Reviews of The Eye of the World (1990) and related work

The Eye of the World (1990Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

In this first volume of the Wheel of Time (WoT) series, Jordan includes the advice columnist Ann Landers in his fantasy world by a clouded reference. This puts Jordan in the same class of writers as Adam Sandler, who namedropped Landers in “The Chanukah Song” (1994).

The Wheel of Time series is about 11 900 pages long in paperback, or 19 days and 5 hours long in a professional reading, specifically the Audible production. If you want an epic fantasy that long, with about one reference to Ann Landers per 200 hours, this is the series for you. Otherwise, I would not advise it.

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‣ The Great Hunt (1990Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ The Dragon Reborn (1991Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ The Shadow Rising (1992Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ The Fires of Heaven (1993Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ Lord of Chaos (1994Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ A Crown of Swords (1996Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ The Path of Daggers (1998Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ Winter’s Heart (2000Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ Crossroads of Twilight (2003Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

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‣ New Spring (2004Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

Read in 2023.

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‣ Knife of Dreams (2005Text)

Robert Jordan (writer).

Read in 2022.

The end of Mat Cauthon’s bachelor life, of Perrin Aybara’s quest to free Faile, and of the civil war in Andor.

This was the last volume of the Wheel of Time that Robert Jordan completed. He died in 2007, which means that this book is one ending of the series. Another author reached another ending.

WoT is an impressive work of fantasy, not fabulism. It was the most popular literary fantasy of its day, certainly if the scope of comparison is limited to scales larger than Tolstoy’s War and Peace or a typical SFF trilogy.

Comparison to Tolstoy is not absurd. Jordan used the same trick of describing his world from the different viewpoints of a large and varied cast of characters across many years. He wasn’t as good at it as Tolstoy or George R. R. Martin, but it’s the right method. If he had stayed in good health, Jordan would certainly have completed his project, remaining true to his vision throughout. The toolmarks of US genre fantasy are all over that vision. Most conspicuously:

Jordan set up the premises for and then extrapolated the consequences of magic in the same way that the best soft-SF authors use hypertechnology. A big part of the pleasure of WoT, therefore, is that of seeing the plot develop with internal consistency. For example, in his most creative worldbuilding choice, Jordan arranged it so that men who use magic go insane. Men and women derive magic from different sources and the stereotypical dark lord—the god Shai’tan—has tainted the masculine source.

The blight on magic is not an axiom—it was removed in the preceding volume of the series—but it has coloured the world deeply, putting women in more positions of power and respect. Incidentally, Jordan’s editor was his wife, Harriet McDougal. Their cishet identities and their views on gender are deeply embedded in the text, determining the true axioms of its magic. Happily, Jordan did not frame his male protagonist’s advancement as a reactionary sexist rebellion against feminine authority, but predicating his world on a crude gender binary to such an extent was out of style in 2022, when I read Knife of Dreams. It is surprising when you look at gender in mythology; The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) discusses various hermaphrodites and other variations that could have made WoT more interesting, but more complicated. Jordan settled mostly for Jainism (the kālachakra or wheel of time, without the giants) and Arthurian legend.

The embedded sexism of the text sometimes verges on pornography, with many instances of the male gaze lingering on the pretty female characters and of sexualized violence against women. The term “rape” is never used in this volume, but the threat of sexual coercion is there in other forms: Women are pinched and “assaulted”, sometimes using sex to escape a bad situation. This is partly realistic, given war as subject matter, but mild sadistic violence against women is overrepresented. The term “whip” is not used here to describe such violence, but there is birching, slapping, slippering (i.e. beating a woman with a slipper), spanking, strapping and switching, in addition to the more general threats of torture and lethal force. Women in particular are sometimes made to strip naked and are also tied up on occasion. There are many descriptions of their pain, and suggestive uses of terms like “toy” and “plaything”. I count 31 “bottom” and “bottoms” (including non-anatomical uses), 15 “breasts”, 33 “bosom” and “bosoms”, an extraordinary seven “bosomy” and two of the synonym “buxom”. This display of objectification averages out to about once per page. It is corny and gratuitous, quite unlike Tolstoy.

