Rating: Summary: whats all the fuss about Review: I've tried reading this book three separate times and it puts me to sleep everytime, I just don't get what all the fuss is about.... I'll stick with Eddings
Rating: Summary: Not bad at all! Review: I expected this book to be horendous,for I heard that Jordan is like Eddings.I HATE Eddings.But luckily,I found that this was not true .Jordan is much more interesting and exciting than Eddings ,and also has much more magic.He also has more detail on the plot ,not on politics .Jordan creates an amazing and creative story .Here is the plot :Rand al'Thor lives in Emond's Field ,and life is terribly dull for him .But his life changes when Moiraine ,a woman who claims to be an Aes Sedai (wielder of the One Power )comes to Emond's Field .Soon after ,the wicked Trollocs,half man half beast attack his village .Rand and his friends are forced to embark on a quest with Moiraine and her Warder ,Lan ,a quest in which Rand will learn his true destiny.
Rating: Summary: A Great Book Review: This is a great book. Shure it does share a few similarities to the lord of the rings, at least at first. I think the story is as origanal as it goes, how the hero, Rand, instead of being loved by all is feared, maybe hated, and he himself at the begining can barely begin to come to terms with the fact he is a man who can channle. Channeling being the ability to use the one power(which is split into bought the male and female half). Its the magic of this world. Rand is able to use the male half wich was tainted by the Darkone, the badguy, think of the devil and your close. By tainting it anyone who uses it will go mad and die. The book starts up slow and king of boring with this mysterious woman showing up in a small town and some of the youngsters of the village run off with her all the while being followed by the minions of the darkone. It is interesting and the ending had a great battle at the end. About midway it gets boring, with them moving from one town to the next, staying at inns and running off without paying the bill. Still one of my favorite books.
Rating: Summary: The Eye of the World Review: I thought this was a very good book. It is full of detail and history, it's not too confusing, it deals with realistic characters...etc., etc. There are some similarities and the Lord of the Rings and some people might say that it is too similar. I disagree. I like the Lord of the Rings better but I am yet to see a writer and can come even close to Tolkein's skill. This is much easier to read than Tolkein-There is enough detail to allow a reader to see, touch, feel, smell, taste etc., etc. but it's not as overwhelming as Tolkein. It has an interesting and intricate plot that will captivate almost any fantasy fan. I highly recommend this book as well as the rest of the series.
Rating: Summary: If you want detail... here it is Review: While the book itself starts off rather slow and if you do not intend to read on with the series I would not suggest reading the first, it is still a relatively decent novel. His plot moves a bit too slowly for me and for the first few books you are too confused to understand what is going on. If you are a reader that has the time to read a hundred or so pages a night, then I'd advise getting into this series. If you are only a casual reader I would advise looking a different direction. Jordan's sense of detail and complexity make the characters seem real and the setting seem as if you were walking with them, but sometimes there is too much detail. You get sick of reading about how a room looks or what a tapestry has on it and you want action. All in all... its a decent book but I wouldn't suggest it to anyone who isn't willing to wait gruelingly for any sort of action (I didn't find any until the end of the second book "The Great Hunt" which was also long and almost made me want to quit reading them altogethor)
Rating: Summary: An amazing novel Review: ~The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan is an excellent novel. My only complaint is how much the novel seems to mirror The Lord of the Rings. Many characters seem similar, along with the characters' homeland known for their tabacco. The novel also looks long, but only took me a little over a week to read. The writing is not super, but the plot makes up for it. I'll give you a small example. Jordan uses a metaphor comparing a character's movement with a treadmill. But in the time period they~~ are living in, there are no treadmills. Additionally the conversations between characters are not realistic sometimes. Despite my reservations, I give the Eye of the World five stars. One thing I like about the novel and the series is its length. Tolkien wrote that he had one regret about the Lord of the Rings: he wished it had been longer. Readers of the Wheel of Time will not have that complaint. The action is steady in this first novel, and the plot is interesting. This is the~~ third time I have read the novel, and therefore encourage you to buy it, because you also will read it more than once.~
Rating: Summary: Don't Start. Save Yourself. Review: For years now Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series has been unfolding. Actually, unfolding is too strong a word. It implies movement of some kind. Taken by itself, Eye of the World is not a terrible book. Nor is the next book, The Great Hunt. Why then does it merit one star? Because this series long ago descended into a quagmire of unresolving plot threads, unmoving story, static (but oh-so-detailed) characters and meaningless dream sequences. .... And the fact is, it's not that great a book to begin with. Here's the plot: A mysterious magic user tells a farm boy that it's his destiny to stop an arbitrarily evil force, a force which happens to reside an unreasonable distance away - on the other corner of the map in fact. If this plot does not scream "Original" I don't know what does. Taken by itself this book is a little padded with a rather vague climax, and not anything that special. Taken as a whole, the series is a lot padded, incredibly plodding, ...
