Review: The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

Blurb:

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 returns again. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

When a vicious band of half-men, half beasts invade the Two Rivers seeking their master’s enemy, Moiraine persuades Rand al’Thor and his friends to leave their home and enter a larger unimaginable world filled with dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light.

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time® has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. The last six books in series were all instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, and The Eye of the World was named one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.

Image source: Reactormag

Review:

"The Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills."

**The first part of this review will be spoiler free. The second part will be marked and will begin to contain spoilers**

The Wheel of Time is one of the most ambitious fantasy epics ever written. It is a sprawling, complex story that weaves together multiple, distinct cultures, thousands of named characters, a hard magic system, and deep philosophical questions into a beautiful tapestry of literature. The Wheel of Time series is made up of 14 main books, a prequel novel, 1 canonical short story, 1 non-canonical short story, and a couple reference books. 

At its heart, with everything stripped away, The Wheel of Time is a classic, “chosen one” story where we follow a small-town boy and his friends as they are thrust into a battle that has been raging between the Dark and the Light for thousands of years and numberless turnings of the Wheel. However, to think of this story as a simple retelling of the “chosen one” trope is to ignore the dozens of additional plots and arcs that Jordan layered into this story. The Wheel of Time spans over 4.4 million words because, while Rand’s journey remains at the center of this legendary tale, all of the other characters have fully fleshed out stories, motivations, and pursuits that create the tangled pattern that is the Wheel of Time. This review is no where near comprehensive, but just reflects some of my thoughts and opinions.

Many who begin The Eye of the World immediately recognize multiple similarities to the Lord of the Rings series, which was an intentional choice by Robert Jordan. At the time of publication, publishers were looking for the next Lord of the Rings so Jordan took a tried-and-true formula, adding in his own magic and worldbuilding, and created a book that would resonate with long-time fans of the Lord of the Rings while adding enough novelty to remain distinctly separate from Middle Earth. However, by the second book—The Great Hunt—Jordan rips us away from any similarities to Tolkien’s masterpiece and firmly establishes The Wheel of Time as a unique story that can stand fully on its own.

I recently finished A Memory of Light, the last book in The Wheel of Time series, and I wanted to work through my feelings for this series as a whole. I am aware that some of what I’m going to write may be controversial for die-hard fans of The Wheel of Time. But starting The Wheel of Time is a huge commitment. If you look around the internet for whether or not you should take the time to read The Wheel of Time, you’re going to see people telling you that you cannot consider yourself a true fantasy fan unless you have The Wheel of Time under your belt because it is THE best epic fantasy series in existence. And you’re going to see people who say that it’s a bloated, unreadable series that needs to be forgotten in light of more modern, streamlined series. And to both sentiments I say, “Yes! Absolutely yes.”

I read The Wheel of Time over the course of about a year, occasionally slipping in other books as brief palette cleansers before returning to the next tome in The Wheel of Time. And now that it’s done, I feel both a profound sense of loss knowing that I’ll never be reading that next, chonky book for the first time while also feeling s great sense of freedom knowing that I’ve made a full journey with the Wheel. 

Now for my personal thoughts on The Wheel of Time. This series is one of the best, damaged series I’ve ever read. There is so much that is absolutely amazing about The Wheel of Time that will stay with me forever. There are scenes with Rand as he develops from Two Rivers sheepherder to where he ends in A Memory of Light that are phenomenal. In the books and series that I’ve read, I do not think there is a better case study of the “chosen one” trope. The ups and downs; the triumphs and defeats. I just don’t think a more comprehensive, immersive story has been written that delves into the highs and lows of finding out that you are someone who has been prophesied would come. Mat is an absolute delight throughout the series. While many would argue that Jordan meandered with the story a lot in the middle books, it is very obvious that he had a solid idea of where this series was going because there are so many hints and lore dropped as early as The Eye of the World that becomes important as the series begins to wrap up. This is a series that ends on an exceptional note, in my opinion. 

