The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

It’s the next best thing to The Lord of the Rings, or even better.

Author: Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson

Released: January 1990

New York Times Bestseller, International Bestseller, Locus Award Nominee, David Gemmel Legend Award Nominee

Synopsis

The Dark One, Shai’tan, is freed from his prison. And the Wheel of Time turns to answer this threat--the Dragon. Lews Therin Telamon is the fated Dragon who led the Aes Sedai, channelers of the One Power, to seal Shai’tan away from the world again. Despite defeat, The Dark One managed to taint Saidin, male half of the True Source. Because of this, male Aes Sedai, including the Dragon himself, is driven to madness. The said taint is described as oil on water; the water which is the One Power, remains devoid of impurities but to touch it means going through the taint.

As time flows, the Wheel turns, and the Dark One’s seal weakens, threatening to unleash himself on the world once more. The Wheel weaves the Dragon again, but the Dragon Reborn would be facing both the Dark One and the madness brought by using Saidin.

Rand Al’Thor, together with Perrin Aybara and Mat Cauthon, are mere villagers of the Two Rivers. This changed when their destinies are interwoven with Moraine Damodred, an Aes Sedai, and Lan, the Sedai’s Warder. Moraine cannot determine the Dragon Reborn from the three, so she brings them all along. The Sedai also saw the potential of two other villagers Egwene al’Vere and Nynaeve al’Meara as future channelers of the One Power. With a party of seven, in the first book of the series, The Eye of The World, they fought a myriad of unfriendly characters to get to Tar Valon, the city of the Aes Sedai.

Rand al'Thor by artist Seamas Gallagher.
See his other Wheel of Time comic artworks
on http://seamassketches.blogspot.com

And from there, the plot thickens, and more characters and subplots are unveiled in a projected 14 part series.

Reading Experience

Robert Jordan brings you an adventure worthy of twelve books. Though I won’t deny that it won’t make you flip through the pages with much haste, it is still quite a page-turner.

Jordan wrote a very elaborate plot for this epic fantasy. Moreover, the characters are fully developed in every page and in every instalment. You may have an affinity to a character, which might turn to adversity in the next chapter or the next book. But the more important part is, you feel them evolving with everything they go through.

I say that the series’ downfall is its length. Readers are daunted by a fourteen-part series, not to mention the width of one book and the span of one page. But serious epic fantasy readers would appreciate this treatment because the book would be able to bring the story to heights that a shortened plot could not. To shed more light, The Lord of The Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien are the last three books of an extensive and much more elaborate epic fantasy plot.

What I enjoy best about The Wheel of Time is its game-like format. Being a fan of Role Playing Games like Final Fantasy, you have an arsenal of predetermined configuration, this is the premise of the One Power for the book. As a gamer, you work around this and you cannot pull something out of the bag for the heck of it, which is the same for The Wheel of Time. Jordan sticks with what was set in the premise and aptly plays around it.

In Conclusion

No I would not recommend reading the Wheel of Time to just any reader. But if you are looking for an epic adventure, determined to see it through the end, then you better start now because the last book is set to be released in 2012 (says me who's still stuck in the 6th book).

The Wheel of Time symbol 
by Matthew Nielsen from www.fantasy-fan.org

Random Wheel of Time facts:

- Characters in the book are mainly humans, compared to other fantasy series with a variety of creatures.

- The series, despite its length, has a prequel, The New Spring, which was originally intended as a short story. 

- Robert Jordan died on September 16, 2007 with the series left unfinished, leaving notes behind on how The Wheel of Time should end.

- Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy writer, was chosen to finish the twelfth book, The Gathering Storm and the last two titles; Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light

-          Prequel. The New Spring

-          Book 1. The Eye of The World

-          Book 2. The Great Hunt

-          Book 3. The Dragon Reborn

-          Book 4. The Shadow Rising

-          Book 5. The Fires of Heaven

-          Book 6. Lord of Chaos (This is where I’ve gotten to so far)

-          Book 7. A Crown of Swords

-          Book 8. The Path of Daggers

-          Book 9. Winter’s Heart

-          Book 10. Crossroads of Twilight

-          Book 11. Knife of Dreams

-          Book 12. The Gathering Storm

-          Book 13. Towers of Midnight

-          Book 14. A Memory of Light

You can get more information about the series at Wikipedia.