Rating: Summary: One Great Fantasy Review: The Eye of the World has all the elements of great story. It has action, character depth and a story that is hard to put down. The first time I read this book I found it to be so good that I could hardly put it down to eat or sleep. The characters have so much personality, and that landscape is of Jordan's world is so well described that I finished the book feeling like I had visited. The book has a great ending that leaves the reader wanting to get their hands on the next book immediately. If you are thinking about getting into this series, I recommend it, despite some of the newer books being slower than this one. Jordan, right now, is the best fantasy writer in the business.
Rating: Summary: Amazing! Review: This book, and Jordan's entire series as a whole, is an achievement in literature rarely surpassed. While books 3 through 5 sometimes seem slow, the build-up in books 1 and 2 are exciting, and well thought out. The intricate way in which characters only briefly touched on in earlier books are brought back into the forefront later during the series is splendid. I have rarely read a book, or series of books where I have actually cared about the characters as much as I do these. I highly recommend this series to anyone looking for high adventure, intricate romances, and devious political plottings. Grade A material, and definitely worth the time.
Rating: Summary: A bit of a Tolkien ripoff Review: A friend of mine has all ten of these books and I've decided to read them. I'm rating them as I read. Frankly, this book does not live up to the hype. That doesn't make it bad or anything -- it's pretty good and enjoyable, if you don't have really high expectations. But the way I heard/read some people, this was supposed to be one of the top two or three fantasy series ever written. It had better improve for that to be the case. There is a lot of stuff blatantly ripped from Tolkien. And not just the fantasy iconography. Look, when you do fantasy, you're dealing with travel stories that ultimately involve a showdown between good and evil, and there's magic/sorcery involved. It's how you make your own story unique that you distinguish yourself as a writer. I don't like how the Two Rivers is basically a copy of the Shire, and how the theme of rural simplicity vs. worldly knowledge so closely parallels the ground already covered by Tolkien. Presumably, this theme will be less important in subsequent books, but in this book, it's annoying to read. Another important similarity is the characters of Lan and Thom. Lan basically *is* Aragorn, both in terms of how he carries himself and his (hidden) regal bloodlines, and Thom may as well be Gandalf, sans sorcery. There's even a Gollum sort of character, although I'll reserve judgement on this because he was introduced as such at the end of the book and subsequent volumes may clarify this some. There are other similarities, but these are the ones that bothered me the most. The positives are the story, although not necessarily how it's told. This first book sets up *lots* of plotlines, and reveals its secrets slowly. Which is good and bad -- it's nice to see such care taken with the development of the plot and the mythology of the book's world, but 800 pages is very much to ask a reader to wade through while the author is basically just setting things up. Nevertheless, there's always something going on, and the book is well-paced. The writing is decent, but not great. I'd actually heard Jordan described as the "Dickens" of fantasy, because of the numerous characters that are in his books. I'll reserve judgement on that for now, but it is looking to me that while Jordan may spend lots of time finding things for his characters to *do* he is no master of making the reader care very much for any of them, or of really distinguishing them from each other. Again, maybe more of this comes later, but right now the characterization seems a bit thin, and the female characters seem especially two-dimensional. The final verdict on this is that the series has the potential to be better than average and I'm ready to read the second book.
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