Review on The Wheel of Time series Of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Hello everyone! My vacations have come to an end (I hope yours haven’t) and here I am once again as the song goes

You know the one I am referring to, don’t say that you don’t.

Writing.

So with no further delay I give you “The Wheel of Time”

 

In Four glorious, oh so glorious wallpapers.

Yeah but what is “The Wheel of Time” you ask.

Good question I answer.

The Wheel of Time is a series of books that began back at 1990 with the publication of “The Eye of the World” written by Robert Jordan, Robert Jordan is a pen name for James Oliver Rigney, Jr.

That’s the one.

The series revolves around three farm boys and there friends and there escalating strangle to save the world from complete destruction.(more on that later)  

After the first eleven books were published Robert Jordan promised to end the series at the 12^th book. But unfortunately he died at September 16, 2007 due to a serius heart illness. He was alert of the possibility of his death and so he left enough notes and material for another writer to complete his series including how the series end. That man would turn to be Brandon Sanderson

an excellent author in his own merit and also a fan of The Wheel of Time.

The final book “A Memory of Light” turned out to be to big to be published in on go, so it was broken down in to three smaller “The Gathering Storm”, “Towers of Midnight” and the final “A Memory of Light”. The final book will be published on January 8, 2013 thus concluding this epic journey.

Info on Robert Jordan and his work you can find here and here.

Info on Brandon Sanderson and his work you can find here and here.

Now more about the story.

The books follows the travels of Rand al’ Thor, Martim Cauthon and Perrin Aybara. Three boys from a village in a corner of the world forgotten by almost everyone turn out to be very important. So to protect their loved ones they leave their village along with Moiraine Sedai and her Warden Lan Mandragoran, along come Thom Merilin a bard, Egwene al'Vere a girl that can be trained to be an Aes Sedai and Nynaeve al'Meara that comes along to keep an eye on the kids.

They travel long the get separate reunite and separate again, each walking his own path to Tarm Gai’don the final battle were everything will be decided, as the armies of men  along with Aes Sedai, Asha'man and heroes long dead all leaden by the Dragon Reborn fight the Dark One and his armies of Darkspawn and his champions the Forsaken.

All in on Word: EPIC.

What I like about The Wheel of Time:

1)      Great character development! We  actule see how this kids turn from naive boys, to confused men and finally to true heroes and not only them, I can remember a character in the series that was left unchanged in one way or another (if they died it doesn’t count).

2)      Supreme World development! The world is more than solid. We have history on it and not at just one point the history come back to haunt us, as the book them self begin “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”  Robert Jordan. And it doesn’t end at history, he gives us great cultures to explore each developed buy the land that surrounds them. We have also the world of dreams and we get hints about other completely different worlds that people can go.

3)      Great battles and confrontations: not just two people fighting (or armies) but why they fight and how each of them sees it (the reason of the fight), also great descriptions of the fight itself.

4)      Nice characters: They are characters you can get behind, be them on the side of the good or evil you cant but like or at least admire them.

5)      It’s a long read. It’s thirteen books so far and we wait the last, but each one of them is also big on its own merit, and you know what? I like that, I really do. I have previously point out that a story must have a beginning, middle and end part but Robert Jordan seems to have no problem to stretch that rule of mine to its very limits. I like when I have a lot of material to read, it gives me a feeling that the story isn’t going to end soon (it usually does after a day or two, regardless of the number of pages).

What I don’t like about The Wheel of Time:

1)      I cant really point my finger in any major by my opinion flow, it has some little boring parts but they are in every book out there and are in fact essential in the story, you cant give action all the time.

2)      The time flow is a little slow in the last books, around the tenth book it takes a book to describe two-three weeks, I get it that  the last battle is supposed to be close and you cant postpone the date for extra time but it stills kind of  bothers me. Still not destroying the overall Excellent flavour of the books.

 

In conclusion: Find them, buy them, read them, listen the song about them and/or read the comics, you will like it.