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.

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When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

No one enjoys waiting. While PSPs and Nintendo DSs whip the minutes or hours to move faster, the lesser techie, more scholastic, or 10,000 peso-deprived, would prefer a novel as a handheld companion. And a funny, opinionated and perceptive companion makes time fly, which are traits of David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

Author: David Sedaris

Released: June 3, 2008

#1 International Bestseller

#1 New York Times Bestseller Non-Fiction

Synopsis

When You Are Engulfed in Flames is a collection of essays, on almost anything under the sun. Topics would come from the author’s childhood up to his present day-to-day encounters. Here are certain essays that I really enjoyed:

Ø  It's Catching – Hugh’s mother, 76, does house chores, which are considerably herculean for her age, while her leg worm deeply bothers David.

Ø  The Understudy – At the time when Americans discriminate against blacks, David and his sisters condemn their white babysitter.

Ø  Road Trips – A truck driver straightforwardly asks for a blow job, implying his personal advocacy that oral sex should be casual.

Ø  Solution to Saturday's Puzzle – An unreasonably demanding airplane seatmate. Enough said.

Ø  All the Beauty You Will Ever Need – David tries to make coffee without water. Again, enough said.

Ø  The Smoking Section – How quitting smoking brought them halfway around the globe, and halfly speaking Japanese. A necessarily extensive journal on the hardship of quitting cigarette smoking.

*You can check the other essays with their short descriptions here.

Reading Experience

Funny and witty. These two adjectives are perhaps enough to sum all the essays in When You Are Engulfed in Flames. Even the title itself was captured from a Japanese brochure on what to do during a fire.

Readers are lucky for Sedaris to have shared his funny experiences in this book. As this is a collection of essays, you won’t be daunted by the number of pages you need to finish. It’s not something you can finish, or would want to finish, in one seating. You would want to read it in the waiting room before a dental appointment, in the bus during rush hour, or during an uninteresting class. You can simply pick one essay, read it at a coffee shop while waiting for a friend who’s beyond 30 minutes late.

Sedaris’ perspective is not only entertaining but also interesting, hitting the mark from a different angle, since most of the essay topics are not entirely foreign or unheard of.

But his delivery is on a higher level, it is a unique, fresh and perceptive presentation of opinion and outlook. There is liberal use of metaphors to further expound a point and the often cause of hilarity. Furthermore, a reader is bound to feel he is conversing with the author rather than just reading his thoughts.

In Conclusion

For those who are already reading a certain title with a convoluted plot or weighs heavily on drama, then this is a good side dish. It would detoxify you and serve as refreshment for the current hardcore novel you’re reading. For the rest, you won’t be making a mistake by taking this off the shelf.

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