The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

[Tao]

Wow. I finished secondary school in 1990 (in Ireland, where, at the time, there was only primary and secondary school; I went to a Christian Brothers school. Good old Edmund Ignatius Rice. Or not). In a way, I'd like to have started reading The Wheel Of Time at the, er, time, but I'm glad my younger brother turned me on to it only a few years ago because I really hate having to wait for things.

I think the ending of this series is what I'm most excited about at the moment, at least in literature (Lost takes it in the TV genre).

[Werthead]

Towers of Midnight

The Last Battle has begun. From Saldaea to Shienar, vast armies of Shadowspawn burst forth into the unprepared Borderlands. Whilst Rodel Ituralde prepares to stand siege against overwhelming numbers, Lan Mandragoran rides for Tarwin's Gap with the last of the Malkieri at his side.

The Dragon Reborn has overcome the darkness that was threatening to swallow him but now faces a struggle to repair the damage his actions have unleashed. Arad Doman is starving, the Borderlander army at Far Madding must be confronted and Cairhien remains without a ruler. But before Rand can address those problems, he must stand within the Hall of the Tower and answer for his actions to the Amyrlin Seat...

Perrin Aybara and Mat Cauthon have their own challenges to face. Perrin must make peace with his wolf side and forge a dangerous alliance with those who only want to kill him for crimes from long ago. Mat must face his own nemesis on the streets of Caemlyn and undertake a desperate quest to rescue an old friend, but the price will be high. And, in the Aiel Waste, Aviendha must journey into Rhuidean and confront a terrible truth that could shatter the Aiel more completely than Rand al'Thor's revelations.

Towers of Midnight is, at last (and third time lucky) the penultimate volume of The Wheel of Time. The fourteenth and final book, A Memory of Light, will be published in early 2012. Towers is published just short of the twenty-first anniversary of the series, which is appropriate as this is where the series finally matures and comes of age. Lots of the more irritating quirks of the series, such as the inability of the major characters to, you know, talk to one another about what's going on, are absent from this novel as fresh alliances are forged, plans are laid and armies are readied for the grand finale.

Just as Rand al'Thor has decided that he must sweep away the rubble of the Bore before he can confront the Dark One, Towers of Midnight sweeps aside many storylines and side-characters in preparation for the grand finale. The pace of the novel is relentless as we drive towards the moment when the Last Battle must be unleashed in its full fury, with each chapter seemingly ticking off character and story arcs stretching back all the way to The Eye of the World. Many characters who first appeared in that book, including relatively minor ones like Dain Bornhald and Morgase Trakand, have important roles to play here, giving the feeling of a vast circle slowly being closed off. There are also strong ties to The Shadow Rising, with the Aiel playing a larger role in events then they have for a while and a revisiting of Rhuidean and its glass columns providing a late-series game-changing moment that was wholly unexpected but quite satisfying.

Thematically, Towers cannot hope to match The Gathering Storm's tight focus on Rand and Egwene and their respective journeys through chaos and fire and out the other side. This book is far more epic and sprawling, with many more storylines and characters visited and progressed. However, Sanderson manages to maintain a strong focus on getting the original major characters back into the thick of the action, this time with Perrin and Mat. There's also an interesting dramatic device used where Lan's march across the Borderlands towards Tarwin's Gap serves as a countdown to the moment when all hell truly breaks loose, which helps the book achieve its oppressive feeling of events moving towards a final, chaotic doom.

In terms of the writing, Sanderson continues to do a fine job of integrating his and Robert Jordan's styles, although Sanderson's 'voice' is a little bit more noticeable here (Towers apparently has far less of Jordan's finished text than the other two books). Fortunately, his grasp of Jordan's characters is more assured than before, with the major weak link (Mat) coming across far more like he did in earlier books. Of the characters prominent in this novel, he only really struggles with Berelain, hardly the most vital of characters anyway, whilst he gets the likes of Perrin, Elayne and Birgitte spot-on (for example, Elayne continues to make wince-inducingly stupid mistakes and not really learn from them). In fact, Sanderson achieves the near-impossible here of making Faile actually quasi-likable for a few chapters, which may be his most towering achievement in writing these concluding volumes so far.

