The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

[Werthead]

The Eye of the World is the first volume in Robert Jordan's best-selling Wheel of Time series. Originally published in 1990, this was supposed to be the first book in a six-volume series. Instead, the series doubled in size. The eleventh book, Knife of Dreams, was published in 2005. The author passed away in 2007 whilst working on the final book, A Memory of Light, which will be completed by fellow fantasy author Brandon Sanderson for publication in late 2009.

With sales of 44 million and no less than four New York Times #1 bestsellers, The Wheel of Time is the most popular work of epic fantasy since The Lord of the Rings. However, it also one of the most divisive. The series has always attracted mixed reviews and has never won any major awards, but its fans love it, and some of the WoT fansites are the biggest SF&F forums and websites on the Internet. Jordan also became tremendously influential, with authors such as George RR Martin, JV Jones, Raymond E. Feist and Guy Gavriel Kay all attracting notice after Jordan recommended them to his fans or provided cover blurbs.

The first volume opens in traditional fashion, with a prologue set roughly 3,400 years prior to the main narrative. In the Age of Legends, the world was united in peace under the leadership of the Aes Sedai, men and women who could wield the One Power, the primeval force of creation which turns the Wheel of Time. In their hubris, the Aes Sedai carried out experiments to access greater forms of the Power, and accidentally breached the prison of the Dark One, the ultimate force of evil in the universe. The Dark One's touch plunged the world into a century of chaos and despair until the Aes Sedai rallied under their leader, a man nicknamed the Dragon, and re-sealed the Dark One's prison. At the moment of that victory, the Dark One cursed the male half of the One Power, driving all male channellers of the Power insane. In their insanity, they destroyed the world, pushing humanity to the brink of extinction and reshaping the continents through the three centuries of earthquakes and tidal waves they unleashed. With the ending of the Breaking of the World, the Aes Sedai, now consisting only of women, rallied and helped civilisation rebuild to a level of technology roughly equal to that of the Renaissance (although social customs and graces are much more akin to the late 18th/early 19th Century). This Age of history has lived in the shadow of the Prophecies of the Dragon, that state that the hastily-patched seal on the Dark One's prison will eventually fail and the Dragon will be Reborn to save the world, but in doing so will doom it for he will go insane and shatter the world for a second time. Which would be bad, obviously.

The Eye of the World opens in the backwater region of the Two Rivers, a bucolic rural landscape tucked in a forgotten corner of the Kingdom of Andor. Rand al'Thor - a shepherd's son - and four of his friends are forced to flee the Two Rivers when the monstrous servants of the Dark One attack, searching for Rand and two of his friends, Mat and Perrin. They are guided by an Aes Sedai, Moiraine, and her Warder (a sort-of bodyguard, but with souped-up badass qualities), Lan. Whilst hiding in the ruined, ancient city of Shadar Logoth our heroes are separated, and must undergo many trials before they reunite in Andor's capital city of Caemlyn and find out what it is that the Dark One wants with them.

Rereading The Eye of the World after thirteen years is a fascinating experience. Both the good and the bad elements stand out a lot more than when I read it as an engrossed teenager, but it's still a page-turning read with a lot to recommend it.

First, the positives. Jordan is an excellent storyteller and demonstrates full command of the numerous entwining plots in this first volume. He delineates each character quite clearly and whilst those characters are based strongly on existing archetypes, he makes them work, so the reader cares about what happens to them. He is also a strong worldbuilder. Few fictional worlds come as fully-realised as this one, with only Middle-earth and after three books or so, GRRM's Westeros coming close to matching both its depth and scope (Bakker's Earwa may also yet match it). Jordan also has some interesting things to say in this series. Whilst not averse to 'grittiness' in fantasy, Jordan expressed concerns about the idea that everyone is flawed and grey takes away from the nature of evil, that real evil exists in the world and must be confronted. Whilst Jordan's characters are certainly not saints or flawless, the forces of the Shadow are very clearly shown to be black-hearted, cruel and merciless, which especially now is refreshing from the notion that are no bad guys, just people with their own agendas which may or may not be as valid as the heroes'. However, this doesn't make for very interesting antagonists and it's a relief then that much of the rest of the series concentrates more on the struggles between different factions of the supposed good guys.

The negatives sound pretty damning. The first half of the book is modelled very closely on the opening of The Lord of the Rings, but the novel stretches the line between tribute to parody to breaking point. We not only have analogues to the Shire (the Two Rivers), Gandalf (Moiraine) and Aragorn (Lan), but also the One Ring (the cursed dagger), the Nazgul (the Myrddraal), the Trolls and Orcs (the Trollocs), Moria (Shadar Logoth), Gollum (Padan Fain), Treebeard (the Green Man) and even the Argonath (the Arinelle statues). It's extremely hard to ignore these close parallels, although they do broadly succeed in giving the first half of the book some of the same atmosphere as the opening of The Fellowship of the Ring and, as bad as they are, they're not quite veering into Terry 'How the Hell Did He Not Get Sued' Brooks territory. As mentioned earlier, the Shadow's pure, irredeemable evil is also rather wearying and the Myrddraal and Ba'alazamon's tedious threats almost tip them into cartoon villain territory. The world building is excellent, but occasionally Jordan resorts to info dumping to transmit it to the audience, which comes across as awkward. And Robert Jordan's sense of humour is beyond tiresome. I was trying to count the number of times Rand or Perrin thought that the other was better at talking to girls and had to give up in the end. A good running gag is one that appears once per book and is varied a bit each time, not exactly the same gag repeated half a dozen times within a few chapters. This also runs into Jordan's problem of his use of stock phrases and recurring sentence structures, which occasionally come across as quite clumsy. Jordan is a great storyteller, but he is certainly not a good writer.

Yet these negatives, although rather annoying, are offset by the positives. The story is engrossing and the depth of detail refreshing, if overdone at times. The characters are interesting, the world building excellent and the fresh spins on old ideas are well-done. The book hints at countless more mysteries to come, and makes you want to pick up the second (and much better) book, which is its main goal, after all.

The Eye of the World (***½) remains a decent opening to a fascinating, if eventually rather troubled, saga. The novel is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the US. The second book is The Great Hunt.

 

[Werthead]

The Great Hunt is the second volume in Robert Jordan's gigantic, rainforest-devastating Wheel of Time series. It was originally published in late 1990 and like the first volume, The Eye of the World, was an immediate bestseller.

The story picks up a month or so after The Eye of the World. Rand al'Thor has discovered he can channel the One Power and thus is doomed to go insane and die, wreaking terrible destruction at the same time. Normally it would be the responsibility of the Aes Sedai sisterhood to 'gentle' him, remove his ability to channel, but Rand's Aes Sedai mentor, Moiraine, and the head of the sisterhood, Siuan Sanche, believe that he is the Dragon Reborn, the long-prophesied saviour who will defeat the Dark One at the Last Battle. As such, they have no choice but to let him go free. When the twisted, insane Padan Fain steals the legendary Horn of Valere and the cursed dagger from Shadar Logoth upon which the life of Rand's friend Mat depends, a band of hunters are assembled to track Fain down and reclaim the dagger. Meanwhile, Egwene and Nynaeve travel to Tar Valon to begin their training as Aes Sedai, but find danger lurking even within the walls of the White Tower. In the far west, on Toman Head, rumours speak of the arrival of strangers who apparently use the One Power in battle and use savage beasts in combat, strangers who will not rest until all the lands are under their control...again.

