Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

Knife of Dreams is the 11th book of the Wheel of Time and the last book in the series that Robert Jordan was able to complete before his premature death.

By the time Jordan started writing this he had been diagnosed with the disease that did eventually claim his life and had to face the reality that he may not be able to complete the series.

I think this prompted him to take a look at where the series was going, and come to the conclusion after looking through Crossroads of Twilight that the answer was: nowhere.

I hoped Knife of Dreams would be better than Crossroads of Twilight, it couldn't possibly be worse, could it?

The prologue, while still being overlong as had become customary with the books, contained more story development than the entire 700+ page book that proceeded it.

Knife of Dreams tightened the whole story up, started to conclude story lines (Faile was finally rescued) and showed signs of eventually reuniting all the characters for a big finale.

It suffers, as does most of the Wheel of Time, from Jordan's excesses and repetition (there's an unusual preoccupation with spanking. It could have almost been retitled Fifty Shades of Wheel of Time) as well as his delight in really hurting his characters without actually killing them.

I started to see some of the fan delight with Egwene, although she only has a section of the prologue and one really long chapter she rocks it. Conversely Elayne turned into the most ineffectual and tedious ruler in the history of epic fantasy.

Mat alternates between taking charge and being SuperMat, to being Tuon's play thing. She even continually and very annoyingly refers to him as Toy. This was hard enough to deal with when she was talking to him, but when one chapter took her PoV it was downright confusing. Would it have killed her to at least use his name when she's thinking about him, rather than addressing him?

I'd been hearing things about Rand's hand (that wasn't meant to sound as stupid as it does), but I didn't know where he actually lost it. This is it. Jordan has a habit of emphasising the small things and glossing over the big ones. I nearly missed the loss of the hand. Loial got married somewhere along the line and I missed that too. The Ogier take an age to make a decision, but they appear to favour shotgun weddings. Odd.

Overall this was an improvement on Crossroads of Twilight and sets it up well for the final three books which were written by Brandon Sanderson, working from extensive notes left by Robert Jordan.

Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan

I'm honestly not sure how I made it through this book and retained my sanity.

I'd become used to the Wheel of Time books not exactly moving things along, but over 600 pages and no story development. Actually a I tell a lie, in about the last 3 pages, 2 things happen with do hint at story development.

I honestly didn't think it was possible to write something as long as Crossroads of Twilight and not move your story, which has already gone for 1,000's of pages over 9 books, at all.

How this book did not kill the entire series stone dead, I do not know. It is a testament to the fans that they stuck with the series through the complete and utter twaddle that composes Crossroads of Twilight. I think Elayne spent an entire chapter whinging about tea. In fact there seemed to be a strange preoccupation with various beverages throughout the book as a whole. It replaced the spanking obsession of a few books earlier.

I'm totally gob smacked. I can't say anything else. Jordan could have written blah blah blah for most of this books length and it would have made just as much sense.

Apparently from what I've heard that Robert Jordan gets his mojo back in Knife of Dreams. I hope so, because Crossroads of Twilight is one of the worst, most pointless, unnecessary books I have ever had the displeasure to trudge through.

Winter's Heart by Robert Jordan

Another month, another Wheel of Time book. This time it's Book 9 Winter's Heart.

I seriously do not know how Robert Jordan got away with it. By this stage he wasn't even pretending that he had any intention of advancing the story and was perfectly content to fill up page after page with elaborate descriptions and continually repeating himself.

The prologue went for nearly 80 pages! I counted at least 4 places where it could have been broken and a new chapter started. They weren't editing it by this stage either, they weren't even attempting to do anything beyond correcting spelling and punctuation.

When the story starts (ha!) it followed Perrin and Faile. Faile had been kidnapped by the Shaido Aiel and was being mistreated by them. She of course knows her husband will rescue her, although she seems to like being dominated by the Aiel warrior in charge of her.

The next few chapters centre on Perrin, he spends the entire time wondering where Faile is and why he can't find her and has she been abducted. For God's sake! Every one of these chapters is completely redundant, because the reader already knows! Just come to a decision Perrin and go after her! Perrin does decide to do so, then the book abandons that particular plot line for the rest of it's 400 or so remaining pages. Mystifying.

