Wheel of Time

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose…

This is how most of Robert Jordan’s books begin. Now when Mistborn is finished and passed on to starting to read this book series so I finally could try and inhale the last piece I have of my dead author. I finished New Spring between Mistborn – The Final Empire and Mistborn – The Well of Ascension so I’ve now started with the Eye of the World and I must say that I am ashamed of myself. Really ashamed to even for one moment compare Brandon even close to Jordan…

Just a couple of loose chapter into the series I realize that it has been too long since I read the series from the beginning. I think it’s over two years now, maybe even more. Most likely the last time I read the whole series was when The Knife of Dreams came out… three years ago. I bought two of them. One through the internet shop Bokus, and another via Akademibokhandeln in Luleå. I wanted to get both the covers so that was why I did that. They both arrived on the same date and I later sold one of my copies to Drak at the same time as we went to Uppcon and I bought his computer that I later named Mars that I sold just a couple of weeks ago.

However if I should get back to Jordan I now see that he is so much greater than Brandon and even if Brandon were to try to copy this he won’t be able to do more than a pale shadow of the original style of the god of fantasy. Jordan is not only great in his way of making a story but his style is really exceptional which really gives life to the book in a completely different way than Brandon. I first thought, before I started reading this for real, that it was due to the fact that Mistborn is set in a Doomsday environment but I later realized that this wasn’t the case. Brandon gives life to a set of characters and makes up feel the atmosphere but that’s about it. Jordan gives life to every page and really makes it feel realistic, which unfortunately Brandon doesn’t.

Mistborn sure has a great potential but it feels a little bit simplistic like a game with set pieces moving very predictable yet unpredictable. Well, hard to really describe the feeling but there are several fallacies in his world that makes it seemed unrealistic, things that need some planning out or something. Like Nianze. However, both authors have good stories; it’s only that Jordan’s story is so much more complex and intriguing than Brandon’s. He has a set world, which is moving around and around just like the pattern he describes driven by the Wheel of Time which is described to be driven by the One Power.

Well, even though I’ve read this book so many times it still feels exhilarating to read it once again. Before I re-read the book mostly to see the pattern of the bigger picture and to notice more of the events to be able to figure out some clues to what was to happen. Even though I know of pratically almost every event that will happen and almost the details of the events the beginning of the series is more vivid to me than the rest and I still think in Swedish terms when it comes to book one, Farornas Väg (part one of the Eye of the World), to twelve, Fursten av Kaos (part two of the Lord of Chaos). After that book I started to read in English terms and even count the books by the English terms too. Then it suddenly becomes book seven – a Crown of Swords and book eight – Path of Daggers and book nine – Winters Heart instead. But that’s mostly because I’ve read the first twelve books in Swedish about three times more than the English ones.

Considering how long ago it was since I last read the book series I think that my capacity and my way of thinking have changed a great deal and most likely I will be able to see some things in other perspective now. I know that I disliked and thought of the drought periods – the periods in which the book seemed slow because it focused mostly on political events and the worlds changing – as hard to get through before. But I think that now I will have a greater interest in them and also find it easier to read and understand what’s going on. There is two “droughts” in the series. A brief one around the middle of The Shadows Raising and near the end of Fires of Heaven and then a long one going all the way from a Crown a Swords directly after The Lord of Chaos to the Crossroads of Twilight. Of course there was some events in between that was interesting, mostly in the end of Winters Heart, but mostly I felt it a really slow part. Knife of Dreams on the other hand completely beat my favourite The Lord of Chaos.

Well, this is the last I’ll have to read of Jordan and maybe I will read the two books he wrote about Conan the Barbarian too but I’m not so sure. I don’t really like that world and how it works. The movies weren’t that great and the world is… I don’t know… to brutal. Maybe Jordan did a fabulous job on it, I wouldn’t think otherwise but I’m not sure anyway. Even so I will read this and at least hope that Brandon won’t destroy the end of this series completely…

Too bad that he hadn’t time to start on Infinity of Heaven, I really looked forward to read that book.

Best regards,
Herid Fel