Update: I started a YouTube read along series for The Wheel of Time. Episode one, covering The Eye of the World is available here:
My wife and my brother have been telling me to read The Wheel of Time for years now. Well, I finally have the time, and with the show coming out on Amazon I should probably get to it before someone spoils something – so, let’s get to it! Here are my thoughts on the first book: The Eye of the World. tl;dr: it’s as good as everyone says.
Note that this will contains spoilers for The Eye of the World.
The Myrddraal jump-scares are fantastic
It’s bizarre how legitimately shocking it was each time a Myrddraal appeared. Even when the characters were expecting it, the actual appearance was still shocking due to the wording. Take the example from the “Whitebridge” chapter. Thom, Rand, and Matt were specifically trying to avoid the rowman who might have been looking for some vengeance, so they stepped out into the street one-by-one. Thom heads out first, then Rand steps out. Here’s the text: “Rand agreed fervently, but even so he hesitated before stepping out of the alley into the square. None of the sparse scattering of people gave them a second look – most did not look at them at all – but his shoulders knotted, waiting for the cry of Darkfriend that could turn ordinary people into a mob bent on murder. He ran his eyes across the open area, over people moving about on their daily business, and when he brought them back a Myrddraal was halfway across the square.” This is so fucking good. I think the key here is that Jordan specifically avoids building up the Myrddraal’s dread. There are no bugs crawling out of the soil, there’s no chill in the area, and we don’t see an ominous figure approaching. In fact, there was a fake-out just moments before this scene when Thom came into the alley. No, the Myrddraal isn’t there until it is. Note how there’s no metaphor or poetry in the description. In fact, we don’t even get a description: we’re simply provided the fact that a Myrddraal was halfway across the square. The Myrddraal always appear like this: they seem to slip into scenes almost as if even Jordan wasn’t aware of them until they tore their way out of the paper.
The Blight
The Blight is really cool. I’m really just not used to seeing otherworldly environments like this in fantasy writing. It actually reminded me a lot of Deimos in Warframe. I think what I most like is the emphasis on the growth aspect of decay: it’s dynamic and dangerous. Living things burst under feet. Corrupted trees bend to attack prey. There’s a whole ecosystem implied but only vaguely described, but it was also clearly invasive and likely unsustainable. It felt deadly in an insurmountable way. I can imagine an army or a warrior fighting through swarms of monsters or undead, but how do you fight a disease that infects everything? Even more than Warframe, the Blight reminded me of Zuggtmoy’s plans in Out of the Abyss, the best D&D campaign I’ve ever DM’d. If I’d read The Eye of the World before running that campaign, I definitely would have incorporated some Blight stuff in my descriptions.
All of the characters are good
Rand is clearly the primary protagonist, but the book didn’t focus on him too much. Perrin, in particular, really stood out as being just as interesting as Rand to me. We get to see things from his point of view for a long while, but I wasn’t sick of him when we switched back. Moreover, after we switch back to Rand we continue to get little hints that Perrin is continuing to experience things that we don’t fully see: he occasionally shows subtle signs of progressing in his wolf-brother abilities, such as when he states that there’s “good hunting along the borderlands” out of nowhere. Egwene’s letter-from-an-owl isn’t overstated, but comes up often enough to make her a bit of a low-key shōnen manga protagonist: I’m definitely excited to find out where her adventure’s going to lead in the coming books.
All of the characters are flawed
The characters are felt very “real”. Egwene, for example, is very bratty in a way that makes her feel, frankly, kind of unlikeable, but in a way that makes her feel very real. When she is unlikable, it’s understandable and forgivable. Her dancing with Aram while also feeling as though she’s betraying Rand is a good example. We see things from Rand and Perrin’s POV more than hers, so my immediate response was a very primal anger at her infidelity and frivolous trifling when so much is at stake… but, she’s a scared teenager being thrown a convenient distraction from confronting that Rand is – as far as she knows – more likely than not already dead. She might not survive the coming days herself. Her whole world fell away all at once, is she really supposed to spend every moment either fighting, worrying, or stoically waiting for the next bit of terrible news? She felt very real to me.
