The Eye of the World — Dinaburg Writes

by Robert Jordan

I didn’t remember trollocs. Or Myrddraal, or Ogiers, or the Green Man. Or even Thom Merrilin, who is a human person not a fantastical beast.

I remembered Rand, I remembered Perrin because I thought he was the boring one, I remember Mazrim Taim—who does not yet make an appearance—and I remember that I cannot pronounce Nynaeve anything but “Nineveh,” even after this reading. I love that about fantasy books, that I can mangle the names and places but so would everyone else, and it didn’t get flattened down to a “correct” pronunciation until or unless it became a TV show or movie. No one would get made at me for “Nineveh,” but the Light protect me from those HBO goons if they knew how I used to read “Daenerys.” I didn’t realize that the Flame of Tar Valon was the yin flipped (or the yang palatte-swapped) until the first time the chapter-opening image of the Dragon’s Fang came up. I feel confident that I never realized it twenty years ago. Not until I saw it on the cover of book eight, Path of Daggers. But we aren’t there. Not yet, anyway.

Yes, that clunky foreshadowing—not yet—means that 2020 is the year I let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time, a phrase buried as deeply into my subconscious as “May the Force be with you” and “My wife” in the Borat voice. The Wheel of Time, the High Fantasy series equivalent of Moby Dick at least in terms of wordcount, has popped up enough times for me lately for me to give it a serious look: “One thing we can do. We can try. What seems like chance is often the Pattern. Three threads have come together here, each giving a warning: the Eye. It cannot be chance; it is the Pattern.” And so I’ll start this journey, for the second time. I’ve read up until at least book six—possibly eight, because I at least recognized that cover—of the fourteen novels. The first book, The Eye of the World, still does as good a job setting everyone up, building out a world, and having as silly a climactic battle as it did when I was seventeen.

It’s the type of book that I consider a magazine novel or a pattern-based book; I just sort of skim most of the pages, picking up the dialogue and jumping back into the preceding paragraphs only if something doesn’t make sense. It’s the type of reading I suspect most people do when they’re just reading for fun, like a beach read where you’re half watching the water and half interested in the international espionage on the page. Even now, after purposefully slowing down and paying the type of full attention to every single word on the page that I adhere to so I could take notes and write up these fun reviews, I still found myself starting to skim:

He fell more than climbed down that first, steep part of the slope, tumbling and sliding from bush to bush. By the time he reached more level ground, his bruises ached twice as much, but he found strength enough to stand, barely. Egwene. He broke into a shambling run. Leaves and flower petals showered around him as he blundered through the undergrowth. Have to find her.

Yeah, you can absolutely cut out all the non-plot fluff and still recognize that Rand is a little dazed and looking for Egwene. “He fell…Egwene. Have to find her.” If you’re like me, you probably do.

Did.

…do.

Even this time, I had to stop, take a breath, go back and force myself to read every word like it was any other book. I mean, that’s the denouement. You’re racing to the end, tripping over the words and sliding down the pages like Rand fall-climbing down the slope, bouncing off the bushes you’re so rudely skipping over. Forgive me that I missed the detail of the old Aes Sedai (which I still pronounce as “Sendai” for no apparent reason, and always will) symbol being described in the archway at the eye of the world, dragon fang and flame balanced together like, well, yin and yang. It’s a neat detail. There are a lot of neat details! And I’m actually seeing them, this time.

It’s not, like, the best book I’ve ever picked up. The tenses get weird, sometimes. The phrasing is suspect. “He was so enmeshed in worrying whether or not he had gotten himself into trouble, whether or not she was someone who could and would call the Queen’s Guards even on a day when they had other things to occupy them, that is took him a few moments to see past the elaborate clothes and lofty attitude to the girl herself.” I know from future book knowledge that The Eye of the World’s big battle is retconned (a portmanteau of “retroactive continuity,” which is a fancy way of saying new details change the meaning of old events) into making more sense, but during it is kind of silly: “‘It is ended,’ Rand said, and he swung the sword at Ba’alzamon’s black cord.” Yes, the retcon is that Surprise! Ba’alzamon wasn’t really the ultimate Dark Lord but someone pretending to be the Dark Lord for plot purposes. But gosh the first time someone mentioned the Aiel and shoufa and Ajahs and all the rest of the bits that I think I might kind of remember, I know that this is the time that I’m finally going to catch that dang whale.

At least until I get to book six. Or Eight. We’ll see.