Cover Art: Darrell K. Sweet
THE EYE OF THE WORLD
THE WHEEL OF TIME BOOK 1
BY
ROBERT JORDAN
ISBN: 978-0-8125-1181-9
Pages: 782
Publisher: Tor
Publishing date: 15 January 1990
On the cover:
The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and go. What was, what will be, what is, may yet fall under the Shadow. Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.
NOTE: As you can read here this is the first time I've read this book. And I have not been following the series at all, so I basically know nothing about what comes later. So this review is written in the same way it would be if it was the only Wheel of Time book in existence.
Let's begin with the obvious, Jordan steals/borrows heavily from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Not just the formula, but characters, locations, monsters and events are more or less carbon-copies from TLoTR.
I don't mind the occasional nod to other works, but here it is not so much nods as a barrage of headbutts. It was in fact so much of it, that I found it really annoying. Especially since this has been done before by Terry Brooks in The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman in The Dragonlance Chronicles (1984/1985). There's also one character that has some striking similarities to a character from Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (First and Second Chronicles 1977-1983, sorry I don't remember which book).
So the level of originality in this book is pretty low. So if you expect that, this is certainly not the book for you. -But let's move on.
The worldbuilding seems a bit lacking. There's several things that just don't seem to add up in the kingdom that most of Eye of the World is set in. What I reacted to most, was the political side of things.
There's a sect that opposes the queen. Yet they have much more power in the capital, where there are plenty of "Queen's guards", and next to no power in the outlaying districts of the kingdom where the queen has no presence that we hear about. Add to that the fact that these outlaying districts is far closer to the power-base of the sect, it made little sense to me. And it totally lacks any explanation in the story.
It seems that there is not much real worldbuilding at all, and that the world is just thrown together to fit with what is needed for the plot. Making it inconsistent, and neither believable nor logical to me.
There's nothing wrong with the story itself, although it is a "light" fantasy done after a formula. Jordan has embraced the tendency of epic fantasy to go into descriptive mode. Unfortunately he does this way too much, and inconsistently. There were lots of detailed descriptions of what I found to be uninteresting things. But when it came to some of the cities, where a description could have added to the understanding of culture and thereby the worldbuilding, he chooses to give only a fleeting description. Something that was disappointing to me.
The pacing of the book was rather slow. The endless description dragged it down, and there is really not a lot happening. There were several times when the book picked up the pace, but these ended quickly, and it was back to the plodding along.
Overall the book gave you the feeling of being stuck in traffic. Every time it started moving forward a bit, and I got hopeful that things were going forward, it clogged up again and ground to a halt.
There are several other things that I think is wrong with this book that I could mention, but there is no real reason for me to go on.
I wouldn't really recommend this book if you want to read epic fantasy, there are lots of books out there that are much better. But if you loved The Lord of the Rings, and miss fantasy that evokes memories of it, this would be a perfect book for you.
See also Malazan Book of the Fallen vs The Wheel of Time
LINKS: Dragonmount (Wheel of Time community) Tor Books
I don't mind the occasional nod to other works, but here it is not so much nods as a barrage of headbutts. It was in fact so much of it, that I found it really annoying. Especially since this has been done before by Terry Brooks in The Sword of Shannara (1977) and Margaret Weiss & Tracy Hickman in The Dragonlance Chronicles (1984/1985). There's also one character that has some striking similarities to a character from Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (First and Second Chronicles 1977-1983, sorry I don't remember which book).
So the level of originality in this book is pretty low. So if you expect that, this is certainly not the book for you. -But let's move on.
The worldbuilding seems a bit lacking. There's several things that just don't seem to add up in the kingdom that most of Eye of the World is set in. What I reacted to most, was the political side of things.
There's a sect that opposes the queen. Yet they have much more power in the capital, where there are plenty of "Queen's guards", and next to no power in the outlaying districts of the kingdom where the queen has no presence that we hear about. Add to that the fact that these outlaying districts is far closer to the power-base of the sect, it made little sense to me. And it totally lacks any explanation in the story.
It seems that there is not much real worldbuilding at all, and that the world is just thrown together to fit with what is needed for the plot. Making it inconsistent, and neither believable nor logical to me.
There's nothing wrong with the story itself, although it is a "light" fantasy done after a formula. Jordan has embraced the tendency of epic fantasy to go into descriptive mode. Unfortunately he does this way too much, and inconsistently. There were lots of detailed descriptions of what I found to be uninteresting things. But when it came to some of the cities, where a description could have added to the understanding of culture and thereby the worldbuilding, he chooses to give only a fleeting description. Something that was disappointing to me.
The pacing of the book was rather slow. The endless description dragged it down, and there is really not a lot happening. There were several times when the book picked up the pace, but these ended quickly, and it was back to the plodding along.
Overall the book gave you the feeling of being stuck in traffic. Every time it started moving forward a bit, and I got hopeful that things were going forward, it clogged up again and ground to a halt.
There are several other things that I think is wrong with this book that I could mention, but there is no real reason for me to go on.
I wouldn't really recommend this book if you want to read epic fantasy, there are lots of books out there that are much better. But if you loved The Lord of the Rings, and miss fantasy that evokes memories of it, this would be a perfect book for you.
See also Malazan Book of the Fallen vs The Wheel of Time
LINKS: Dragonmount (Wheel of Time community) Tor Books
