Time, a break from Rand al'Thor, a break from the whole world wherein the Dragon Reborn is being... well... reborn, and rediscovered. I fully realize what a complete nerd I sound like, fervently discussing books whose main characters do things (routinely) like fighting with swords and axes against half-human monsters, make use of ancient magic, and travel on horseback most of the time. I realize it, and currentl...more

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Mary-Beth rated it:

06/13/07

bookshelves: fantasy, fiction

I only gave this novel and its subsequent sequels one star because it is not possible to give a negative rating. These are the novels which led me to the conclusion that any series longer than a trilogy probably isn't worth reading.

The characters are two-sided playing cards. They are so pathetic they're forced to even repeat their gestures ad nauseum. When you find yourself hopelessly praying that Nynaeve dies horribly just so that she can never tug her stupid braid again, you know you're fa...more

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John rated it:

09/07/07

This is more or less my review of the whole Wheel of Time series, though I'm only two thirds of the way through book 10. I'd be surprised if my opinion changes much in what's left though.

At the beginning of the Wheel of Time series, you delve into a rich world that becomes more and more vast as the main characters see more of it themselves. The breadth and depth of this world is undoubtedly the greatest strength of the series. The other strength of the series is the plotting: there are co...more

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Garrett rated it:

05/13/08

I had never read the Wheel of Time series (or anything by Robert Jordan). But, with the latest announcement that Brandon Sanderson was going to be finishing the last book in the series, I had to go out and get it from the library (to see if I'd even like it before spending all my hard-earned cash).

I had grown disenfranchised with the fantasy genre in my late teens/early twenties, as I've mentioned in one or two other reviews, so I stopped with the things I had already read, and started focus...more

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Bria rated it:

07/31/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: The Nine Rods of Dominion (tee hee)

I know I'm only on page 8, but when you find in the prologue of a book this passage:

"..the Dark lay heavy on the land and weighed down the hearts of men, and the green things failed, and hope died. And men cried out to the Creator, saying, O Light of the Heavens, Light of the World, let the Promised One be born of the mountain, according to the prophecies, as he was in ages past and will be in ages to come. Let the Prince of the Morning sing to the land that green things will grow and ...more

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Nicole rated it:

06/25/07

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: fantasy fiction lovers with stamina

I read the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan because both my husband and best friend had read them. The best friend highly encouraged me to read the books - my husband warned me off.

The warning is not because the books are bad. The first few, actually, are very good. Great character development, interesting universe for those who love fantasy novels.

The warning is because these books never, ever, ever are going to end. Ever.

There are so far 12 books (including a prequel that c...more

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Maze rated it:

11/16/07

bookshelves: fantasy

Read in January, 1998

recommends it for: people who love epic fantasy

There have been many reviews already done for The Eye of the World, as well as the entire Wheel of Time series. If you have read any of them you will probably notice a lot of people just couldn't hang with the series and I would be hard pressed to blame them. It does drag on, and now that the author is deceased, there is no certainty that the final book will ever be released. But I personally have really enjoyed this series.

The Eye of the World, more than any of the other Wheel of Time ...more

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Jason rated it:

01/19/08

Read in September, 2007

All right, so here's the deal. I've got a good friend from work. He's been trying to get me to read this series for over a year now. Then I walked into the break room at work one afternoon and busted my boss reading a book from the series as well. Then the campaining began. They both pressured me to partake in what I referred to as "Total Geekdom". I mean, it's a fantasy series, I don't read fantasy. Sure, the movies got me reading the Harry Potter series, but that's as far as I'd trav...more

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Chaunine rated it:

03/31/08

Read in January, 1992

This book is great. I love the role that women play in this series. Usually fantasy books involve some young farm boy that gets caught up in an adventure he would never have asked for in his wildest dreams and finds out that he is the key to saving the world... oh yes, like this book for example. BUT I enjoy the role that women play as the holders of the magical power. I think the characters as fun and the mystery of the whole thing sucked me right in. I think Nynaeve is great, the way she go...more

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Anton rated it:

09/03/07

bookshelves: fantasy

Read in January, 2000

recommends it for: lord of the rings fans

I just re-read the series this year. The series is spectacular and the world that Jordan creates is greatly detailed and absorbing. What really makes this series special is the political intrigues, a history to rival the Simarillion and characters that as you read the books build a certain fondness... Personally I like the idea of the void. Its basically the same concept that professionals in sports such as basketball or target shooting where one enters a state of hyper-concentration and the bal...more

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