I have been meaning to read this book for a very long time. Back in junior high my dad would read passages of other books in the Wheel of Time to me while we were away at soccer tourdemenets. In high school when I started reading Terry Goodkind I really wanted to start the Wheel of Time as well, alas they were all somewhere in the basement in boxes.
Fast forward to this year: we’re renovating our basement and installing shelving, soon the books will be reveled. I make The Eye of the World my goal book for June. I’m finally going to read it. Unfortunately my grandmother is moving out of her house so shelving dreams will have to wait because we’re getting another piano and it has to go where the shelves would. No books appeared.
Then the two nights before we left for camping my dad calls me down stairs. He is hidden behind the entire Wheel of Time, mostly in hardbacks, hands them to me and walks away. Luckily my brother was downstairs at the time helping me look for our lost tripod and opened my room’s door for me otherwise I would have dropped them all on the floor. It took all my arms have to hold them.
I started (and finished) this book while we were camping at Stanhope National Park in PEI. It was a really fun way to read this book. There were minimal interruptions and my dad was with me most of them time which was really nice because I had someone to talk to about the books. We had times where we also read out-loud to each other form the books that we were reading, he was reading Brendon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings and found some great out-of-context quotes to share with me. Even mum joined in the fun and read parts of Temple Grandin’s memoir outloud that she found particularly interesting.
Needless to say, this is a very special book it me. It is another in a long line of books that my father has given to me that include books like Harry Potter and The Hobbit, among others. He read The Eye of the World 4 or 5 times, so I was expecting great things.
Now, I have often heard other series *coughcoughGoTcough* compared to The Wheel of Time and now I have some very strong feels about comparisons. This is the singular best high fantasy book I have ever read (perhaps excluding LotR, though I would say that the actual reading experience was better). All other books I have read paled in comparison to the first page of The Eye of the World and this point occupied many hours of discussion between my father and I.
Robert Jordan builds a complete world in one novel. He has a diverse group of cast members and all that you would expect from a band of misfits. The magic in his world is as diverse as his characters and its system is well thought out. His monsters are superb.
I have very little criticism for this book. There were some points that don’t make 100% sense yet and some characters who have disappeared for the moment. The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, a what will they do next, so I really want to read the next book soon. I rated this book a 5 out of 5. Hopefully the rest of the series can fill its boots, though I’m sure it can.
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