The Great Hunt sees a notable widening of the scope of the world seen in the first book. Whilst the first novel perhaps veered too close to Lord of the Rings' characters and structure to be entirely comfortable, the sequel takes off in a completely different direction. Whilst the series' slightly irritating tendency to be obsessed with 'plot coupons' gets its start here, it does give the book a classical quest structure and deals with the parallel timelines as the core group from the first book gets split up and we follow them separately until their reunion at the end. Jordan also introduces a whole new threat in the form of the Seanchan, a powerful empire ruling a continent beyond the western ocean who now want to reclaim the homeland of their founder (Artur Hawkwing's son). This out-of-left-field threat does an excellent job of shaking things up, whilst the suspicious timing (the Seanchan invasion occurs at the same time the forces of the Shadow are gaining strength in the world) is later revealed as deliberate. The characters are deepened and made more interesting, particularly Rand and Perrin who are shown to grow and change as a result of the revelations they have discovered and the things they have suffered in the first novel. However, we also get to see the Dumb Aes Sedai plot trope get the first of many wearying outings, as Nynaeve, Elayne and Egwene get led into a trap which couldn't be any more painfully obvious. Only their relative youth and naivete makes it convincing in this book; the fact that Elayne is still falling for these things as late as Book 11 is rather more dubious.

The Great Hunt (****) is a notable improvement on the first book, taking the world, story and characters in refreshing and interesting new directions. Jordan's mastery of his enormous narrative is evident here, and even a certain economy (not a word normally associated with the verbose Jordan) of plotting can be detected as some major storylines are rattled through in just a few pages (the Seanchan themselves, surprisingly, don't appear until the book is more than halfway done). The novel is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA, and is followed by The Dragon Reborn.

 

[Werthead]

The Dragon Reborn - as I am sure most people have guessed - is the third volume in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series and was originally published in 1991. It is notable within the series for marking the end of the 'adventure' phase of the series. After this book on, the main characters start becoming major players in the politics of the world.

The Dragon Reborn picks up a few months after the end of The Great Hunt. With the invading armies of the Seanchan driven back into the sea, Rand al'Thor has also defeated Ba'alzamon for a second time, but their battle was seen in the skies above the city of Falme. Rumour is spreading that the Dragon has been Reborn and the kingdoms of the west - Tarabon and Arad Doman - have been plunged into war and civil war. Torn by self-doubt over whether he is the real Dragon Reborn, Rand decides to prove it once and for all by travelling to Tear. The fall of the fortress that guards the city, the Stone of Tear, is the greatest sign in the Prophecies of the Dragon that the true Dragon has emerged. Whilst Rand proceeds on his own, Perrin, Moiraine, Lan and Loial pursue him. Meanwhile, Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve have returned to the White Tower but rather than face a heroes' welcome for their part in the defeat of the Seanchan, they find themselves accused of being runaways. As they struggle for acceptance, they also learn of a new threat to Rand, which will also take them to Tear.

The Dragon Reborn is a pretty tightly-focused book, with three major storylines proceeding in tandem and events driving the characters in all three arcs to a major convergence in the city of Tear. The biggest surprise of the novel is that the central character of Rand, who drove the first two novels, is all but absent from this third book. Instead, most of the book is related through his two friends, Mat and Perrin, and the trainee Aes Sedai as they are dispatched on a dangerous mission by the Amyrlin Seat. A number of interesting new characters also appear, such as the thief-taker Juilin Sander and Zarine 'Faile' Bashere, who is probably among the most unpopular characters in the books (although I always found her tolerable, at least up until the last few installments). The (relatively) rapid intercutting back and forth between the three storylines makes this feel like the shortest book in the series. In fact, with the possible exception of some of the toing-and-froing in the White Tower, the book has remarkably little filler or fat to wade through, making it among the fastest reads in the series.

Are there any complaints? Well, the overall story is becoming a little too reliant on plot coupons: the Horn of Valere and the cursed dagger in the second book, the dreaming ter'angreal and the sword housed in the Stone of Tear in this one. The book is also mostly taken up by characters travelling from one point to another, making it feel rather transitional. Balanced against that is some excellent character development (most notably for Perrin, who was low-key in the second volume as he struggled with his own problems but in this volume makes important progress to finding a new role in life) and a much greater focus on Mat. Whilst the other characters have the weight of the world on their shoulders, Mat fairly consistently throughout the series comes across as the most fun character to read about, and his adventures in this book are memorable and set up a lot of future plot developments in an entertaining manner. There's also the introduction of certain metaphysical concepts such as the World of Dreams, which adds a fascinating psychological/metaphorical side to the more mundane epic fantasy trappings of the story.

The Dragon Reborn (****) is another enjoyable addition to the overall series which tries some new things (pushing Rand out of the limelight) and generally pulls them off. The novel is available in the UK from Orbit and in the USA from Tor

 

[Werthead]

The Shadow Rising is the fourth Wheel of Time novel and, through the highly scientific method of checking a few fan-forums, appears to be regarded as the best. At a whopping 1,000 pages and just shy of 400,000 words in length, it's also the longest.

The Shadow Rising, in a controversial move, picks up after the events of the third book. You might think that's to be expected, but these days you're lucky if the latest volume of your favourite epic fantasy doesn't take place on another continent four years before the last book with a totally different cast of characters. Anyway, Rand al'Thor has taken the Sword That Is Not A Sword, Callandor, The Sword Which Cannot Be Touched, The Sword Which Has Too Many Fricking Names, Just Pick One And Stick With It. As a result he has been proclaimed the Dragon Reborn and the nations of Tear and Mayene have sworn loyalty to him. With the evil Forsaken seizing control of other kingdoms across the continent, it appears that Rand has little choice but to go to war against them. Instead, he wrong-foots both his enemies and allies by delivering humanitarian aid to the neighbouring, warring kingdom of Cairhien and travelling into the Aiel Waste, where he hopes to unify the feuding warrior-clans under his leadership. At the same time, his friend Perrin returns home to the Two Rivers, which is under attack by Shadowspawn, and Nynaeve, Elayne, Thom and Juilin head to the distant city of Tanchico in pursuit of the evil Black Ajah, Aes Sedai sworn to the service of the Dark One.

This breaking of the narrative into three storylines which proceed simultaneously worked very well for the third volume, The Dragon Reborn, and continues to work well here. Jordan's sometimes sluggish pacing isn't so much of a problem here as we flip between events in Tanchico, the Two Rivers and the Waste fairly rapidly, and there's an additional subplot set in Tar Valon which delivers some devastating plot developments on the Aes Sedai front in a very economical manner. The worldbuilding is advanced impressively as we get a decent look at the Age of Legends and the way the world was before and during the War of the Shadow, and character-wise we see some interesting maturing and advancement for the likes of Mat, Nynaeve, Perrin and Rand. Unfortunately, other characters come off badly. Moiraine is inert for a lot of the narrative, and Elayne continues to annoy whilst Aviendha is probably the most irritating character in the series at this point. Also, Jordan's somewhat juvenile views of male-female relations reaches their apex here, with supposedly comedic or ironic musings on the way men and women interact falling very flat indeed. The book also wears its influences strongly, although the mixing of Dune with the Scouring of the Shire is diluted by enough original characters and ideas so it doesn't irritate as much as the first book's nods to Tolkien.

The pacing is crisp, the characters and world develop most satisfyingly, and Jordan very cleverly laces some narrative time-bombs into the mix which don't bear fruit for several books, but when they do are all the more satisfying.

The Shadow Rising (****½) is indeed the best book in The Wheel of Time sequence and impresses as it marks the transition of the books from the 'adventure' phase to the 'political' phase and does so most satisfyingly. The book is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA.

 

[Werthead]

With The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan moved The Wheel of Time series out of its 'adventure' arc into a 'political' phase as the characters finally moved into positions of high authority and influence amongst different nations and cultures, and could begin the process of uniting the world to face the Last Battle. Whilst adventure storylines would continue to appear, a lot more time from this point onwards would be spent on political maneuverings. Indeed, some storylines would unfold almost entirely within a character's office as they fired off letters, received intelligence, and debated strategy. That, at this stage anyway, Jordan is able to make this readable and compelling is a testament to his often-underrated storytelling skills.

The fifth book in The Wheel of Time opens by picking up the storylines from the previous volume. Rand has convinced several of the Aiel clans to accept him as their chief-of-chiefs, and he makes preperations to lead them back into the Westlands. However, his task is complicated when the Shaido clan rejects him and launches a devastating invasion of the kingdom of Cairhien. Rand is forced to take his troops in pursuit before he can secure the loyalty of the remaining neutral clans, leaving his forces exposed to possible attack on two sides. Meanwhile, Nynaeve, Elayne, Thom and Juilin have extracted themselves from the civil war in Tarabon but now face the task of crossing the hostile nation of Amadicia, the stronghold of the Children of the Light and a country where channelling is outlawed. At the same time, a fanatic claiming to be the 'Prophet of the Dragon' is ravaging the kingdom to the north, Ghealdan. Back in Tar Valon, the Aes Sedai have splintered into opposing factions, with Elaida seizing control of the White Tower and a 'Tower-in-Exile' opposed to her rule establishing itself elsewhere, but the latter's stance towards Rand is unclear. Finally, the Forsaken are preparing a trap to neutralise Rand once and for all.

There's certainly a lot going on in The Fires of Heaven and Jordan mostly handles these storylines with aplomb, switching between them to stop things getting stale and delivering a relentless pace to Rand, Mat and Egwene's story, which has them chasing the Shaido hundreds of miles and culminating in the biggest battle in the entire series (to date, anyway). However, the first few cracks in the series' structure are becoming apparent. Given the distances traversed by Rand in his story, Jordan had to find a way of slowing down Elayne and Nynaeve's trip across a much smaller area so events would converge as he needed them to. His solution was to whack them in a very slow-moving circus as it traverses Amadicia, which leads to the first chapters in the entire series so far which don't actually seem to advance plot or character, but merely keep things ticking over for some of the characters. With events proceeding pretty rapidly elsewhere, the cutting-away to Elayne learning to walk a tightrope or Nynaeve being followed around by the lovelorn circus-owner really kills the pace of the book, making it a sluggish read in places. Some readers may also bemoan the lack of any appearance by Perrin in this book. Whilst Jordan had downplayed some characters' appearances in previous novels (Rand in the third, most notably), this is the first time one of the major characters from the first book doesn't appear at all.

Jordan makes up for these issues with the ferocious climax. At the end of the book Rand unleashes a blitzkrieg as a huge battle is fought with the Shaido and he has to face down two of the Forsaken in separate, desperate duels with the One Power. During these few chapters an enormous number of important events in the series take place, several important new characters are introduced and no less than five recurring characters are (apparently) killed off. This section of the book really repays careful rereads, as you can see how Jordan impressively set up events ahead of time. In fact, this may be the most dynamic part of the entire series to date and makes for great reading. However, be warned that a fairly big mystery is introduced at the end of Book 5 that has still not been conclusively answered more than 15 years later, although Brandon Sanderson has promised us a definitive answer in the final book of the series.

The Fires of Heaven (****) is a solid installment of the series, with a sometimes leaden pace and a very tedious subplot (the circus) more than made up for by the highly impressive climax and the way Jordan deftly spins the series' course onto a new heading (although this also lays the seeds for some extremely dubious writing decisions in the books to come). The book is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA.

 

[Urien]

Werthead,

Just thougt I'd say I'm enjoying your reviews (I read the books long ago), please keep them coming.

Cheers

AVS

 

[Werthead]

Not a problem

The sixth book of The Wheel of Time takes us deep into the second act of this massive story, with the transition to a more political-oriented narrative continuing apace. Lord of Chaos is one of the more divisive books in the series, with fans praising its deeper exploration of ideas and intrigue, whilst critics bemoan the slow pace of the book compared to earlier volumes.

The kingdoms of Cairhien, Mayene and Tear are now sworn to the Dragon Reborn, and a successful raid on Caemlyn, capital of Andor, has seen that city fall to his forces as well. Several of the Forsaken, the most powerful servants of the Dark One, have been slain and Rand's successes look like they will continue unabated. In the south, he is assembling a vast army to send against the Forsaken Sammael in his stronghold of Illian, whilst the Aes Sedai remain divided on how to proceed with him. However, Rand's announcement of an amnesty for men who can channel has shocked the world, for all male channellers of the One Power are doomed to go mad and die, wreaking havoc as they go, and some of his enemies are prepared to move against him before that can be allowed to happen.

The theme of the sixth book in The Wheel of Time is consolidation. Rand's forces have absorbed vast amounts of territory, but before he can resume his campaign he must secure that which he holds already. With scheming against him in Andor and Cairhien underway and an outright rebellion going on in Tear, this proves a difficult task. Rand also has to find a way of dealing with both factions of the Aes Sedai, an undertaking fraught with peril. His companions also have their own problems to deal with: Perrin must prove his worthiness to his wife's parents, Mat has to deal with the issues of becoming a general, and Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve have complex currents to negotiate amongst the rebel Aes Sedai. Even Pedron Niall, commander of the Children of the Light, has significant problems he has to overcome in both his own ranks and his dealings with the displaced Queen of Andor, whilst the surviving Forsaken scheme incessantly against one another.

The problem with this kind of stock-taking is that it is hard to work up a dramatic story about it. Instead, you end up with lots and lots of talk. Characters sitting around talking about the plot, about what has already happened and what they think might happen in the future. That's when they are not engaged in increasingly tedious and infantile discussions about male-female relations, which by this volume are starting to get a mite repetitive. The politicking and intrigue is fine as far as it goes (although fans of GRRM or Bakker may find it a bit on the shallow and simplistic side), but you do need a bit more to spice the book up. There's some fine, atmospheric interludes in the book, such as Rand taking a brief sojourn in the desolate, cursed city of Shadar Logoth, but overall the novel has serious pacing issues. Simply put, this is a 1,000-page book in which not a lot happens for the first three-quarters of it.

Towards the end, however, the pace starts to lift quite noticeably as Rand's attempts to play the two Aes Sedai factions off against one another backfire spectacularly and some of the most surprising events in the entire series take place, culminating in a massive battle at the spring of Dumai's Wells in which Jordan's sometimes-variable skills at depicting action, drama and the ability to tie together disparate storylines are put to their best effect. This late burst of action sequences and confrontations is extremely effective, and Dumai's Wells often tops readers' polls as the most satisfying moment of the entire series to date, with some fine moments right at the end of the book which hint at much greater things to come.

Lord of Chaos (****) is a sedentary novel where events unfold slowly, but do succeed in laying the groundwork for the spectacular and satisfying concluding section of the book. I suspect many readers will be put off by the slow pace, but I found the payoff to be more than worth it. The novel is available in the UK from Orbit and in the USA from Tor.

 

[Werthead]

The seventh volume of The Wheel of Time carries us over the halfway point of the series (with the final book now being split into two volumes, bringing the series total to thirteen) in terms of wordcount. However, in terms of the actual story we're much closer to the end. Robert Jordan made a decision in the latter part of the series to reduce forward story momentum in favour of developing subplots and character interactions, a rather controversial choice that has resulted in the series' overall mixed reviews across SF&F fandom. By this seventh volume, we are starting to see the impact of this decision.

