Free At Last – Wheel of Time

Robert Jordon’s Eye of the World

When I was 11, back in 1990, my father brought home a big blue book.  I liked the art on the front quite a bit, and it opened up such that the first page was hard material with the cover-art redone as a two-page spread.  It showed an armored warrior and regal woman leading a line of rough looking people on horseback under a night sky.  You could see that they were leaving a warm looking village at night, and over them flew a dark shape.  I probably spent dozens of hours staring at that art as a child, figuring out which character from the book matched which tiny, indistinguishable figure.  The book was called The Eye of the World.

The Wheel of Time has since blossomed as a series to become one of the most significant fantasy works in the field.  Whether you like it or hate it, if you’re a fantasy fan, you’ve heard of the Wheel of Time, and half of your favorite authors were probably influenced by it.  When I was a kid, I was addicted to it.  I would seek out other readers to talk theory, and spend hours pouring over specific passages trying to wring out meaning and future hints.  The best way I have heard the series described is by my friend Grant, who calls it: “Twilight for d00ds.”  I am unashamed to admit that he’s right.  (Though there are literally millions of female WoT fans, the series is definitely pitched to the 14-18 white male).

Now I’m 33.  I’ve been reading the series for 22 years.  The final book comes out Tuesday.  All I can think is – Free at last!  Free at last!  Sadly, as I aged, while the first several books retained their quality and called me back time and again, the later books did not hold up as well.  They dragged on and on, with nearly nothing happening in each book.  More and more characters appeared and got their own focus, without any resolution to the old character’s arcs.  It began to feel like this thing was never going to end.  At last Robert Jordan announced that he was working on the last book, called A Memory of Light.  He promised to finish, no matter how big the book got or how long it took.  Then he promptly died.

I would call what I went through when he died despair.  His series had its hooks in my soul, and my OCD wasn’t ever going to let it go until there was SOME kind of ending.  Thank God Brandon Sanderson was tapped to finish the series.  It turned me on to Sanderson as an author, which is a good thing, and allowed the series to finish strong, though in more than the one book I was promised.

So, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of The Wheel of Time.

Pros:
Strong classic epic:  The series hits all of the right points for an epic fantasy.  Simple villagers become the movers and shakers of the world, everything hinges on half-forgotten prophecies . . . the series is the Hero’s Journey told from every conceivable angle and character.

Well fleshed out setting:  The world is very well-imagined and detailed.  It’s ripe for story telling, and that really makes me wish Jordan was still around to give the go-ahead to tell some of them.

Neat magic system:  The Wheel of Time really marked and pushed the major shift in fantasy from the hermetic spell casting tradition of magic to a more free-form “roll your own” approach.  Not a lot of authors before Jordan were exploring the details of a magic system that didn’t involve bat guano.

Excellent battle scenes:  Jordan can write a fight like nobody else in the genre.

Great opener:  The Eye of the World is one of the great fantasy novels of the 90’s.  Very reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings, but Jordan shows instead of tells, which really draws you in.

Cons:

Welcome to Breastland:  Robert Jordan never describes a woman without telling you exactly what her breasts are doing at the time.  He’s like the Russ Meyer of fantasy books.

It’s the Song that Never Ends:  It’s just goes on and on my friends.  And on, and on, and on, and on . . .

Jordan can’t write women:  Beyond the location and goings on of breasts, Jordan’s women are all extremely similar, and not too terribly believable.

Too many characters:  This thing is rivalling Romance of the Three Kingdoms for hundreds of completely forgettable characters that don’t matter a damn.  The sub-characters in the early novels were persistent and awesome – Hurin, Uno, Basil Gill . . . most of these have been replaced by several other minor characters that I don’t care about.

The series got better after Jordan died:  It makes me feel like a shitheel to say this, but Jordan’s epic was saved by the guy that was finishing it after he died.  In a lot of ways, that’s like Leonardo cacking it in the middle of painting the Mona Lisa, and then Bob Ross finishing the painting . . . and makes it somehow BETTER.  It makes you call into question everything that the original artist has done.