Rating:  -
Good Evening... oh wait, it's nine in the morning, how odd. I enjoyed immensly the first two Wheel of Time books finding them to be highly entertaining. The third became a little dull in the middle however recovered itself before the end. Two hundred pages into book four however led me to realise that Robert Jordon was an insane lunatic who apparantly had no concept of the word "brief". Make no mistakes i am a fan of fantasy in its better forms such as "The Lord od the Rings" and the like, however Robert Jordan seems to be paid by the word. The story spirals into a mess which by all accounts is going to take another eight books to complete. I found myself contemplating the ending after fifty pages such is the predictibility of this book.I am by no means discouraging others from reading the book. I can easily see it's appeal to a wide audience, however it did nothing for me or my dog...wait...oh dear. Robert Jordan claims another victim to his sickness.
Rating:  -
In my personal opinion, (I have all the books in series) this is the best in the series. Perticularly the Battle of the Two Rivers. The whole sequence was incredibly detailed and imaginative. I found myself upon rereading the book flipping through everything else just to read that particular part. I highly recomend this book, of course, only after you've read the 1st three books.
Rating: -
All the Wheel of Time fans say the same thing, that the first five or six books in the series are great, and the downward spiral follows after that.
I don't get it. The first book was a lot of fun, despite the horrible Nynaeve character and the horribly boring Egwene. Book 2, The Great Hunt, was also fun, except for the increasing awareness of recurring quirks, like one character being flustered around another character of greater position or title (repeated on every page). Plus the female characters were grouped together for their own sub-plot---painful chapters you wanted to skip over. But the second book was good overall.
The ominous clouds of Jordan's bad traits began raining in book 3, The Dragon Reborn. The Aes Sedai sub-plot was eye-crossingly boring, with all of those icy stares and blushes. The female characters "sniffed" twenty-three times (I counted). Nynaeve's habit of tugging on her braid was introduced, and she did it endlessly. Rand was left out of the book and the focus was put on these one-dimensional supporting characters. The women all hated men and the men were clueless and subservient around women. And the ending was the same thing for the third book in a row. And on and on...
Things only get worse in the fourth book. We spend considerable time with the Aiel, who are all the same. Did you know that Tolkien's books are recommended by white supremecist groups as good family reading? It's because all the conflict is as simple as Good People vs. Evil People, and all the people of each race are identical. If you know one of them, you know them all. In The Shadow Rising, this is taken the Nth degree with the Aiel, these super-warriors WHO ARE ALL THE SAME. And the Sea Folk, too, are all identical to each other. Jordan is one of those BRILLIANT pulp-fantasy writers who creates a nation of people by giving them some cultural traits, like marriage customs, maybe a tattooing style, and calls it a day. Take away the names and you can't tell one from the other.
The female characters are just as obnoxious and boring as ever, but now it's even worse. Now there's even more of them. Faile was a lot of fun in book 3, her debut, but now she becomes just another insufferable Robert Jordan Bad (or Bitch) Female Character (BFM). At one point, she's traveling with Perrin and calls him. "Perrin. Perrin, come here." When Perrin rides up and asks her what she wants, she just turns to him and says, "Oh yes. I wanted to see if you could be taught to come when I call." Gagh! How does Perrin respond? He just grinds his teeth a little. My god... And there are more BFMs, like Aviendha, another personality-less Aiel character, and Elayne, who gets more pages and a greater role for no clear reason.
The male characters suck too. I just wanted to read about Rand being the Dragon Reborn and wielding his magic sword, but instead we have to wade through hundreds of pages of Mat, who still doesn't have a personality, and Perrin, in love with Faile for inexplicable reasons. Ditto Lan, in love with Nynaeve---why, no reader can understand.
Have I mentioned the agonizingly boring dream sequences? Now it's a major thing in the series. Is there anybody out there who thinks, "Yay! Another dream sequence! I'm entranced!"
