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A review by thekingcrusoe
The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan
4.0
So this rating and review will likely come as a shock to some people. Some who have following my journey with the series so far will notice that it is my first 4 star rating for The Wheel of Time; some reading this review without the background might assume "Oh, that means he liked it better than the others rated only 3 stars, because TSR is where the series comes into it's own and gets really good!"
The problem is that I rated the first 3 books 5 stars.
The Shadow Rising has some very, VERY cool moments - I'll be the first to assuage those doubts - but some of those great scenes, including the most emotionally impactful scene in the series thus far bar none, also come balanced with quite easily the worst, most annoying, most eyerollingly aggravating and stupid moments of the series as well - again bar none. The irony is that both the peak and trough of the book occur in the same storyline. If you know, you know.
What it comes down to is the The Shadow Rising as a journey is vastly overrated, and overstated as being the best book in the series. Now I've only read these 4 books so far, but that isn't true at all - in fact, this is my least favorite of the 4, in case my earlier statements related to the star ratings didn't make that obvious. And it's not even just that the book itself is a little overrated, it has specific moments that people claim define the book, and even define the peaks that series in totality reaches, but I did not get those much at all.
The primary culprit of this is the Rhuidean sequence. I will say no more lest I say spoilers, but as I was coming up to this section around half way through the book, it was made clear to me that these 2 chapters (25-26 I believe) are THE BEST OF THE SERIES, and they are astoundingly good, yada yada.
They were great, yes, but far from the best section of the entire series.
I harken back to The Great Hunt being another of the most popular entries of The Wheel of Time, especially of the ones that Robert Jordan wrote, but even that one I look back on and think "yeah, incredible book, but not the best of the first arc - the first "trilogy", so to speak. I think I'm coming out of this realizing that some of the books that are more underrated are the ones I appreciate more than the ones that everybody else adores, for one reason or another, though expectations has a lot to do with it for sure.
My major complaints though come down to Zarine (fuck this character; the only good moment she had was in the aforementioned "best scene of the book" that I hint at earlier, but she's also the sole reason all of my least favorite scenes of this book are my least favorite scenes. I've only heard bad things about the storylines for her and her associated characters continue - I know they become the absolute bane of books in the slog especially, and that has me incredibly worried, because I already cannot stand this bitch, before most other people start to have any issues with her at all, so that's not encouraging.
Otherwise, my main complaint was that the climax was pretty mediocre. Even in The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt when there were abrupt or confusing aspects to those climactic scenes and moments - especially regarding Rand - I still found myself enthralled by the imagery, by the events, by what was happening, even if I didn't fully understand it until later.
And that's an important point: "didn't fully understand...until later". Robert Jordan is the master at writing rushed and confusing climaxes that make 0 sense until after the fact, when the real implications of it all becomes realized (as in TSR) or when the confusion has time to pass (as in EotW and TGH). It's just unfortunate. Rand's climax in this book particular (the other 2 storylines had great endings and I liked those a lot) really soured me, because it was doing one thing that I was super invested in and then all of a sudden, SOMETHING happens that took me 3 pages to understand, and by that point the 5 pages or less of battle for this climax were basically all done. So it took until the last 5 pages of the book for me to appreciate what the climax actually does for THE FUTURE of the series, and I could not enjoy it in the moment like I could with the previous books.
Also notice I don't disparage The Dragon Reborn in here. That climax made sense automatically and inherently, and culminated in something amazing, unlike this one in my opinion. In fact, looking back, this might be a big reason why I love The Dragon Reborn so much (it's my favorite of the series so far): finales, climaxes, resolutions, etc. are MY JAM. I love the ends of series when things are wrapped up well, even if loose threads maybe aren't fully taken care of - so long as they aren't too major or too voluminous, or botched to no end. But generally, I LOVE endings, and The Dragon Reborn had the best one.
The Shadow Rising had a good ending for some plots, but a meh ending for others - or at least, that's how I felt in the moment, so that deeply affects my overall opinion of the book, as I don't think THIS ending was 100% worth the 400,000 journey to get here.
