The first series that showed it was possible to do an uninspired rewrite of Tolkien and make a mint was Shannara. After that the doors were flung wide, and the next to profit off the scheme was was Robert Jordan. Of course, I'm not suggesting it's bad to take inspiration from older authors--all authors do this, as Virgil did from Homer, and Milton from Virgil, and Byron from Milton. Tolkien himself drew on the Norse Eddas, Welsh myths, English fairy tales, and Blake's myth-making.

But when a skilled author takes inspiration, they expand and change what came before, combining many influences to produce their own unique voice and vision. Jordan didn't have the knowledge of language, history, or culture to truly copy Tolkien's style, nor was he able to add a unique spin.

The Eye of The World is a more accessible version of Tolkien, but Tolkien is already a simplified version of the Norse Sagas, meaning that Jordan felt a need to dumb-down the accessible, which doesn't leave his book with much personality.

Jordan also takes influence from the Sword & Sorcery tradition, particularly R.E. Howard (Jordan even wrote and published some of his own Conan stories). However, un other authors of rollicking adventure Fantasy, Leiber or Charles Saunders, Jordan kept Tolkien's plodding length. It is difficult to comprehend how an author could take such a simple, familiar story and stretch it out over so many pages.

The hero is an orphan who looks different, he gets his father's magic sword, he goes on a quest with an old, wily mentor, gets attacked by evil (dark-skinned) mongoloids from the mysterious East, meets the princess by accident, becomes embroiled in an ancient prophecy, discovers a magic 'force' which controls fate (and the plot), &c., &c.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. a lot of modern fantasy, the plot and characters are nothing new. If you've seen Star Wars, then you know it by heart. Every fantasy fan has read this same story again and again from countless authors--some, apparently on purpose. Of course, when this old story is told well, with slick pacing and vivid characters, we can forgive the cliches, or even enjoy them freshly, recognizing their universal appeal. But when an author is simply trotting out an old, tired story and doing nothing to make it shine anew, then the only appeal it can lay claim to is bland nostalgia.

There's no reason for this sort of repetition: a new book should be more than just fanfic of an older, financially successful book. There are countless different influences out there, long before Tolkien or Howard ever touched pen to paper (many of which can be found in the link at the end of this review), so it's disappointing to see authors continually rehashing the same tedious cliches completely unchanged half a century later.

Jordan's long-winded style can't even boast the wealth of meticulous details with which Tolkien filled his pages (often to the detriment of his story). It's clear that Jordan's trying to build a one of those massively detailed worlds so prevalent in pop fantasy, but it's not an interesting, original world--it's just another generic, pseudo-Medieval Europe without any of the genuinely interesting bits that made that time period unique. It's just modern characters with modern psychology swinging around magic swords in a Disneyland version of history.

It might not be so bad if the lengthy asides were actually interesting, in and of themselves. If each little piece was amusing in its own right, we might forgive. If they gave us some odd bit of defamiliarization that caused us to look at our own, modern world in a new way, that would be something. Instead, we get dry, lengthy explanations of extraneous facts that we had no reason to be curious about in the first place.

Some readers have pointed out that these facts show up in later books of the series, which is probably true, but then, what are they doing in this book? If Mary doesn't appear until book three, it is not useful or interesting to stop in the middle of book one and tell us she has blonde hair. Facts should not be evenly distributed throughout a series, they should be placed in close proximity to scenes that relate to them. That way they make sense to the reader and we have a reason to care about them. That's the difference between foreshadowing and a word search puzzle.

If an author has to stop the story every few paragraphs to explain what's going on, then his writing is simply not working. The world should be revealed to us through characters, through their interactions, through small details of verisimilitude that are lovely or interesting on their own, and through scenes designed specifically to illustrate a point without losing focus and falling into lengthy digressions.

But Jordan's characters are dull and shallow, his dialogue bland, and his plot (though it possesses many parts) lacks twists or turns. We are given an unending parade of new characters and lengthy asides, which masterfully suck all the drive, purpose, and life from an otherwise simplistic story. At half this length, the book would have been merely another two-star fantasy rehash. At a third the length, it might have started to show some pep--but Jordan had to stretch out his all-to-familiar story to doorstop proportions.