But this is also a deeply flawed series. If you’re reading this and trying to decide if you should start The Wheel of Time, you’ve almost certainly already heard of “the slog.” Depending on who you talk to, people will say that “the slog” ranges between books 7-10, give or take 1 or 2, and that these books are painfully slow and move the plot forward in such miniscule amounts that it hurts the overall story. For me, at the time I was reading, I sailed along well through A Crown of Swords, The Path of Daggers, and Winter’s Heart. While much slower than previous books, there were enough great scenes in each that I was pretty happy as I read them. Crossroads of Twilight was a difficult book for me to get through. I felt like the pace slowed down to a near complete stop, with a little backing up. But then it was as if a breath of fresh life came into Jordan for Knife of Dreams and the pace started to pick up and it felt like we were back on track, speeding towards the Last Battle. Now, looking back at the series, I truly believe this series would have significantly been improved by a much stronger handed editor taking his ideas for books 7-10 and compressing them into a lean single edition. I’ll speak about this more below in the spoiler section.

Brandon Sanderson. As you likely know, Jordan unfortunately passed away after finishing Knife of Dreams so the remaining three volumes (The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, and A Memory of Light) were written by Brandon Sanderson with the use of extensive notes, outlines, and already written scenes by Jordan in close consultation with Jordan’s wife and editor, Harriet McDougal. I am so glad that we had Knife of Dreams, where Jordan seemingly returns to the same quality and energy that he exhibited with earlier books in the series. That being said, and this is controversial with a large group of fans, I think the Wheel of Time was saved by Sanderson. Now, before everyone burns me at the stakes, let me acknowledge that I don’t think Sanderson would have had any chance to complete this series if Jordan hadn’t provided him with all of his notes and if he hadn’t laid such an amazing groundwork. However, even with Jordan’s return in Knife of Dreams, I don’t know if I believe that Jordan would have been able to pick up the pace that was needed to complete this series as well as Sanderson did (though it is still not perfect). Many people criticize Sanderson for having prose that lacks the richness and beauty of Jordan’s. I think this is a fair criticism. However, I think the events leading immediately up to and including the Last Battle would have suffered from Jordan’s slower, more thoughtful prose. Sanderson’s quick, streamlined prose allowed for an increased sense of urgency and chaos that was completely appropriate to the Last Battle. 

So, before I get to some spoiler thoughts, should you read The Wheel of Time? Yes. And No. If you want to become immersed in one of the most detailed, well thought out fantasy epics of the modern era and you’re happy to get lost in the details and meander with Jordan as he explores these wonderful characters then this is the series for you. If you want to understand and experience firsthand one of the most influential pieces of epic fantasy literature as it was intended by Jordan, then this is the series for you. If you want a streamlined story without hundreds of pages of excess and a quick, heart pounding pace with non-stop action, then this may not the series for you. 

For me, I love this series. I will always recommend it to people, with the caveat I spelled out above. I am 100% glad that I read this series and would not take back the experience for anything. I love Rand’s character. I love so many things about this book. The worldbuilding for The Wheel of Time is in a league of its own. The prose is often beautiful. And even with Jordan’s untimely death, Sanderson did a phenomenal job finishing a huge series in a herculean effort which paid off with one of the best endings in fantasy. 

**Spoiler alert moving forward**

"And then Rand al-Thor—the Dragon Reborn-—stood up once again to face the shadow."

There are so many absolutely amazing things within this series. I’m not going to touch on even a small percentage of them. 

I’ve mentioned above how much I loved Rand’s arc. I discussed a lot of my feelings in my review for A Memory of Light, so check that out if you’re interested in my in-depth thoughts on A Memory of Light. Rand’s progression from a sheepherder to a demi-God who stood up to the Dark One and was able to forcibly pull him into the Pattern and realize how pitiful and small the Dark One was as he held him in his hand is astounding. There are moments and scenes that are indelibly etched into my mind: Dumai’s Wells, his initial failures attempting to use Callandor, his capture by Semirhage leading to the brutal decimation of Natrin’s Barrow, to his revelation on Dragonmount, to Maradon, to his final confrontation with the Dark One and so many more scenes in-between. He will always be one of my favorite protagonists. 

