766 Pages Hardcover (Fantasy Fiction)
This is the 12th book in the series of The Wheel of Time. If you are a regular reader of my blog you will probably notice that none of the first 12 books are on the blog. I started reading this series about 12 years ago. I was very interested in the books and the series especially up through the 6th book. After that I lost interest overall, but continued to read the series. After the 11th book was printed Robert Jordan died. He knew this was happening and Brandon Sanderson was hired to finish the series. Jordan had written a large part of the final book and the rest was written out as notes. After his death is was decided to break the book into 3 volumes. This is the first of those books.
If you haven’t read the books up to this point and care about spoilers skip to the end where I grade the book. In fact most of this review won’t make sense since it will assume you know most of the story so far.
A great storm is growing across the land. Everyone is covered in a cloudy sky that never goes away. Everywhere you look bad things are happening. The taint of the Dark One is revealing itself across the land. It is springtime, but crops aren’t sprouting, food is rotting unnaturally fast and buildings rearrange themselves overnight.
The book focuses on two characters. One is Egwene. In the previous books the White Tower, home of the Aes Sedai, has been split in two. A rebel force has a standing army at siege with the tower. Elaida, a crazy Red Aes Sedai, has been raised to the Amyrilyn Seat and has disbanded the Blue Ajah. Egwene was seated as Amyrilyn in the Rebel camp, but was then taken captive by the White Tower. A large part of the book focuses on her struggles to gain power within the tower. Egwene also finds out information regarding the Black Ajah and attempts to bring their existence to the light.
Rand Al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, struggles with pretty much everything. His main goal is to get the Seanchan to stop their war with him so that they can focus their efforts on the Final Battle. He must also feed his armies. Most importantly, he must prepare himself for the final battle. The pressure continues to build and the only option he sees is to make himself hard. By hardening himself he starts to give up the things that he hopes to defend. Besides this he must deal with two of the forsaken. Semirage has been captured and attempts at getting information are hindered by Rand’s veto on torture. Greandal has been eluding Rand, but he works hard to eliminate her. His friends and advisors do what they can to show him how to feel again. Rand feels that if he gives in to his emotions than he won’t be able to do what is required of him.
Sanderson has done a great job of taking over this series. Personally, I think this has been the best book since the 6th. Jordan had added so much to the series and all this political intrigue had gotten bloated and uninteresting to follow. Sanderson had the benefit of bringing the story to a close. So many things had been left undone and he is the one that gets to present the problems being solved.
The style of the books continues in the vein of Jordan. Sanderson takes things from Jordan and makes it a part of his writing. Examples of this are Women “sniffing” when they are annoyed or men “knuckling” their mustache when uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this leaves a reader with a feeling like the book is somewhat immature. By this I don’t mean immature writing, but that it is written for younger readers. When making comparisons to other writers such as George R.R. Martin and Stephen Erickson the characters don’t seem as real. This is a fantasy series and I may have been spoiled with other more realistic fantasy writers.
3 Emotional/Intellectual: This book was a page turner and I was mostly invested in Egwene struggles. Her inner monologue made for the best part of the books.
3 Style/Readability: This is a tough one. The style of the book was somewhat annoying at times, but I feel like this was a compromise of Sanderson’s to continue with Jordan’s legacy. That said, I did get into the book and looked forward to reading more.
3 Long Term Impact: This series is already set as a major part of Fantasy Fiction. Regardless of how I feel about it is going to last for quite some time. Also this is one of the better book s of the series. Realistically, I feel that as time passes The Wheel of Time is going to be overshadowed by better series.
9 out of 13. From my perspective the whole series should have gone like this: Take books 1-6, then take the events of books 7-11 and put them into one or two books and cut out a lot of the unnecessary chaff. Then continue with this book and finish out the series. I plan on reading the rest of the books. I have gotten this far so I’ll finish it. That said, I wouldn’t recommend this series to a new reader. If you have read a lot of the series it is worth your time to continue. If you haven’t started pick up another writer.
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