Reviews

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

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brittney_king's review against another edition

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adventurous tense medium-paced

4.5

mnstr_qn's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

It wasn't for me. I slogged through 700+ pages of world building, prophecies, boys being boys, girls being angry at things, and I couldn't give hoot about any of them, mostly because they have very few, if any, defining features or actual character.

I'm sure this book suffered from the Tolkien craze of "make it like LOTR" but it definitely didn't benefit from it. If the characters were given more love than the descriptions of places, and it were about 350 pages shorter, I may have gotten into the slightly rehashed LOTR copy/hero story, but it was so very slow and not in a good way. I don't mind descriptions, I love them - but he keeps describing the same things over and over, losing the plot...but I really lost interest at page 462.

A woman is backhanded in front of Rand and he doesn't give a sh*t. He even goes on the say something irks him about the inn, but it's not the physical abuse that just happened in front of him it's...the inn being dirty. I can forgive him being an idiot because he's a child, but not given any inkling of a sh*t about that woman and it never being touched again made any interest shrivel up and die. The ending was tepid, the whole thing diffuse and anticlimactic.

I will not be reading further in the series, It's just not my style. If you enjoy LOTR though it's worth a try, because it certainly takes it's time and it's obviously very popular for a reason, it's a big world, big magic, and I hear it gets better.