"The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.
The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
When The Two Rivers is attacked by Trollocs-a savage tribe of half-men, half-beasts- five villagers flee that night into a world they barely imagined, with new dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light."
Read till 60%
1 star
I couldn't do this to myself anymore. Just the thought of picking up this book and continuing it filled me with dread, and at this point, I decided it was not worth it. There are other things I'd much rather do.
The setting was interesting, and the world-building was done well. The author is very imaginative and he made up a lot of legends to provide some history to their land. But after reading a few of them, I got really tired. The names of all the kings and magicians and devils started getting mixed up in my head. I found I absolutely did not care which great person had defeated who or what, where, in which Age and the other unnecessary details that came with every story that was told.
The plot was good too, but the narration was the most excruciatingly slow one I have ever read. The story given at the back of the book started almost on page 200. Two boring hundred. Until then it was just about the dudes hanging out at their village and somehow that was the most interesting part of the book.
The story went nowhere after page 200 either. The next hundred were spent in the characters roaming in the forest, after which similar predictable things happened. I could quite actually sum up all four hundred and fifty pages I read in one sentence.
The amount of sheer over-reacting in the book was atrocious. It was like something I used to write as a kid, when all the characters gasped and gaped at any and every event just because the actual story wasn't dramatic enough to warrant the same reaction from readers. The village folk were also pretty unintelligent when it came to everything. At one point "Rand gasped, trying to smile and gape at the same time." and I don't see how that's a valid reaction to seeing a tower or a bridge or whatever they had come across at that moment in the story, or a valid reaction to anything, really.
The characters were rather two-dimensional, and all of them had similar dialogues. Rand was only a tall person who fell for everything. Mat was his trickster friend, and the other guy was a muscular blacksmith's apprentice. Moiraine and Lan had practically no emotions. In the author's attempt to make all the women appear powerful and strong-willed, he has ended up writing them as short-tempered and rude.
I also didn't understand why the other two boys spared by the Trollocs were not included in their runaway party. Couldn't one of them have been the person the Dark One was after?
I do not see how the author had the patience to write this 800-page book, and thirteen others like it, because I certainly did not have the patience to read it. I wanted to know what happened at the end, but the 300 or so pages of entirely boring sentences were too daunting. I tried skimming through the last couple of chapters, but I lost interest after a few lines.
I wanted to like this book, but at the same time, it was highly unlikely that I would have read the entire series even if I'd enjoyed it, so I guess good riddance.
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