Literateur: "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan

This series is 14 books long with each one clocking in at about 1,000 pages. The author died after writing 11 of them. Brandon Sanderson was picked to finish the series- on the strength of his Mistborn trilogy- and he revitalized it with his final three best-selling books.

The best advice I got about approaching Wheel of Time was "Read until you don't like it. Then stop reading."

I took this advice!

So, Book One: Eye of the World. Let's dive right in.

The prologue has the cataclysmic Portents and epic conflict of Light and Darkness and the world being Broken and overcome with The Darkness and hints that a Chosen Hero will one day be Born to Restore the Balance. Alright...

Then we're in a village with a bunch of NPC villagers doing NPC villager things. There's a hooded figure who may be a villain...or a hero! But mostly it's just NPCs wandering around. Okay...

Then the NPCs start discussing the big upcoming festival and the biggest topic of discussion is the dude who will be bringing fireworks.

......

Terry Brooks started his first Shannara book the same way. Villagers getting all excited about their village festival and a wizard comes into town with fireworks that everyone is stoked about.

I promptly threw that book across the room.

Do fantasy authors know there are other ways to start a fantasy book? Just because Tolkien started Lord of the Rings with a guy coming into town bringing fireworks for a village festival...doesn't mean every fantasy saga has to do the same!

But I really enjoy Brandon Sanderson, so I wanted to give the series a fair shot and hopefully read through it and finally get to the ones he wrote.

And heck, it isn't aggressively bad. It's just kinda bland. An easy way to describe it would be "Brandon Sanderson without humor or irony." Or, heck: "George R.R. Martin without grit or interesting plot twists."

So I kept plodding along. Nothing continued to happen. 

I recalled that everyone online and IRL told me that this series hits a wall at Book Four and then continues to suck until Book Twelve, when Sanderson took over.

Let's examine that: FANS of this series say 8 out of 14 books suck!

So I'm allegedly reading one of the exciting books in the series. Hmm...

In a world with infinite entertainment options, I couldn't in good conscience allow this book to continue taking up my leisure reading time.

So I defied the sunk cost fallacy and dropped the book cold. I pity the folks who kept reading book after book in this series because they felt like they made it that far, so they had to keep going.

I plan to read Wikipedia or fanpage summaries of the rest of these bad boys and then read the final Sanderson books that brought me here in the first place.

When you speak of me and the Wheel of Time, never let it be said that I didn't try!

But go ahead and say I didn't try very hard.

-Phony McFakename

* * *

Legal disclaimer: Me am on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and even Pinterest if that's your thing. And me books am on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Kobo and probably some other places, too.