Review: The Eye of the World

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Goodness me, what a tome!

It was both a blessing and a curse to have watched season one of the TV series first. It certainly made their tedious journey of multiple inns and roads stand out like a sore thumb, but it was also really fascinating to get more into the lore and meet more characters.

I'm sure there's not too much I can say about this series than hasn't already been said, but I'll give my own thoughts nevertheless.

The plot: A bunch of farm kids get swept up in an epic adventure, led by a sorceress and her warrior protector. Danger stalks them and things are not going to be easy, but the fate of the world is at stake.

Epic hero action, but I was not too convinced by Rand at all I'm afraid. He seemed like kind of an idiot. I felt more for Perrin and Nyanaeve than old bleeding heart Rand. I really liked Mat's character development, and Lan is of course the true hero. I appreciated that the women were powerful, but that it wasn't done to the point of making the men worthless. I like that all of the men had their own thing, and even Nyanaeve and Egwene (omg am I spelling any of these names right?!) were different in the way they thought of magic.

The pace of the story is a bit off, and I did get rather bored with all the city/inn hopping and road travelling. So much of it was the same, and having seen the show do it better I was really impatient to get on with the story. However, where the book differed from the show I was fully enthralled, and it was fun witnessing these parts of the story for the first time. I wonder if book two will have more appeal for that reason?

By the time the ending came around I was pretty hooked and keen to see where it all finished up.

In summary, it was a little monotonous at times, but there's an epic story here to dig into and I suspect plenty more world to dive into in the following books.


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