Lord of Chaos: Book Six of 'the Wheel of Time' (Wheel of Time, #6)

by Robert Jordan

The sixth book in Robert Jordan's internationally bestselling epic fantasy series, THE WHEEL OF TIME, now reissued with a stunnng new cover design. Rand al' Thor, the Dragon Reborn, strives to bind the nations of the world to his will, to forge the alliances that will fight the advance of the Shadow and to ready the forces of Light for the Last Battle. But there are other powers that seek to command the war against the Dark One. In the White Tower the Amyrlin Elaida sets a snare to trap the Dragon, whilst the rebel Aes Sedai scheme to bring her down. And as the realms of men fall into chaos the immortal Forsaken and the servants of the Dark plan their assault on the Dragon Reborn ...Find out more about this title and others at www.orbitbooks.co.uk

• ISBN10: 1429960531
• ISBN13: 9781429960533
• Publish Date: 16 March 2010 (first published 15 October 1994)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Tor Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 720
• Language: English

Reviews

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!

I’m not going to lie, it took me approximately forever and 15 days to finish this book. First of all, it is really long. We’re talking 1000 pages. However, on top of that, there isn’t much going on. I’m not sure how to convey this properly in a way that makes sense, but it felt like most of this book was world-building. I understand that Jordan wants to convey a lot of information about the different peoples in this story and their habits and customs. While I don’t mind some world-building, this was just a lot of it in one go without much other development. It wasn’t until almost the end of this book that the pace started to pick up again.

I’m starting to sense what I usually call the “Tolkien problem”. The author quite obviously knows a lot of words but concise and brief aren’t among them. Sure, give me some world-building but this could have been edited down *a lot*. Another thing that irritated me a bit (now that I think about it, that’s also a Tolkien thing to do) is that he seems to forget about certain characters. You don’t hear about them for essentially 800+ pages and as a reader, I just keep wondering, why? Did they die? Live happily ever after? Did the author just straight up forget about them? Just spread things about a bit more evenly. I’m begging you.

Despite the pace of this book being next to glacial, I enjoyed the story. Interestingly, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a book this much where almost every single character is *so fucking annoying*. I know I’ve talked about this in the previous reviews, but Matt’s a twat, Nyneave keeps acting like a bitch all the time, I’m straight up gonna ignore that weird bit about Elayne and Thom that was going on for a moment. While I sympathize with Rand and surely would be a bit testy as well in his place, my patience is starting to wear thin. Especially now that Min has shown up I keep getting more and more irritated. I don’t understand at all why she is so smitten since it felt like they exchanged all of three words in the previous books. They are both behaving almost ridiculously.

I know I just complained a whole lot, but I did like the novel. In the final chapters, the story did finally regain some speed and it was once again difficult to put it down. I hope we will continue like this but from what I’ve heard the more concise writing I’m wishing for won’t come up until Brandon Sanderson took over. I feel like I would be a bit more forgiving with the slow pace if there weren’t so many more books and pages left. On my e-reader, I have all books combined into one (so I don’t have to remember the correct order) and page count wise I’m not even halfway through. To be honest, that can be a bit disenchanting. I read and read and feel like I made a lot of progress trudging through a story that isn’t going anywhere for almost 1000 pages and then you check the count and it’s essentially going nowhere.

[Ben Pick]

Books 5-8 felt like pieces moving about a chessboard without much happening. There are a few standout exceptional scenes, among the otherwise long middle section.

[HekArtemis]

5 stars for nostalgia, 3 stars otherwise. This, like the previous book, has some amazing scenes. But not as many as the last book, and the rest of the book kind of just bored me to tears. And of course the women were all nasty and awful as usual. Even Min starts acting like that in this one. I really struggled to keep picking this one up, even knowing that it has Dumai's Wells in it, I still just wanted to give up.
This is only the beginning of the slog! I don't know if I will make it to the end of this reread.

[cornerfolds]

After taking kind of a long break from The Wheel of Time series, I decided to get back to it with installment number six on audiobook (because I just cannot stay focused on these books on paper). My overabundance of free time lately made this one a much quicker "read" than books one through five, but I was honestly a little sad when it ended!

Lord of Chaos begins Perrin and Faile trying to manage Emond's Field, Nynaeve and Elayne hiding out with the rebel Aes Sedai, Egwene studying under the Wise Ones, Mat doing his own thing with his army, and Rand wondering if he's gone mad already. (Can we just talk about all the names in these books? It is SO hard to write a review after listening to them and not seeing names on pages!) As always with The Wheel of Time, book six starts right where book five left off. And, as always, the action takes a little while to pick up. These books are by no means fast paced. There were actually moments throughout the book when I'd stop and take note of what had actually happened and not much ever had. I think this is something that would really grate on my nerves if I were reading them instead of listening, but as it is I actually enjoy hearing all of the minute details. In any case, things did happen and they were amazing!

This is actually the first book in The Wheel of Time series that had me cheering out loud for the characters! I have been rather impartial to the individual characters up until now, but Lord of Chaos changed me. I am absolutely in love with both Rand and Egwene! I LOVED watching them throughout this sixth book as they both rose to the occasion and embraced the power they were faced with. I really liked the relationship between Egwene and Gawyn. Although it did seem a little rushed, it worked for me. And Egwene herself is just a lovely character - she seems so much more wise and mature than the other women her age. Could this be from her time with the Wise Ones? o_O The romance between Rand and Min was also a lot of fun! As was wondering whether Rand really was going mad! He has become so strong throughout this series. I can't wait to see where book number seven takes him! Between Egwene becoming the Amyrlin Seat and the final battle between Rand and the Aes Sedai, I had to literally restrain myself from jumping up and down in excitement!

Of course, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Nynaeve and Elayne continued to annoy me with their constant bickering and behaving like teenagers. I realize this book was written during a slightly different time, but the non-stop references to the differences between men and women had me rolling my eyes on a pretty regular basis. I try not to hold that against Robert Jordan... And it really doesn't detract from the story overall, at least in my opinion. I wished Lan had a more prominent role (read: any role) in this book. One negative about a series this long is that sometimes characters completely drop out of an entire book! Hopefully he's back for the next installment!

This book was truly the best of the six I've read so far! I couldn't give it five stars because it really did drag. I mean, it's almost 42 hours of audio, so... it was bound to happen. Either way, I really did enjoy it and I can't wait to read the next one!


Notes on the Audiobook
Once again, Kate Reading, Michael Kramer completely blew me away! I love them so much! Anyone who happens to be listening and hear them think they're the funniest thing ever, but their voice acting skills are superb!

I love the wheel of time series and I've been reading the series since the 90's and I've reread these books at least 4 times and I always say the whole series is my favorite whenever anybody asks which books I like.

The way Robert Jordan describes his world, he does it in such detail that you can picture it in your mind and I just love his characters he created. He has so many characters that have there own storyline and there own adventures they go on and I love following them. Sometimes I go back and reread individual characters storyline and each reread I discover something new about them because Robert Jordan is so detailed with his characters that sometimes you don't catch everything on the first read.

I would recommend this series to anybody.