I haven’t thought about Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time” in years.
I think I first started reading it eleven, twelve years ago. The summer of 98 or 99, I forget which. I was looking for fresh reading material at the time, and I picked up “The Eye of the World” (number 1) at the local bookstore. That bookstore went out of business years ago, but every Thursday or so I used to walk down there and pick up my reading material for the week.
But, anyway. “The Eye of the World”. I read the first hundred pages, and thought “Wow! This is really boring.”
By the end of the book I thought “Wow! This was really not boring!” It was an amazing experience. Jordan had created a world of richness and detail, populated with vivid characters and a plotline of epic scale and grandeur. I hastened to the local bookstore and got the next one. And the next one. And then the next one.
I blasted through the rest of the series in fairly short order – I think up to “Crown of Swords” (number 7). And I got the next two books faithfully as they came out. And then…I just gradually lost interest. The plot didn’t move forward very much. The books came out farther and farther apart. And I was busy, and I had lots of other things to fill my time. So I forgot about it, and when “Knife of Dreams” (number 11) came out, I thought about getting it, but never actually got around to it. It had been so long I couldn’t remember all the plot details, and I didn’t want to restart this enormous series from the beginning once again.
And then Robert Jordan died, which was sad. Since he left detailed notes, I figured they would hire someone to finish, but I didn’t really plan to read it. It’s never the same after the original author has died, after all.
Then I read Brandon Sanderson’s “Mistborn”, and I realized that he definitely has the chops to finish off “The Wheel of Time” in a satisfactory manner. And “Wheel” is such a huge epic tale that I want to read the ending. Besides, I’ve been reading it for twelve freaking years, you know? When I first started reading those books, I’d never used a laptop, I didn’t have my own Internet connection, didn’t have a car, had never written a book of my own, never been published. The Wheel’s turned over quite a bit since then, but the series is still there. I want to see how it ends.
So, I’ve decided. I’m going to read “The Wheel of Time” again. I’m going to start with the prequel book “New Spring” that I never actually read, and I’m going to read all the way to the end. Not all at once; I’ll read other stuff in between the “Wheel” books. So by the time I actually get to the end, Sanderson might well have finished.
I look forward to it.
-JM
Posted by JM 