Review of The Eye of the World, By Robert Jordan

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is one I grabbed at a thrift store one day, because I'd been searching for fantasy, and saw the Tor Fantasy logo on the spine. But I bought it because I'd heard so much about The Wheel of Time. I'm very glad I did.

At first, I found myself chuckling about how similar it was to Lord of the Rings; the rider in black, the group of friends, the visiting magic-user.

But it wasn't long before it departed utterly from Lord of the Rings in terms of the world itself. The writing style is still similar, however, and as a fan of Tolkien was still enjoyable for me.

The Eye of the World is a story about Rand, and several of his friends. Him and three of his male friends are convinced to leave town after an attack by trollocs and a Fade (or Myrddraal) by a visiting Aes Sedai (female magic-user) named Moiraine. They are joined by a young woman named Egwene, and Moiraine's Warder, Lan.

The story follows them as they leave their home town of Emond's field in the Two Rivers, running from the trollocs and Fades that are pursuing them. No one but Lan and Moiraine knows why the three young men are being followed, but they're being tracked with tenacity.

The tale goes through many different adventures, many different places, and with the group splitting up several times in different ways. But it is obvious throughout the book that the three young men are linked, and somehow important to what's going to happen. They all begin having dreams of a terrible being named Ba'alzamon who was locked up by those who could channel the One Power (magic).

At the end of the story, Rand, Moiraine and a few of the others find the Eye of the World - and servants of Ba'alzamon (the Dark One) determined to use it. The Eye of the World is the essence of the male half of the True Source, tainted for years so that any male who can channel is locked away from the One Power by the Aes Sedai so that they can't touch it and destroy the world.

There is a fight with the servants of Ba'alzamon, named Aginor and Balthamel. During the fight the Eye of the World is used, and Rand discovers a secret about himself that could drive him to madness, or worse.

This book kept my attention all the way through, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series. It's clean, it's well-written, and the world has depth and imagination. The paragraphs are, perhaps, sometimes long-winded, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable for those of us who don't mind long paragraphs that are well-written.

View all my reviews