Elayne blah blah blah. Nynaeve blah. Lan blah. Avidendha blah blah, I will knife you if you look at me sideways, blah. Min and Rand arrive. The girls bond as sisters and then they all bond Rand as a Warder, despite the fact that Alanna has already done this and Elayne predictably threatens to have her birched. I've never understood women's fascination with Rand and this is another example. Admittedly being bonded to Elayne and Aviendha would be a fate worse than death, but Min seems like a nice level headed girl. Far too good for Rand. The bonding also brings up the issue that neither Aviendha or Min are Aes Sedai. Aviendha is sort of the Aiel equivalent, but they don't have Warders, and Min doesn't even like the Aes Sedai much, she has visions, but nothing beyond that.

It takes about half of the book to finally find out what happened to Mat! You remember him? He was in mortal danger at the end of Book 7 and then completely ignored in Book 8. Apparently he wasn't really in that much trouble, because he's in the same place, with the same people, doing the same thing. The only difference is the Seanchan are ruling the place. Jordan also spent a lot of time explaining Seanchan Asian influenced culture. I did find this interesting (not the descriptions of the culture, they were sleep inducing, but the fact that it was Asian influenced, they were descended from Artur Hawkwing, Randland's King Arthur equivalent), but it's not expanded upon. Mat has to meet them, because there's a prophecy that he'll marry their queen The Daughter of the Nine Moons.

After more than 500 pages of complete and utter twaddle, because that is what it is, Rand finally does something that is important to the story, unfortunately this only takes 30 pages and doesn't make up for all the nonsense before it.

There's a glossary at the end of the book. It describes the cultures and terms. It does it better than anything in the books and really a 100 page glossary like this could have been put out in place of Winter's Heart and it would have been better.

The word is that Crossroads of Twilight is even worse. I'll have to read it, because I really don't think that's possible.

The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan

I really have to take my hat off to Robert Jordan here with The Path of Daggers. I would not have thought it possible to write a 500 page plus novel and not advance the plot at all, but in this the 8th book of The Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan manages to do exactly that.

I knew I was in for this when I realised I'd gotten up to book 8 in my reread. All I could remember from this particular volume from when I read it years ago was that Mat, after being left on the edge of a very high cliff at the end of The Crown of Swords, was frustratingly not in this book at all. I think he gets mentioned three times.

For the rest of them they wander around, they bicker and squabble, but they don't ever actually accomplish anything. I'm sure Perrin is only in this book, early and towards the end, so that Faile can be kidnapped by a rogue band of Aiel and give him something to do in the next book.

There isn't even much of Nynaeve and what there is, doesn't help. Jordan even managed to make me lose interest in Nynaeve!

Rand continues to be frustratingly inconsistent. The man has near godlike powers, yet when some of his female bodyguards decide to lay an absolute beat down on him he accepts it without really attempting to defend himself, yet when Cadsuane tries to tell him what to do he trashes the room using his power. It just doesn't make sense. It's also pretty sloppy writing from someone who should have known better.

What had happened by now was that Jordan had introduced so many characters and story threads he couldn't control them anymore and was unable to keep all the balls in the air at once. Interestingly this didn't stop him from adding in more characters and story lines. Worryingly there have been signs in it's last two volumes that George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is headed down this path.

I can't remember any of volume 9 Winter's Heart either, so that's concerning. I do know that was when I jumped the good ship The Wheel of Time fed up with the inertia, though.

A Crown of Swords by Robert Jordan

A Crown of Swords could have also been subtitled Searching for a Bowl, because that’s really what this one was about, although the ‘bowl searchers’ (Nynaeve, Elayne, Mat and peripherally Aviendha) don’t show up until about a third of the way in.