For time’s sake, I’m not going into all the great stories that surrounded Perrin and Mat and Logain and so many other characters. But this is a series that is bursting at the seams with top notch character work.

Jordan did a phenomenal job creating and maintaining a sneaking sense of suspension and uneasiness over multiple books as the Dark One’s influence on the world was slowly developed. You could feel the very fabric of nature slowly morphing and deteriorating. It wasn’t sudden or jolting. It was slow and insidious and masterfully done.

As I mentioned above, Jordan planted so many hints and threads that were buried in the first few books that were so important in the concluding books. I can only imagine that this is a series that is gratifying to re-read because of the ability to pick up on so many of the hints that were missed on an initial read that may be more evident with full hindsight. Some of my personal favorites were the mention of the Tower of Ghenjei in The Eye of the World and the revelation of the red veiled Aiel guarding Thakan’dar.

There were a few parts of The Wheel of Time that I specifically didn’t love that I wanted to air here. I don’t know if this is a hot take or not, but the end of The Eye of the World doesn’t really make sense to me. Our fellowship decides to travel all of the way into the Blight and find this pure pool of saidin that Rand then uses to kill a Forsaken. Why was there a pool of saidin? In no other place in the books do we see this physical manifestation of saidin or saidar. And why had someone just left the Horn of Valere at the bottom of this pool? It seemed like a lot of cool thoughts that Jordan threw together to help close the book out that never had any ties to the larger series. The Eye of the World seems like it was this legendary, important thing but in the end, it was just a random pool of saidin that Rand took up, blasted a Forsaken with, and then they ended up with the Horn of Valere. Throughout the wholes series I kept waiting for some sort of explanation or conversation to harken back to all of that and there just wasn’t. It happened and then it’s like Jordan and Sanderson just swept it under the rug.

The same thing with portal stones and the alternate dimension that Rand goes to in The Eye of the World. We almost never use portal stones again. And it’s never explained how or why Rand went to some alternative dimension where it seemed like the Seanchan had taken over the world. It was clear that this wasn’t Tel'aran'rhiod but we never have anything similar happen again. And why was Lanfear hanging out there? Again, I was waiting the entire series for an explanation of that whole episode, and it just never came.

My other issue with the series, and this harkens back to the need to cut books 7-10 down to a single novel, is I felt like the middle dragged out so long that events that happened in the earlier 6 books that were resolved in the last 4 lost a lot of their emotional impact for me because there were 2 million words separating them. If the series had been able to undergo a major trimming around the middle, I think the emotional impact of several events in the last books would have hit much harder because their initiation would have been much fresher in the reader’s mind.

And my last gripe that I’ll leave here is that Jordan really needed to beef up his villains. There were too many Forsaken and they kept coming back but there was no real bite with most of them. It was so rare for the Forsaken to strike any terror into my heart or to demonstrate why they were these feared figures from history that kept kids up at night. It wasn’t until Taim and Demandred in A Memory of Light that I felt the power of the Forsaken at all. Along those same lines, the Black Ajah, which were so menacing initially, faded into obscurity within a few books. I don’t even know if they were mentioned in any real detail in the last battle. Ultimately, this all comes from the fact that I don’t think Jordan established them well enough as true, evil bad guys in the beginning, and then when the series stretched out to 4.4 million words, a lackluster villain was stretched out to a kind of pathetic villain without much bite. Again, I think Sanderson did a fantastic job of giving the Forsaken a vicious renewal in A Memory of Light. Demandred was brutally murderous. Graendal was slippery and manipulative with the Great Captains. But the two truly terrifying villains in the series—Padan Fain and Shaidar Haran—were both quickly extinguished at the end without any fanfare, killing a lot of the excitement and anticipation they had built up during the series.

If you’ve read this far, I hope I haven’t completely offended you and your Wheel of Time sensibilities. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. These are just my opinions and takes. At the end of the day, The Wheel of Time is an epic journey that I’m so glad I took, regardless of whether it was the perfect epic fantasy story or not.