Books of 2008, Part III

This one took me a while, but a couple of days ago I finished The Dragon Reborn, book three (of a planned twelve) of the late Robert Jordan's epic fantasy saga, The Wheel of Time.

I'm late to this party, I know; all the hardcore WoT-ies (including many of my siblings and my dad) started reading these books years ago. I read the first two or three books back when I was in high school, but I stopped reading them because I would only devote five or ten minutes a day to reading for pleasure, right before I went to bed. That's no way to read an 8000-page saga featuring hundreds of characters, unique locations and storylines, intrigue, shifting alliances, and all that stuff. So I put it aside and figured I'd come back to it later.

Well, when I got back into reading for fun (imagine that!) I knew I wanted to come back and read this series. I figured it would probably be better to wait until all the books were out and then read them, but I didn't want to wait that long, and besides, eleven of the books were in paperback, and #12 can't be too far out, right? So I got the first book during a bookstore trip, and came home to read that Jordan had just been diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. It figures.

So, now, everyone knows that Jordan has died, leaving his magnum opus unfinished. According to his blog, just a few days before he succumbed to his illness, he spent the weekend telling his close family members exactly how the story was going to end. What a neat experience that must have been! Unfortunately, of course, he'll never be able to see his 20-year journey end.

The task of finishing the book, A Memory of Light, now falls to a new author--one from my hometown and undergrad alma mater, coincidentally enough. It's supposed to be released in 2009, I believe, which should give me adequate time to finish the other eight books in the series.

Ahh, but book 3 is what this post is ostensibly about, so how is it? I enjoyed it! So far, I think Jordan's series is inferior to the other great "fantasy" series I'm reading: George R. R. Martin's fantastic A Song of Ice and Fire, but that's more praise for Martin than condemnation for Jordan. Jordan has built something of staggering scope and I am excited to see all the directions he can take all these characters. Yeah, yeah, I know, I understand that the series really begins to stall around book 8 or 9, and very little happens until book 11, but I knew what I signed up for when I bought book 1, and I intend to get through the rest of them.

It is interesting to see how considerably little has happened across three seven-hundred-page books, though. It took three books for Rand, who was established as the titular Dragon in the very first book, to finally proclaim that fact openly. Three books! Some series have everything wrapped up in three books, but not Jordan's.

In addition, despite the title of the book being The Dragon Reborn, a good 90% of the story revolves around all the side characters--Rand al'Thor barely appears at the beginning and at the end of the book, where he fights another (evidently inconsequential) battle against Ba'alzamon, a being as evil as Ba'al, Beelzebub, and a demon (?) combined! Apparently!

This post sounds really critical of the book, I know, but I did like it. I'm enjoying the rapidly multiplying threads of intrigue and interweaving plot lines, even though I know those will become a source of frustration as I read further into the series.

Ultimately there's no point in picking this up if you haven't read the first two books, but if you have, you certainly can't stop there! Read this one, too!

And now I'm going to go take a shower and go help my friend move.