Plot or Premise

The Wheel of Time turns, and the battle between the Dragon of Light and the Lord of the Dark occurs over and over, with destiny weaving people’s fates or people’s actions nudging destiny. Three young men from a distant village are attacked by beasts of the Dark and are pursued across the countryside, aided by an advanced witch, a soldier, two novice witches, and various travellers that they meet along the way.

What I Liked and Didn’t Like

The story is epic, with a wide breadth of story and a lot happening across the pages. As the first of 14 stories, even the first one is amazing in its piece of the overall storyline. The steady young shepherd, Rand; the quiet young blacksmith, Perrin; and the mischievous farmer, Mat, are targeted by the Dark Lord for reasons none of them understand. The forces at play, the history of the battle…it all seems like simple legends and stories to their quiet area of the world. Until Trollocs and Shadowmen attack their homes and start chasing them across the countryside.

I love the main characters and most of their story (Mat is affected by some dark forces that get a bit monotonous over time). Spoiler alert, but it turns out Perrin can communicate with wolves, which is startling and disturbing news to him. Egwene and Nynaeve, two young women from the same small village, turn out to be potential powerful witches. And a powerful witch, Moiraine, plus her protector, Lan, are all great characters. Any one of them could be a story in and of itself, but the pattern weaves them together. I also like that the first book is relatively complete at the end…while there is a continuing storyline, the first part is “done” and thus self-contained.

There are two things I don’t like about the book, and the first is a bit pedantic. Or pedestrian. There is some seriously bad editing in the book. I can accept some things being repeated a few too many times…if it’s an important plot point, you don’t want anyone to miss it. It’s a little heavy-handed in some places, but well, okay. However, there is a point where Mat and Rand are on a long road, lasting about 10d perhaps in total. Maybe two weeks, it’s hard to tell. Anyway, as they are on one stretch, it is really dusty. But there is a reference to how it’s okay because they have neck scarves that a local farmer and his wife gave them, which used to belong to their sons. No biggie. Except fast forward about six chapters, they’re almost at the end of the road, nearing the big city, and another farmer gives them two scarves that used to belong to his son. It’s the live version of the scene that they already told us about six chapters / days earlier. Huh? Are we supposed to believe it happened identically twice? Or did they somehow time-travel and not tell us? Just bad editing. That shouldn’t happen in a majorly commercial book with multiple printings.

The second problem is much bigger and endemic to the series. There are way too many characters. Note that I read book one, then watched three seasons of the TV show, started book 2, and I had almost no idea who was who. I’m usually pretty good at keeping track of characters, even with similar names, and I had actual faces from the TV series to help me remember who was who. Nope. I got 3 chapters in and was almost completely confused. Partly because I realized that with OVER 250 CHARACTERS in book one, I didn’t really know who everyone was going into book two. FYI, some of the books in the series have over 600 referenced characters. Now, sure, many of them are simply names thrown out as part of historical references. I finally had to go online, find a list of ALL the characters in book 1 and create my own cheat sheet. The laundry lists at the end of the books were just not cutting it.

Here’s my cheat sheet for Book 1 of 14, with only about 35 (!) particularly relevant to the outcome.

The Bottom Line

Epic storyline, too many characters