I finished this book months ago, and I really ought to have gotten to this by now, but time has slipped away from me. You'll have to forgive me if I'm a little vague on the details, because... Wait. Hang on. This is The Eye of the World? Book one of The Wheel of Time? I've probably read this thing ten times or more. No worries, then, I've got this sorted.
So, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. This is a big one for me. I first encountered it when I was around 15 years old, and that's probably the exact right age for it: too old for simplistic "farmboy saves the world" fantasy stories, but not yet old enough to have grown out of that sort of thing.
Make no mistake, The Wheel of Time is a "farmboy saves the world" story, and we've all read our fair share of those. I feel like it transcends that description, though. In a lot of ways it's the ultimate story of its type. Certainly it's one of the longest, at over 4,000,000 words. But more than that, it takes the tale in messier directions than the norm, exploring things like what actually happens when a farmboy becomes a king. But that's for a later time; for the moment, we're in more familiar epic quest territory.
The first book begins the story of Rand al'Thor, the aforementioned farmboy, and how he and his friends discover that they are important in the battle against the Dark One. Most of the story finds them on the run from the Dark One's minions, trying to get to the safety of Tar Valon.
I was struck upon this reading at just what a sudden lurch the finale of this book is. The characters spend the whole book with one goal in mind: to reach Tar Valon, home of the Aes Sedai (lady wizards, basically). Then, with about one hundred pages to go, they abandon that goal to head off into the Blight to foil the Dark One's plan to "blind the Eye of the World and break the Wheel of Time". It comes out of nowhere, and in some ways it feels as though Jordan hit a deadline and had to rush the ending. It doesn't seem likely, because he's usually a very meticulous writer, but this particular instance stands out to me.
On the other hand, there's a moment that I used to feel came out of nowhere, but is actually foreshadowed quite well: Rand's ability to channel, and the revelation that he is the Dragon Reborn. Upon my first reading, as a dumb kid, I had thought this done poorly. I don't know what I was thinking, because it's obvious in hindsight. There's even a scene where Rand is cornered by bad guys, and they get mysteriously struck by lightning. Dumb kid me got so angry at that scene, because, well, it's a stupid, random way to get the hero out of trouble. Except it wasn't a random lightning strike, it was Rand using the Power. Not to mention the episodes Rand has where he alternates between nausea and madness, exactly the symptoms described for becoming a channeller elsewhere in the book. Like I said, I was a dumb kid.
There's one strength Jordan has that is on display in this book in spades: planning. The guy planned the hell out of this series, and reading the first book it really shows how well he did so. There's foreshadowing all over the place, and a scattering of prophetic visions that all pay off down the line. It can't be stated enough how difficult it is to plan a book, then stick to the plan during the writing phase: especially so in a book spanning fourteen volumes.
Still, for all that planning there are a few unexplained oddities in the first book. Most of these come from the finale, which... well, it's confusingly written. Deliberately so, I'm sure; it's all from Rand's perspective, and he seems not quite in his right mind at the time. But a number of things happen at the end of the book that never get resolved. Was it really Rand's mum being held by the Dark One? Who was that ALL-CAPS VOICE? We'll probably never know for sure, but I'm cool with that. Every work of art should have its ambiguities.
I probably haven't made it clear, but I LOVE this book. As I mentioned above, it took hold of me at exactly the right age, and Jordan became a massive influence on me as a writer. I spent a good number of years attempting to emulate his style, before swerving off into a totally different direction with Jack Manley. Later on, the series gets bogged down in detail and side-characters, but here in the first book it's a relatively tight coming-of-age quest story that does what it does very, very well.
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