The boys are also just kind of dumb in a way that felt very realistic. Rand accidentally falling into the queen’s backyard was great: it was clearly crazy unlikely and embarrassing… and really stupid, but… I mean, in a society with no long-distance media, why wouldn’t Rand take a big risk to see a once-in-a-lifetime sight? If we’re going to have fated meetings between characters, I don’t see why they can’t also be just as awkward and cringey as the usual interactions between teenagers.
Moiraine and Lan are another good example. They’re extremely capable as a two-person combat team… but they’re kind of terrible at leading a group, or at least a group of teenage peasants. I expect that they’d do just fine ordering a squad of trained soldiers around, but that’s not what they’ve been forced to deal with. Much of the conflict in the book could have been avoided if Moiraine had simply been more transparent with the boys. They would have trusted her enough to tell her about their dreams if she’d even made a basic, even insincere, attempt to make them feel like they were part of the team. Instead, Lan consistently treated them condescendingly – even contemptuously – as peasants. He generally addressed them as “sheepherders”, at it was clearly meant to be derogatory. For a man who doesn’t want the mantle of a king, he certainly liked to look down on common people. I actually called out, very early in the book, that Lan gave me the impression of someone who had been forced into becoming a child soldier at a young age. He’s emotionally stunted, disgusted by weakness, and overly respectful of a very particular authority. Neither Lan nor Moiraine share anything with the boys, but then they become angry with them when they don’t know something.The boys sneaking out while they were in Shadar Logath is a good example of this: if Lan wasn’t so harsh and unapproachable, the boys would’ve trusted him enough to ask if they could explore a bit. Moiraine’s lessons to Egwene are another good example: why not include the boys, at least a little bit? Maybe give them a watered down version of things just to make them feel included. There’s some very basic team building stuff that could’ve been done here. They weren’t merely “mean” to the boys, but actively counter-productive to their mission. I actually really like this. I thought this made Lan and Moiraine feel very real: we don’t have perfect heroes here, we have what we have. If Lan had been a better leader but a worse swordsman, the group might have fallen to trollocks early in the story. If Moiraine had been any more talented, she might have come off as a Mary Sue. Having some flaws is a good thing in a story, and these characters have very good flaws.
The overall world building was awesome
The little echoes and shadow of real myths were great. I’m sure I missed some of them, but I caught enough of them to geek out over our world being an age in the book’s universe. Having characters like “Lenn” and “Salya“, as well as “Artur Paendrag Tanreall” made the world feel much more rich, because there’s a history to it, and it felt more real because it’s connected to the real world. The differences in the telling were a great touch: this isn’t our age. Having darker skinned people with Irish names and a more Celtic society was really interesting. Red haired desert people made me wonder how they deal with the sun… but it’s all really interesting and I can’t wait to see more. This is definitely giving me an itch to dive into some Arthurian legends… or, at least, finally get around to playing Fate/stay night.
The period specific stuff was excellent
The Eye of the World avoids most of the flaws fantasy series often have with misunderstanding pre-modern rural societies. I’m no professional historian, but I read enough history to at least have an appreciation for when things are done right. The scale of cities felt very realistic, as did the wonder the farmers had at that scale. It’s specifically called out that Rand is amazed at the scale multiple times, and each time he feels silly for having been impressed on the previous occasion. This is just perfect. Honestly, you don’t even need to go to history to appreciate this. I grew up in Waunakee, Wisconsin, a pretty small town (small enough for the name to be flagged as a spelling error, apparently.) I’ll never forget how awestruck I was when I first walked up the steps to Van Hise Hall when I started at UW Madison – I’m sure I looked like a lost country bumpkin, craning my neck up to see the big buildings. Then, a few years later, I spent a summer working at NEC in Japan and found myself walking around Osaka, once again walking around awestruck: how could buildings be so tall? Like Rand, I felt foolish for being impressed last time: Madison is nothing compared to a real city, even if it was absolutely immense compared to what I was used to.
While traveling, it’s a minor plot point that towns and farms are more spread out the further you get from a city and that cities kind of overflow their synthetic barriers. No hint of the “Lonely City” trope here. Side note, definitely read just every single post on A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: it’s all great.