Elsewhere, problems remain. The formal agreement between two armies to do battle at a given place on a given time feels very odd and doesn't ring true. Whilst the pace is mostly furious, there's possibly a couple too many chapters and scenes where people sit around and talk about the plot rather than getting on with business, although these are less noticeable than they have been in the past. There's also, to this reader's frustration, the fact that this is the seventh book in a row where Perrin and his forces are messing around in the Altaran/Ghealdanin backwoods (a story which, thankfully, finally and definitively ends here) rather than doing anything that's actually interesting. Fortunately Sanderson even rescues this storyline, taking advantage of the longueur to conclude Perrin's 'wolfbrother' arc. However, I suspect there will be complaints that both the Seanchan and Black Tower storylines are only barely touched on here, rather than being explored more thoroughly. As it stands, it is dubious that Sanderson can bring those two storylines into play and conclude them satisfyingly with only a (relatively) small number of chapters remaining, but we will see.

Many events unfold that people have been expecting for years (and yes, we learn the answer to a long-standing but utterly irrelevant mystery that Wheel of Time fans have furiously debated for over a decade), but Jordan's plotting skills and Sanderson's writing means that there are still plenty of big surprises to come, some of them almost strokes of genius in how they were set up beforehand.

Towers of Midnight (****½) clears the decks of a lot of dead wood and brings us almost to the end. Some minor issues mar what could have been the best book of the series, but there is nevertheless the feeling that we have been set up for a huge finale. Time will tell if Sanderson can deliver on that. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

[Werthead]

Originally Posted by jstarbuck

IS there a release date for the fınal book?

At the moment, March 2012.

[Tao]

Well, I found Towers Of Midnight freaking awesome. Literally could not put it down. All the dangling plot threads are getting tied off really well, all the characters, including Mat, are just as they should be, plenty of action and humour...really, really enjoyed it.

Two niggles: Firstly, I'd have liked to have seen the timelines of the various actions of the different characters more in sinc; At one point, I was reading almost alternate chapters focusing on Perrin, and what was happening in the Stone of Tear, with Tam al'Thor playing a role in both at different points in the overall story. The other concern I have is the events following Aviendha's return to Rhuidean; I won't go into detail so as to avoid spoilers, but I have concerns about giving too much of what is to come in the final book away at this point in the penultimate one.

But despite that, I think this one ranks right up there with the best that the series has had to offer. Now the long wait for the final book begins...

[Werthead]

American cover art for A MEMORY OF LIGHT.

We won't be getting that cover in the UK, of course. It'll be the same as the last few but with a slightly different colour. The book's release date seems to be pretty finalised for 8 January 2013 as well.

Interesting to see if SFX actually bother to review it this time around

[Werthead]

The Wheel of Time Book 14: A Memory of Light

The Wheel of Time is finished. That's a statement that's going to take a while to get used to. The first volume of the series, The Eye of the World, was published in January 1990. George Bush Snr. and Margaret Thatcher were still in power and the Cold War was still ongoing. Fourteen books, four million words, eleven thousand pages and over fifty million sales (in North America alone) later, the conclusion has finally arrived. Can it possibly live up to the expectations built up over that time?

It is a tribute to the plotting powers of Robert Jordan, the writing skill of Brandon Sanderson (who took over the series after Jordan's untimely death in 2007) and the hard work of Jordan's editors and assistants that A Memory of Light is - for the most part - a triumphant finale. Given the weight of expectations resting on the novel, not to mention the unfortunate circumstances under it was written, it is unsurprising that it is not perfect. The novel occasionally misfires, is sometimes abrupt in how it resolves long-running plot strands and sometimes feels inconsistent with what has come before. However, it also brings this juggernaut of an epic fantasy narrative to an ending that makes sense, is suitably massive in scope and resolves the series' thematic, plot and character arcs satisfactorily - for the most part.

It is a familiar viewpoint that The Wheel of Time is a slow-burning series, with Robert Jordan not afraid to have his characters sitting around talking about things for entire chapters (or, in one case, an entire novel) rather than getting on with business. However, Jordan at his best used these lengthy dialogue scenes to set up plot twists and explosive confrontations further down the line, pulling together the elements he'd established previously in surprising and interesting ways. This reached a high in the slow-moving sixth book, which ended with what is regarded by many as the series' best climax to date at the Battle of Dumai's Wells. Steven Erikson (whose Malazan series is the most notable recent mega-long fantasy series to have also reached a final conclusion) used the term 'convergence' for such structural climaxes and it's fair to say that this is what A Memory of Light is: a convergence for the entire series. All thirteen of the previous novels lined up plot cannons in preparation for the Last Battle, and in the closing chapters of Towers of Midnight Brandon Sanderson started triggering them.

