Robert Jordan
These books are slowing me
down. There are two things that kept me
from really getting into the series before, and they are both rearing their
ugly heads again now. First, some years
ago...well, some decades ago, I decided that I did not want to start a series
until all the books in the series were out.
Since then, I have only broken that rule twice. Once was for the Harry Potter books, and once
for The Wheel of Time. I had put off starting
the series and then decided to start and read the first two, but then waited at
least a decade to start again now. Of
course, now Robert Jordan is dead, before having finished the series, but it is
being finished by another author.
The second is that they are so damned long, that is each book.
So, this is the first of the books
that I have never read before, so I had no idea where anything was going,
though I should admit that I only had general memories of the other books, so
while I had a general idea where they ended up, I did not remember much of what
came in between.
These books have suffered from the
beginning from something that I do not like, which is having all the characters
go off in multiple directions and having the story switch point of view to
follow. I find that this often fails and
makes the book more confusing than it needs to be. Jordan follows one important rule for doing
this successfully, because when you move to a new character, you tend to still
with them for a while, so whether you are following Rand, or Mat and Thom, or
Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve, or Perrin, Moraine and Lan, you tend to stay with
them for at least a long chapter, and often several. This allows you to try to keep the bits of
the story separate, while seeing how they weave together.
Spoilers follow.
One surprising thing is that we do
not follow Rand much in this. Perrin,
Moraine and Lan, along with a new addition to the story, Zarine, are following
Rand and we see the effect that Rand has as he passes. Mat starts off one direction, trying to get
away from Aes Sedai control, but then ends up chasing Egwene, Elayne and
Nynaeve.
Now, as much as I dislike it
generally, at the end of the story, the various stories are woven together
nearly perfectly at the end. Mat, Rand,
Perrin, the three girls, and Moraine all travel separate routes to the final
denoument, but Jordan does an excellent job of keeping them separate and yet
showing how each sees the effect of the other as they near the final scene.
I won’t give anymore away, but while
some of the middle of The Dragon Reborn
is as boring as the long middle haul of the first two, the ending is completely
satisfying. The first three books are
each probably a full 25% too long and would be better for significant
tightening. That tightening and the
intensifying that it would bring are what hold these books back from joining
the ranks of The Lord of the Rings at the very summit of the genre. As they are, they are good, but not great.
