Robert Jordan's Eye of the World is, for the uninformed and/or not geeky, the first book of his epic, 11-books-and-a-prequel-so far Wheel of Time series. In brief, the Wheel of Time follows three friends from a small town who must accept their fantastic destinies and lead Good against Evil. The plot is of course much more complex than that, but thats the gist. This first book introduces us to Mat, Perrin, and, most importantly, Rand al'Thor, as their quiet village is attacked by forces of darkness and they flee their quiet lives for the great wide world and begin to discover who they really are. There is loads of magic, strange creatures, vivid characters, and made up languages. It is every bit as dorky as you expect it to be.
WoT (as the even nerdier of us refer to the series in typical nerdy shorthand) is not original in its story--people ever casually familiar with anything even resembling fantasy or epics will recognize the same tropes that mark all the Joseph Campbell defined hero stories that preceded it, and Jordan doesn't cover any ground that wasn't previously visited by people like Tolkien and George Lucas, and he has been joined recently by favorites like J.K. Rowling. Even Jordan's world, especially in this first book, is constantly referencing Lord of the Rings. Whether consciously or unconsciously, its hard to see how evil creatures called "Trollocs" aren't derived from "Trolls" and "Orcs", how the Mountains of Dhoom isn't a homage to, well, Mount Doom, and the Green Man (a large, well, tree) isn't the greatest Ent that ever lived. So that's the "bad".
Except the bad isn't really. If you love Lord of the Rings, and if you didn't love it to some extent there's no reason to bother with this much longer and less cultural-touchstone-y series, then chances are one of the reasons you love it is that it allows you to enter a beautiful, fully realized, and wholly other world. The point of fantasy, the point of hero stories, is escape, to imagine oneself as a hero or to lose oneself in a more, for lack of a better word, fantastical world. And the reason I loved Jordan's books (and Tolkien's, and Martin's, and Rowling's, and, I assume up-and-comers like Patrick Rothfuss, who I would imagine will make an appearance later in the year) is that I love the world, the creations, the danger and the joy, the discovery and the complexities. The reason I picked it up now (besides the fact that the 12th and final book, only written in part by Jordan, who passed away last year after a prolonged battle with a rare blood disease, and written mostly based on his copious notes and outlines comes out next year, and i had planned to reread them all once more before it drops) is that I had a lot of reading time on my hands now that I am subbing, and more than anything else I've ever read (at least anything not featuring a character named Harry Potter) I get excited about reading WoT, I look forward to losing myself in the world. While I love to read, and enjoy the escapisim aspect of all fiction, no other books pass the time for me the way movies or TV does quite like fantasy. Maybe that seems like a small thing, but for me at least, it is not. Reading these books is like going on vacation to visit old friends sometimes, like entering a vivid daydream others (incidentally, the books also helped me get through some rough emotional patches, when I wanted to think about anything other than my own life) and what else could be better if I'm stuck in a classroom for two hours with nothing to do?
Score: (are we scoring all these books?) 10/10 for what it is, but comparing it to traditional classic literature is much harder. so i'll stick with that.
WoT (as the even nerdier of us refer to the series in typical nerdy shorthand) is not original in its story--people ever casually familiar with anything even resembling fantasy or epics will recognize the same tropes that mark all the Joseph Campbell defined hero stories that preceded it, and Jordan doesn't cover any ground that wasn't previously visited by people like Tolkien and George Lucas, and he has been joined recently by favorites like J.K. Rowling. Even Jordan's world, especially in this first book, is constantly referencing Lord of the Rings. Whether consciously or unconsciously, its hard to see how evil creatures called "Trollocs" aren't derived from "Trolls" and "Orcs", how the Mountains of Dhoom isn't a homage to, well, Mount Doom, and the Green Man (a large, well, tree) isn't the greatest Ent that ever lived. So that's the "bad".
Except the bad isn't really. If you love Lord of the Rings, and if you didn't love it to some extent there's no reason to bother with this much longer and less cultural-touchstone-y series, then chances are one of the reasons you love it is that it allows you to enter a beautiful, fully realized, and wholly other world. The point of fantasy, the point of hero stories, is escape, to imagine oneself as a hero or to lose oneself in a more, for lack of a better word, fantastical world. And the reason I loved Jordan's books (and Tolkien's, and Martin's, and Rowling's, and, I assume up-and-comers like Patrick Rothfuss, who I would imagine will make an appearance later in the year) is that I love the world, the creations, the danger and the joy, the discovery and the complexities. The reason I picked it up now (besides the fact that the 12th and final book, only written in part by Jordan, who passed away last year after a prolonged battle with a rare blood disease, and written mostly based on his copious notes and outlines comes out next year, and i had planned to reread them all once more before it drops) is that I had a lot of reading time on my hands now that I am subbing, and more than anything else I've ever read (at least anything not featuring a character named Harry Potter) I get excited about reading WoT, I look forward to losing myself in the world. While I love to read, and enjoy the escapisim aspect of all fiction, no other books pass the time for me the way movies or TV does quite like fantasy. Maybe that seems like a small thing, but for me at least, it is not. Reading these books is like going on vacation to visit old friends sometimes, like entering a vivid daydream others (incidentally, the books also helped me get through some rough emotional patches, when I wanted to think about anything other than my own life) and what else could be better if I'm stuck in a classroom for two hours with nothing to do?
Score: (are we scoring all these books?) 10/10 for what it is, but comparing it to traditional classic literature is much harder. so i'll stick with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment