I love these books.
It's "typical" high-fantasy epic adventure writing, but having read so much of this sort of thing over the years, I keep coming back to Jordan's world as something special. It's the same, but so different. Let me attempt to explain...
The story has clearly been though-out very, very far in advance. Things start off with a Tolkien-esque adventure, but the mood is completely different just a few chapters in. If you distill it down, the story is VERY much like Tolkien: Some young boys from the middle of nowhere are pushed out into the world by a magician, and along the way they learn a lot about themselves. They also save the world because they are heroes.
At least, I think the boys will save the world in The Wheel of Time. I don't actually know, because the story isn't done. When Jordan died in 2007 while writing the final book in the story that had become his life's work, I thought it was over. That situation has been improbably resolved. More later.
Anyway, back to the story. The boys and some of the girls from their village are pushed out into the world by what seems at first to be a female Gandalf character. Turns out that she's not really that rare or that powerful. Just really, really clever and tenacious.
This is a series full of description, set off by climaxes of varying scope and scale. Sometimes the battle is in a character's own mind. Sometimes it's between two impossibly huge armies. Sometimes it takes place in a strange metaphysical "dream" world. Regardless, battles are a major strong point for Jordan's writing. He doesn't dwell on military tactics or bloody scenes very much at all, but when a battle is over, you feel like you've just watched it on a movie screen, or in some cases, like you've just lived through it. He finds the most compelling moments and brings them to life, again and again.
The other really important thing about Jordan's work that sets it apart is the depth and thought that's gone into the world he's created. It feels like things are going on everywhere without you. Cultures are distinct and believable. They pull from our world and they pull from our myths, but you can really believe that the Seanchen and the Aiel and the Borderlanders and the Aes Sedai cultures have been stewing around for thousands of years, building up their own taboos and traditions in response to their environments and their unique histories.
We see how simple misunderstandings between two people can cause a rift that echoes through centuries and becomes something so much more. Jordan delivers enough details to make these things believable and leaves enough out to make you want to keep reading forever. People in these books are fallible. Just because a main character says "Bob likes coffee" doesn't make it true. You don't realize how rare this is in fiction until you run into it like this. Writer never make their good characters wrong about simple stuff. Kudos.
The obligatory "magic system" in WoT is really, really convincing and detailed. It just seems right. It doesn't seem like "magic" at all, in fact. That's a really difficult thing to pull off in fantasy. Jordan has managed it, and he didn't even have to go mitochondrial to explain it. (take that George Lucas!)
So why don't people like Jordan's books? I think it comes down to two distinct things:
1. He's been very successful, commercially. Most people have a favorite writer, and they figure if their writer isn't selling as well as another writer, then the people who like that author must just be "sheep" or what have you. I often feel this way about popular things, and so I understand the sentiment, but if you haven't listened to the album, or watched the movie, or read the book, then let's be honest...you're just being bitter. Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's bad.
2. Brevity, or the lack thereof. Jordan was a prolific writer. He wrote a LOT of words. Books 4 and 6 of Wheel of Time were nearly 400,000 words each. To put that into perspective, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, with the Hobbit thrown in there for good measure, is less than 400,000 words. The funny thing is that those two WoT books seem to fly by, and you want MORE. Some people can't read this much without a break, and I feel some sympathy for them, but at this point, you can't claim ignorance. Everyone knows these are huge books, and a huge series (looks like it will be a solid 14 books at this point, with the last 3 considered 1 volume (for 12 volumes total). From books 7-10, Jordan got very, very descriptive. He started having to deal with political situations in his books, and the sheer number of characters he was juggling started to weigh the series down. I would even say that he lost some focus. There are some really, really incredible moments in those books, but also a lot of pages describing things in a way that was off-puttingly verbose for people who were expecting the same pacing they got in the first two books. The world is complicated, man. If you are an adaptive reader, then you adapted and enjoyed this new side to the story. It's really great political maneuvering, and I personally have no complaints. If you see a paragraph that looks like it's going to be describing a row of trees at dusk, or someone's hairpiece and how it relates to their family's vineyard operations, and you don't want to read it, just go to the next paragraph. Was that so hard? It isn't cheating to skip a description and move on to the next dialog. I've done that with Jordan, Tolkien, Martin, McCaffrey, T.H. White, and everyone else who writes bigger words than R.L. Stein.
All that to say, you can't read Book 11 of WoT and complain about a lack of action. That book is jam-packed with stuff. And now that everything has been set up for the REAL BIG ENDING®, you can expect things to be even more exciting in the last volume.
Robert Jordan's world has colored my own. That's no small feat for a work of fiction. I can think of few authors who have done this in my life. When a book compels you to re-read it again and again over the years, and you get more out of it each time, something is very, very right.
If you hate Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, I don't want to know you.
Until next time!
-Ben