The book opens in the aftermath of the massive Battle of Dumai's Wells, when the Dragon Reborn, imprisoned by the Aes Sedai loyal to Elaida, was rescued by his supporters and both sides had to fend off an attack by the Shaido Aiel. During this battle nine of the rebel Aes Sedai swore fealty to Rand to prove their loyalty and the Asha'man, a society of male channellers created by Rand to use in the Last Battle, proved their worth. Resisting the urge to revenge himself upon Elaida, Rand prepares for his much-foreshadowed confrontation with Sammael, whilst at the same time trying to finally win over the Sea Folk and the Cairhienin rebels to his cause. Meanwhile, in Ebou Dar, Mat, Nynaeve, Elayne and several other characters are trying to find the Bowl of Winds, an important artifact that will restore normal weather to the world. In Amador, stronghold of the Children of the Light, a shift in the balance of power puts Morgase's life in danger, and from the south and from the west an even greater threat is emerging to challenge the alliance Rand is hoping to assemble against the Shadow.

There's a lot going on in A Crown of Swords, and the book conveys a feeling of momentum and movement compared to the largely static Lord of Chaos, which makes it a moderately more satisfying read. There's also a widening of the worldbuilding, with the Sea Folk presented in more detail then we have seen before, the introduction of the Kin (a secret society of female channellers) and the revelation of a new form of magic, the True Power, and a convincing reason given why we haven't seen it before (although we have, kind of). We also get to meet a deadly new form of Shadowspawn which presents a real sense of menace, just as we were starting to get bored of Trollocs and Myrddraal. As with the last three books, multiple storylines proceed in tandem and build to a series of large-scale, epic climaxes which shift the balance of power in the world and the story and leave the reader eager to plunge into the next book.

However, several key problems emerge or are solidified in this book. There is a lot of talk and overlong chapters in which very little happens. Forward character development proceeds satisfyingly for several characters, but others (most notably Elayne) seem to be stuck going round in circles to the increasing frustration of the reader. The fact that one of the most interesting and morally complex characters in the entire series dies in this book is also rather irritating (given how reluctant Jordan is to kill off characters in this series). The introduction of the Kin also feels like a redundant step too far. On top of the Aes Sedai, the Aiel Wise Ones and the Sea Folk Windfinders, we really didn't need yet another group of female channellers and their attendant politics. On the other hand, Jordan sometimes gets criticised for his introduction of a whole new bunch of characters among the White Tower Aes Sedai who are assigned to flush out traitors, but he doesn't devote much time to them and they are clearly essential for the resolution of the Aes Sedai civil war storyline.

A Crown of Swords (****) is largely a satisfying continuation of the story despite the increasing longueurs in some of the storylines. Some of the new characters and elements introduced are more successful than others, but broadly there is still the sense the story is going somewhere with continuing hints that we are moving towards a definitive conclusion. Unfortunately, this is the last time for several volumes that this is apparent. The book is available from Orbit in the UK and from Tor in the USA.

 

[Werthead]

The Path of Daggers was originally published in October 1998 and was released two and a half years after the previous volume (which had ended on a cliffhanger), the longest gap between books in the series at that time. As a result, expectations for this book were high. When the book finally arrived, people were taken aback by its slimness (at least compared to other books in the series) and its failure to address that cliffhanger from the prior volume. Reviews of the book were negative and even today some fans continue to cite this as the weakest book in the series (although the majority agree that that honour goes to the tenth book). For a series that had almost been immune to criticism up to this point, this book marked a serious turning point for the worse.

The book opens in the aftermath of events in A Crown of Swords. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, has been proclaimed King of Illian after killing the Forsaken Sammael. His satisfaction is short-lived, however. The Seanchan have returned in great force and in a blitzkrieg campaign lasting several weeks have swept through the south-west of the continent, conquering the kingdom of Tarabon and capturing the cities of Amador and Ebou Dar (the capitals of Amadicia and Altara, respectively) in rapid succession. Already fearing they might march on Illian next, Rand concocts a plan to bottle them up in Ebou Dar, but is unaware that there are those in his own ranks who are preparing to move against him.

Meanwhile, in Ghealdan Perrin makes contact with Queen Alliandre as part of his mission to track down and neutralise the increasingly insane and dangerous 'Prophet of the Dragon', Masema. At the same time, the leaders of the Borderlands have led a vast host southwards for an unknown reason. Nynaeve, Elayne and their loose and fractious alliance of Sea Folk Windfinders, Aes Sedai and Kin have recovered the Bowl of Winds from Ebou Dar and now have to use it to restore normal weather to the world, unaware of the consequences of their actions. And in the White Tower Elaida walks a fine line as she is blackmailed by Alviarin into doing things that will shatter the sisterhood, whilst her secret agents continue their hunt for the Black Ajah.

A plot summary of Path of Daggers sounds exciting, and the news that the book features a significant military showdown between Rand and the Seanchan should be impressive. However, The Path of Daggers is beset by numerous problems that prevent it from being fully enjoyable. First off, the level of filler in this book is much worse than any previous volume. There are several chapters where characters are riding along arguing with one another, or discussing the plot, or making it clear how much they hate one another. These points are slammed home again and again by Robert Jordan for no clear purpose. The battles between Rand and the Seanchan are intriguing and the messy ending to the engagement is an important moment in the series, but it comes far too late in the book. Perrin's story proceeds at an absolute crawl and he barely has any screen-time in the book, whilst Mat has none. Jordan's point that Mat is recovering from his wounds and thus isn't doing anything interesting in the story at this moment is well-taken, but at the same time the ambiguity of Mat's fate in the prior volume was part of what made the book's ending powerful and interesting. It being completely ignored for four and a half years until Book 9 was annoying. However, re-reading the series now this isn't so much of a problem.

Up until The Path of Daggers, the structural and writing problems with the series could to some extent be ignored because the story was still compelling and the reader was encouraged to read on no matter what. However, at this point and through the next two books these problems start to actually interfere with the readability of the books. The pace slows to a crawl and events that would have been covered in a few chapters in previous books now span entire novels. For some reason Jordan ignored the basic writing maxim that as you build up to a series finale you have to increase the pace and intensity of events, and as a result the series becomes somewhat more difficult to read in-depth from this point on.

The Path of Daggers (**½) doesn't suffer from quite so many problems as it did on first release, but it still represents a significant failure in both writing and editing that makes it a shadow of the book it could have been. The book is available in the UK from Orbit and in the USA from Tor.

 

[Werthead]

After the thoroughly disappointing Path of Daggers, expectations for Winter's Heart were mixed. Maybe Robert Jordan had written the weak book that all series seem obligated to have and he could ramp things up again as the series drew towards its conclusion? At the same time, other, hungrier authors in the epic fantasy field were now clawing at Jordan's heels. Whilst he spent most of the 1990s as the unchallenged master of the subgenre, towards the end of the decade writers such as George RR Martin, JV Jones, Robin Hobb and Paul Kearney had started producing works that matched or exceeded the quality of the later Wheel of Time books, and Winter's Heart in particular suffered from coming out just two months after GRRM's A Storm of Swords and three months ahead of Steven Erikson's Memories of Ice, probably the two most critically-lauded epic fantasy volumes of the last decade. With his position no longer unchallenged and his critics mounting, Jordan had a lot to prove with this book.

The Seanchan Empire's attempt to conquer the Westlands continues apace. Its invasion force has conquered Tarabon, secured most of Amadicia and is sweeping north across Altara, its temporary defeat at the hands of the Dragon Reborn notwithstanding. The invasion force has received massive reinforcements from the Seanchan home continent with the arrival of the full Corenne, a vast fleet consisting of thousands of ships and hundreds of thousands of settlers and soldiers. In occupied Ebou Dar, Mat Cauthon recovers from his wounds and plots an escape, unaware he is about to come face-to-face with the Seanchan noblewoman prophesied to become his wife. In Caemlyn Elayne's claim to the Lion Throne has not gone unchallenged, and the Andoran noble houses scramble for power and influence. The Sun Palace in Cairhien has been partially destroyed by renegade Asha'man out to kill Rand al'Thor, who forces them to come to him in a place where their use of the One Power will count for little. But Rand knows he is losing precious time as more and more of the Asha'man succumb to madness, forcing him to take desperate, and dangerous measures.

