Wheel of Time Review
The Eye of the World, the first The Wheel of Time book of fourteen was published Jan. 15, 1990. The Wheel of Time was published by Tor books and written by James Oliver Rigney Jr, under the pen name Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time is one of the most influential fantasy series of our time, and was recently brought to the silver screen by Amazon’s Prime video.
Despite The Wheel of Time boasting 4.4 million words and 704 chapters, it feels like there are never enough words to sing its praises. Or it’s criticisms. The series is loved by most fantasy nerds, and outright hated by many. It’s impossible to read the Wheel of Time and leave unchanged.
However, I think it’s possible to love and hate it. I fall into that category. There are aspects of this book that put it in the conversation for “best fantasy series ever written,” and others that make me want to rip the books in half and stomp on them.
At its core, The Wheel of Time follows the stories of three farm boys and the woman who follow them out of their village. The epic begins with them being abducted from their village from a Gandalf-like character named Moiraine who they’re not sure if they can trust, and evolves into a spider web of plots and characters that would take me half the newspaper to list out.
The series features explosive action scenes using the “One Power” magic system, thrilling military maneuvers and in-depth battles, and character arcs that can only leave you shaking your head in wonder. The characters grow and change so much throughout the series that they feel like close friends by the time you finally put the books down.
It’s hard to give an in-depth review of the plot without spoiling the content of all fourteen books, though this review focuses specifically on Jordan’s writing in the first eleven (twelve if you count his prequel).
The Wheel of Time at its best is magic. It rivals Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Stormlight Archive, any series or book you want to compare it to. The highs of Wheel of Time make you feel like you’re on top of the world.
The Wheel of Time at its worst is a miserable slog through pages of needlessly long description, and books full of side characters you don’t care about, and who don’t influence the plot in any meaning full way. They’re characters Jordan wrote about simply because he could, or because he wanted to explore more aspects of his world.
That’s cool and all, but it absolutely tanked the pacing of his story. The middle books of his series have been dubbed “the slog” just because of how little happens in them. Crossroads of Twilight is especially notorious for being difficult to get through. Jordan probably could have cut two-to-three books from the series and wouldn’t have missed any important plot points or character beats.
In Jordan’s defense–and this is what I tell my friends all the time–is that in his mind, he probably was being brief. At the time of writing Wheel of Time, one of the only popular fantasy series on the market was The Lord of the Rings. To anyone who doesn’t know, Tolkein once spent three pages describing a single tree. If Tolkein was one of the only examples Jordan had to look to, it’s little wonder why he spent so much time describing rooms we spend two paragraphs in.
In addition to Jordan’s pacing issues, there were also dozens of squandered characters and some ruined plotlines that weren’t done justice just because Jordan wasn’t invested into them.
Despite the Wheel of Time’s pacing issues, Jordan’s writing is brilliant. His characters are extremely fleshed out and all have their own unique voices, and the humor in his writing is dry, sarcastic, and unmatched. Jordan is an expert of making fun of his characters and their sometimes-crazy situations, and introspection is always a joy to read. You can flip to any page in The Wheel of time, and the quality of writing is going to be top-notch.
Minus the paragraphs of lengthy description, Jordan’s text is something any budding, amateur author should study. Jordan truly was a master at weaving character introspection, humor, and dialogue into a story in a way that’s joyful to read.
If The Wheel of Time has ever interested you, give the first three books a read. One is a bit of a stereotypical “fantasy chosen one adventure,” two is one of the best books in the entire series. It gives you the highs of Wheel of Time without needing you to get too invested into it. Three is where the book really begins to drag at certain points. If you can survive book three, you’ll be able to make it through the rest of the series.
What I’ve personally done to survive The Wheel of Time slog is read other books between entries, or to just take a few weeks to a month off from reading. Jordan’s work is brilliant, but it can also be exhausting. The one downside to taking time away from the books is that you might forget important characters or plot events. But with how much time Jordan randomly wastes at certain points, you’d have forgotten those events even if you had just kept going strong.
Jordan died before he could finish The Wheel of Time. He planned out a twelfth and final book, A Memory of Light, before his death in 2007. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series, and split Jordan’s notes into three books, comprising of the final three of the series.
