The shepherd walked down the city’s main thoroughfare. His face was hidden inside the cowl of his grey cloak. He kept to himself, but people would go out of the way wherever he passed. It seemed to the passerby that the very air itself seemed to warp around him. They might have stood around to gawk, but these were terrible days, and you didn’t go looking for trouble even on the best of days. The strange weather, the overcast sky, the endless nightmares haunting the odd hours of twilight. The people considered all of it an omen of worse days to come. Yet for all his strange bearing, they felt a certain joy when the hooded figure walked by. As if they would soon be rid of the darkness, and the nightmares, and the pain. And the red-headed man continued to walk towards the sheer walls of the Stone.
The blacksmith trudged the length of his patchwork war camp, his face stricken with such devastating grief as to belie his otherwise youthful countenance. This war against the Shadow had already taken its toll on everyone, and yet everyone also knew that the worst days were yet to come. This frail world was heaving its last breaths, hanging on to the promise of a spring that would not come. The very landscape seemed to be mocking their attempt to fight the Lord of the Grave’s onslaught. And so, the blacksmith decided to do the only thing he could; he buried himself in his craft, using the single-minded alacrity of working his hands to go through the tangled enigma of this impossible conundrum. Today had marked the death of a dear friend, but he would not let it go to waste. There was still work to be done, and people counted on him to lead them, this humble man of little ambition. And so, he continued to pound on the anvil, the threads of power swirling around him and forging his fate into the very face of the metal.
The gambler stood on a cliff, the dice rattling in his head, his eyes fixed on the broken plane before him, piling up with corpses, a river of red flowing in and out of his vision with every slash, every cry, every blast of power. His people looked towards him, their faces pale, their eyes glazed over, but who among them could say what the gambler was thinking inside that peculiar brain of his? Those who had an eye for this sort of thing had found the dance the most spectacular feat of mental prowess they had ever witnessed, but now the song was coming to a crescendo. Now they needed to trust in his luck to see them through. The fighting had gone on for days. It would soon be over. As those who were still standing looked at that unnaturally dark sky, their thoughts meandered to a dream, and they knew then that their only respite before death would be a memory of light. The gambler took all of this in, raised his halberd, let loose a war cry, and dove into the fray.
These words are not from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, but they are an attempt to capture what it felt like to experience certain moments in this spiraling epic. A work that took 15 books, almost two decades, and two authors to finish.
I have to admit that approaching this next bit is a bit of a challenge for me. I can write professional articles about The Wheel of Time all day long. I could tell you the name of every stop from Whitebridge to Caemlyn, and from Caemlyn to the mouth of the River Alguenya in Cairhien. I could name every town and fortress from Tarwin’s Gap to the World’s End, and do the same for the Black Hills to the Sea of Storms and the enormous stretch of land in between. What I have trouble with is telling you exactly why this story means so much to me.
So maybe I’ll just tell you a story instead.
I remember a day from more than a decade ago when I was just chatting with a group of my friends and colleagues. The conversation slowly meandered its way to our favorite things in the world—and as far as that particular group of people is involved, that mostly meant talking about books, and more specifically, High Fantasy books. There I made two very important discoveries. First, a dear, dear friend introduced me to The Kingkiller Chronicle and spoke of it in reverent tones. This would go on to become my favorite book of all time, and cement my decision to become a writer and a storyteller. Second, we collectively wondered if there was any story or fictional world that could challenge Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings — which we all loved — in ambition, meaning, philosophy, and scale.
The question haunted me for many days and weeks and months to come, during which I spent a great deal of time uncovering the legacy of my favorite author. That was when I first read about The Wheel of Time; this colossal book series that was almost 10 times as long as the entire Lord of the Rings. A whopping 15 books, more than 12,000 pages, and 4.4 million words. A journey that takes its protagonists from unassuming, innocent people to grand players on whose shoulders rests the fate of the entire world. Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time wasn’t just the most popular fantasy book series that succeeded Tolkien (I’m excluding Harry Potter for obvious reasons), having sold more than 90 million copies as of 2021. It was also the series that took the legacy of The Lord of the Rings, paid tribute to it, and expanded it in ways that no other author has managed since.
The premise told me of a fight between good and evil, of political intrigue in a lush, intricate fictional universe with plenty of intricate worldbuilding and detailed history. It spoke of an entity called Shai’tan, and a prophesied armageddon between light and shadow, all amusingly enough tracing back to my own culture and heritage. But here’s the deal, folks. What really sold me in that moment wasn’t all these back cover blurbs. For one reason or another, I ended up reading the plot summary for the 12th book in the series, just to appease my morbid curiosity about where an epic story of this scale would eventually end up.