Four hundred pages into it and I just couldn't go on. Rand is in this haunted city, his consciousness transported into bodies of Aiel warriors that have lived in the past (complete with cookie-cutter names, no personality, and indistinguishable from all other Aiel). I don't care about these spirits, dreams, Aiel, yadda yadda yadda.
The Wheel of Time series doesn't even have great villains to be gripping antagonists. We just see the Dark Lord popping up again and again in dreams, saying, "Fear me and tremble! I'll crush you, you pathetic fool!" And I'm yawning. The guy never shuts up, and Rand is always kicking his ass.
Have you noticed that the Wheel of Time world doesn't even have a name? It's actually just a continent, but not even that has a name. And if you look at the map, several nations don't even have names. It's all so dumb...
This series is just pulp fantasy for thirteen-year olds. How does the Wheel of Time have such dedicated fans? Go find some good adventure fiction.
Rating:  -
If you've made it this far into the series, you pretty much know what you're getting yourself into. Rand and his friends split into three groups (four if you count Min) and go on their separate missions. Rand ventures into the Aiel wasteland, Nynaeve attempts to discover and thwart the plans of the black ajah, and Perrin ventures home to defend Emond's Field against the Whitecloaks (and Min gets trapped in Tar Valon and gets to witness important events unfolding there).
The book succeeds in many ways. It sets definite, tangible goals and is fairly straightforward in its storytelling (when following multiple groups, it is important that the plotlines not get too convoluted). The storylines are weighted with appropriate seriousness and the process of reaching those ends is well told with exciting and interesting events appropriately spaced along the way. When we reach the end, we feel like the characters have accomplished important tasks and have made progress toward the ultimate goals of the author.
This installment provides some very satisfying developments, such as insight into the culture and history of the Aiel, and the introductions of two more of the Forsaken.
There are also ways in which this book disappoints. First of all, the first few books in the series had a hook, at least one situation or storyline that I found compelling to the point where I couldn't put the book down. While this book's stories were still interesting, I never lost any sleep while reading it.
The second major flaw in this book almost seems to come from an oral tradition. When I was in school studying Homer, we talked about how each character had "catchphrases," phrases that were uttered every time a character came into the scene (I specifically remember the phrase about "grey-eyed Athena"). The idea was that stringing a few familiar words together would give the bard a few moments to think ahead and remember how the next few lines went. Unfortunately, at 1000 pages, I very much doubt that this book will ever be recited from memory, and what was forgivably eccentric in an oral history, grows tedious in such a long, written work. Heck, I could probably reproduce half of the scenes in the book just by making something up about how Perrin had trouble talking to women, or Nynaeve picked a fight with whoever was around, or Egwene berated men for being so foolish. It would have been even more irritating if I had read the first four books consecutively, instead of spacing each one a year apart.
The third major flaw in the book, and of the series in general, is that it suffers from bloat. The plotline moves swiftly enough that it never loses the reader, but the book would have been much better at half the length. Even though I haven't read any further in the series, knowing that there are going to be at least 12 books has seriously dampened my enthusiasm. Even though this book gives the illusion of progress, having the characters basically abandon the gains of the previous book doesn't engender faith that the author doesn't have them on a treadmill.
Overall, the book is enjoyable, but not as good as previous installments.
Rating:  -
Well, for those of you who think that the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth series is so much better than the Wheel of Time, try actually looking at them and finding similarities. Here just a few: Sisters of the Light/Aes Sedai, Sisters of the Dark/Black Ajah, Palace of the Prophets/The White Tower, misunderstood Mud People, Baka Ban Mana/misunderstood Aiel, Richard and Rand (mysterious past, uncertain future and tumultous present events because of who they are), and yes
, both series and books did not have to be sooo loong! Lots of description, but i enjoy it, and I need a book this long (sometimes as dull) to keep me with something to read for more than 2 days!
The Wheel of Time series is definetly worth reading, it has an interesting and complex plot.
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