In Tolkien, the first hundred pages takes place in quaint Hobbiton. This prelude prepares us for the rest of the book, allowing us to understand the strange world and characters and setting a mood. When the action takes us away, we find we have formed a certain attachment to the bucolic charm of Hobbiton (sickly-sweet as it may be). Finally, when we do depart, the world we meet is much grander in comparison. In Eye of the World, you spend the first hundred and fifty pages in a drab farming community, so that when the characters finally leave, it will seem something is happening. This is only an illusion.

Some of Jordan's fans have pointed to the 'Wheel of Time' aspect as his unique contribution to the genre--mixing Eastern philosophy and the idea of eternal recurrence in with his mock-feudal world, but it's the same thing that E.R. Eddison was doing in the 1920s, and which Michael Moorcock has been exploring and expanding on since the sixties. As such, I don't see it as some new twist that Jordan has added to fantasy, but as another bland rehash of an interesting idea some other author had decades before.

Also, most fantasy authors, Jordan seems to have a problem writing female characters. They are either whiny and snotty, or emasculating ice queens. They all speak in the exact same voice--and the joke in the writing community is that anyone who has met his wife know exactly where every one of his female characters comes from. I couldn't count on both hands the fantasy authors who seem to think 'strong woman' means 'insufferable, unapologetic shrew'. Then again, it isn't as if his male characters aren't any more interesting or fleshed-out, even if they do get a more flattering depiction.

I've also been led to understand that later on in the series, we get a magical band of lipstick lesbians who 'go straight' when they grow up (and meet 'real men', our heroes), plus a bunch of sex-fetish weirdness about punishment by naked public spanking. But I suppose that if Jordan resembles other genre writers in terms of plot, length, setting, and character, he might as well go all the way and throw in some of his own unprocessed sexual hangups.

And as the series goes on, the many problems with pacing, plotting, and unfocused asides only grow worse. If Jordan can't keep everything straight in his opening book, how will he possibly deal when the story starts branching out (as stories inevitably do)? It is hardly surprising that such a tenuous grasp will inevitably slip away--as it has for so many other authors in pop fantasy, from Martin to Goodkind, who start off intending to write a trilogy and end up with ten books, each of which takes five years to write, and none of which even manage to finish the plot started in book I.

So, take the plot of Star Wars, add the long-windedness of Tolkien, the piecemeal structure of Howard, the cosmology of Moorcock, add in a pinch of awkward sexual hangups, and you have yet another crap pop fantasy, ready to sell a million copies to folks who want nothing more than to read the same story over and over as written by a succession of chubby, bearded, awkward dudes. I'm sure a violent, breast-baring miniseries is already in preproduction.


UPDATE: one might point to the endless repetition in modern literature as a sure sign that there is no God, no grand plan, and no purpose to the universe. A benevolent power would surely spare us the pain of such unending mediocrity.

However, if there were some deity, and he had a sense of humor, then he would allow the uncreative authors to publish, to gain fame, win awards, and rake in the cash, until their series piled self-indulgently to the length of a minor encyclopedia. Then our clownish deity would let the author announce that he is finally approaching The End (for real this time!), only to perish on the cusp. Since this is precisely what happened to Jordan, I will have to keep an eye out for other signs of this humorous demiurge, possibly in the form of leper-curing banana peels and hagiographic fright wigs.

My Fantasy Book Suggestionsamerica fantasy novel ...more1,560 s8 comments Joel564 1,802

Paternity leave reading for 3 a.m. crying jags. (Mine and hers.)

---

There, Brian. I read it. Are you happy?

My friend Brian has been telling me to read The Wheel of Time for years. It always went this:

Brian: You should read The Wheel of Time. It's really good.
Me: I've heard that it gets really, really bad.
B: The first seven books are really outstanding.
M: Yeah, I'm not going to read seven books without an ending.
B: The first one is good but the second one is better.
M: Mmm. I don't know.
B: The first one stands alone really well! [Retrospective commentary: NO IT DOESN'T]
M: OK, lemee borrow it.

[Several months pass]

M: Here is your book back.
B: Oh, you read it?
M: No.

I really thought I was never, ever going to start this series. Everything I read about it screamed at me to run away. Tolkien pastiche. Incredibly long. Characters with stupid names. Lots of "world-building." The main villain is called "The Dark One." WTF, trollocs?

