The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time #1) * * * * *

I finally started The Wheel of Time after the TV adaptation was cancelled. I had always meant to read it, in a vague someday sort of way, but fourteen enormous books is an intimidating commitment. Still, I was in the mood for high fantasy, and I was genuinely annoyed about the show. I liked it. I did not need it to be faithful in every detail; I am perfectly fine with adaptations changing things. Books and television work differently, especially when the source material is this sprawling. I tend to think of adaptations as alternate versions of the same story. The visuals were beautiful, the atmosphere worked, and yes, I am going to miss it. Screw Amazon.

I listened to The Eye of the World as an audiobook, which turned out to be a serious undertaking. It runs over thirty hours, and it took me more than a month to finish. This is not a fast book. The plot is enormous, but the pace is glacial. Things happen, then the characters walk. Then they walk some more. Something interrupts them. Then they walk again. If you put every event from this book on screen, one season would be longer than the audiobook itself. And while I would absolutely watch that, most of it would be wildly impractical to film and, frankly, tedious to watch for most people.

The book is often compared to The Lord of the Rings, and while the comparison is obvious, it is also a bit lazy. This is how older high fantasy often worked. A group sets out from point A, travels through a dangerous world, and slowly learns how large and old that world really is. Modern fantasy tends to move faster and explain less. If this book were written today, it would not stop so often to explain the history of a broken statue, the origin of that statue, and then the tragic life story of the man who once stood for that statue. The lore is relentless. Interesting, yes, but overwhelming. By the end, I had probably forgotten most of it.

The middle of the book is where the pacing really starts to strain. After the group splits up, several characters meander for a long time, and their chapters begin to blur together. It does eventually pick up again, but there is a stretch where progress feels minimal and repetition sets in. The show cuts huge amounts of this material, and honestly, I understand why.

The cast felt so familiar after the show. If you have seen the show, most of the main characters arrive on the page already recognisable. It’s hard to talk about them without the characters from the two mediums blending together.

The central figure, Rand al’Thor, is almost aggressively decent. He is practical, stubborn in a quiet way, and constantly trying to keep everyone together while understanding very little of what is actually happening. He feels less like a traditional chosen-one hero and more like a pressure point the story keeps leaning on. Things happen around him and through him, and his defining trait is endurance. He holds. He keeps going. At this point in the series, that is his role, and it works.

My biggest problem, however, is a character issue. Nynaeve al’Meara. I already found her irritating in the series, but the book version amplifies everything I disliked. She is perpetually angry, perpetually resentful, and convinced that everything is somehow Moiraine’s fault. Her hostility toward the Aes Sedai makes no sense to me. The girls are born with their abilities; no one forces them into anything. The Aes Sedai offer education, structure, and survival. Treating that as coercion feels wilfully obtuse.

She also behaves as though the other characters are helpless children dragged along against their will, when they are very clearly making their own decisions. No one forced them to leave. No one threatened their village. And yet she acts as if Moiraine Damodred, played in the show by Rosamund Pike, personally ruined everyone’s life by showing up. Scene after scene, I found myself thinking, oh no, her again. If the book had quietly removed her from the narrative for a while, I would not have missed her.

Despite all this, I did enjoy the book overall. It is a classic for a reason. The world is vast, ancient, and carefully constructed, even when the detail becomes excessive. I am interested enough to continue, though I suspect I will need breaks between volumes. This is not a series to binge unless you are very patient.

One thing that adds to the experience and makes listening, even maybe binging, easier is Rosamund Pike’s narration. Her delivery is controlled, expressive, and clear, even across long stretches of exposition. Given the length of the book, this matters. Without a strong narrator, listening to over thirty hours of lore, walking, and world-building would have been a far harder sell. I hope all of the books will come out with her narration, so far we only have her until book 4.

The Eye of the World is slow, lore-heavy, and frequently indulgent. It rewards commitment, but it absolutely demands it. Whether that feels immersive or exhausting will depend entirely on your tolerance for walking, backstory, and one extremely infuriating healer.