Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World, the first book in the epic Wheel of Time series, has an incredibly strong nostalgic hook for me. I first read it in 1999, at age 16, and I’ve lost count of how many times I ended up re-reading it (and many more of the early books in the series) over the following years to refresh my memory about what happened, each time one of the final books was published. After reading, and loving, A Memory of Light (incredibly, 24 years later in 2013) to finish the series I wasn’t sure I would ever go back and read the whole thing again from the beginning – after all, even though I love this series, despite its flaws, we’re talking tens of thousands of pages (4.4 million words) across the whole thing, so it’s a massive commitment. Eight years on though, the trailer for the TV adaptation of The Wheel of Time was released…
Let’s take a quick step back, first. If you haven’t come across it before, the Wheel of Time series is a grand, sweeping fantasy epic based around the classic ‘light vs dark’ premise, with a highly detailed world rich in history and mythology. It features a large cast of nominally ‘good’ characters trying to bring to fruition a prophecy that would see a great hero – the Dragon – reborn to face off against the looming presence of the Dark One, Shai’tan. All very standard fantasy on the surface, except that all the magic users – known as Aes Sedai – are women, as in the last age all the male Aes Sedai went mad and literally broke the world, and the Dragon, should he be reborn, would be as much a figure of fear as hope. Much of the series is given over to political machinations and maneuvering as various factions, predominantly female-driven, attempt to influence people and events to suit their own agendas.
The Eye of the World, as the first book in the series, has a lot of heavy lifting to do to introduce key names and start building a clear picture of the setting. Right from the off it sets up both the cyclical nature of this world and its history – an ongoing battle between light and dark that repeats across the ages, but which isn’t necessarily understood by the people living it – and the point in that cycle at which the series begins. It introduces a whole host of characters, from the really rather ambiguous Aes Sedai Moiraine and her Warder Lan, to the core group of youngsters dragged away from their quiet lives and thrust into a new world full of both wonder and fear. It also throws in plenty of the bad guys, quite clearly sets up just how high the stakes are, and provides all manner of foreshadowing for what the main characters are going to be put through over the course of the rest of the series.
Now then, back to the trailer. Watching those couple of minutes of footage brought back tantalising memories from hours spent reading these books, reminding me of how much I loved these characters, and how magical this series is at its best. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person to see Moiraine and Lan, Rand, Egwene, Mat, Nynaeve, Perrin and all the rest brought to life and to get shivers, and then to see the Myddraal only to get a different kind of shiver! So it was that after watching and re-watching the trailer, I pulled my battered and much-loved copy of The Eye of the World off the shelf, thinking that maybe I would read the prologue just to remind myself what happened at the start. Inevitably one thing led to another, I went on to read the first few chapters to see how I got on…and then I basically did nothing else for the next day or so hours except read, eat and sleep!
And you know what? After finishing The Eye of the World, I’m so glad I did pick it up again. I look back at some books that I read and loved when I was younger, and worry that maybe they won’t stand up to scrutiny now (don’t get me started on David Eddings), but while this certainly isn’t perfect, I absolutely loved it. Looking back at it now, the Lord of the Rings…let’s say influences…are pretty strong throughout, from creepy black-cloaked riders to the unplanned breaking of the ‘fellowship’, but they don’t dominate, and there are more than enough differences to give this series its own unique identity (including some noticeable Jordanisms, not least a few repeated phrases that regular readers of the series will recognise – with varying degrees of tolerance). What’s more, it’s great to read a fantasy novel – especially from this era of the genre – with such female-centric world building and so many great female characters.
So it has its flaws, it could certainly be at least a little bit shorter (it’s about 800 pages in paperback, so it’s a hefty tome), and I can understand why the series as a whole doesn’t appeal to everyone…but I still love it. The characters, this setting, the whole tone and feel of the series, it’s all here in the first book, and I simply couldn’t put it down. Something I found particularly interesting this time around was spotting just how much Jordan included here, from tiny little hints of foreshadowing to major events in some characters’ arcs, which I recognised as having considerable impact later on in the series. It’s amazing to see just how much he had worked out about the whole series even at this early stage, and there’s no doubt that revisiting this early part of the story takes on a fascinating feel in context of the completed series.
All told, I couldn’t be happier to have re-read The Eye of the World, both to make sure I can remember the key details for when the Wheel of Time TV show launches, and to remind myself just how much I love this book. After all, it doesn’t matter whether other people love a book as much as you do – there’s something magical about reading a story (of any length) that just really works for you! I’m not sure if I’m going to tackle the whole series again – the first season of the TV show will supposedly draw from the first three, so maybe I’ll re-read The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn too – but if I do decide to keep reading, I’m pretty confident that I’m going to enjoy myself. If not, I’ve had an absolute blast with just this one, which as far as I’m concerned is a fantastic book and a brilliant start to a series that, despite everything, I still love.
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