It’s no secret that I kind of found myself losing steam with the Wheel of Time series. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed every book (at least for the most part), but I remember feeling so invested, and so enthusiastic when I read The Eye of the World and that feeling of excitement has slowly faded as I’ve read each successive book. Although there are ups and downs, this was the first book in a long time that made me feel anything close to how I was feeling with the earlier books.
The main storyline is about Moiraine and how she ended up on her quest to look for the Dragon Reborn that we find her on at the beginning of the first book. I loved this, because Moiraine was my favourite character and I felt her absence quite strongly in the last few books. Admittedly, she is pretty different here, because she’s about 20 years younger and not yet the mysterious and enigmatic figure she would become (though she makes some progress towards that). Although I can imagine that some people might not appreciate the de-mystification, I enjoyed seeing her fleshed out a bit more and thought it helped make her more of a three-dimensional character.
Siuan also plays a pretty big role in this one (which is good, because I felt that she had been quite significantly side-lined in the recent novels too) and it’s cool to see her before she became Amyrlin. Most of all, I appreciated the deeper exploration of her relationship with Moiraine, as the pair of them are very sweet together. I was invested in their relationship in a way that I never really was with any of the other pairs of friends throughout the series.
To my surprise, the only thing I didn’t really enjoy was Lan. I liked him before, and always thought his bond with Moiraine was really cool and interesting. Here though, there’s a kind of eye-rolling “enemies to lovers” trope (even though they don’t become lovers exactly) which doesn’t really feel at all true to life. It’s also pretty tiresome when there are so, so many pairings in his series where they kind of hate each other, but also care a lot for each other. There are other types of relationships in the world and it would have been nice to see them.
Other than that (and the fact that Robert Jordan still couldn’t wait to find contrived ways to get the women naked and thinking about how they feel about being naked, which he always does), this was a real step up. I think a big part of it feeling more enjoyable was the fact that it was much more focused. A lot of the other books are very much just all the characters in different places, working towards different goals, and doing so very slowly. Here there are much fewer characters in the spotlight, and there goals are a lot clearer. It was a great throwback to the golden age of the series.
Rating: 8.7/10
