The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time, #2)

by Robert Jordan

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


I’m slowly making my way through the Wheel of Time novels, and I just finished the second book. First of all, there is just *so* much going on. Robert Jordan is going hard with the worldbuilding, introducing a bunch of new things here. Naturally, with all those new additions came loads of questions on my part. Those, however, don’t get answered. You can clearly tell that Jordan was setting things up for later in the series, this book feels like a promise of things to come.

That being said, there is still a lot of progress we make story-wise. I mean, it does take a while for things to actually get going, but there are some things I want to talk about in detail. If you haven’t read the book yet, you might want to avoid everything after this paragraph due to spoilers. Let me just tell you, I enjoyed this novel tremendously even if it did drag on ever so slightly somewhere around the middle.

Let’s talk about Rand first. He’s off looking for the Horn of Valere and does a bit of an oopsie on the way. He accidentally teleported himself, Loial, and Hurin to another world/reality/I don’t even know what. The concept of those traveling stones is fascinating to me. As much as I would love to know more about saidin right now, I appreciate that we learn about Rand’s powers as he learns about them, as he explores what he can do with them. I do hope, however, that there will be a bit more explanation for all of this in the future. Sure, a lot of knowledge on this is supposed to be lost, but I’m way too curious by nature to not question stuff like that.

Another important thing to mention is a new character that pops up right when they are in the middle of god-knows-where. This “lady” who tries to seduce Rand and push him in a specific direction. I knew she was trouble the moment she walked in, and honestly, I found her supremely annoying. Sure, she’s magic or something (she must have some sort of powers) but how just everyone was looking at her with nothing but heart eyes, almost bending over backward to please her irritated me so much. She’s definitely gonna stir up some shit later. No doubt about that.

We also have Nyneave, Elayne, Min, and Egwene who find themselves in a bit of a pickle. Liandrin essentially sold them into slavery. To be honest, when she picked them up and told them they’re going on a quest to help Rand, I felt certain she’s up to something. I fully expected Liandrin to just leave them behind in the Ways, lost forevermore. I certainly didn’t have exploitation of Aes Sedai on my bingo card. While we learn about this weird and twisted role the Aes Sedai have to play for the Seanchan, we don’t learn too much about the Seanchan themselves and what they are doing here. I had some theories on that, but right now I’m not sure any of them make sense. But considering how little we know about them and their motives at this point, maybe later it’ll turn out to be correct all along. Again, I understand that Jordan will circle back to this later, but I’m just too curious. I want to know now!

Another thing I didn’t have on my bingo card was that the Horn of Valere would get blown in this book. That act felt like something very final, something that would happen towards the end of the series. So, certainly didn’t expect it to happen in novel number 2. The Wheel of Time series creates this weird conundrum in my head because there are so many things set up for things to happen a lot further down the line, but at the same time so much stuff already went down, it feels like the series has to end soon, because what else can there be? It’s hard to imagine that there are another twelve books.

The first novel reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings. There was one chapter titled “The Nine Rings” which is an Inn Rand goes to. Rand specifically likes the name because it was the title of a story he remembers from childhood. Now if that isn’t a big ass nod to LOTR, I don’t know what is. That actually made me chuckle a little bit. Initially, this book also reminded me a little of Tolkien’s works, but the further we get in the story, the more it moves away from that. Also, when I say it reminds me of LOTR, that’s not a bad thing. Wheel of Time still is very much unique and its own thing. Not a cheap copy or anything of the sort. But I think we can all agree that Tolkien’s works were influential on literature as a whole and on the fantasy genre in particular, so it comes as no surprise that you can see those influences in other works.