Winter's Heart has a lot of storylines to follow and Robert Jordan's skills at juggling multiple, complex plots simultaneously and covering a lot of ground are sorely lacking at this point in the narrative. The book actually rewinds to a point some weeks before the end of Path of Daggers, meaning that Egwene is hardly in the book and the rebel Aes Sedai's storyline does not proceed at all (in a precedent-setting move, completely invalidating the cover blurb). Perrin's wife and several of her companions have been kidnapped by the Shaido Aiel, forcing Perrin into a desperate alliance with the insane Prophet of the Dragon to find her...but this storyline barely crawls forward from where it had been at the end of Path of Daggers, and Jordan's characterisation suffers a loss of credibility when Perrin, having accepted Masema's explanation why he won't use Travelling to move around the continent at speed, seems to forget it instantly at the start of this book.

The book succeeds more in its depiction of life under Seanchan occupation, and Jordan showing the more positive aspects of their society without letting the reader ever forget these are people who still hold slaves and base their power on military force. Tuon is something of a disappointment, however. The Daughter of the Nine Moons has had a bit of a build-up in the books leading up to this one and she is distant and uninvolved in the story. However, Mat's plan to escape from the city makes for fun reading, mainly because he comes up with the plan, overcomes obstacles and executes it within this one novel, a story with a beginning, middle and end contained in one volume, which is something of a rarity this late in the series.

Jordan tries for something similar with Rand, but in Rand's case his story is nonsensical. Far Madding is an interesting city, well-described, but it is simply far too late in the day for the series to be romping off to as-yet unvisited spots on the map simply because they might be cool. Rand wanting to track down the rebel Asha'man is logical, but to do it in this city and to spend weeks on it whilst everything he's spent eight previous books building up is in danger of being toppled and destroyed really doesn't make sense. There is definitely the feeling here that Rand is more or less ready for the Last Battle, but Jordan keeps having to give him stuff to do because he hasn't maneuvered Mat, Perrin, Elayne and the other characters into the positions they need to be in before the Last Battle starts. Why he then doesn't decide to simply keep Rand off-stage as he's done before and even in this book (Egwene barely appears, and only has a few lines of dialogue) in favour of resolving the other characters' storylines is a bit of a mystery.

As usual, Jordan gives us a humongous climax and this one should have been a doozy: a massive, full-on battle between Rand's assembled Asha'man, Sea Folk, Aes Sedai and ex-Seanchan damane allies versus almost all of the surviving Forsaken outside Shadar Logoth, whilst Rand and Nynaeve attempt to undo an act of pure evil that the Dark One itself carried out. However, all we get of this massive conflagration are a few confused scenes and an anticlimactic finale. Disappointing, to say the least.

Winter's Heart (***) is a flawed book, although Mat's storyline is enjoyable and Rand's reveals some new and interesting worldbuilding. Elsewhere, it does appear that Jordan's immense story has gotten out of his control and he is having significant problems wrestling it back into submission. However, Winter's Heart immediately wins half a star purely for having some decent scenes of men and women working effectively together, whilst past books in the series have been rather juvenile in their depictions of male-female relations. Here, there are indications that he may be moving past that. Jordan's writing remains interesting and readable, but there is definitely the feeling that the series is now way past its best. The book is available from Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA.

 

[Werthead]

Wherever epic fantasy writers ply their trade, scribbling scenes of magical convergence or enormous battles between steel-clad knights, there are whispers of a dire warning: "Remember Crossroads of Twilight." This is a book that has gained a certain infamy in fantasy circles, which even the most ardent Wheel of Time fans are hard-pressed to defend, and serves as an object lesson to every writer of a long, complex series of what can happen if the writing discipline slacks and they lose control of the narrative.

Winter's Heart ended with a number of storylines in progress and Crossroads of Twilight picks up on them. Briefly, Mat Cauthon has escaped from Ebou Dar but has inadvertently wound up with Tuon, the Daughter of the Nine Moons, as his prisoner. Perrin's wife Faile is a prisoner of the Shaido Aiel and Perrin and a band of reluctant allies attempt to locate her. The renegade Aes Sedai have Travelled to Tar Valon and besieged the city, but Egwene's reluctance to unleash bloodshed results in a morale-sapping stalemate. Elayne's attempts to secure the Lion Throne continue. Rand al'Thor recovers from the exhaustion caused by the Cleansing of saidin. And that's about it. The only major new storyline is General Rodel Ituralde of Arad Doman organising an offensive against the Seanchan, which is intriguing and is naturally only featured for a few pages and then not mentioned again.

Crossroads of Twilight's structure is not very well thought-out. Jordan's intent was to provide a catch-up following each band of characters from where we last saw them in Winter's Heart to the moment of the Cleansing, a major world-shifting event and arguably the biggest moment in the series to date. And if he had done this say in the first 100 pages, or in the prologue, this would have been a good idea as people's misunderstanding of what that event signifies goes on to play a major role in events in the series. The problem is that he takes far too long to pull this off. We only start moving on beyond the Cleansing in the last 50-100 pages or so of the book, and aside from a mildly startling cliffhanger ending to Egwene's storyline, there is no real climax to the book. It just judders to a rather unsatisfying halt. And the great irony is that the Cleansing itself is largely proven irrelevant: most people, when told what it was, flat-out refuse to believe it, making the whole book feel like an exercise in futility.

So, we have a 700-page novel in which not much happens. Everyone's storyline crawls forward at an insanely slow pace, with entire chapters featuring little beyond descriptions of forests or characters discussing what has happened earlier in the plot for no discernible reason. There are good moments buried amidst the dross, such as Perrin realising the limits of his morality, the true nature of Shaidar Haran being revealed or Egwene's intelligent plan to resolve the siege of Tar Valon, but getting to them is like wading through treacle. There is no momentum to the story, especially as every couple of chapters we rewind to a point before the Cleansing, move a few days forward, and then rewind again with a different bunch of characters. The bulk of the book takes place only across a few days (whilst The Great Hunt, for example, covered about six months) and progress is torturous.

Crossroads of Twilight (*½) is by quite some margin the weakest book in the series and one of the most disappointing fantasy novels ever published, considering how good some of the earlier books were. The few decent moments are drowned amidst literally hundreds of pages of empty, pointless prose and padded minutiae. The book is published by Orbit in the UK and Tor in the USA.

 

[Werthead]

After the disappointing and critically-mauled Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan seemed to have a serious rethink about his Wheel of Time series was progressing. He stopped writing the series - taking a six-month break to write the extended version of the prequel novel New Spring instead - and when he came back to it he seemed to have recaptured some of his old fire. The resulting eleventh and then-promised-to-be-penultimate book in the series, Knife of Dreams, is a definite step up from the preceding three or four books, although some of the series' latter problems continue to be an issue.

The Last Battle is drawing near. The fabric of reality itself is breaking down as the seals on the Dark One's prison begin to fail. The dead are reappearing, long-lost towns and cities are flashing in and out of existence and the One Power itself seems to becoming unreliable. Yet Rand al'Thor's task of unifying the Westlands against the Shadow is far from complete. The Seanchan invasion force, now massively reinforced, is continuing to absorb more territory in the south-west of the continent. Whilst Rand's forces are large enough to destroy them, it would only be at a terrible cost in blood. With little choice, Rand extends an olive branch to the Seanchan whilst a Domani general launches a massively ambitious gambit to throw back the Seanchan armies encroaching on his kingdom.

