**Mild WOT spoilers, but no real specifics.
I don’t know what possessed me to start reading this series. I have now read the first 7 books, and I have thoughts.
Actually, no, I remember why I wanted to read this series. The TV show was starting to pick up momentum and news kept coming out about casting. In 2019, I decided to read The Eye of the World just to get a feel for the series and see what all the hubbub was about. I was pretty ambivalent about it. I rated it 3 stars on GoodReads. I had a vague notion about continuing the series but wasn’t super enthralled.
I picked at The Great Hunt for almost 3 years before I managed to finish it. T H R E E Y E A R S. I very nearly gave up on the series at that point. I still don’t know what kept me going. Sheer stubborness, maybe? At any rate, I forced my way through it and finished it in 2022. I got smart with The Dragon Reborn and started listening to the audiobooks, and since then have averaged 1 WOT book per month.
I can definitely say with confidence that the first book is a thing of its own. The Eye of the World is its own contained story, and is very much a Lord of the Rings-style narrative, with a group of folks thrown together by circumstances on an Epic Quest to take down a Dark Lord. We have a Chosen One, we have the sage mentors who keep the Chosen One to the correct path, and we have Evil people who are trying to stop them.
Side note on Team Evil: I have long considered the Myrddral to be the Nazgul analog, but HOLY CRAP my brain just made a big connection as I am sat here writing this post: Is Padan Fain the analog to…GOLLUM? Someone weigh in on this in the comments, because I think I just blew my own mind. Especially with his obsession with the knife! Oh my god, how has it taken me 7 books to get there???? If Gollum could blend into normal society, he would be Padan Fain.
Back to my thoughts. The Great Hunt expands the world past that quest narrative, and weaves in more extensive world-building. We get more characters (Jordan is nothing if not good at introducing characters. He just makes all of their names RHYME) and a lot more history and geography. I was glad to see the story become more than just Tolkien Take Two.
His character work is great. The main cast is written pretty young for the first few books. The Emond’s Field characters are all around 18-20 years old, and they definitely feel that way. A lot of their squabbles and dramas feel very young and now that I am 7 books in, I am seeing how the characters are changing and maturing. It is one of the strengths of this series that the characters change based on the events taking place. Granted, the events from books 1-7 take place over a little more than a year, which throws me off every time it is mentioned. I had honestly forgotten how young they all were until Elayne mentioned that she is only 19 in book 7.
Speaking of Elayne, I want to expand on my small parenthetical gripe from above. Elayne, Moiraine, Egwene, Melaine, I think there was a Selaine at one point, Berelain. They all rhyme!! I have a hard time with fantasy names in general, but having all these rhyming names while listening to the audiobook is awful. In this last book, they kept mentioning Melaine talking to Egwene in one place, and I kept hearing it as Elayne. I kept thinking to myself – No, that can’t be Elayne because she and Nynaeve are off over here doing this other thing and are nowhere near Egwene right now. I had to go home and grab the physical book just to make sure I wasn’t going insane.
Anyway, that’s my little gripe. I can’t find my WOT Companion to look up the spellings of those names, so just pretend I spelled them correctly, okay?
As the series moves into the second half, I can especially see the Emond’s Field characters changing for better and for the worse. Mat started out as such an annoying character. Immature, lazy, a womanizer. He’s still a womanizer 7 books in, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not as gross about it. I had some gripes about the way he was treated in book 7 when it comes to a specific woman, but I won’t go that deep into it here. Suffice it to say, book 7 has a lot of issues surrounding consent and sexual politics that go largely unaddressed. Where Mat is concerned, since he is such a womanizer his consent is just taken as given even when he is expressly saying no. It’s written in a kind of la-di-da, of course he’s into it, he’s a man, manner that drove me nuts.
He has come a long way on the laziness and immaturity level, however. He has become a major part of the story and has stepped up in a way a lot of the background, comedy-relief characters don’t get to. He still really wants to be lazy and immature, but the narrative is tugging him along in a way that is forcing him to be a more active, responsible character.
Nynaeve and Egwene have also evolved over the last several books. I think Nynaeve took longer to mature, mainly because she refused to stop clinging to her waspishness when someone questions her knowledge. She becomes angry a lot, which fuels her magic, which does not give her incentive to change. It takes a long time for Nynaeve to want to change, and as of book 7 I can see it start to shift in her. Egwene was forced to grow up a bit faster, between her run-in with the Seanchan and with the Aiel Wise Ones. WOT fans will know that book 6 was a big change for Egwene and has made her character grow in a new direction. I think that has been one of the most enjoyable plot threads to follow.
Perrin has been perfect from page 1 and I will take no criticism of him.
And finally we have Rand. What to say about Rand? I go back and forth on whether I think he has matured as a person in these first 7 books. He started out as the reluctant Chosen One who mistrusts pretty much every new person he meets. Especially the Aes Sedai, who all seem to want to use him in some manner to control the way the world goes. He has this big destiny all written out before him, and he just really does not want it. He is a sheep farmer and he wants to continue to be a sheep farmer. Over the books, events have happened that convince him that he has to follow the path as it unfolds before him, but he of course has to have a couple temper tantrums along the way. That is why I go back and forth on him so much. I can see where he has begun to take responsibility for all these plot threads, but then he goes and does some boneheaded stuff to counterbalance it. If Rand was a real person I would want to wring his neck, I won’t lie.
If I had to choose one thing to be the strength of these novels, I would say it is Jordan’s character work. Second would be backfilling in the world-building. It definitely takes a book or two to really get moving, but once it does it hooks you in.
I have only read the first book in the part of the series affectionately referred to as “The Slog,” but so far it is not so bad. I can see why it is considered a slog – from where we start at the end of book 6 to where we end up at the end of book 7, not a lot has happened, plot-wise. I still found it a decent read.
I don’t know if this made any coherent sense. I mainly just wanted to get down some thoughts I’d been having while reading this series. I plan to start book 8 next week, and then march on until the end. I expect I will have more to say toward the end of the series, so stay tuned.
The Neverending Unread 