I have nothing against multi-volume, word-bloated epic fantasy. Not really. (Well, kind of, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt: George R.R. Martin, that one Brandon Sanderson book I d). But even the people who The Wheel of Time also seem to apologize for doing so or outright resent it for what it became in the draggy middle. So why do I want to start reading it? If someone told me a show about a mysterious island was really entertaining and interesting for a while there, but then totally peed the ending down its leg, and really, that's a PRETTY BIG DEAL for a mystery show, even one that is purportedly focused on a bunch of unable assholes characters first, would I immediately run home and start watching that show on Netflix streaming? No, because I'm the idiot who watched it all along, assuming I wasn't wasting my time.

I think I am getting off track.

So, I wasn't going to read this. But then I was off work for a few weeks on paternity leave, and my daughter was waking up five times a night, and I was unable to sleep even though, at that point, I didn't really have much to offer that she was interested in, and I had a copy of The Eye of the World that I absorbed for a quarter somewhere, and I've always had a thing for the goofy cover art. So I picked it up at 2 a.m. and read the prologue. And it was pretty much what I expected, what with the stupid names and bad dialogue. But it was also kind of... fun. Of course, I also knew (based on reading a bunch of and blogs about this book series I never planned to read) that the next 150 pages were going to be, in the tradition of Hobbiton (Chapter One: Concerning Ensuring Joel Will Never Read Past the First Section of This Book) horrifically boring. So I almost put it back down.

Then I remembered that my brother had the book in his Audible account, and that my phone lets you listen to books at double speed, meaning I'd get through the 30-hour production in roughly 15. That sounded about right -- the auditory equivalent of skimming (except I actually got really good at listening that quickly; you just kind of have to get in the zone).

And it was exactly as I'd been led to believe: clumsy, repetitious prose (a few times I had to make sure the audio track wasn't repeating as the same dialogue and phrasing was repeated over and over). Meandering pacing and haphazard plotting (nothing happens nothing happens SOMETHING HAPPENS same thing happens five more times nothing happens rushed climax cliffhanger). Bland heroes (though in their defense, they are stupid teenagers). Blatant Tolkien rip-offery (OH MY GOD THE DAGGER IS OBVIOUSLY CURSED YOU IDIOTS). And my favorite, the pauses for self-indulgent infodumps (the "best" one comes in one of the last chapters and throws in so many weird names and covers so much time I have absolutely no idea what happened and why it mattered enough to put the climax on hold). The unsatisfying ending (the last chapters are rushed, drop in a few villains out of the blue only to defeat them a few pages later via a magical object that isn't mentioned until page 650 even though it's the freaking title).

But. Um. I kind of d it. The world is pretty interesting. I the way Robert Jordan sketches out the history (even some of the infodumps are fun!). I his magic system, and the powerful women who are feared and respected for tapping into it. I don't strictly care about the hero's journey at its core, but the weight -- the epicness -- of it all... Once the big, lumbering thing gets moving, it really has momentum.

So here's where the real test comes. Do I read the second book?

No, I do not.

Do I listen to the second book at chipmunk speed?

I really kind of want to. But doing that will only make me want to read book three, and, poor Rand al'Thor accidentally touching the tainted power of saidin (dammit, Brian, see what you did?), that way lies madness and death.

Maybe if Josh has an extra Audible credit.paternity-leave1,207 s2 comments Emily (Books with Emily Fox on Youtube)579 65k

(4.5) Here I am, a bit to my surprise...

I've been trying to read a lot of "older classic Adult Fantasy" books and it's been hit and miss.
I'm tired of being hit with description of boobs and nipples every time a female character is introduced and this was (sadly) refreshingly not that. The bar is loooow.

The characters are able, the word building is intriguing, the magic system is interesting... It does contain some classic tropes the farmer boy/chosen one but it didn't bother me and I'm totally planning on continuing!

The weaknesses:
- the "romances" they don't take much space in the book (thankfully!) but they're not very good. Lan and Nynaeve came out of nowhere.
- The ending was pretty vague but it is the first book in a 14 book series.

If you weren't sure about it, I say pick it up! In time for the new tv series!964 s1 comment Melissa ? Dog/Wolf Lover ? Martin3,587 10.8k

Holy hell! The movie trailer gave me chills! YES QUEEN!!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fus4Xb...

10/20/20 - I got the anniversary hardback edition and itÂ’s so beautiful
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