The Eye Of The World (Wheel of Time, #1)

by Robert Jordan

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


Wow. This was *a lot*. And I mean it in the best way possible! This book was quite long. The eBook copy I have contains all novels, so I kept glancing at my progress for the page total (a bit over 13,000 pages), which made this seem even more massive. Regardless of that, I essentially burned through the first novel, unable to put it down.

The world-building is super cool, and I can’t wait to learn in the next 10+ books. The story comes with a lot of twists and turns, chapters that will give you goosebumps, moments that will make you hold your breath. I loved the story, especially because you can tell just how much thought went into it. There are no gaping holes in the logic staring you in the face. This world, this legend, this story was crafted meticulously.

The set of main characters we get is both diverse and similar at the same time. There are things they have in common, things that unite them. Nevertheless, they all have their distinct personality, their own thoughts, their own goals. Over the course of the first novel, you’ll see the strands of each of their stories weave together, move apart, converge again. It almost felt a little bit Lord of the Rings-like. It somehow reminded me of when Frodo and Sam take off and we follow to different stories for a bit. Well, Jordan thankfully goes back and forth between the individual stories a lot more than Tolkien did! I am, however, convinced that Jordan did read LOTR. At least his description of the Ogier with the trees and how long things take and how slow everything movies screamed Ent for me. There must have been some influence there, whether he intentionally drew from it or not. This is by no means criticism, by the way! I actually enjoyed being able to spot those little references. In fact, there were quite a few more things that struck me as familiar when reading this. Granted, maybe I’m just imagining it, and Jordan never even read LOTR.