Rating:  -
I am finsihing the 4 th book of the series and have the 5th book already in my posession. It is and excellent series which is slow reading at first but then gets you into its web and keeps you there. A little of old world or is it a new world after the extinction of our civilization. Don't know for sure yet but will find out!
Rating: -
Robert Jordan is an excellent author and having unabridged audio cds of his stories are great. You can listen to them while driving and still get the complete story. The narrators do an excellent reading and distinguinshing charchaters with small voice inflections. And as alwasy Robert Jordan manages to write a story with serveral threads that draws you into a magical world.
Rating: -
It has been a while since I didn't read something so well written, not since the original Dune series by Frank Herbert and Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. The complexity of these novels is astounding; its characters and their world seem so real. I recommend Wheel of Time as the greatest fantasy series of all time. TSR is better than TDR and the scenes describing the Aiel story and the Emmond's Field Battle are the best of the saga so far.
Rating:  -
If you eliminate the number of scenes/conversations involving any woman in which no bickering occurs (no matter the trivial point of discussion), and then eliminate the scenes where a male character wonders why women are so hard to understand/live with, you're left with about four action sequences. I read this years ago, got bored with Jordan's increasingly poor writing, and quit for a while. Recently, marooned at the airport (due to the Colorado blizzards), I picked it up and settled in for what I hoped would be at least a long distraction. After all, though the later books stink (and everyone agrees on THAT), some still claim earlier books, like The Shadow Rising, are excellent (or even, "some of the best ever"!).
Well, on second review, I have to say that this one is a stinker, too. Maybe we were all caught up in the hype about "the heir to Tolkein" or whatever drivel publishers and marketers put on the back of RJ's books. The reality is, this is an awful book, and the series just gets worse. Take for example the all-important (for Mat's character, anyway) scene where he enters a second ter'angreal door and ends up with a spear, a medallion, and a noose around his neck. I read the scene FOUR times, because I felt that I must have missed the part where RJ explains why all this happens--after all, the snake people in the doorframe seem to be reacting to Mat's requests....except that he never makes them. RJ just wanted to give him these items but was too lazy to actually make their acquisition make sense. It's typical of this series. Jordan has characters running amok and then creates an illogical, unbelievable quick action sequence at the very end. Since this happens at the end of the book, most superficial readers will think that the whole book is good, but in reality, the whole thing is dross. Imagine, for example, if you eliminated the scene (just a few pages, really, and in some cases a few paragraphs) where Rand defeats (Forsaken du jour) or X finds (item du jour). Without those, the entire book would be a clear clump of nothing. But by sticking just a bit in there at the end, he paints his "novel" with a thin veneer of plot/advancement--no matter how illogical.
The Shadow Rising is more of the same Jordan junk. For those reading reviews to determine if they should buy this book or just quit the series now, the answer is clear: quit now.
Rating: -
Great Book in a Great series. Lets all hope the next comes out soon.
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