Finished. At Last.

Lets Review: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Nearly eight hundred pages of description, dialogue, action, edge-of-the-seat tension and infected nightmares. And that list doesn’t even scratch the surface of what Jordan has offered. It has taken me just over three weeks to read this book with all of Life happening around me (including School Inspectors poking their noses into things).

Having read this book over such a long time, I feel like I have a relationship with the characters in The Eye of the World. At times I have hated this book, and times tolerated it, and at times loved it. For people who have read Eye of the World, I am sure they too understand this – there are some criticisms of the writing style of Robert Jordan in general in his writing of the Wheel of Time. But you can’t fault the plot, the characters or the setting. And put beside another epic, such as Lord of the Rings, these criticisms are shared: often, less egregious than in other epic works of fantasy fiction, even. Jordan was writing an Epic – he decided it was going to be especially Epic.

I try to keep book reviews positive, and that is very easy with Eye of the World. Robert Jordan packed in a ton of beautiful locations, lifelike characters and a complex conflict which go beyond Good and Evil. This is fantasy for grown-ups.

I’ve listed my five favourite things about Eye of the World.

5. The Wisdom

The Wisdom is a woman in parts of Jordan’s world that serves a village as a healer, a midwife and a voice of reason. The Wisdom we meet in the book is called Nynaeve (pronounced NIGH-neev). And she is awesome. She berates the men, scoffs at teens, threatens idiots with violence and is willing to fight an entire magical order after the kidnapping of [!!!SPOILERS!!!]. Why do I like her? Because, even though I’m a dude, I can relate to her – up to a point. She goes from very scary bear to cuddly toy as the story goes on. My only hope is after the climax of Eye of the World, we get the old Nynaeve back. The one not scared to tell people exactly what she thinks of them.

For this list, it was almost a toss-up between the Wisdom or the Gleeman, but I think Nynaeve was slightly better because Thom’s ‘redemption’ seemed to come out of nowhere and I wasn’t so pleased at how cramped together the foreshadowing and the fight in the town centre were. It was too rushed for my liking – a good plot point, but not executed with as well as I’d hoped. He had all that time on the boat to tell the lads about his past but I didn’t see any illusion to it. Still, the Gleeman was awesome. The Wisdom, slightly better. By fractions.

4. Bella

Bella is a horse. She has no magical power, she does nothing particularity wonderful except being a horse. So, why is she 4th? Simply put, you care about Bella as the journeys wind on – she matters because she is a sympathetic extra. When Fades chase the characters, Bella is mentioned. In the passages beyond reality, Bella is mentioned. The horses are described in relation to Bella. This seems to me to be a clever trick so that readers care as much for the horses as they do for the people. It adds a sense of realism, that if Bella dies, the characters would suffer. Good work, Mr Jordan.

3. The McGuffin

The Eye of the World is named for a McGuffin in the story. The bad guys want it, the good guys need it. Without giving any spoilers, the McGuffin leads to character revelations, links to further tales and totally subverts the expectations I had. I was half-expecting a ring to take to Mount Doom to appear. Instead, what I got was an exciting climax that was held till the last slice of the book.

2. Myrddraals

Eyeless horrors of the Great Evil. Agents of the darkness. The Myrddralls are hideous and man-like, with great sword skills and an aura that freezes men on the spot. I love the description of these bad guys and how they dog the characters until the very end of the book. To me, they feel a lot like the Ring Wraiths from the Lord of the Rings – You really don’t want to meet them. And yes, I know the Ring Wraiths are undead and Myrddrals are living (after a fashion) but still. They ‘feel’ similar in terms of how sinister they are and how they chase the protagonists around like the Nine Riders do in the Shire in Lord of the Rings.

1. Dapple and the others

I can’t really talk about Dapple and her ‘family’ without some spoilers – and I would like other people to enjoy meeting them as much as I did when they read The Eye of the World. Of all the surprises in the story, the relationship with Dapple and the yellow-eyed lad (hehe sneaky workaround to prevent spoilers). Why did I rate this part of the story so highly? Well, for purely personal reasons. After the events of Shadar Logoth, this is where the story comes alive for me. This marks the point were I stopped slogging through Eye of the World and began devouring it. More of this, please! Bring back Dapple!

In conclusion –

Eye of the World is an ‘Undertaking’. It is more than 300,000 words long – nearly 800 pages. In comparison, Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring is under 190,000 words long. The Two Towers and The Return of the King combined have less words than The Eye of the World. Reading this book is daunting. Especially since it takes a little to get started and a lot of characters are thrown at the reader at the start. I think though, for a set-up for a tale as truly epic as this, it does pay off. Get through the first hundred words, and suddenly things start really happening. Bad things. Exciting things. Shocking things.

So, did I like Eye of the World? Put it this way – I’m going to read the next book in the series, the Great Hunt. Well, after I’ve stuck a couple of smaller titles under my eyes first perhaps. That alone should say what I think of the Wheel of Time’s first instalment – I’m invested. I want more.