Disclaimer: I am going to try my hardest to be fair and judge this book on its own and not as a piece of the unfortunate saga it has turned into (which tells you something of my feelings for the series as a whole). The one ultimate source of evil wants three country bumpkins snuffed out before they come to realize their power to destory him. We start in their small village, at a party, after which they flee with magic-weilding and woodsy outdoorsman type protectors. LOTR anyone? I'll not digress into how much Jordan "borrows" from Tolkien, except to say that he does. It's not a terrible thing--if you look at this as LOTR updated for a newer generation. For those who have never read Tolkein, it's probably not bad. Anyway, back to the story. Bumpkins & Co flee, recover an ancient artifact, and battle what they think is the be-all-end-all good & evil fight. Somewhere along the line we (if not they) discover and admit that these young people must be the prohpesied Dragon Reborn (really, if no one saw that coming...), destined to be there at the ultimate battle. Which unfortunately has not surfaced in 11 books.

People who love to read for the sake of reading.

Perrin and Mat are my favorites, at the time I read this and now through the series. The ending, while too short, was the most exciting part of the book.

Oh lordy, where to start. Limited just to this book, I HATED all Jordan's female characters. They're all variations of the same stock character. Intelligent women who think highly of their sex and talk down to men and treat them like children. I was sick of Nynaeve after a page, of Egwene after three chapters, and Moraine (I forget how to say her name) grates on my nerves by the end of it. I don't like how fast the ending went by. After several hundred pages of build up, it felt too sudden.

Read more, despite the whiny girl characters. I thought that surely, it would get better in subsequent books, right? Oh how wrong I was.

Like I'd picked up the start to an amazing series.

Is too in love with his world and characters. Every time you meet a character, you better remember their name, because you can almost 100% bet that they will be coming back with their own plot line later on. Am convinced he had a less-than-enchanted view of women in general when he started writing.

I don't. On its own I would. But the fact that I now feel the need to slog through the other 11 books to find out what happens (and it's entirely predictable and we know pretty much exactly what's going to happen, if not the tinier details on the way) and wanting to spare anyone else the tedium of books 5+...yeah. I don't recommend it unless you just love to read words for no reason other than they're printed and in front of you.

Whoops. I think I answered this above.

This book as a standalone is pretty decent. I think I remember liking it. I am now deep in hate with book 11. I have invested too much to quit now, but boy am I tempted. Action isn't Jordan's strong point. Dialogue isn't either. Neither, now that I think of it, is characterization. Describing the numerous 'vast differences' between the different cultures in his book is. I don't care why Tairen women dress differently than Caiheinen women, and oh my, they all find each other just scandalous...blah. Back to my original point. Hating book 11. Besides the fact that the later books have 100+ page PROLOGUES, I have been forcing myself to read this book because I want to find out how the final battle aligns itself, and it's now been months since I started. It came out November 2006. It's now July 2007. I'm not even a third of the way through. Not because I'm a slow reader. I read Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (not really a huge Potter fan either, but nonwithstanding) in a single day. Because Jordan has made it difficult to like his work, if not darn near impossible. Maybe he doesn't know how to end it, which is why he keeps procrastinating the end. It is entirely unnecessary to have the sheer volume of main characters he introduces. Less is more, Robert.

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Created Jul 10, 2007 at 4:15pm • Submit your own review...