Meanwhile, Perrin has made the fateful decision to ally with a Seanchan general to destroy the Shaido Aiel encamped at Malden who hold his wife Faile prisoner. Inside the camp, Faile is making her own escape plans but is relying on some very dubious partners to pull it off. Elsewhere, Mat Cauthon's flight from Ebou Dar with the kidnapped Daughter of the Nine Moons runs into difficulties when he encounters a huge Seanchan army blocking the way into Murandy, and Egwene al'Vere has been captured by the Tower Aes Sedai, whose plans to break her are foiled at every turn. In besieged Caemlyn Elayne Trakand makes one last throw of the dice to win the Lion Throne of Andor, and the Ogier teeter on the brink of a fateful decision that may have ramifications for the Last Battle.

Knife of Dreams is a much busier, far better-paced book than the ones preceding it. Several major storylines in the overall Wheel of Time series, some of them extending back seven or more volumes, are brought to final conclusions, and long-dangling minor plot threads are finally picked up on and expanded. We also get some tantalising clues as to the origins of the Ogier (one of the least of the series' mysteries, but welcome nevertheless) and, at long last, some major combat scenes. Rand, Mat and Perrin each have a major battle to fight and Elayne also has some skirmishing to do to win the throne of Andor. However, the storyline that possibly most impresses is Egwene's captivity in the White Tower. Jordan deftly avoids falling into the trap of making this a contrived story, and Egwene's quiet method of defiance against her captors is genuinely interesting. Also, the fact he packs virtually the whole story into one chapter is a plus as well.

(Not Darrell K. Sweet's finest hour)
​

However, Knife of Dreams is plagued by some of the same troubles as earlier books in the series. An absolutely vast number of minor characters whose import to the series is questionable continues to expand, and the minutiae of Elayne's pregnancy and arguments between different groups of channellers continues to weigh the series down. About halfway through the book, however, these problematic elements recede and the focus on resolution and conflict becomes more apparent, making the second half of the novel far more enjoyable to read, almost as much as the series at its best.

Reaching the end of Knife of Dreams, it is abundantly clear that there is no way that the series could be resolved in just one more book, and the recent confirmation by Brandon Sanderson that A Memory of Light will almost certainly be two volumes strangely comes as something of a relief: after such a huge journey, wrapping everything up in as short a space as possible for the sheer sake of it would have been dissatisfying.

Knife of Dreams (***½) was the best Wheel of Time novel in a decade when it was published and although the series' flaws were not eliminated by it, Robert Jordan's decision to acknowledge the weaknesses of the previous volume and move to counter them was effective. It certainly leaves the reader anxious to leap into the next book as soon as possible, and hopefully less than a year from now that will be possible. The book is available from Orbit in the UK and, with quite possibly one of the worst fantasy covers in history, from Tor in the USA.

 

[citri]

Very interesting and good reviews (review quality, not book quality). I must say, I saw that little reference to Earwa with a little distaste. The Prince of Nothing was an awful series in my opinion. The introduction of the first one was the best part of all of them. The books were not very believable at all and the ending of the trilogy was about as anticlimactic as they come. The Aspect Emperor better be pretty good if it wants to redeem itself in my eyes. Of course, most people probably don't agree with me on that. The writing was pretty long winded with overly elaborate sentences.

 

[Werthead]

The battle for control of the western nations ahead of the Last Battle continues to rage. Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, has taken his army to the war and famine-wracked kingdom of Arad Doman to restore order, win the country to his cause and also to negotiate a new peace treaty with the Seanchan. But as his plans continue to unfold, Rand has to harden himself more and more, and in doing so is in the process of losing his soul and his mind.

In Tar Valon, Egwene al'Vere remains a prisoner but a defiant one. As her efforts to undermine the false Amyrlin Elaida continue within the Tower, her followers maintain their siege of the city from outside, and are joined by an unexpected new ally. Elsewhere, Mat Cauthon and the Band of the Red Hand continue their flight towards Andor, and are surprised to be reunited with an old friend, a friend whose careful, long-laid plans are about to come to fruition...

The Gathering Storm is the twelfth volume in The Wheel of Time series and the first released since Robert Jordan's unfortunate death in 2007. Jordan spent his final months amassing and dictating a significant amount of notes, outlines and chapter summaries for another writer to use to finish the series. Previously, Jordan had indicated he'd wipe his hard drive to stop someone else completing his work, but with him being so close to the end of the story he changed his mind, trusting his wife and editor, Harriet, and his publisher Tom Doherty to find a writer capable of finishing the series well. In theory, it should have led to disaster: typically one writer finishing a series begun by another is an atrocious idea that only leads to very bad books (note the vomit-inducing new Dune novels and the ill-advised Amber continuations). The only example I can think of this working was when Stella Gemmell completed her late husband David's final novel in fine form, but the amount of work required to bring Wheel of Time to a conclusion required an altogether different level of commitment and effort from Brandon Sanderson.

Almost unbelievably, Sanderson has pulled it off. In his introduction he hopes the differences between his style and Jordan, whilst unavoidably noticeable, will be comparable to a different (but still good) director taking over your favourite movie series but all the actors remaining the same. This isn't a bad analogy at all, and whilst there are a few moments in The Gathering Storm where you think, "I don't think Robert Jordan would have done things quite like that," there's never a moment where you think, "He definitely wouldn't have done that at all!" which is vital.

Another concern was that originally these last three books were supposed to be one volume, A Memory of Light, and Sanderson actually wrote the bulk of the text under the impression it was going to be probably split in two. The decision to split the book in three instead resulted in much recrimination, although at 800 pages in hardcover (and assuming the second and third come in at a similar size) and well over 300,000 words, tying it with Knife of Dreams as the longest book in the series since Lord of Chaos, it's clear this could never have been done in just two books either. One problem with this split was that since Sanderson hadn't been writing with three books in mind, The Gathering Storm would feel incomplete or unsatisfying on its own. This is not the case at all. In fact, The Gathering Storm has the most cohesive through-line in story, character and theme of any book in the series since The Shadow Rising, and possibly out of all of them.

The structure of the book focuses on two primary storylines: Rand's deteriorating mental state as he struggles to bring Arad Doman into the confederation of kingdoms sworn to him, and Egwene's efforts to unite the White Tower and end the civil war within the Aes Sedai that has raged for the past seven and a half volumes. Other characters and stories appear briefly, such as Perrin and Tuon, and Mat has a slightly bigger role, but other major characters and storylines do not appear at all. The recently-quelled civil war in Andor and the Mazrim Taim/Asha'man plotlines are notable by their absences. Instead, this part of the story focuses on two of the central protagonists, Rand and Egwene, and the experiences they go through to achieve their goals. The novel could almost be called The Long Night of Rand al'Thor as the series' central figure is dragged through the wringer, going to very dark places indeed as he struggles to understand his own role in events and how he is to achieve the things he must do to save the world. On the other hand, Egwene is shown to have already passed through her moments of doubt and misjudgement in previous volumes, and in this book her story focuses on her battle of wills with Elaida to restore unity to the Aes Sedai.

This contrast of darkness and light and putting two central characters squarely back in the limelight (previous volumes have sometimes devoted way too much time to tertiary characters of limited importance) is a highly successful move, allowing some interesting thematic elements to be touched upon. Whilst the reader may have guessed that Rand is severely traumatised from everything that has happened to him in the previous books, it isn't until this volume that we realise just how badly things have affected him and we see just how hard and how determined he has become. An interesting analogy that is not touched upon is what happened to Aridhol to defeat the Shadow in the Trolloc Wars, where it became harder and more ruthless than the enemy and eventually consumed itself in insanity and rage.

