24-02-2009, 09:08 PM
I'll start with a list of all the books and a cover shot of the first book in the series.
1. The Eye of the World (1990)
2. The Great Hunt (1990)
3. The Dragon Reborn (1991)
4. The Shadow Rising (1992)
5. The Fires of Heaven (1993)
6. Lord of Chaos (1994)
7. A Crown of Swords (1996)
8. The Path of Daggers (1998)
9. Winter's Heart (2000)
10. Crossroads of Twilight (2003)
11. Knife of Dreams (005)
12. A Memory of Light (scheduled for 2009)
![[Image: WoT01_TheEyeOfTheWorld.jpg]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/WoT01_TheEyeOfTheWorld.jpg)
The author is Robert Jordan, who actually passed away at the end of 2007. Another author is finishing up the last book of the series with all of Jordan's note and stuff. It is a fantasy series set in a medieval world that does contain magic. Now on to the story itself.
This series is very epic in scope. Each book is at least 600 pages or so. Its a good series, but it takes a bit of time investment. The story starts out in a very small village that is basically in the middle of no where. Nothing exciting about the place at all. The plot follows three boys/young men from this village and their travels and exploits throughout the world.
I never like to give too much away, so as not to give away any plot, but I'll give a roundabout description of how the plot goes. If you start at the beginning, you will probably have to read through at least 50 pages before anything really interesting happens. Jordan very much tries to set a mood and is very descriptive about everything. As an example, everyone, and I mean everyone has a name. So, if there is a man selling fruit on the corner of the street as the main character walks by, its not just a man selling fruit, its Jim Bob selling fruit on the corner. There are countless instances where non-descript people pop up later on in the story line and affect the plot dramatically. So you never know who is actually important and who is just there as background.
As far as characters, there are tons in these novels. There are the 3 main characters you start with, but the main character list grows at least to 10 or maybe a few more, that the story follows around, plus 20 or so other non-main characters that affect how things go. Beyond that, there are at least 100 or more other sub-characters that have interaction with all these other main characters. It can get a little confusing trying to keep track of who is who, especially if you have taken a long break between reading books. Jordan does a pretty good job of refreshing your memory as to who is who though, so the remembering of characters is not too bad.
For the general scope of the series, it kind of goes like this. It starts out with personal relationships. One person interacting with another. As the story progresses, these interactions grow to include groups interacting with other groups. The scopes keeps getting bigger and bigger. Armies versus armies, cities versus cities, countries versus countries, until practically the whole world is involved which each other on some scale. This growth of scope is very interesting to me.
Overall I would say this is a must read if you like the fantasy genre and if you have the time to invest in reading all the books.
1. The Eye of the World (1990)
2. The Great Hunt (1990)
3. The Dragon Reborn (1991)
4. The Shadow Rising (1992)
5. The Fires of Heaven (1993)
6. Lord of Chaos (1994)
7. A Crown of Swords (1996)
8. The Path of Daggers (1998)
9. Winter's Heart (2000)
10. Crossroads of Twilight (2003)
11. Knife of Dreams (005)
12. A Memory of Light (scheduled for 2009)
The author is Robert Jordan, who actually passed away at the end of 2007. Another author is finishing up the last book of the series with all of Jordan's note and stuff. It is a fantasy series set in a medieval world that does contain magic. Now on to the story itself.
This series is very epic in scope. Each book is at least 600 pages or so. Its a good series, but it takes a bit of time investment. The story starts out in a very small village that is basically in the middle of no where. Nothing exciting about the place at all. The plot follows three boys/young men from this village and their travels and exploits throughout the world.
I never like to give too much away, so as not to give away any plot, but I'll give a roundabout description of how the plot goes. If you start at the beginning, you will probably have to read through at least 50 pages before anything really interesting happens. Jordan very much tries to set a mood and is very descriptive about everything. As an example, everyone, and I mean everyone has a name. So, if there is a man selling fruit on the corner of the street as the main character walks by, its not just a man selling fruit, its Jim Bob selling fruit on the corner. There are countless instances where non-descript people pop up later on in the story line and affect the plot dramatically. So you never know who is actually important and who is just there as background.
As far as characters, there are tons in these novels. There are the 3 main characters you start with, but the main character list grows at least to 10 or maybe a few more, that the story follows around, plus 20 or so other non-main characters that affect how things go. Beyond that, there are at least 100 or more other sub-characters that have interaction with all these other main characters. It can get a little confusing trying to keep track of who is who, especially if you have taken a long break between reading books. Jordan does a pretty good job of refreshing your memory as to who is who though, so the remembering of characters is not too bad.
For the general scope of the series, it kind of goes like this. It starts out with personal relationships. One person interacting with another. As the story progresses, these interactions grow to include groups interacting with other groups. The scopes keeps getting bigger and bigger. Armies versus armies, cities versus cities, countries versus countries, until practically the whole world is involved which each other on some scale. This growth of scope is very interesting to me.
Overall I would say this is a must read if you like the fantasy genre and if you have the time to invest in reading all the books.