Jordan continues to belabour points that he may have somehow not hammered into readers heads yet, and he seems obsessed with interior design. I do wonder if he was a frustrated home renovator.  I’ve largely lost interest in Rand by this stage. He gets to spend some quality time with Min, but most of the time he’s wondering if he’s going mad or not. I think the erratic and irrational behaviour exhibited by him nearly always points to the answer being yes. On the bright side legendary Aes Sedai Cadsuane turns up and if nothing else she’ll provide entertainment going forward, as she seems to think spanking Rand (actually spanking anyone judging by the way she talks) will be the answer to all his problems. Yes, at 7 books in, it is all getting a bit silly at times. A lot of fans are irritated by Cadsuane. I kind of like her. She does come across a bit like an older Nynaeve, so this may be why.

Egwene’s story is largely set at the ‘little tower’ which is on the move. It’s a lot of political posturing, and only seems to be included for the return of Lan to the story. At some stage she’ll have to have a showdown with the White Tower, but why inject some excitement into this instalment when there are so many periopheral issues to concentrate on, like her adolescent sexual fantasies about Elayne’s older brother Gawyn.

Oh, I nearly forgot Perrin. That is entirely understandable I feel. He’s there early, worries needlessly about Faile, sniffs a few things, then wanders off to do something else. I assume we’ll find out what in the next book.

The best bit of the book, as always seems to be for me, involves Nynaeve, Elayne and Mat. The story comes alive when these characters are in it. Their dialog is quite often snappy and funny and makes sense. They do things, things happen to them and around them. Admittedly the idea of the Bowl of Winds is quite silly (so the weather’s off because of a bowl hidden in a warehouse in Ebou Dar, oookay then), but the journey they take through Ebou Dar to get there is interesting. They uncover a bunch of wilders, face down some other Aes Sedai, it just moves when they’re front and centre. Honestly if Jordan had made then the central characters and forgotten all about Rand I would have been much happier. The books would have also been a lot shorter and better for it. I didn’t even groan when Aviendha appeared, maybe this was because she slapped Elayne down.  I’m with Mat: the ‘goat kissing’ Daughter Heir needs to be put in her place every so often.

Bowl of the Winds, aside the author made another odd decision regarding Mat. He is all but raped by a ruler called Tylin, and it was played for laughs. Weird and not particularly funny.

The pacing was a bit off. One moment I remember clearly from the first time I read this was that Mat’s story ended with him running all over Ebou Dar as it was being invaded by the Seanchan, looking for Olver and then the dice in his head that roll when his luck is in stop dead. Now that is a great ending. That is what those who write cliffhanger endings dram about. Those who like reading them want to read this sort of heart in mouth, what happens next ending. Perfect place to end the book. Yet we have a few more dreary chapters of Rand facing off against Sammael and a bunch of trollocs. Why is it that hes the Dragon Reborn when he’s showing off for the likes of Cadsuane, but when faced with what is form him now a fairly mundane threat like trollocs he winds up in mortal danger? Cadsuane had to pull him out of this one and I wouldn’t blame her if she did decide to spank him.

From memory Book 8 The Path of Daggers is pretty dire and it doesn’t contain the answer to the question that everyone was asking after reading A Crown Of Swords, what happened to Mat? I will however push on and hope that my memory is playing me false here.   

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan

The Shadow Rising is the fourth book of Robert Jordan's epic Wheel of Time series. I've seen some rate this as one of their favourites of the sequence. I can remember really liking the fifth book, but this one not so much. It's necessary and it has some great bits, but overall it's quite uneven.

Most of the Wheel of Time books seemed to go for about 1,000 pages, but whilst reading The Shadow Rising I kept wondering what Jordan's editor was doing, other than checking spelling and punctuation. There really is a huge amount of padding that could be easily cut without affecting the final outcome. At the end because it really doesn't go anywhere and cliffs are hung left right and centre you really wonder why this wasn't broken up and added onto the 3rd and 5th books.

Possibly some of my dissatisfaction could stem from the fact that Jordan seems to be interested in Rand's story with the Aiel, and I find that particular section fairly boring. Egwene and Moiraine liven it up a little, as does Mat, but most of the time it's yawn inducing for me.

Three of the other stories had far more potential and one of them, despite being the most exciting part of the book, was really given rather short shrift.

