Rating: 
Summary: A Fantasy Masterpiece
Review: _The Wheel of Time_ far surpasses the majority of the fantastical genre. I was immediately entranced by the detailed introduction to the scenery and charaters. The story has a depth to it wich many authors cannot achieve. The plot follows the character of Rand Al'Thor, a naive young sheepherder who is dragged into a world he thought was only an old wive's tale. Rand, his companions, and a enigmatic Aes Sedai and her Warder all stand together in the battle against the Dark One, Shai'tan. The second and third books are similarly captivating, allowing you to see this adventure through the eyes of other important charaters. But as the saga continues, the detials become cloying, and slow the story down.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I love this book, finished it recently. I must say, this is a book that is very deep and believable. Historical accuracy to Medieval times from a fantasy perspective. I must say, I thought this book was boring at first, but that was because I didn't understand. I had to force myself to read to page 50, after that, I couldn't PUT THE BOOK DOWN. addictive
Rating: 
Summary: A good start
Review: I have been listening to rave reviews of The Wheel of time for quite a while now, and I finally decided to get this, the first book in the series. Well, I was quite impressed.After a very well done introduction, the book gets off to a pretty slow start and stays there for the first 60 pages or so. After this, the pace really picks up. There are certain times when you can't put the book down, and certain times when...you can. I personally thought that the last 100 pages or so was the best part of the book, which makes it worth reading the rest of it. Also, I just finished the second book (The Great Hunt), which is very good. So, have patience.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful start to a series
Review: I got hooked on this series years ago, and it only took this first one to earn my dedication. Robert Jordan has a great ability to create wonderful, believable fantasy characters, and then to let them each develop personally as a human being and develop unique fantasy characteristics. All I can say is that, like so many before and after me, this book captivated my interest and set up some great characters, and in the books to come, the new characters to arrive are all at least as cleverly developed... and let me just say that, if you are a fantasy-lover newcome to Jordan, you will UNDOUBTEDLY enjoy this and the next 2-3 books. If you like fantasy, you will not regret buying this book... though some day you may regret becoming hooked on this seemingly infinite series. Though this is part of an apparently infinite series, this first volume of the million-ogy is most certainly worth your money.
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Summary: The Eye of the World is the Highlight of My World...
Review: This book is the best book I have ever read! It's detailed plot, settings, and characters are amazing, fascinating, and fun to enjoy! Robert Jordan reveals mysteries to you before you know they exist. Before I was even done with this book, I bought the second one. The Eye of the World is a 'must read'!
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully flowing series
Review: The Eye of the World was one of the most fun books I've ever read. It's a strait-out fantasy epic based in a fully realized fantasy world. (If you read the rest of the WoT series anyway...) Nations are involved in power struggles and have their own heritage and culture. Some of these are archetypal and some are created purely from Jordan's fantastic imagination. In essence, it is still a story of a king risen from a farm boy, heroes, honor and love. However, Jordan does a wonderful job weaving a plot that intrigues from its start and gets delightfully complicated as it progresses. (Sometimes having 5 or more main plots going on at the same time.) The characters are easy to relate to. (Or so it seemed) There are several main ones, and each has a loveable and unique personality. When I picked this book up at age 15 I believed that any fantasy that wasn't Tolkien was a sacrilege or a copy off. This book was perhaps the best bet to convince me otherwise. Jordan's views on magic and the races (i.e. elves, dwarves, etc.) are refreshing, although they too have been copied several times. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves epics, classic sword and sorcery archetypes, or a refreshing fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Caution
Review: I caution any reader interested in reading the Eye of the World or any other books in The Wheel Of Time Sieres. They are Very hard to let go of once they have been picked up. So unless you have time to spare BE CAREFUL.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Read for any fantasy lover
Review: Set in a world of sorceresses (Aes Sedai), Monsters (Trollocs), and humans, this book is the first book of the wheel of time series. It's fantastic! The spell it casts on you will drag you away from any other books for weeks (yes, once you read this book, you'll have to read all the rest.) Then you'll be waiting desperately for the next book to come out. Now do you know what you're getting yourself into? I couldn't put it down. It starts in a sleepy little village locked away from the rest of the world, so locked away that the two mysterious travelers set the entire village abuzz with questions about them. More so after the village is attacked by monsters from legends (Trollocs.) The attack is focused on three boys, which the Aes Sedai (sorceress) and her Warder (a fighting man) take away with them. Rand, Perrin, and Mat (the three boys) must discover the secrets about themselves that almost lead their village to destruction. And, along the way, they have a ton of great adventures that you'll read about in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Start for a series
Review: This is a fantastic book with a gripping plot. One of the best books from Robert Jordan. The tension starts at the very beggining of the book and is maintained through out the book. Only problem may be in the number of main charecters created. We have the three main ones Rand, Mat and Perrin, Then come the women, then come some of the Aes Sedai , the children of light (Pedron Niall) all of them seem important and the list seems to be increasing. This may cause some trouble in the later versions.