Doing better than Heinlein and Terry Goodkind, Jordan never let his proclivities or his stylistic flaws topple his plotting entirely, and it isn’t because he played it safe. At this late stage of the narrative, the harbingers of the apocalyptic final battle include an architectural implementation of Fiona Broome’s original paranormal concept for the “Mandela effect”. Even that major disturbance feels consistent, because Jordan has already established and continues to affirm that some magic—such as the balefire spell—can violate causality in minor ways, because the literal threads of magic are the weave of everyday life.

If you want a moralistic epic fantasy that is immersive and internally consistent, WoT is still good, for all its warts. The high point of this volume is the scene of Birgitte hurriedly rescuing Elayne: That scene is unexpected, tense and moving, even if it is surrounded by the grind to an ending that Jordan never got to write.

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‣ The Gathering Storm (2009Text)

Robert Jordan (writer), Brandon Sanderson (writer).

Read in 2023.

My favourite part here is Rand’s concluding mostly-solo quest, but almost every strand is good. It’s also nice that Sanderson’s women have arms “akimbo” or “in front of her” as often as “beneath her breasts”. Overall, there’s a noticeable drop in the flattering or narcissistic quality of the fantasy writing between the two authors, but the tonal contrast is otherwise gentle and the surreal premonitions of the apocalypse thicken.

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‣ Towers of Midnight (2010Text)

Robert Jordan (writer), Brandon Sanderson (writer).

Read in 2023.

A roller coaster of narcissism in fantasy. Amid satisfying detail work, the epic power level continues to escalate, including more silly and bizarre “bubbles of evil”. Rand, Perrin and Mat, the central three childhood buddies, all gain more power. All triumph in their various adventures. Tellingly, they all become more comfortable with their power over other people.

Following the arc of Chesterton’s “more heartening heroic legend”, Rand has gone pop-Jesus after the conclusion of the preceding novel, to the point that his presence fills apple trees with fruit, improves the taste of tea, and helps the weather. His similarities with the scriptural Jesus Christ now extend to turning the other cheek as various rulers of the Borderlands beat him. Perrin’s forging of a magical hammer is not quite on that level, but makes no more sense. I guess the weapon is supposed to be a template for Mjölnir, its creation presaging Perrin’s rise nearly to royalty. Mat triumphs over his magical stalker and over the fairies, paying a price that is similarly compatible with Norse mythology. In a pinch where he can’t roll dice, Mat twirls to pick the right path, sensing his “luck”, meaning it isn’t luck. It is apparently what the fairies like about him: Fate itself, or the universe on his side.

Further enhancing the narcissism of these developments is the conceit that Rand has done so well because he was, as a conservative Christian pundit might have put it in 2010, “raised right”. By this I mean that his rural childhood with Perrin, Mat and Rand’s strong-and-silent-type father Tam mirror a parochial Christian upbringing in the “heartland” of the USA. The three young men do not come from humble origins to their peak power level simply for the sake of the reader’s vicarious wish fulfillment. Sanderson, a Mormon, apparently felt that parochial ignorance and poverty actually produce a strong and humble character of the finest moral fibre: Yet another piece of wishful thinking.

Character development is more satisfying in the women. Elayne continues to be the butt of too many jokes for her supposedly cute rashness, but also exhibits a power madness that is believable in someone her age. Egwene’s mind, too, is realistically coloured by the position she’s taken. Nynaeve’s manipulation of Lan is good comic relief, and Nynaeve herself almost manages to avoid the trappings of social status as she, too, levels up for the finale. The world of dreams reaches some grand payoffs in this volume, particularly in the way that Nynaeve’s experience with magical dreaming threatens the test she takes to be formally accepted as an Aes Sedai. The way the ontology is blurred, both in that scene and in Perrin and Egwene’s meeting, is the ultimate test of Jordan’s worldbuilding. His magic system was built around a core of self-serving wishful thinking about magic as a triumph of the personal mind over impersonal matter: Getting what you want without having to work for it. In the world of dreams, as in Perrin’s scene at the forge, technical knowledge of magic is no longer relevant. The system is lifted off, exposing the core of the genre. To the authors’ credit, Aviendha’s bleak visions of the future provide the necessary counterpoint: Unflattering, impersonal forces reassert themselves on a historical scale, as they should.