It could also be the females Jordan writes. I've heard it that he based most of his female characters on his wife; Harriet. If I were Harriet I don't know if I'd be flattered or horrified, I lean towards the latter. I'll just go through a few of them and how I see them.

I like Nynaeve, yes, she's a bad tempered shrew, and I personally wouldn't like her if I met her, but she's very honest about what she is and she's comfortable with it. The same cannot be said for some of her companions. Elayne is a bit of an airhead, the scene where Nynaeve sobers the Daughter Heir of Andor up in her usual no nonsense way is one of the book's highlights. Egwene is very controlling and manipulative, and I have no doubt she'd sell her own family down the river if it came down to a choice between them and her precious Aes Sedai. Then there's Aviendha, I didn't mind Aviendha in The Dragon Reborn, but I came to really loathe her in The Shadow Rising. She's homicidal and her behaviour doesn't even make sense. I kept hoping she'd get killed in one of the many fights the Aiel get themselves into during the book, but alas it was not to be.

The parts of the book that took place in the Two Rivers, Tanchico and the Tower were excellent. They could have cut Rand's entire section and got a far better book out of it. I'm reading on for what happens in those stories, not Rand. He could walk off a cliff into a bottomless pit and take Aviendha with him and immediately improve the story.

The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan

Back to Randland. The first time I read The Dragon Reborn I was under the impression that The Wheel of Time was a trilogy. I’m not sure why. Possibly because at the time most fantasy epics were trilogies, with the exception of David Eddings, but his 2 5 book series were both really short enough to have been fitted into 3 books.  Anyway I can remember reading The Dragon Reborn, getting closer and closer to the end of the book and thinking to myself: ‘How is he going to wrap this whole thing up in the next 50 pages.’ Of course I got to the end and was told that the adventure would continue in book 4. Groan.

I actually enjoyed The Dragon Reborn. I’ve liked it every time I’ve read it, and I’ve read it a few times. This is the book where I think some of the series problems became evident. One of the most regular criticisms levelled at Robert Jordan regarding The Wheel of Time is that he takes too long to make things happen. The story continues, but it doesn’t advance. Maybe I didn’t really notice it the first time because I thought it was a trilogy, I’m not sure. The book is about 600 pages long without the glossary, but the story only really advances in the last 200 pages. Despite that I didn’t mind the other 400 odd pages.

I do question his choice of PoV for one section of the book, and that’s because he chose Perrin. Of the 3 male ta’veren in the book I find Perrin the hardest to read. He’s very dull, and any story seen through his eyes suffers the same fate, plus the group he’s with seem to do a lot of that aimless wandering about that anyone who has read my reviews know I just absolutely adore in a book (where’s that sarcasm emoticon?). In The Dragon Reborn Jordan splits his main protagonists up into 3 loose groups for the bulk of the narrative. Perrin, Loial, Moraine and Lan comprise one group (Rand was with them, but he ran off, which is why they spend most of the rest of the book looking for him), Egwene, Elayne and Nynaeve are another and Mat and Thom Merrilin are the third. Jordan spends nearly 400 pages orchestrating events so that the three groups along with Rand will all be in the same city at the same time, to witness Rand’s confrontation with the Dark One (again) and proclaim him (again) as The Dragon Reborn.

With that particular précis of things it sounds like I didn’t much enjoy what I was reading, but weirdly enough I actually did. One reason was Mat. When I first decided to reread the series from go to whoa one thing that was firm in my mind was that Mat was my favourite character. After the first two books I was wondering if my mind had played me false, because Mat wasn’t particularly likeable, nor did he even do that much. Once the Amyrlin Seat (leader of the Aes Sedai) has broken the connection with the ruby hilted dagger from Shadar Logoth, the Mat I knew and liked emerged. He pushed his luck to the hilt, he wheeled and dealed, he had memories of youthful hijinks and curiousities complete with their usual painful consequences, he put himself in harms way for his friends while telling himself that he was doing it for his own benefit. This is why I always liked Matrim Cauthon.

