Wheel of Time #1 - The Eye Of The World
I’ve accidentally begun a re-read of Robert Jordan’s Wheel Of Time series. I don’t know what drove me to pick up New Spring earlier this week, but pick it up I did, and I ended up writing two posts about it. And I enjoyed it so much that I decided to move straight on to The Eye of the World.
Since I’ve read this series before (at least once, possibly twice, though I honestly don’t remember) all of the posts about these books will contain spoilers. I also don’t know how quickly I’m planning to read these, since I have a huge number of other books that I really do want to get to this year that I keep putting off. But, having now finished books 0 and 1, I think I’m pretty set on continuing with the rest of the series.
Coming back to The Eye of the World after so long away from this series was like slipping into a warm, comfortable bath. These books aren’t without their faults, especially later in the series when we start to see Aiel and Seanchan societies (and even here with the Tuatha'an neatly shoring up some of the more prevalent stereotypes about Irish Travellers), not to mention some of the gender politics in here, but there’s just something about the way Jordan writes that feels incredibly welcoming. He’s also eminently readable, even when his characters are delivering ridiculous expletives like “blood and bloody ashes” (for the love of god, if you want your characters to swear then please just let them fucking swear), with the result that I ploughed through this nearly 800-page tome in about a day and a half of on-and-off reading.
I think part of what makes Jordan’s weird treatment of real-world cultures so palatable is that it’s clear he’s using these bases to build something actually interesting and fantastical, in the same way that he takes the raw material of The Lord Of The Rings and works it into something new. This book is built very firmly on the bones of The Fellowship of the Ring: the shape of that book is all over the early chapters especially, and things like the Draghkar are very obviously his version of the Fell beasts, but Eye of the World very quickly becomes its own thing after sprouting from those roots. It’s interesting to contrast it with something like The Sword of Shannara, which wears its influences so openly that it’s at times simply plagiarising, though of course Jordan had the benefit of writing this first book having seen people accuse Brooks of theft for over 20 years, and Jordan himself still faced accusations of being too derivative.
Though I’ve read this a couple of times, this was my first time reading an edition that contains the ‘Ravens’ prologue. I’m always interested to see prequels written after the main series is well underway, not least because it’s fascinating to see which bits of the larger story they think are important enough to ‘foreshadow’ - which I put in inverted commas because it’s not really foreshadowing when you do it this way. The very first page of ‘Ravens’ - which is from the point of view of a nine-year-old Egwene - contains the line, “Why did you have to keep doing something just because it had always been done that way?” This, of course, will prove to be the main theme of Egwene’s development over the course of the novels.
I don’t particularly like this prologue. It’s very clear that it’s written in an attempt at a more ‘young adult’ tone, and it’s not a voice that comes naturally to Jordan. It feels like he’s talking down to his audience. It’s also just not particularly interesting and doesn’t add anything of value to the book - often a danger of prologues in general, but one that Jordan tends to manage to avoid throughout the series if memory serves me. I suspect this only exists because the publisher thought that younger readers needed an opening with a younger protagonist to hook them, but I feel like anybody grabbed by this prologue would be hugely disappointed when the tone - and the point of view - shift dramatically once we get into the bulk of the book proper.
Still, dodgy prologue aside, I still think The Eye of the World is great. This huge, sprawling world with thousands of years of history needs so much exposition to set it up, and later books really get bogged down in that, but here I feel like it’s mostly handled really well. The action is always exciting, I love spending time with all of the characters, and despite the length the pace never really gets bogged down. If anything I think it’s sometimes too fast, especially during the end sequence in the Green Man’s garden which is, frustratingly, probably the weakest part of the book. Considering it’s the climax of the novel we simply don’t get enough time with it - we spend longer in some of the dream sequences earlier in the book than we do in this fabled location that nobody ever gets to visit twice.
My main frustration with the climax is to do with the appearance - and importance of - Balthamel and Aginor, the two freed Forsaken who appear in the garden at the Eye of the World. While the existence of the Forsaken has been hinted at throughout this book they’ve never really been set up as genuinely important enemies, and we don’t yet know that the person appearing in the dreams of the three boys is Ishamael rather than the Dark One himself, so the appearance of two of them - who haven’t been named before - in such a pivotal role at such a climactic moment just feels weird.
Imperfections and frustrating ending aside, I love how this first book sets up the rest of the series. This has always been a series that’s more about the journey than the destination, and that’s on full display here. This is also the only book where I’m able to really remember what happens in it; the rest of them sort of smear together in my head, though I do remember that book 2 features Mat blowing the Horn of Valere and Egwene being captured by the Seanchan, so I’ll look forward to those moments and to rediscovering what else happens there.
Stray thought while reading this: What is the history of “blighted” lands in fantasy? Is there a lineage of them? Has anybody written anything about this, or can it become a new special interest for me?