Rating: Summary: Despite Flaws, Remains Above Average! Review: Compared to Shadow Rising, FoH's predecessor, Fires of Heaven is amazing. Compared to other novels, it is barely above average. Still, you do manage to find yourself enjoying the novel. It moves faster than SR and has better plot lines, too. Two bad points: the characters Perrin, Faile, and Loial are never brought in, and Mat is still here. Can't that whining, immature brat ever leave? Rand's character does manage to improve and I also began to like the characters of Aviendha, Nynaeve, Elayne, and Egwene more so than before. Some ideas are either bit redundant or just plain ridiculous, but it still is a book you can enjoy and still be ready to read the series' next installment in the end.
Rating: Summary: Jordan still Rules! Review: This book is great and just as the books preceeding it.
Rating: Summary: A soft flame Review: Unfortunately I found FoH to be an unfulfilling novel, on the whole, considering it's the 5th book in the series. It's not necessarily worse than the first 3 novels, but rather a rehashing of past themes and plot devices in such a manner that it does not warrant 900 odd pages - especially after the excellent 4th book, Shadow Rising, I can't help but feel somewhat let down.Still it isn't a total loss by any means. For example, I feel that the continued excellent use of Matt provides a standout character that is interesting and one that you truly begin to care about. Of course Matt alone doesn't carry the novel but I hope that Book 6 can revitalise the series by adding a new dimension or two.
Rating: Summary: That's enough! Review: When I first started reading this series, I thought it showed promise. I now have to admit I was wrong. Since this series began, these books have done nothing but rehash the same plot. And the plot wasn't all that interesting in the first place. This book was absolutely awful! I barely managed to finish the thing at all. I'm never going to read another book by Mr. Jordan, Wheel of Time or any other.
Rating: Summary: TFOH-- two thumbs up Review: I really enjoyed this book-- book six hasn't gotten here yet and the wait is almost unbearable. I didn't give it five starts because Elayne began to really tick me off around page... two hundred? Some of it was predictable but overall I thought it was well done, and it's keeping me waiting for "Lord of Chaos". Well worth the read.
Rating: Summary: A teenage soap opera Review: By this time this series has squandered what potential it had and become little more than a teenage soap opera, and a bad one at that. Our intrepid characters once again bravely wander the countryside, occasionally taking the trouble to slay a number of really scary Trollocs, still apparently the most common enemy. We have budding 'relationships' abounding- Elaine might love Rand, but so might Aviendha... etc. Some find this exciting, but I don't, and by this time I'm tired of this series. It has none of the scope of Tolkien's grand work, or Pullman's beautiful His Dark Materials. There's nothing driving it forward, hardly anything holding it together but a final conflict with the 'Dark One'. For such a simple plot this series is astonishingly long. And, just because its long doesn't mean it has anything good about it(as many readers erroneously assume). Most of the book is full of sterile and pointless details and descriptions. If I wanted to read a bad soap opera/history book of Randland I would pick this up, but for no other reason.
Rating: Summary: Fantasy that's more believable than reality Review: What to say?! Of the 5 I've read, this one is by far the best. The Lord Dragon learns more about weilding the One Power, about his destiny to fight Ba'alzamon, and keeps finding himself thrown about the pattern like a leaf in the wind. As beautifully detailed as one could wish for; you almost feel the taint of the dark one when Rand touches Saidin. The battles, the sorrow, the laughter. Jordan shocks and amazes. I can't wait to get number 6.
Rating: Summary: Impressive...but filler Review: Ok this novel was a series filler so to speak. It was just a build up for the following book, but it was still great. I have never been disappointed with a Robert Jordan book(except that the books are too small...hehe) This novel is definitely worth reading but you better have the next one handy otherwise you will pulling your hair out withing for it to come in the mail when you are done with this one. This is a gread addition to the series and a worthy read.