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Summary: A series that makes "Tolkien imitator" no longer an insult
Review: After I read the _Lord of the Rings_, I couldn't help agreeingwith Tolkien that one of that trilogy's few faults was that it is tooshort. In other words, I (and many other readers, obviously) wanted to read more books that did the sort of thing Tolkien did--opened a gate to a new world; made us feel that ordinary life can suddenly take on epic meaning, and so on. Less healthily, perhaps, we wanted to lose ourselves in a fantasy world where we could think of ourselves as heroes without actually doing any work or putting ourselves in danger. (I think these two aspects go together--"escapist" literature is neither completely unhealthy nor entirely free of dangers.) Terry Brooks's _Shannara_ series was clearly written with such readers in mind (so were a lot of much poorer tales--but I take Brooks as one of the better examples); Brooks himself was no doubt one of the Tolkien addicts whose withdrawal pangs after reading LotR twenty times or so he was trying to alleviate. While Brooks's series has its virtues (which this is not the place to discuss), they were generally best when they forged new ground, rather than treading in Tolkien's shoes. While one could take them as one's "Tolkien fix," that didn't really do justice either to Tolkien or to Brooks. Similarly, Stephen Donaldson's _Thomas Covenant_ series (far more skilfully crafted than the _Shannara_ books) showed clear signs of Tolkien's influence but headed in a substantially different direction. When I picked up _The Eye of the World_ about three years ago, I almost gasped with delight. Finally, someone had done what Brooks had so obviously tried to do--written a story that rings the changes on the familiar Tolkien themes, but does so in a way that is interesting and gripping in its own right--a story that, if we had never read Tolkien, could open the same gates that he opened. This would be enough justification for reading Jordan. But even in _The Eye of the World_, it's obvious that Jordan is more than a would-be Tolkien--even the best of the would-be Tolkiens. And this has become even clearer with subsequent entries in the series. Indeed, though it may be blasphemy to say it, Jordan's work is in some respects superior to Tolkien (though of course, like all other modern fantasies, it cannot compare with Tolkien in the things Tolkien does well). One of the biggest defects of the Lord of the Rings (well, maybe not defects--I wouldn't want Middle-Earth to be different than it is--but certainly one of the ways in which Tolkien fails, or doesn't even try, to create a credible secondary world) is its failure to give us many details of how people live. Indeed, apart from the Shire, Middle-Earth seems to consist of mountains and barren plains over which huge armies roam. The one large city Tolkien describes, Minas Tirith, contains only a fraction of the population it could hold. Of course, this is partly on purpose--the Third Age is waning, and the great kingdoms such as Gondor are only a shadow of their former selves. But one would like to know more about Tolkien's people than their languages and their myths. What do they eat? What do they wear? What are the major agricultural products of each region? The major industries? With a very few exceptions, Tolkien passes over such matters with fine disdain. Jordan, on the other hand, creates a world that is crammed to the brim with life and bustle. Though he too can evoke vanished grandeur, his nations are not simply ghosts of ancient, legendary realms--they are real places with distinctive customs and cultural presuppositions. And Jordan describes these customs and attitudes in what threatens at times to become wearying detail. This does not create a better series than Tolkien's by any means, or even one half as good. But it is a series that in some respects surpasses its model. And that is high praise. Another superiority of Jordan's series is the prominence given to its women. While all the women tend to be similar (no surprise, since Jordan says that they are all modeled on his wife), and all share a good deal of affectionate contempt for men, which they express over and over in more or less the same terms, they are nonetheless an impressive gallery of characters compared to those found in many other fantasy series, particularly LotR. On the other hand, Jordan's work is by no means without faults. In particular, the attention to detail has increasingly come to bog down his series, so that each mammoth volume moves the story along only slightly. Furthermore, Jordan's style is voluble and repetitive, with similar cliches and mini-plot summaries repeated over and over. This makes it very easy and enjoyable reading, especially at the beginning. But after five volumes or so it begins to pall. One wants to say, "Don't tell us for the five thousandth time how stubborn and dumb Nynaeve (and all the other female characters) thinks men are, or how incomprehensible the men think the women are, or how Wise Ones don't trust Aes Sedai, or how difficult it is for Aes Sedai to tolerate the existence of men who can channel, or any other of the things that anyone who has been reading the series (and who's going to pick it up at volume 8? Jordan's series doesn't lend itself to that sort of treatment) has burned on their brain by now. Instead, how about making some progress on telling us about Egwene's march toward Tar Valon, or Perrin's mission, or which kingdom Rand is going to attack next?" But I don't have high hopes. Judging by vol. 8, vol. 9 is going to have a lot of Aiel and Aes Sedai bustling about, a few battles with Rand losing control of the One Power, and precious little else. However, I'm supposed to be talking about vol. 1. The flaws I've been mentioning are distinctly manageable at this point. The main problem with this volume is its ending, which appears tacked on to bring the story to some sort of conclusion--a conclusion that turns out to be only the beginning. END
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