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‣ A Memory of Light (2013Text)

Robert Jordan (writer), Brandon Sanderson (writer).

Read in 2023.

The last battle between good and evil.

Once again, as Jordan did in The Eye of the World, Sanderson refers to advice columnist Ann Landers (“Anla”) as one of those people who were so notable in their own time that their legend survived multiple ages. This is despite the death of the most famous person who played Ann Landers, Eppie Lederer (1918–2002), since the preceding reference. I suppose the joke is that Landers is a corporate construct, not a mortal individual like Lederer. That second reference, however small and self-consistent, stands out. I wonder whether Jordan had anything to do with it. Jordan’s death literalizes Roland Barthes’s thesis of the metaphorical death of the author. It’s a literary ship of Theseus that finally reached its destination with the publication of this volume.

Reading more than ten thousand pages of any story is going to make the end of that story feel significant. That is especially true where internal consistency in worldbuilding is a major selling point. Sure, there are side tracks, there are minor errors in continuity, there are (very few) zany jokes like the legend of Anla, and there are moments throughout the series where the heroes bend the rules for reasons of narcissism, but the Wheel of Time worked in large part because it was always building, and building towards the end. Maybe it’s the end Jordan planned, maybe not. Either way it’s good enough. That said, there is much in the plot that seems designed to please the crowd, not to make sense for the story. Most of the major characters have brushes with death in some form, but too few of the morally good ones die. Egwene dies but is sent directly to fantasy Heaven; Birgitte just returns there. Bela the horse is lost in battle and not recovered, but was confirmed to survive in a later non-narrative “companion” book. Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Nynaeve, Moiraine, Cadsuane, Aviendha, Min, Faile, Tuon, Lan, Loial, Logain, Thom, Galad and even Rand all make it, and only two of them are maimed. Even Talmanes makes it, sadly taking the edge off an otherwise strong opening. Too few heroes get realistic deaths in battle. Of these, Gawyn, Siuan and Rhuarc are the most significant. This is a mistake in my opinion; the heroes should have had outcomes more like those of the soldiery, or worse because they’re more exposed. There should have been more than one burial in the denouement.

Tellingly, three of the greatest female villains of the series meet an end worse than death: Enslaved and loving it. Elaida in the previous volume and Moghedien in this one are bound by a’dam, as if the Seanchan practice of slavery were justifiable by its use on villains. Graendal, already made ugly, is magically brainwashed to love and serve Aviendha, and it’s an accident in self-defence so that Aviendha doesn’t feel guilty about it, like the Joker accidentally stabbing himself in the opening issue of Batman (1940). I see this as an extension of Jordan’s objectification of women, as well as an ancient moralist device in fiction. Aristotle wrote in Poetics (ca. 355 BCE) that such a plot, where the good are ultimately rewarded and the bad are punished, is too sentimental and suits only comedy: “It is accounted the best because of the weakness of the spectators; for the poet is guided in what he writes by the wishes of his audience.” Rand’s love tetrahedron also ends badly, following the same pattern: Not only do all four parties survive, but they’re all still in love, despite the total loss of Rand’s appearance, his magical powers, his nature as a drama-generating ta’veren, and the pressing fate that made Rand important and any romance urgent. It’s a non-haram harem ending complicated only by a narcissistic secret identity and the loss of some of Aviendha’s action-girl fitness. Her bleak vision of the future from the previous book is rejected, so utopia is still up for grabs.

