• Author: Robert Jordan
• Series: Wheel of Time #1
• No. of pages: 803
• Year Published: 1990
• Publisher: Orbit
• Dates read: 10.09.19 – 14.12.19
• Rating: 5 stars! (Favourite)

Plot: The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. But one truth remains, and what mortal men forget, the Aes Sedai do not …What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the shadow.

WE FINALLY MADE IT!

I started this book in SEPTEMBER! I only just finished it. But it has been a RIDEEEEE! This book is officially my favourite book of 2019!

I have too many thoughts which I don’t think I will fully be able to explain how much I loved this book and I want to keep my review spoiler-free so I am going miss out on a lot but here we go!

The writing is really accessible and after reading Tolkien and hating the writing style and pacing. I was worried going into this book, as it was inspired by Tolkien. Thankfully, the writing was easy to read! The stand out moments for me were the world building. The world was so fully realised, I felt I knew the entire history and the geography of this world, despite only knowing a tiny fraction. But it was so well done that I wasn’t bored, even during the info dumps. I wanted to stay in this world and absorb more of it’s history.

The female characters in this book are AMAZING! The women are fully realised aren’t caricatures of themselves that I was worried they might be. I loved seeing so many women in power whether they are ruling a kingdom or wielding a strong amount of magical power. I loved watching them standing up to powerful men. It was beautiful. You had stern women, compassionate women, intelligent women, strong-minded women. I loved it.

I loved the cast of characters we are given and how each character is given a point of focus and we equally watch them develop over the course of the book. Each character found out something special about themselves that they didn’t know was possible. It just added that extra incentive to keep reading as you wanted to watch them navigate with all this new information. Reading this book I found myself writing down my theroys of each character, what plot points that might come up, what relationships we may see and I loved that I couldn’t stop theorising what might happen with the vast amount of content we are give.

Getting back to Jordan’s fully realised world. What I applaud him for is making me invested in characters we only see for a chapter or so. Again, Jordan’s fully realised world allowed their to be amazing characters, some which only meet for a chapter or two but they are written so well that I fully reading for a story about their life. Meeting these characters just solidified my desire to see our main group succeed. I want the random farmer who gave Mat and Rand a lift about 3/4 through the book, to live a happy life.

What I also enjoyed was the nuances of good and evil. On one side of the spectrum we have the Dark One and all his evil minions and then on the other side we have the Whitecloaks and their force for good which is also at times evil. I loved seeing the balance and this grey area where some of our characters tip-toed.

The dream sequences were masterfully done! The atmosphere created, the sense of danger and panic scared me at times. The imagery was incredibly eerie and I weirdly looked forward to the dream sequences as it gave us more insight into the Dark One as a character.

I found myself getting super excited whenever anything cool happened or we were told something of importance. At times I needed to put the book down and process what was happening and I loved being excited again about a book I was reading.

Finally, Jordan did a great job at giving us a fully thought out adventure but also setting up the sequel well enough. I didn’t feel the first novel was just a setup novel for the rest of the series.

The next book I’ll be reviewing is Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I really enjoyed her other novel, Uprooted. I also love stories inspired by Eastern European folklore so I’m excited to get into this!