This is a powerful and intense story, something that has been building for the entire latter half of the series, and it's a demanding tale that you probably wouldn't want to dump on a new author in ideal circumstances. But Sanderson picks up the ball and runs with it. Rand's characterisation is completely spot-on and consistent with earlier appearances, and Sanderson does a monumental job with this storyline. He also does superbly with Egwene's story, which culminates in one of the most spectacular action set-pieces in the series to date (and I suspect something that could dislodge Dumai's Wells or the Battle of Cairhien as many reader's favourite action sequence in the whole series). A whole myriad of lesser characters is also well-handled, such as Siuan, Tuon and the various Aes Sedai, but Gawyn becomes a bit of a fifth wheel with not much to do, which is odd given he has a much bigger presence here than he has in some considerable time.

Other reviewers have suggested that Sanderson struggles with Mat, and unfortunately this is true. Not fatally so, but for everything Mat does that is 'right' to his character, he'll typically do something incongruous and uncharacteristic a few pages later. Sanderson also never really gets into the swing of his speech pattern or sense of humour either. He's readable, but it's the only part of the book where the change in authors feels jarring. Luckily, it's not a large part of the book and hopefully Sanderson will be able to work more on this area for the next book, Towers of Midnight, where Mat is expected to play a much bigger role in events.

The Gathering Storm (****½) is a very fine book, one of the strongest instalments of the whole series and easily the best book published in The Wheel of Time for fifteen years. Whilst some of that achievement must go to Brandon Sanderson for his sterling and jaw-dropping work on the book, it is clear that Robert Jordan had planned these events with a watchmaker's precision, setting them up through lines of dialogue and minor twists of characterisation stretching right back to the second volume of the series, and the overwhelming feeling upon reaching the end of the novel is that he was an extraordinarily clever writer and plotter, for all of the flaws that have cropped up along the way. The book is available now in the UK and, with the worst cover in the history of modern publishing, in the USA. Towers of Midnight will follow in one year's time, with A Memory of Light to follow a year after that.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Your persistence awes me. I gave up on this series somewhere during the prologue to 'A Path Of Daggers'. I see that I bailed just as the series was about to hit its weakest phase.

I have, all things considered, mixed feelings about these books. The first three volumes (volumes 2 and 3 in particular) came to me at a time when I still fancied myself an epic fantasy fan but hadn't come across anything new that really scratched that itch for a while. I was so taken with these books, they really struck me as the most vividly imagined of their kind since Tolkien.

Then, the pacing started slipping, several characters started to become actively annoying and the plot thread became obscured in a complex weave of sub-plots. I still value this series for what it meant at one time in my life, and for helping me clarify that epic fantasy is not really my cup of tea.

 

[Werthead]

Towers of Midnight

The Last Battle has begun. From Saldaea to Shienar, vast armies of Shadowspawn burst forth into the unprepared Borderlands. Whilst Rodel Ituralde prepares to stand siege against overwhelming numbers, Lan Mandragoran rides for Tarwin's Gap with the last of the Malkieri at his side.

The Dragon Reborn has overcome the darkness that was threatening to swallow him but now faces a struggle to repair the damage his actions have unleashed. Arad Doman is starving, the Borderlander army at Far Madding must be confronted and Cairhien remains without a ruler. But before Rand can address those problems, he must stand within the Hall of the Tower and answer for his actions to the Amyrlin Seat...

Perrin Aybara and Mat Cauthon have their own challenges to face. Perrin must make peace with his wolf side and forge a dangerous alliance with those who only want to kill him for crimes from long ago. Mat must face his own nemesis on the streets of Caemlyn and undertake a desperate quest to rescue an old friend, but the price will be high. And, in the Aiel Waste, Aviendha must journey into Rhuidean and confront a terrible truth that could shatter the Aiel more completely than Rand al'Thor's revelations.

Towers of Midnight is, at last (and third time lucky) the penultimate volume of The Wheel of Time. The fourteenth and final book, A Memory of Light, will be published in early 2012. Towers is published just short of the twenty-first anniversary of the series, which is appropriate as this is where the series finally matures and comes of age. Lots of the more irritating quirks of the series, such as the inability of the major characters to, you know, talk to one another about what's going on, are absent from this novel as fresh alliances are forged, plans are laid and armies are readied for the grand finale.

Just as Rand al'Thor has decided that he must sweep away the rubble of the Bore before he can confront the Dark One, Towers of Midnight sweeps aside many storylines and side-characters in preparation for the grand finale. The pace of the novel is relentless as we drive towards the moment when the Last Battle must be unleashed in its full fury, with each chapter seemingly ticking off character and story arcs stretching back all the way to The Eye of the World. Many characters who first appeared in that book, including relatively minor ones like Dain Bornhald and Morgase Trakand, have important roles to play here, giving the feeling of a vast circle slowly being closed off. There are also strong ties to The Shadow Rising, with the Aiel playing a larger role in events then they have for a while and a revisiting of Rhuidean and its glass columns providing a late-series game-changing moment that was wholly unexpected but quite satisfying.

Thematically, Towers cannot hope to match The Gathering Storm's tight focus on Rand and Egwene and their respective journeys through chaos and fire and out the other side. This book is far more epic and sprawling, with many more storylines and characters visited and progressed. However, Sanderson manages to maintain a strong focus on getting the original major characters back into the thick of the action, this time with Perrin and Mat. There's also an interesting dramatic device used where Lan's march across the Borderlands towards Tarwin's Gap serves as a countdown to the moment when all hell truly breaks loose, which helps the book achieve its oppressive feeling of events moving towards a final, chaotic doom.

In terms of the writing, Sanderson continues to do a fine job of integrating his and Robert Jordan's styles, although Sanderson's 'voice' is a little bit more noticeable here (Towers apparently has far less of Jordan's finished text than the other two books). Fortunately, his grasp of Jordan's characters is more assured than before, with the major weak link (Mat) coming across far more like he did in earlier books. Of the characters prominent in this novel, he only really struggles with Berelain, hardly the most vital of characters anyway, whilst he gets the likes of Perrin, Elayne and Birgitte spot-on (for example, Elayne continues to make wince-inducingly stupid mistakes and not really learn from them). In fact, Sanderson achieves the near-impossible here of making Faile actually quasi-likable for a few chapters, which may be his most towering achievement in writing these concluding volumes so far.

Elsewhere, problems remain. The formal agreement between two armies to do battle at a given place on a given time feels very odd and doesn't ring true. Whilst the pace is mostly furious, there's possibly a couple too many chapters and scenes where people sit around and talk about the plot rather than getting on with business, although these are less noticeable than they have been in the past. There's also, to this reader's frustration, the fact that this is the seventh book in a row where Perrin and his forces are messing around in the Altaran/Ghealdanin backwoods (a story which, thankfully, finally and definitively ends here) rather than doing anything that's actually interesting. Fortunately Sanderson even rescues this storyline, taking advantage of the longueur to conclude Perrin's 'wolfbrother' arc. However, I suspect there will be complaints that both the Seanchan and Black Tower storylines are only barely touched on here, rather than being explored more thoroughly. As it stands, it is dubious that Sanderson can bring those two storylines into play and conclude them satisfyingly with only a (relatively) small number of chapters remaining, but we will see.

Many events unfold that people have been expecting for years (and yes, we learn the answer to a long-standing but utterly irrelevant mystery that Wheel of Time fans have furiously debated for over a decade), but Jordan's plotting skills and Sanderson's writing means that there are still plenty of big surprises to come, some of them almost strokes of genius in how they were set up beforehand.