Rating: Summary: Some Wandering Thoughts Review: Well, I made it through book five. I started the Wheel of Time series over a year ago and with each successive book it takes me longer and longer to finish. Like an all-you-can-eat buffet, I started out fast and now (with three books left) I'm more than full. Oh, I'll make it through books six, seven, and eight, but I'm reading (or eating) to fulfil a mission rather than out of hunger. That said, I won't comment much on the book itself (I've also written amazon reviews for the previous novels). The same usual stuff happens. Elayne and Nynaeve bicker like adolescents. Egwene and Rand bicker like adolescents. Mat chases women. Trollocs attack at will. There's a big final confrontation (gosh, I hope I'm not spoiling things) at the end. Jordan's juvenile obsession with female nudity and sexuality continues. In short, it's the same old, same old. Rather, I feel like spewing out some thoughts on why this series has received so much attention. Why are there so many readers who can't make it through the first ten pages of The Lord of the Rings (yep, it's true, read through the Amazon comments to see how many readers place Jordan above Toliken) but who CAN make it through EIGHT books and nearly 7,000 pages of this series? Fantasy is an ancient genre. There are elements of fantasy in the Bible, in Greek Mythology. In fact, it is impossible to date just how far back fantasy goes. Our more typical conception of fantasy (dragons, battles, elves, fairies, etc.) show up in Beowulf, the epic poem, The Faerie Queen, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Most recently, of course, in the 20th century, J.R.R. Tolkien (who, by the way, translated Gawain), Ursula LeGuin, and John Gardner (in his novel Grendel) have carried on the tradition. Sadly, though, this sense of tradition is what is missing from the Wheel of Time series. I really don't believe that Jordan is well aware of the broader tradition that he's writing in. So what tradition IS Jordan writing in? I may be going out on a precarious limb here, but Jordan's novels seem to stem from the more modern, attention-deficit disordered, quasi-Advanced Dungeons and Dragons/Role Play-gaming tradition. The Wheel of Time is a like a PC RPG put in words. There's a loosely structured main theme (Rand must defeat the Dark One) and inbetween there's a bunch of side missions and marching to and fro (the equivalent of roaming around gathering experience points). Along the way certain characters, with this accumulation of experience, recieve added skills (the ability to channel or channel with newly learned powers (healing, calling wind, etc.), the ability to dreamwalk, the ability to plan battles (Mat), the ability to communicate with animals (Perrin)). Likewise, characters pick up useful items along the way (Mat's medallion and spear, Elayne's Terangreal, Rand's Terangreal). And like in RPG's, after accumulating enough experience, they're finally strong enough to defeat a decent enemy (Asmodean, Rahvin, Moghedian etc.). And what happens after this enemy is defeated? Well, the characters go back to wandering back and forth throughout the countryside, gaining more experience points so they can do battle with the next strong enemy. Eventually, of course, these characters will be strong enough to encounter that final enemy, The Dark One, and then, well, Game Over! My problem is this: slowly going up levels and gaining experience points may be a lot of fun on a computer screen but it makes for BORING reading. Thus, I'll wrap up my long, long review with the following: there's something wrong when today's readers shun traditional, talented writers such as J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula LeGuin (who, in addition to being a sci-fi/fantasy writer, is also a published poet and writer of literary fiction) and turn to the thin, convoluted plots of writers like Jordan. Readers who claim that Jordan is the greatest fantasy writer of all time simply don't appreciate strong, capable writing and manageable plots; instead, many of today's readers (when they can tear themselves away from Baldur's Gate or Everquest) cast the quality of the story and the quality of the writing aside in lieu of countless numbers of battles, myriad subplots and mindless wanderings back and forth across that silly Wheel of Time Map. When will the Wheel of Time series eventually end? I honestly don't know, but it seems Rand, Mat, Perrin, Elayne, Egwene, and Nynaeve still have thousands more pages of experience points to acquire!
Rating: Summary: An Exhausting Book Review: Mr. Jordan appears to have a phenomenal eye for detail, and has the potential to be a very good writer, but his work is crippled by clear imitation and by a certain emotional sterility. He lifts his primary cultures and the vast detail that accompanies them straight from European and Asian history, without either truly transforming them into his own vision, as did Tolkien, or unashamedly acknowledging his sources, as does Guy Gavriel Kay. In terms of emotional relations, this book is exhausting! Jordan's characters live in a sterile world in which endless dominance and status games stand in for real emotions, feelings, or relationships. Physical punishment is the primary indicator of a character's status or lack thereof. After a while I found this repetitive. I lost count of the time people "howled," and found that I really wanted a character to come up with a way of solving problems or managing impossible situations other than resorting to position, place, and force. One either submits or is dominant in this world. The series appeared to me to be a romp through a comic book world with characters who have the emotional maturity of early adolescents (or the type of person who seeks out a military life because of its overt hierarchy and rules, and cannot function outside that clearly delineated environment). If you want good writing, intellectual stimulation, and solid psychological exploration in light fiction, read Laurie King, Ursula Le Guin, Robin McKinley, or Mary Doria Russell. If you want a sensitive and hard-hitting treatment of torture and pain, read Susan Matthews and Mary Doria Russell. Jordan, unfortunately, has turned his early potential not in the direction of richness, but to an adolescent soap opera.
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