Rating: 
Summary: A very enjoyable sequel; I can't wait to buy the next one!
Review: People often compare fantasy writers with Tolkien. Now they have a new, and better (I believe, from experience reading The Lord of the Rings series), author to be compared with. Robert Jordan has created a believable world where right and wrong are clearly defined, as compared to our own. I gave this book a 9 because although it is truly fantastic in its imaginative scope, it did drag at times. In this volume we get a better view of the problems Rand will face as the series progresses. And I also got a feel for what kind of troubles people in power may come against. I recommend this book, in fact the entire series, to those who enjoy fantasy, those who like to go to other lands, and those who don't, because I'm sure it will change their minds. Submitted by Allison MacKenzi
Rating:
Summary: Incredible adventure.
Review: I loved/enjoyed every moment of it.Story so vividly told as the other previous books. Twists in plots so clever! Character development was extremely pleasant for me, enough to feel loss when some particular minor (or main for this volume) character(s) were killed off the Wheel. A treasure.
Rating:
Summary: Jordan's Wheel Keeps Turning
Review: After surviving the disappointment of "The Dragon Reborn", the Wheel of Time series has definitely regained its lost momentum and the series continues to get better with each book. This book has been my favorite of the series so far. Jordan builds on the momentum he captured in book four ("The Shadow Rising"), and the storyline and character development continue in TFOH. As for the main characters, each is facing new and exciting challenges in this book. Rand is still dealing with the realization that he is The Dragon Reborn. He has rallied the Aiel clan chiefs in a massive battle against the rebel Aiel chief Couladin, who claims that he is the true Dragon Reborn. Couladin and his followers, the Shaido, meet the fury of Rand and the rest of the Aiel in a decisive and climactic battle. Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve continue their pursuit of the Black Ajah. Word has reached them that Siuan Sanche has been overthrown and stilled by Eladia. The three have also learned that a group of Aes Sedai has decided to try to overthrow Eladia and reclaim the White Tower. Mat, Lan, and Moiraine continue to travel with Rand. Mat distinguishes himself in the battle with the Shaido by beheading Couladin. Moiraine has decided to become more yielding to Rand, but this turns into disaster at the end of the book. This book is the best of the series so far in my opinion. The storyline and character development is very good, and the plot keeps the reader interested throughout the book. The last 200 pages of the book are some of Jordan's best work. The ending of the book is a true cliffhanger and will leave the reader wondering what will happen next. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series. Hopefully, it will be as good as this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of Time and Money
Review: The Wheel of Time series is "New Age" fantasy. Channeling, a new age technique, is the only form of magic in this series. The series GARBAGE! I've read much better fantasy than Robert Jordan. For example, Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series is 100 times BETTER than the Wheel of Time! I wasted my time reading the 1st 6 books, and I am glad I had the sense to stop there! Don't waste your money buying JUNK! Don't waste your time reading this JUNK!
Rating: 
Summary: Droning on...
Review: I just started the series last week, and I'm on number five. I've really enjoyed these books, but I have some problems. Everyone else has commented on the amount of description, so I can skip that. Starting in book 3 or so, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Egwene merge into the same character. Without the context you couldn't tell which character you are reading about. They act exactly the same. It's very frustrating. Was I the only one who noticed that Nynaeve's obsession with pulling her braid came in the middle of book 2, and not book 1? All the "habits" of characters have evolved along the way. However, my biggest problem would be this obsession with "Women's Circle" or the constant berating of men. I'm a girl, and we aren't always that derogatory of men. I'm getting to the point where I dread the girls perspective because we have to listen to 3 pages berating men, and then the plot continues. However, if we listen to Rand we get his little temper tantrums and lessons on Aeil customs. But if we switch to Mat we hear about how much he hates being ta'veren. These are my biggest problem. And traveling. Can't they just arrive somewhere and stick with it? I do really enjoy the series, and hopefully he'll be able to smooth out some of these problems.
Rating: 
Summary: Not his best work but still good
Review: This book is a slow moving plot line, like a giant freight train.....
