I finished Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and reviewed it very recently. And THEN I bumped into some content on Youtube.
Typical.
Daniel Greene’s Review…
Daniel Greene is a total Wheel of Time fanboy, but gives fair reviews. I really like his content on his Youtube channel. His review of Eye of the World is good but not something I entirely agree with. And that’s fine, but I want to explain what specifically I have a bit of an issue with.
I feel like the whole ‘Eye of the World’ is Lord of the Rings shtick is overstated. We’re not reading fantasy books because we’re studying them – we’re reading them because we enjoy them. And having Tolkien as an influence can be claimed by almost all fantasy books. After all, he is the source of the ideas of orcs, our understanding of Elves (not pixies), wise wizards, and dark lords. And while he is far more knowledgeable about Robert Jordan and the Wheel of Time in general, I only seem tropes in common between the two stories. And I don’t think that is enough to say it’s a retelling.
Merphy Napier’s Review
Merphy Napier I know less about, but her review seems fair. Her comment about the pacing reflected my experience with reading the Eye of the World. I could have put Eye of the World and not picked it up again in places, had I not wanted to finish it rather than DNF a book for the second time this year. In her other comments, I suspect she and Daniel Greene have one another on speed-dial, especially the Lord of the Rings comment. (EDIT – After further research, I found that both Greene and Napier had appeared in one video I could find together, but I was being hyperbolic with the speed-dial comment). And this leads me strongly to my major point:
Eye of the World isn’t the Lord of the Rings!
It isn’t.
Think about this… A boy discovers he’s adopted. A mentor comes from a distant place to lead them to safety. A dark one hunts for the boy. The boy discovers he has magic powers. That’s right. Eye of the World is Star Wars.
Still not convinced?
A girl lives as one of the poorest of her society. She performs magic which brings her into conflict with the law. She runs and is taught by a rogue wizard… Could this be Vin from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series… or Sonea from Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy? Silly question, it is both!
My feeling is that, because Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Eye of the World all follow Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, there are parallels. Strong ones. You can equate Ring Wraiths, Darth Vader and Myrddraals because they fulfil the same role in some respects. Sure, the river crossing seems almost the same in Eye of the World to Lord of the Rings – but actually, I think Tolkien did that bit way better. Sure, Lan is a bit of an Aragorn clone and Myrddraals are Ring Wraiths with a bit of a paint job. But similarities do not make it the same story.
Think of Tropes! How many stories have similar tropes but are completely different? I could be horribly insulting and suggest that these two reviews are just copies of one another – clearly they are not, nor are Merphy and Daniel the same. I just don’t see that similarities make that strong a case for being derivative. Maybe I’m wrong – I haven’t read The Great Hunt yet but I am looking forward to starting it. Currently I’m reading the Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson at the moment and will be hitting something ‘thin’ before colliding with the massive task of The Great Hunt.
I think, had I started thinking ‘this is just the Lord of the Rings, retold,’ I’d be a little miffed with Robert Jordan and this post would be a lot different, calling him out and slotting him in that same collective of writers as the Goodkind. But while it may begin from a similar premise and take a similar approach to introducing us to the fantastic setting, Eye of the World doesn’t follow the same path or hit all the same plot beats as Lord of the Rings – even in the beginning. Any similarities are cosmetic.
But here is the very interesting question…
The Wheel of Time is being adapted for streaming services (Brandon Sanderson recently tweeted from filming locations). Should any similarities to Lord of the Rings be scrubbed from the episodes? Should Eye of the World start differently… and if so, how?
What do you think about similarities and derivative content? Am I wrong about it all? Please leave a comment! I love to hear your views!
Imagine Erratically 
A girl lives as one of the poorest of her society. She performs magic which brings her into conflict with the law. She runs and is taught by a rogue wizard… Could this be Vin from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series… or Sonea from Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy? Silly question, it is both!
Huh you need to do some research , Except both books are written after Eye of the world , so it could be only the other way round Sonea and Vin are influenced by Jordan’s writings no other way round …for the obvious reason , Wheel of time is was written before them
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Oh, I’m not claiming that those plot points are at all found in Eye of the World. I, at least, didn’t see them. Egwyn’s story certainly doesn’t fit in them anyway. What I was trying to make was a case for similarities not being the same as taking a story and rewriting it, whole cloth. I used Sanderson’s and Canavan’s best selling books to show that they are mile apart. Nobody can claim that The Magician’s Guild and the Final Empire are any more than tenuously linked.
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