With all of that being said though, The Shadow Rising is still a pretty good book, just pretty handily my personal least favorite of The Wheel of Time so far.
The problem is that I rated the first 3 books 5 stars.
The Shadow Rising has some very, VERY cool moments - I'll be the first to assuage those doubts - but some of those great scenes, including the most emotionally impactful scene in the series thus far bar none, also come balanced with quite easily the worst, most annoying, most eyerollingly aggravating and stupid moments of the series as well - again bar none. The irony is that both the peak and trough of the book occur in the same storyline. If you know, you know.
What it comes down to is the The Shadow Rising as a journey is vastly overrated, and overstated as being the best book in the series. Now I've only read these 4 books so far, but that isn't true at all - in fact, this is my least favorite of the 4, in case my earlier statements related to the star ratings didn't make that obvious. And it's not even just that the book itself is a little overrated, it has specific moments that people claim define the book, and even define the peaks that series in totality reaches, but I did not get those much at all.
The primary culprit of this is the Rhuidean sequence. I will say no more lest I say spoilers, but as I was coming up to this section around half way through the book, it was made clear to me that these 2 chapters (25-26 I believe) are THE BEST OF THE SERIES, and they are astoundingly good, yada yada.
They were great, yes, but far from the best section of the entire series.
I harken back to The Great Hunt being another of the most popular entries of The Wheel of Time, especially of the ones that Robert Jordan wrote, but even that one I look back on and think "yeah, incredible book, but not the best of the first arc - the first "trilogy", so to speak. I think I'm coming out of this realizing that some of the books that are more underrated are the ones I appreciate more than the ones that everybody else adores, for one reason or another, though expectations has a lot to do with it for sure.
My major complaints though come down to Zarine (fuck this character; the only good moment she had was in the aforementioned "best scene of the book" that I hint at earlier, but she's also the sole reason all of my least favorite scenes of this book are my least favorite scenes. I've only heard bad things about the storylines for her and her associated characters continue - I know they become the absolute bane of books in the slog especially, and that has me incredibly worried, because I already cannot stand this bitch, before most other people start to have any issues with her at all, so that's not encouraging.
Otherwise, my main complaint was that the climax was pretty mediocre. Even in The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt when there were abrupt or confusing aspects to those climactic scenes and moments - especially regarding Rand - I still found myself enthralled by the imagery, by the events, by what was happening, even if I didn't fully understand it until later.
And that's an important point: "didn't fully understand...until later". Robert Jordan is the master at writing rushed and confusing climaxes that make 0 sense until after the fact, when the real implications of it all becomes realized (as in TSR) or when the confusion has time to pass (as in EotW and TGH). It's just unfortunate. Rand's climax in this book particular (the other 2 storylines had great endings and I liked those a lot) really soured me, because it was doing one thing that I was super invested in and then all of a sudden, SOMETHING happens that took me 3 pages to understand, and by that point the 5 pages or less of battle for this climax were basically all done. So it took until the last 5 pages of the book for me to appreciate what the climax actually does for THE FUTURE of the series, and I could not enjoy it in the moment like I could with the previous books.
Also notice I don't disparage The Dragon Reborn in here. That climax made sense automatically and inherently, and culminated in something amazing, unlike this one in my opinion. In fact, looking back, this might be a big reason why I love The Dragon Reborn so much (it's my favorite of the series so far): finales, climaxes, resolutions, etc. are MY JAM. I love the ends of series when things are wrapped up well, even if loose threads maybe aren't fully taken care of - so long as they aren't too major or too voluminous, or botched to no end. But generally, I LOVE endings, and The Dragon Reborn had the best one.
The Shadow Rising had a good ending for some plots, but a meh ending for others - or at least, that's how I felt in the moment, so that deeply affects my overall opinion of the book, as I don't think THIS ending was 100% worth the 400,000 journey to get here.
With all of that being said though, The Shadow Rising is still a pretty good book, just pretty handily my personal least favorite of The Wheel of Time so far.