In epic fantasy, the point Aristotle made about undeserved outcomes was proven by the ascendance of the more tragic George R. R. Martin over Robert Jordan in popularity. Fortunately, there is a second reason why Sanderson saves so many of Jordan’s heroes. That is the eucatastrophe, a word J. R. R. Tolkien made up to modify Aristotle’s use of “catastrophe” to refer to the outcome of a plot. A eucatastrophe is a last-minute miracle, but not necessarily a deus ex machina. There are several parallels to Tolkien’s humble ring bearers in the finale. These work in parallel with a literal last battle, and the effect is touching. It does what Aristotle wanted in a tragic play: “an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude”, with decorative language, pity, and fear.

The only intradiegetic reason to clump together all the human soldiers in one battle seems to be one of those long-term extrapolations: Back in The Fires of Heaven, Mat got strategic acumen and an anti-magic medallion which protects him from being subverted like the other generals. That’s thin. It seems more important that the good guys can teleport while the Shadowspan cannot. Towards the end, Androl figures out a tactic (teleporting cannonballs, plus telepathy with Pevara) that would have given the good guys the advantage in a more drawn-out fight, or in knocking out the enemy’s supply lines, but the discovery is made conveniently late. Instead, some of the plot twists rely on bending the rules: Mat’s history of pseudo-death has disconnected him from the Horn of Valere, because that’s convenient to the plot, but not from Mashadar, because that is also convenient to the plot.

In Rand’s thread of the last battle, the philosophical foundations of the epic are clarified. His final solution is not to imprison Shai’tan or to kill it, but to exile it, ending direct contact between the god and the world until the god, in some future age, creeps back in. By author fiat, this is a good solution, restoring the conditions of the utopia of the Second Age, where—at least by the middle—evil was absent and unknown. The way it’s actually implemented, through the flaws of Callandor and the strange relationship between Moridin and Rand that developed at Shadar Logoth, is clever, but the philosophy of it is not. It is confirmed, in a prophetic vision, that killing the evil god would make people soulless. This premise could have come out of one of Jordan’s non-Christian sources, but I suppose not. If it had been Daoist, for example, then Shai’tan would have been revealed as integral to the world, but it’s not. Shai’tan is an external force, like Jordan’s fairies, the Finn. Soullessness, in the vision, is still likened to the Turning rite that makes a person evil, removing their freedom of choice while also making them eerie and incomplete.

I think that the association between evil and choice came out of a Christian theodicy: The one where Yahweh allows Satan to do evil so that people are free to choose between good and evil. Free will, in that older fantasy, is a grace. That idea is so incoherent that it’s not even in The Bible (ca. 110 CE). In the prophetic vision that teaches Rand his lesson, people don’t need a queen but—stupidly—there is still a queen. What free will would mean in a world of abundandant prophecy is not explored. At a more fundamental level, the premise that people’s bad behaviour comes from outside of people is a bad one. With or without Shai’tan, Sanderson’s characters are like the eerie inhabitants of Rand’s vision: They only do bad stuff when a god makes them, unlike real people. Much of the author’s attempt to explain this uninteresting situation is a vulgar dialogue between Rand and the evil god. The other god, the deist Light, is silent and absent as always. This reminds me of Rand’s metaphorical aunt Ayn Rand, who was even more vulgar in her fictionalized conflations of free will and moral good.

Fortunately, the bad moral philosophy is itself self-consistent and largely disconnected from the other worldbuilding. Sanderson and his collaborators, that is the late Robert Jordan and his editor-widow Harriet McDougal, tie up enough loose ends here without the moral theory, bringing the sense of closure that is necessary after so long. For me, who read the first volumes growing up, it is a genuinely moving experience. It’s not moving enough to make me recommend the series to newcomers, but if you do try the beginning and like it, I think you should go all the way; you will be rewarded in the end.

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Viewed 2024-11-21.