Reading a genre classic for the first time. I have thoughts.

Firstly, I liked this, I really did. I am completely susceptible to these kinds of stories, and Jordan seems like a smart and enthusiastic kind of writer guy. However, a lot of this didn’t work for me, and I have lots and lots of thoughts, although I don’t know how many I will be able to remember and/or actually articulate in this space.

I consider myself pretty well-read in terms of the fantasy genre. I’ve read a little bit of everything, and I’m determined to read all the classics. But somehow, despite the voracious sucking power of my brain as a teenager, I seem to have missed a pivotal story. I’ve read a lot of what came after The Wheel of Time (disregarding personal opinion, there’s no doubt this series was hugely influential), and of course I’ve read The Lord of the Rings, the main work which so obviously influenced Robert Jordan. But never the thing itself. (In retrospect, this is very sad for teenaged Ashley, who would have been absolutely gaga over everything about this.)

And then of course when I discovered Brandon Sanderson several years ago, I really had to get in on this, because if I am going to read everything Brandon Sanderson has ever written, that includes the last three books of this series, which he finished upon Jordan’s death. (For those of you who know nothing about any of this, he was personally chosen by Jordan’s widow, Harriet, upon the strength of his Mistborn Trilogy.)

So, how to sum up The Eye of the World?

Well, it’s about a naïve young man who is ripped from the idyllic bosom of his home in a sheltered little community. The forces of darkness enter his community for the first time, and they are searching for something or someone. The young man joins company with a wise magic user and secretly royal companion of a long dead kingdom, and along with several of his friends, leaves his home for the first time to start a perilous journey towards a place where he can be safe from the forces of darkness. Along the way, he and his eight companions encounter dark creatures, cursed objects, intelligent animals both good and evil, fallen cities, and hidden queens and kings. The main force of darkness in the land has eyes and ears everywhere, and exerts its influence over our hero and his friends, forcing them to test themselves in resisting the temptation of his power. The young man ultimately learns it is his destiny to save the world by destroying it.

So I just roughly described the plot of Lord of the Rings. And also this book. But really, the above paragraph illustrates the main problem I had with The Eye of the World, especially as a long-time reader of Tolkien. It’s very, very derivative of fantasy tropes in general, but for most events in this book, you can actually find direct parallels to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Jordan apparently acknowledged openly that the beginning chapters are a deliberate homage to the scenes in the Shire with Frodo and the hobbits, but I think it goes beyond that. There were just too many things in this book that echoed that other story for me to let it pass completely. Too many things that felt like he’d taken one of his favorite things from LOTR then twisted it to fit into his story.

Examples of this off the top of my head (um, spoilers): Obviously, the Shire thing with Rand/Frodo leaving home for the first time after the Myrddraal/Ringwraiths come for him. Their flight from Emond’s Field where they ultimately escape closely pursuing Myrddral by use of a ferry. The decision to go into the famously haunted and very dangerous, even to the wisest of people, city of Shadar Logoth to escape the Trollocs is such an echo of Gandalf acceding to Gimli and taking the Fellowship into Moria, I can’t even with it. Right down to waking up the ancient evil that ultimately takes down one of their companions. The dagger Mat finds there is an obvious analog to the One Ring. And Mat himself plays the same role Pippin did in LOTR as the quest’s fool who endangers the company, although Mat is a more malicious and foolhardy version of the type than Pippin, who is more of a silly, gentle fool. The group is pursued by flocks of birds who are enchanted spies for the Dark One, which is basically what happens with Saruman’s birds as well. The group splits a third of the way through and has their own adventures before ultimately being reunited at the end. The Warder Lan’s backstory is basically Aragorn’s story dressed up in different clothes. And SPOILER Rand turning out the be the Dragon Reborn, and basically defeating the bad guy with almost no effort could be drawn from any number of fantasies END SPOILER. Etc.

However, ultimately the derivative nature of the story was not a hindrance to enjoying the story. And not everything in the story felt like it was poorly disguised borrowing.* Scattered throughout are elements that I genuinely found intriguing, and which I could see not only set it apart as a unique fantasy world, but which I would really like to see developed further, because they seem like they would be interesting sources of conflict. The Aes Sedai (people who are able to channel the One Power–basically the source of magic in this world) are a good example. I liked how they were clearly a force for good, but how their reputation is complicated mix of fear and respect among the people, instead of the hero-worship you’d probably expect. It gave the world verisimilitude, since the Aes Sedai were the ones that seemingly brought about the cultural tragedy thousands of years before that is seared in these peoples’ collective memories.

*I just want to take a moment here to talk about how dumb “Trollocs” are as a name for those creatures that Jordan made up. It sounds like he just called them Trolls with -ocs added on at the end. He couldn’t have gone with Crollocs? Or Drollocs? Or Grollocs? Or even Rollocs? Or literally anything else. All of those names are 1000% better than ‘Trollocs,’ which makes them sound like hybrid troll/orcs, which they’re not. I hate the name so much that if gifted only a singular trip in time, I would use it to find Jordan before he published this book and somehow convince him to change it. I would probably regret it later, but right now it seems an excellent plan.

The idea of the Wheel of Time also intrigued me, although how it will tie in to the overall story, I have no idea. Mostly, I think it was a clever way for Jordan to excuse all the major major conveniences that occur throughout the book. If the Wheel of Time deliberately exerts influence over particular people, then of course they would end up in THAT place at THAT time in order to meet THOSE people, etc. I also really liked the idea that, like the Aes Sedai, their savior (“The Dragon”) is someone they fear, rather than worship.

I know there were other things that I liked, but this review is getting long, so I’ll save those for another time. Mostly, what I saw in this first book is the promise of an immersive world, which is my very favorite thing about fantasy. It’s clear that Jordan thought out his world in detail, from how each culture interacts politically, gender roles, all that stuff. (Although, he’s no Tolkien–it never has that feel of history that you get in Lord of the Rings, and his made up languages are nowhere close to Tolkien’s. To be fair, languages were Tolkien’s thing, but still.) The world in the Wheel of Time feels like it’s been there for ages, and like all good fantasy stories, it stimulates that part of my brain that likes that feeling of WHEEEEEEEE WE’RE GOING EXPLORING. The lady characters were actually pretty great. All of them were better than all of the male characters, who were actually rather lacking personality, excepting Mat, who had personality in the form of annoying douchenozzle. (I’ve heard Mat becomes a really intriguing character, which also makes me excited; I love to watch characters evolve.) Perrin’s wolf thing, while you could argue still might be derivative, felt different enough that I thought it was really cool.

In terms of the actual writing, well, it was pretty rocky. The dialogue felt stilted and unnatural to me a lot of the time, probably because Jordan was trying to emulate a style that didn’t come naturally to him. The narrative description was severely overwritten at points, which felt to me like Jordan was trying to consciously make his story more epic, but it doesn’t come across that way. I wish he would have simplified his language. The parts where it was the most awkward were when he told the stories of the past worlds, where we were clearly meant to be caught up in the epic beautifulness of all these tales, but for me they came off as trying too hard.

Anyway, I had a complicated and rather short-lived relationship with this book over the course of the four days I read it in. Ultimately, it was a positive experience, and I am cautiously excited about reading the rest of the series. I’ve heard lots of things: That after this book, the imitation largely goes away and Jordan starts to build his own world. That the first five or so books are pretty great. That he starts to lose it and become overly involved with his world around book six. And that the last two books he wrote are very hard to get through. I’ve also heard that the last three books, especially the final one, bring everything together into a worthy ending. So yeah, I feel good about my decision to finally read this series. I don’t think it will be a favorite, but I’m definitely having a good time.