Eye of the World is the first book in the incredibly long Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It is long, meandering, cartoonish at points, and borderline feels unfinished. It seems like the author had no self-control, and in the editing process none of the fat was cut, leaving the book with large sections with no narrative progress and no character progress. This would be forgivable if the action/adventure was exceptional during these sections, but typically it's not - the characters are fleeing an enemy force for most of the book, and spend most of their time hiding away in farmhouses, inns, and barren leafless woods. The character moods tend toward the morose for the greater part, so there's not even enough cheer to feel a fellowship with them.
The first time I tried reading this (years ago), I gave up after reading the prologue. This series had been suggested to me as a classic, landmark series many times by different people. So when I read the prologue with a super powerful servant of a dark lord who has an evil laugh and delights in hurting others, I was surprised by its cartoonish pulp. This time, my expectations were different. No reason I can't enjoy some good pulp - after all, I love pulp! The problem is that the story really doesn't seem to be aware that it's pulp, and doesn't manage to be fun for almost the entire length. Instead, it takes itself very seriously and tries to tell a dark, hopeless story. This is at odds with how downright goofy all of the antagonists are, including the generic humanoid villains called trollocs, whose description accidentally drew a chuckle from me.
Worst of all are the lore dumps. These are clumsy, boring, non sequiturs. If you read this, expect the story to halt every few chapters so that some character can ramble on about some ancient important artifact or nation or person that no one else knows about. These often go on for pages, and the lore dumps keep occurring up until basically the end of the story. The go-to technique for Jordan seems to be having an orator character and a crowd who is entranced because of how irresistibly interesting the lore is. Be aware that I am rolling my eyes right now AS HARD AS I POSSIBLY CAN.
The story also begins dozens of story threads that go nowhere, and at the end of the book there is something I can only describe as an impromptu boss battle. As bad as this is, at least it was good pulp again towards the end. I'm sure most of the various story threads go somewhere in future books, but the narrative structure is amateurish enough to give these story threads thousands of words in this book. You probably shouldn't put a spotlight on threads that aren't going to progress - note the difference between progress and finish - but there are characters who are just hanging around towards the end of the book whose presence is narratively meaningless despite having multiple chapters devoted to their "importance" in the "weaving of fate" or whatever.
Lastly, the prose - I read a few reviews of this to see what other people thought, because I'm honestly a bit confused about this. The prose is good in places, though I couldn't be persuaded to call it masterful anywhere in this story. On the other hand, there are weirdly a lot of places where sentences chapters apart are repeated almost word for word. It was kind of jarring for me, and I wasn't going to mention it except that I'm not the only one who noticed.
The worst bit was when an anecdote is remembered in two separate chapters about a nice farmer gifting scarves to two characters. It's told a second time several chapters later as if it is wholly new information - I'm convinced this is actually a botched editing job where sections which were supposed to get moved were actually duplicated and some artifacts of this were left floating around the final product.
So, all-in-all, I... liked it? A bit? Despite its flaws? I mean, everything I said above is true, but also Jordan just has a lot of little neat ideas (which go nowhere in this book) and for someone who likes unraveling stuff like I do, having all sorts of hanging plot threads is actually incentive for me to read more of the story.
I have since read the second and third books and, after spending some time with other series I’m interested in, I plan to come back and read a bit further in (as well as review other entries).
Plot: 5
Characters: 3
Themes: 5
Prose: 6
Overall score: One farmhouse full of trollocs.
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