I was a little disappointed when the 3 girls left the White Tower in Tar Valon. As I’ve said in earlier reviews the Aes Sedai fascinate me and I thoroughly enjoyed the dynamics and the politics in the White Tower, along with the little bits of information and history I was being fed. The girls aren’t entirely without their charms on a road trip either, especially the big sister/little sister relationship between Nynaeve and Elayne, who being the Daughter Heir of Andor isn’t used to being put in her place, but nevertheless does accept it from Nynaeve. When she gets angry Nynaeve has a habit of tugging the braid she generally wears her hair in, she does it so often that it’s become a bit of a joke about the series in general. There wasn’t a lot of braid tugging in the first two books, but it is in there with a vengeance in book 3. I’m surprised Nynaeve hasn’t pulled her hair out by the roots.

At times The Dragon Reborn has the air of a travelogue through a fictional land. It’s interesting, but one feels that maybe the world building could have been done earlier, or cut down on considerably.

The Dragon Reborn sees the introduction of two female characters I can remember not particularly liking later on. The intensely annoying adventuress Faile, who spends most of the book trying and succeeding to get Perrin to fall for her, and the Aiel Spear Maiden Aviendha. I did occasionally find Aviendha funny, but most of the time she was a bit of a Red Sonja caricature.

Despite the criticisms The Dragon Reborn is an integral and strangely compelling entry in The Wheel of Time, and I’m looking forward to rereading The Shadow Rising, where hopefully some of the questions raised in The Dragon Reborn will be answered.

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan

As I said in my review of The Eye of the World I've read a number of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books a few times. The Great Hunt; the second book of the Wheel of Time, has always been one of my favourites in the series. I think it's probably the one I like the most.

I did find it hard to get into The Eye of the World. There's the Tolkien similarities for a start, but I could get past those fairly easily (I'm one of the few people who doesn't really have issues with Terry Brooks' Sword of Shannara on those grounds), there was a lot of world building in The Eye of the World, also plenty of scene setting, plus readers were getting to know the characters, and Jordan's love of intricate description. These all made The Eye of the World a challenging read. It wasn't the best thing I'd ever read, I didn't get that whole shot of nitro glycerine to the brain thing that I got with A Game of Thrones and The Lies of Locke Lamora, but I was intrigued and I picked up The Great Hunt as soon as I saw it.

To a certain extent it's a very different book. It has the same characters and it continues the story begun in The Eye of the World. The setting is slightly different. The Shienarans have a distinct Asian flavour to them, and are very different from Tolkien, and with some exceptions, from most epic fantasy of the time.

Robert Jordan decided to split his central group up as well in The Great Hunt, this had also happened in The Eye of the World, but I felt the split was more emphasised, and certainly more deliberate than the previous book. Rand, Mat, Perrin and Loial go off to look for the Horn of Valere and the dagger from Shadar Logoth, while Nynaeve and Egwene head off to Tar Valon to become Aes Sedai.

Rand, Loial and a 'sniffer' called Hurin break away from the rest of the group and get stuck in the wilds of Cairhien with a bewitching and beautiful young lady called Selene. Rand, Hurin and even Loial become besotted with her, despite her being central casting's perfect femme fatale. Admittedly she's not totally evil, but she will cause problems later on. One thing that was present in The Eye of the World, and was also here was Rand and Perrin's belief that the other knows how to talk to girls. It's funny once or twice, but two books in it's rather tiresome, besides the only one of the trio that is any good with girls is Mat.

Rand's story does eventually see him reunited with Mat and Perrin, as well as the gleeman Thom Merrilin, believed by Rand to have perished in an encounter with a Fade in The Eye of the World. Rand's story contained two sequences I thought were very strong. One was him being taken through all the possible lives he could have lived, and dying in each one with the Dark One whispering in his ear 'I win again Lews Therin' at the moment of death. This was done well and it was very powerful, it also confirms that Rand is the true Dragon reborn. The other was his sword fight with the Seanchan blademaster. The descriptions of the sword movements are a bit silly and over done, ie: The Basset's Ears Flap In The Breeze, etc..., but they're fairly effective in giving you the idea of the fight, without using intricate descriptions of each and every movement in the encounter, this is unusual for Jordan who has never been accused of being ecomomical with his use of words. On the other side of the ledger Rand's story does also contain some of that pointless wandering around that appears in so many fantasy epics, and really only serves to eat up pages and frustrate readers.

