I’ve always been a huge fantasy nerd with a bias to high and epic fantasy in particular! No, not because of Game Of Thrones, it’s actually one of my least favorite in the genre! After putting it off for a long time, I recently decided to dive into the Wheel Of Time series. It’s a massive epic sprawling across 14 different books with about 5.5 million words covering a myriad of exciting plots, interesting characters, and an expansive world. Like any fan, I spend a fair share of my time scrolling through Reddit checking out a variety of subreddits and posts on the series. During one of those binge reading sessions, I came across a comment that really struck a chord because I had been wondering exactly the same thing as I was reading the first book.
At the time of publishing the first book of the Wheel of Time series (The Eye of the World), the author Robert Jordan tried to mimic and closely follow the same style and storyline as Tolkien’s LoTR as much as possible and this is apparent as you read the first book. At the time of writing, in the 80s-90s, that was the best way to get a fantasy novel published by mimicking Tolkien and also Jordan wanted to get people hooked with something familiar. His sense of style and the story comes alive only from the second half of the 1st book and after, where he gets to tell the story that he wanted.
