Author : Robert Jordan
Description : Three shepherd boys on the verge of manhood will flee their sleepy village when the Dark One's forces attack. Helped by a Warder named Lan, and an Aes Sedai named Moiraine, Rand, Mat, and Perrin try to stay one step ahead of the unnatural enemies who stalk them. The friends don't know why they've been targeted, and Moiraine is determined to get them to Tar Valon, the stronghold of the ancient Aes Sedai. One of these three will become the key to the Dark One's return to power, and he's determined to have their obedience, or their lives. The easiest way to describe The Eye of the World is to compare it to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings series (from this point on I'm going to resort to acronyms, and use WoT for Wheel of Time and LOTR for The Lord of the Rings). There are so many similarities between these epic fantasy creations that if they were relations, I'd say they were first cousins at the very least, or maybe even siblings. They definitely should not breed together, or they'd produce pop-eyed children. For readers hankering for a good, long, adventure that traverses thousands of miles, this 800-page brick will do the job admirably. I enjoyed myself from start to finish, and while this introduction book didn't tap my deeper emotions, I think that if I continue the series it just might.
For all that I'm tempted to draw parallels between LOTR and WoT, there was one big difference that pleased me greatly. It's been many years since I read Tolkien's great work, but I do recall getting bogged down at times, bored by yet another elfin song, or some obscure piece of history that had me skimming paragraphs, if not whole pages. In my opinion, Tolkien was a little too wrapped up in his own little world at times, and he forgot about the reader. I think that Robert Jordan's style is much more accessible, and he kept everything moving at a brisk clip. Even when one of his characters settled down to tell a story, it never tested the limits of my concentration. Mr. Jordan's work is extremely similar to Tolkien's, but I found it more readable. Not once in 800-pages was I tempted to skip or skim, and that's saying something.
One of the trickiest things about these epic stories is juggling the wide cast of characters. There are a lot of people running around, half of them with un-pronounceable names (too bad I didn't notice the glossary at the back until the very end), but I think Mr. Jordan did a decent job. I wish a bit more time was invested in Rand, the corner stone for the story, but with eleven more books to go, I'm confident that even the guys on the sidelines will be brought to life in exquisite detail.
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