The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time #1)

Robert Jordan

This seems to be one of those series that people either love or hate--for some, both--but I find myself somewhere in the middle. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it took me more than a month to read just the first book. It is easy to get lost in all the (brilliantly woven) details of a 657-page book when one keeps interrupting it to peruse several other novels in-between.

Rand alThor is content to herd sheep on his father's farm just outside the village of Two Rivers, but strange visitors uproot everything he knows. Trollocs seem to be hunting him and two other boys, and so they must flee, setting off on an adventure with more questions than answers and discovering that the gleeman's stories were not all fairy tales.

This is a classic fantasy, brilliantly crafted with more details than my poor little mind could handle. In fact, the blurb above hardly does it justice--a good synopsis would have to be paragraphs long. This is a story of a few characters who represent but a few strands in the Pattern, and though I followed well their story, it was the Pattern I had trouble with.

I enjoyed this book, but obviously it was not impossible to put down. In fact, it was quite easy. But I may read at least the second book if for no other reason than I own it, and this one ended in a bit of a cliff-hanger.

3/5 leaves