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Moreover, Eye of the World features strong men and, through their magical abilities and powerful personalities, stronger women. Jordan has been rightly lauded for the prominent and powerful roles he created for the female characters.
The Great Hunt, The Dragon Reborn, The Shadow Rising and The Fires of Heaven followed and created a tremendous series such that The New York Times noted that Jordan had come to dominate the genre that Tolkien made famous.
In Eye of the World, the writing is smooth, the various characters and their motivations work well, and there's action aplenty. The sense of innocence and mystery that correspond to the heroes' relative lack of knowledge of their surroundings and the world at large is palpable and realistic.
Unfortunately, starting with Lord of Chaos (book 6), Jordan's creation became unwieldy. Instead of concentrating on following the themes and story-threads of books 1-5 (which combined are more than 3500 pages, hardcover), he created new storylines, bogged down the narrative and halted the pace of the epic. Book 8 in particular is an unmitigated disaster -- 650 pages (hardcover) of wheel-spinning (pardon the pun) with almost no progress to the story. Book 9 began to jump-start the narrative once again.
The series is at 10 books (the tenth will be published in about two months from now) and growing (13 total possible -- it's a common numerical theme in the books), thus the last volume will be published in 2006, at the earliest.
The Eye of the World is great, as are the next four in the series. They are, however, addictive, so know what you're getting into.
Robert Jordan has created a landscape of magnificent proportions. Accents, legends, superstitions, politics...His amazing attention to detail allowed me to become fully immersed in the story. Even more surprising is that the quality of his writing is maintained throughout the book's length of 782 pages. I couldn't put this novel down, with the result that I finished it well inside of a week.
This is the first book of a series, and the reviews for some of the later books aren't as glowing. However, I feel that this book is a great read, and can stand on its own. It is not uncommon for series to degrade over time -- take a look at "Wishsong of Shannara"by Terry Brooks, "The One Tree" by Stephen R. Donaldson, or "The Sorceress of Darshiva" by David Eddings. All three of these books fail to live up to the quality of others in their respective series, but that doesn't mean you should avoid the series altogether.
"Eye of the World" provides us with an epic that is also refreshingly new. Robert Jordan presents us with a world that is the most richly colorful since Tolkein. If you're a fan of fantasy, then don't miss reading this book.