And that little paragraph, detailing the main protagonist Rand al’Thor’s struggle with his sanity in the penultimate chapter of the story, with the fate of the world hanging in balance, spoke to me in a way that few stories have managed to do in my lifetime. And I’ve read or experienced more than my share of stories; hundreds and thousands of them. I don’t know if it was that exact combination of words in that particular moment, or just the high stakes of the story, or the fact that I had to know how Rand al’Thor would get to that point, but I decided at that moment that I must read The Wheel of Time, even if the mere challenge of approaching a 12,000-page story would drive the fear of the Creator himself into the hearts of every gratification-seeking, self-indulgent human in our post-modern world. (If you ever decide to pick up The Wheel of Time, look out for the final chapter in book 12 titled “Veins of Gold” — it’s something of a high point for the series and the fandom, and that’s putting it mildly.)
Suffice it to say, I got the books. I opened The Eye of the World and read the prologue and was blown away by how Robert Jordan set up the story from those early pages. True to what everybody was saying, The Wheel of Time gave me the exact same feeling I had when I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. There was a problem, however. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, Jordan’s books had not been translated yet, and my grasp of the English language back then was not up to par by a long shot. I struggled in vain through the first 150 pages of that book, and realized that there was no way I could read all 14 books and appreciate them adequately.
I didn’t know it back then, but what I was about to embark on was a 7-year detour, during which time I read many other books and fantasy series, always keeping The Wheel of Time and the promise of eventually reading it in the backdrop of my mind. Then came a low point in my life, and for some reason I can’t quite remember, I decided to give The Eye of the World another go.
I breezed through the text this time around, and noticed that reading all those other books has made me appreciate the subtle nuances of Robert Jordan’s storytelling even more. I remember a particular night when I was tucked in my sheets reading the part where the party reaches Shadar Logoth, the abandoned, haunted city where the characters first encounter the creature Mordeth and the malicious entity known as Mashadar. I remember the absolute tingling fear that crept up my own spine as the boys walked down the shadow-cast alleyways of once-beautiful Aridhol, and realized that I’m already utterly engrossed in the story.
But two more moments stand out in the two months it took me to read The Wheel of Time in its entirety. Not that The Wheel of Time is in any shortage of epic, unforgettable moments. Hell, you could write a whole novel just talking about each of them in the order they appear in every installment. But the first time I found myself being invested in these characters, or giving a damn about them if you’re not feeling particularly concerned with formality, was in the middle of The Eye of the World. (You might not know this, but no matter how great the undertones of a story, or how much acclaim it receives in the public’s eye, the moment you connect with a story is the moment its author, through whatever cunning craft of story or characterization or presentation, tricks you into being invested in the lives of the fictional characters he’s created.)
For me, The Wheel of Time first clicked into place when I read through Rand and Mat’s struggle to reach Caemlyn. Alone, with their backs to a home they may never see again, hunted every step of the way with no promise of deliverance, surrounded by foes so lost in their worship of Shai’tan that they don’t seem to register they’re dealing with boys who are still wet behind the ears, their innocence and helplessness a stark juxtaposition of the ordeal they find themselves in. A truly spectacular feat in storytelling, one that I find myself revisiting over and over again just to savor and cherish as a fellow aspiring writer.
And the second time? Well, the second time was during Dumai’s Wells. And there’s that.
The Wheel of Time is one of the most ambitious worlds ever created. Robert Jordan consulted almost every mythology from around the world and somehow found a way to incorporate it into his story, whether we’re talking about the Arthurian legend, the Scandinavian and Viking sagas, our own Zoroastrianism, Christian and Islamic thought, Slavic mythos, Hinduism and eastern philosophy, the Finnish Kalevala, the Japanese shinto, Celtic epics, or anything in between.
So it is any wonder when The Wheel of Time feels so complete and thorough? As if this one story contains in itself the sum of humanity and its history on this Earth?
The Wheel of Time offers one of the most profound explorations of human nature, with each character in its cast of thousands representing a certain worldview and its effects on the course of events. The philosophy is deeply buried, but its well of insight will never run dry no matter how many times you approach the story or read through a particular section.
And as I’ve expressed this sentiment many times before, I believe that Rand al’Thor remains, to this day, the best-written character in all of fiction.
That is the highest praise I could give this story, and the hill I might just decide to die on if it comes to it.
I had been thinking about writing this piece for a long time, but I reckoned now was the perfect opportunity to revisit The Wheel of Time on this blog, as we inch closer to the premiere of the TV adaptation’s third season. My first proper blog post, after all, was written in anticipation of the second season, so it felt only appropriate to write another one again. You probably already know my contemptuous feelings toward The Wheel of Time on Prime Video, so I won’t go into it here.
What I will say to end this is that reading The Wheel of Time changed my life forever, so I hope anyone reading this blog will also one day find the time to live through this exceptional story, trapped though they may feel in the throes of our busy, fast-paced lives.