Towers of Midnight (****½) clears the decks of a lot of dead wood and brings us almost to the end. Some minor issues mar what could have been the best book of the series, but there is nevertheless the feeling that we have been set up for a huge finale. Time will tell if Sanderson can deliver on that. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

 

[Werthead]

The Wheel of Time Book 14: A Memory of Light

The Wheel of Time is finished. That's a statement that's going to take a while to get used to. The first volume of the series, The Eye of the World, was published in January 1990. George Bush Snr. and Margaret Thatcher were still in power and the Cold War was still ongoing. Fourteen books, four million words, eleven thousand pages and over fifty million sales (in North America alone) later, the conclusion has finally arrived. Can it possibly live up to the expectations built up over that time?

It is a tribute to the plotting powers of Robert Jordan, the writing skill of Brandon Sanderson (who took over the series after Jordan's untimely death in 2007) and the hard work of Jordan's editors and assistants that A Memory of Light is - for the most part - a triumphant finale. Given the weight of expectations resting on the novel, not to mention the unfortunate circumstances under it was written, it is unsurprising that it is not perfect. The novel occasionally misfires, is sometimes abrupt in how it resolves long-running plot strands and sometimes feels inconsistent with what has come before. However, it also brings this juggernaut of an epic fantasy narrative to an ending that makes sense, is suitably massive in scope and resolves the series' thematic, plot and character arcs satisfactorily - for the most part.

It is a familiar viewpoint that The Wheel of Time is a slow-burning series, with Robert Jordan not afraid to have his characters sitting around talking about things for entire chapters (or, in one case, an entire novel) rather than getting on with business. However, Jordan at his best used these lengthy dialogue scenes to set up plot twists and explosive confrontations further down the line, pulling together the elements he'd established previously in surprising and interesting ways. This reached a high in the slow-moving sixth book, which ended with what is regarded by many as the series' best climax to date at the Battle of Dumai's Wells. Steven Erikson (whose Malazan series is the most notable recent mega-long fantasy series to have also reached a final conclusion) used the term 'convergence' for such structural climaxes and it's fair to say that this is what A Memory of Light is: a convergence for the entire series. All thirteen of the previous novels lined up plot cannons in preparation for the Last Battle, and in the closing chapters of Towers of Midnight Brandon Sanderson started triggering them.

The result is not The Wheel of Time you may be familiar with. A Memory of Light is a brutal, bruising, 900-page war novel that kicks off with all hell breaking loose and doesn't pause for breath until the ending. The prologue starts with a well-paced sequence as we find out the state of play for the major characters, intercut with Talmanes and the Band of the Red Hand engaging hordes of Shadowspawn on the streets of Caemlyn. The rotation of scenes between the desperate street fighting and more familiar politicking is highly effective and is exhausting in itself. Immediately after this we alternate between Rand's attempts to pull together a coalition against the Shadow whilst a small group of Asha'man try to save their organisation from destruction against overwhelming odds. No sooner is that over than the Last Battle is joined in full force. Vast armies clash, channellers engage one another in One Power exchanges that dwarf anything seen before in the series and lots of stuff blows up. There's more action sequences in A Memory of Light than the rest of the series put together, more than earning the adage 'The Last Battle'.

The action sequences (which make up almost the whole book) are, for the most part, impressive but benefit from unpredictability. Jordan has been criticised for making his characters too safe, with almost no major character of note (on either side) dying in the previous books of the series. This limitation has been removed for the Last Battle. Major characters, middling ones and scores of minor ones are scythed down in this final confrontation with near-wild abandon. Some get heroic, fitting, blaze-of-glory ends. Some die in manners so unexpected, offhand and callous that even George R.R. Martin might nod in approval. Many of the survivors are seriously wounded, either in body or mind. Jordan's experiences as a Vietnam vet informed Rand al'Thor's arc in The Gathering Storm, and resurface here when one major character is tortured by the Shadow before being rescued, but spends the rest of the book suffering the effects of his experiences. The war scenes are suitably epic and exciting, but Sanderson remembers to include moments counting the cost of such a struggle.

That said, there is an annoying discrepancy in the Last Battle sequence compared to earlier novels. Based on the army sizes in previous volumes and the number of channellers in each faction, the good guys should have brought the better part of a million troops and five thousand One Power-wielders to the Last Battle, and the Shadow several times more. There is no indication that such vast numbers are present, which seems rather odd. There is also the fact that the channellers suddenly seem to be much less effective in mass combat than previously shown. This is most blatant when Logain is angrily told that he and a couple of dozen Asha'man cannot hope to defeat a hundred thousand Trollocs by themselves. Given this is exactly what happened in one scene in Knife of Dreams, I can only conclude that the channellers were deliberately reduced in power for this book, which is very strange.

For the most part, this is the level of problems A Memory of Light presents: something mildly irritating to those who prefer consistency from fictional works but ultimately not hugely relevant to the overall thrust of the narrative. Similar issues can be found with a number of very minor subplots that the novel fails to resolve (or even address) from earlier volumes. In some cases these may be examples of what Robert Jordan himself said would happen in the last book, with some elements left deliberately hanging to give the illusion that life goes on after the last page is turned. In other cases, it may be that Jordan did not draft out how those storylines ended, so Sanderson chose to leave them rather than risk too inventing too much of his own material. Sanderson even refuses to name an important river that Jordan did not name himself, resulting is a slightly awkward battle sequence where characters talk about the 'river on the border', the 'river on the battlefield' and so on, which is a bit laboured.

However, whilst the war scenes rage there is also a philosophical struggle at the heart of the book, and of the series. This struggle is shown in the confrontation between Rand and the Dark One in which their visions of the world and the Wheel are shown in conflict with one another. Robert Jordan was convinced that whilst there were certainly complexities and shades of grey in real life, he also believed that real good and real evil existed, and these ideas form part of the philosophical struggle that takes place alongside the battles. How successful this is will vary (perhaps immensely) from reader to reader, but is not helped by some muddling of the issues. The primary struggle of the books has consistently been Good vs. Evil, but in this philosophy-off the idea of the Creator personifying Order and the Dark One Chaos also arises, possibly as their primary roles. This is in conflict with the rest of the series and is also more tiresomely familiar and predictable. Once that interpretation arises, it's impossible not to think of the ending of the Shadow War in the TV series Babylon 5, and the resolution we get is not a million miles away from it (Rand even gets a line almost as awful as "Get the hell out of our galaxy!").

On the prose side of things, it's pretty much the same set-up as The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight: acceptable, faster-paced and a bit less prone to unnecessary introspection. Where Sanderson comes undone (yet again) is his very occasional use of terminology and language that Jordan would never have used, particularly modern words and terms. Though relatively rare, they still jar a little bit when they appear. The book's centrepiece is a single chapter that is almost 200 pages (and 70,000 words) long in hardcover, with some 70 POV characters playing a role. Apparently both Sanderson and Jordan wrote parts of this chapter, and a few minor inconsistencies aside their writing styles mesh very well. The very last section of the epilogue, written by Robert Jordan himself before he passed (including, rather eerily, Jordan's epitaph from his own funeral), is indeed a fitting way to end the book.

Taking everything into account, A Memory of Light (****½) is a lot better than perhaps we had any right to expect. The book is a relentless steamroller of action, explosions, plot resolutions, deaths and philosophical (if somewhat confused) arguing. Some elements are under-resolved, or a little too convenient, or not fleshed out enough. But that's par for the course with any ending to a series this huge. The big questions are answered, the final scene is fitting and the story ends in a way that is true to itself, which is the most we can ask for. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.