The attention that horses need is also called out: they’re not motorcycles, they’re animals that get tired, need rest, grow hungry, and can be injured. Individual horses have personalities and feel like extra characters. Bela is, frankly, about as important to me as Matt and Nynaeve at this point in the story.
The risks people are willing to take to witness something personally is also an interesting touch. It’s kind of hard to empathize with as a modern person: sure, I’ll go to an event if it’s convenient, but I’m perfectly satisfied catching online videos and descriptions most of the time. Though, some of this might just be me: I’ve never really understood why so many people care so much about meeting celebrities in person. The idea of risking my life just to see an important person up close is just baffling to me… but I’m spoiled on recordings. In a society with no such technology, the only way to really know something is to see it firsthand. The people who saw Logain up close will be able to tell the “real story” of the “false dragon” to their grandchildren with the smug knowing that, whatever the rumors twist the story into, they saw the real thing. Even gleemen who weren’t there will, of course, write stories as though they were, but they’ll need to live with the fear that someone will credibly contradict them. At times it felt foolish how much people were willing to risk just for a firsthand experience, but I think this is just a good interpretation of the limitations of the period.
The Ending
Okay, so, the ending felt rushed and very abstract. I don’t think this is all bad. To some extent, it felt like a good way to have magic be really interesting. Having things end abruptly felt kind of realistic in a sense: not every ending is cinematic and drawn out. That said… I mean, all of the loose ends are tied up in like a single page. Rand just teleporting to the battle and killing the evil army in a flash felt kind of stupid, even if it was sort of foreshadowed in the intro.
I did like, however, how Rand is just immediately certain that everything is over and he totally killed the big bad. This isn’t even a case like Thom where, I mean, we never saw a body, so as readers aware of tropes, we’re not even surprised when Lan and Moiraine mention that it would have been odd for nobody to have mentioned a gleeman being killed in broad daylight in the middle of the city. No, it’s clear from Moiraine’s reaction that she was fine letting Rand have his moment, so long as he doesn’t call down Shaitan on them all. This also gives her a good excuse to continue being self-destructively opaque about everything.
Oh, and speaking of tropey father-figure-dying-scenes…
Tam’s “death scene” is really solid
Having seen a fair bit of death, I really hate how death scenes are always so perfect and tidy. Even when there’s an attempt to eschew the trope of a character being able to conveniently say everything they’ve ever wanted to say just before expiring, it’s generally only done to highlight that those left behind already knew what they were going to say or it’s played as a subversive joke. I really liked how Tam wasn’t really making any sense and wound up just causing confusion with his feverish rambling. If he’d been one of the tropey father figures who are perfectly sound of mind right up until the exact moment their soul leaves their body (or maybe a few minutes after, even), then he wouldn’t have said anything. Having him actually make it is even better: sometimes things just happen. It could turn out to be destiny or w/e, but at least in that moment, I liked how whether someone lives or dies in a chaotic situation can feel arbitrary. Rand could’ve just given up, but he didn’t, and it actually worked out! He could’ve just as easily merely distracted the healers from their triage and would up killing someone else without helping Tam, but in this case, it happened to work out. Sure, magic was involved, but it didn’t need to be: he could’ve just needed someone to help him handle shock and a fever and the scene would’ve played out mostly the same way.
I liked the Jolly Green Giant
The Green Man is one of those characters that is just obviously a folklore reference even if you don’t recall any specific source. That he dies and then is, in a sense, reborn was predictable, but I still really liked how it was done: he even gets to be kind of badass. Sadly, we’ll definitely never see him again…
I’m also reminded of Bob from Fallout, though that’s a bit more of a stretch.
So, this is just The Lord of the Rings
The Eye of the World is definitely The Lord of the Rings fanfiction, at least to an extent. I mean, right down some of the characters, scenes, and overall plot structure. It literally reads like (extremely good) fanfiction sometimes. It’s still great, and I have it on good authority that this doesn’t continue for much longer, but I’m not going to just pretend that it isn’t so. The takeaway for me, at this moment, is that nobody cares. People seem to trip over themselves to defend that The Wheel of Time either isn’t really LotR fanfiction or that it doesn’t matter. In my own writing, maybe I don’t need to worry so much about being fully unique, so long as what I write is good.