Rating:
Summary: Not quite a three star book, really
Review: This was the weakest book in the series so far for me. The plot is thinly developed, and the relationships are not focused or emotionally acute enough to make me care. I read this after I finished Shadow Rising, with the relationship of Perrin and the Bashere woman fresh in mind. (I think that she was from house Bashere-- the Hunter of the Horn, whom he loves.) This one, despite the sparkling relationship between Aviendha and Rand, saw these highlights come few and far between. The best thing in the book for me was probably the rise of Matt as leader of the Red Hand, a re-instated military group from the Age of Legends. Matt does not use Age-Of-Legends warriors or anything to man his army. He just runs it. Also, this book relates some great tragedies, and course changes. The book gets three stars because Jordan's prose is still actually pretty lucid, and he seems to have a point to make. The thing is, these points are explained with little vigor.
Rating: 
Summary: The road goes ever on (and on and on and on...)
Review: As this is not a new book, there are many reviews published here on Amazon. The great majority of the reviews are correct in making the same point: this story is much too long.
The Fires of Heaven is the fifth book of this series. There are currently ten in the series, plus a prequel -- and the story isn't done yet. There must be close to 9000 pages of "Wheel of Time" books published -- and the story isn't done yet. There must be 50 or 100 separate characters running around the stories (often with similar names, to confuse the reader) -- and the story isn't done yet. There are dozens of different plot lines floating around and confusing each other -- and the story isn't done yet. To make a comparison, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings ran 1350 pages without the appendices, and that is considered a long story. The length of this story is far beyond ridiculous.
I also agree with many of the reviewers that Jordan's female characters -- not only the more famous named characters, but innumerable Aes Sedai, "Wise Ones," "Maidens of the Spear," and so forth -- act like teen-agers afflicted with permanent PMS. It gets far beyond tiring to read the thousandth description of how stupid they think men are, etc., etc., ad nauseam. The series could have really been improved if a couple of these offensive little twits could have gone bad. Then there would have been real reason for their incessant squabbling and bickering, and maybe they could have wasted each other and we would be done with them. But the bickering and whining continue, with no end in sight. If the story were of reasonable length, maybe this approach to female characters would be endurable; but after several thousand pages of this, it gets far more than tiring.
Jordan also over-uses the plot device of having characters appear to die, or actually die, and then somehow come back. Tolkien used this device once (with Gandalf). Jordan uses it with several characters in this volume alone. This is bad writing for two reasons: first, it reduces the finality and horror of death, and thus cheapens it; and second, it confuses the reader mightily -- is this character really gone, or not? One of the major characters of the story up to this point dies in this volume. But does she? So many other characters have come back; maybe she will, too. So what's the big deal about dying?
Perhaps most importantly, Jordan makes the great fantasy error of making magic too powerful. In a previous volume the hero, Rand, got his hands on a magic sword that could blow up entire cities. After this, Jordan must have realized that putting such power in the hands of his hero would ruin the story -- makes things too easy -- so the hero took this superweapon, stuck it in the floor, and left it. While that idiotic behavior is rationalized in the story, the least bit of common sense says that he would keep this weapon, use it to slaughter all the bad guys, and bring the story to a quick end. But that would keep Jordan from selling another zillion books, so the weapon gets left behind and is not used in this volume. Even so, the hero's magical power is so great that he apparently can just zap uncounted bad guys into nothingness. If so, just why he spends this volume building a military coalition to fight wars is beyond any reason. This is important because even as a stand-alone book, apart from the endless series of which it is a part, this book has a plot that does not make much sense.
When Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings, he wrote the entire work, and then re-wrote and edited it completely, so that the entire story held together. Jordan instead started with a single book -- The Eye of the World -- which was written so that it could clearly have stood alone. But because the first book sold well, Jordan seemingly dedicated his life to grinding out more and more Wheel of Time books. Since they kept selling, he kept grinding, with more and more characters, more and more plot twists, more and more endless verbiage. This book is a too-long part of an endlessly-long series. It is readable for those that like fantasy, but as literature, it scarcely rises above garbage. I give it two stars because I have actually read worse, and one star is the lowest score you can give. So I suppose it rates more than one star; but it is not a good book.
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