The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan

Published by Orbit Books: Great Britain, 2013 (1991).
First published 1990.
Book 1 in 'The Wheel of Time.' Followed by 'The Great Hunt.'

This is the first book in a series of 14, a series that I was first introduced to by one of my cousins years ago. I read through every book that had been written to that point, but the series was unfinished, so I put it down and never revisited it. Since then, the series was finished (despite the main author dying before the end!) and it has also been made into three seasons of an Amazon TV show.

Anyway, finding a copy in a bookswap library inspired me to give it another go.

Let's start with the 'negatives.' It's quite slow paced. It IS an epic story, that would have required a lot of books regardless of pace, but there are times when it FEELS slow. The main characters spend over 100 pages of plot before leaving their home village, there are 300 pages before we get a different POV character for the first time, and the actual AMOUNT of plot covered does feel like it could have been told with far less words.

An example of this that really highlighted things for me, is one chapter that opens with two of our main characters getting off a wagon, farewelling the driver by name, and making reference to the fact that one of the two is just recovering from some sort of sickness. This would be enough to fill in what has happened since the end of the previous chapter, but Jordan proceeds to 'flashback' to just after the end of the previous chapter, and then tell us about the various days the duo have travelled, the different (mildly repetative encounters they have with villains on the way, different wagons they catch a lift with - including one where the driver gives them a gift of scarves, despite the fact than they have already received a gift of scarves from another wagon driver in an earlier chapter - and one of the duo getting sick, then ends with them catching a lift with a final wagon driver who introduces himself by name, revealing himself to be the wagon driver from the start of the chapter.

Could have been an email!

Another 'negative' is that this is full of quite stereotypically fantasy characters, although to be fair, it could also be intentional. The main characters all come from a small village. They are guided by a mysterious magical mentor figure, whom they are parted from after being pursued by evil minions of the Dark One. Jordan also uses (intentionally?) familiar terms that are slightly altered in order(?) to create a sense of familiarity for the readers. So we get Trollocs instead of trolls, Ogiers instead of ogres, and villains with names like Ba'alzamon, Shai'tan, and - yes - the Dark One.

And yet, I still enjoyed this world and the story it is beginning. The magic system is interesting, with the male half of 'the One Power' having been tainted in aons past, meaning that any man who can do magic will go insane over time. The 'Dragon Reborn' as this story's 'Chosen One' is called is therefore both longed for and feared. The world (as the series title suggests) is also repeating in some sense, with past events predicting future ones. And there is a fun extra wrinkle in the fact that any one of our three main male characters could conceivably turn out to be the main character - although this is undermined a bit by having one character, Rand, be so much more prominent than the other two in terms of POV.

By the end of this book, we have moved our main characters out into the world, we have roughly identified who the Dragon Reborn is going to be, we have been introduced to numerous world-building elements, we have have the introduction of a number of potential love-interests for various characters, and we have killed at least two minions of the Dark One.

So, although it's a bit slow in patches... it gets there. And I enjoyed it for the second time.

Completed 18 June 2026.

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