I've always said Mat was my favourite, and I hold to that, but it hasn't happened yet. He's not in this all that much, and he's fairly unpleasant when he is, however my other favourite Nynaeve shines. The Aes Sedai as an organisation really interest me, and the way they do what they do. So to see Egwene and Nynaeve in the centre of that, along with Elayne Trakand, the Daughter Heir of Andor was quite a treat for me. I hadn't really experienced anyone go into an organisation like the Aes Sedai and study them in the way Jordan did in The Great Hunt.

I know I've gotten the order in which things happen in the books all messed about in my head, because the Seanchan appear in this, and they're really a villain. I didn't think that happened until a few books on.

There's some fairly extraneous stuff through the middle of the book, which I think a more ruthless editor could have trimmed, and would have possibly made it stronger, but it comes home strong and the last 200 pages are gripping. It still remains one of the best books in the series, as far as I got anyway, and it's still my favourite. Next month: The Dragon Reborn.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

The J’s have been good to me, admittedly there were only 3 of them, but they were still a good letter. I’d read two and liked them both after multiple rereads, and although I hadn’t read Howl’s Moving Castle, I had seen the film and enjoyed it, so the book stood a fair chance of getting a thumbs up, which it did.

I first picked up Robert Jordan’s Eye of the World (the opening volume to his immense The Wheel of Time saga) not long after it was originally published. I didn’t love it, but it did grab me enough to hook me into the series for about 8 or 9 books until I lost interest, but determined to read it all once the final volume had come out. The book coming up where it did in the list is fairly good timing, as the Wheel of Time’s finale is due out later this year, so by the time I read through the whole saga at the rate of a book a month the last one will be well and truly out.

I’ve read The Eye of the World about 7 or 8 times (I used to read it every time a new book in The Wheel of Time was published), and it’s always entertained. I hadn’t read it in many years, so I was interested to see how it would hold up this time. Surprisingly well is the verdict.

The first book is at times rather Tolkienesque, with some elements very obviously influenced by Professor Tolkien’s masterpiece. The world has echoes of that, too, but the idea that it is built on the remnants of a technologically advanced society that was wiped out by some cataclysmic event had echoes of Terry Brooks The Sword of Shannara.

The story is very typical of epic fantasy. Young farmboy finds out that he has a mysterious destiny, gathers a band of like minded individuals with various skills or personality types around him and leaves his home to have an adventure and fulfil said destiny. That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. The band will be split, have adventures on their own and discover things about themselves, they’ll be reunited and ultimately fight the good fight against the bad guy, in this case he goes by multiple names and guises, but is most commonly known as the Dark One. They’re reluctant to give him his true name, which made me think of Harry Potter and Voldemort, but Jordan predates Rowling, and I doubt she ever read any of his work.

It’s a long book, and it’s going to clock in at a staggering 14 books when it’s done, all of a similar length to The Eye of the World, it may actually be a little on the short side compared to some of the others. It takes a bit of work to read, and it had been so long for me that I had the order of things and what happens in which book rather jumbled up in my head. I did enjoy returning to Randland and reacquainting myself with him and his friends. I know Mat was always my favourite character, but now I kind of like Nynaeve more.

It’s become one of the classics and is considered a bit of a must read for anyone wanting to get into epic fantasy. It’s got me all keyed up for The Great Hunt next month.

Similar works to explore are of course the sequels, the last 3 being written by Brandon Sanderson, after Jordan tragically passed away after a battle with a particularly virulent blood disease. The Lord of the Rings, which clearly inspired some of The Eye of the World. Tad Williams’ Tolkien homage: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. George R.R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is often mentioned along with The Wheel of Time, but I don’t see many similarities, other than scope and the fact that fans worry George Martin may also not be able to see his project finish. There’s also Steven Erikson’s Malazan Books of the Fallen, but despite length and size there aren’t a lot of similarities. If you wanted something lighter and not as well written you could also look at Terry Brooks The Sword of Shannara.