The result is not The Wheel of Time you may be familiar with. A Memory of Light is a brutal, bruising, 900-page war novel that kicks off with all hell breaking loose and doesn't pause for breath until the ending. The prologue starts with a well-paced sequence as we find out the state of play for the major characters, intercut with Talmanes and the Band of the Red Hand engaging hordes of Shadowspawn on the streets of Caemlyn. The rotation of scenes between the desperate street fighting and more familiar politicking is highly effective and is exhausting in itself. Immediately after this we alternate between Rand's attempts to pull together a coalition against the Shadow whilst a small group of Asha'man try to save their organisation from destruction against overwhelming odds. No sooner is that over than the Last Battle is joined in full force. Vast armies clash, channellers engage one another in One Power exchanges that dwarf anything seen before in the series and lots of stuff blows up. There's more action sequences in A Memory of Light than the rest of the series put together, more than earning the adage 'The Last Battle'.

The action sequences (which make up almost the whole book) are, for the most part, impressive but benefit from unpredictability. Jordan has been criticised for making his characters too safe, with almost no major character of note (on either side) dying in the previous books of the series. This limitation has been removed for the Last Battle. Major characters, middling ones and scores of minor ones are scythed down in this final confrontation with near-wild abandon. Some get heroic, fitting, blaze-of-glory ends. Some die in manners so unexpected, offhand and callous that even George R.R. Martin might nod in approval. Many of the survivors are seriously wounded, either in body or mind. Jordan's experiences as a Vietnam vet informed Rand al'Thor's arc in The Gathering Storm, and resurface here when one major character is tortured by the Shadow before being rescued, but spends the rest of the book suffering the effects of his experiences. The war scenes are suitably epic and exciting, but Sanderson remembers to include moments counting the cost of such a struggle.

That said, there is an annoying discrepancy in the Last Battle sequence compared to earlier novels. Based on the army sizes in previous volumes and the number of channellers in each faction, the good guys should have brought the better part of a million troops and five thousand One Power-wielders to the Last Battle, and the Shadow several times more. There is no indication that such vast numbers are present, which seems rather odd. There is also the fact that the channellers suddenly seem to be much less effective in mass combat than previously shown. This is most blatant when Logain is angrily told that he and a couple of dozen Asha'man cannot hope to defeat a hundred thousand Trollocs by themselves. Given this is exactly what happened in one scene in Knife of Dreams, I can only conclude that the channellers were deliberately reduced in power for this book, which is very strange.

For the most part, this is the level of problems A Memory of Light presents: something mildly irritating to those who prefer consistency from fictional works but ultimately not hugely relevant to the overall thrust of the narrative. Similar issues can be found with a number of very minor subplots that the novel fails to resolve (or even address) from earlier volumes. In some cases these may be examples of what Robert Jordan himself said would happen in the last book, with some elements left deliberately hanging to give the illusion that life goes on after the last page is turned. In other cases, it may be that Jordan did not draft out how those storylines ended, so Sanderson chose to leave them rather than risk too inventing too much of his own material. Sanderson even refuses to name an important river that Jordan did not name himself, resulting is a slightly awkward battle sequence where characters talk about the 'river on the border', the 'river on the battlefield' and so on, which is a bit laboured.

However, whilst the war scenes rage there is also a philosophical struggle at the heart of the book, and of the series. This struggle is shown in the confrontation between Rand and the Dark One in which their visions of the world and the Wheel are shown in conflict with one another. Robert Jordan was convinced that whilst there were certainly complexities and shades of grey in real life, he also believed that real good and real evil existed, and these ideas form part of the philosophical struggle that takes place alongside the battles. How successful this is will vary (perhaps immensely) from reader to reader, but is not helped by some muddling of the issues. The primary struggle of the books has consistently been Good vs. Evil, but in this philosophy-off the idea of the Creator personifying Order and the Dark One Chaos also arises, possibly as their primary roles. This is in conflict with the rest of the series and is also more tiresomely familiar and predictable. Once that interpretation arises, it's impossible not to think of the ending of the Shadow War in the TV series Babylon 5, and the resolution we get is not a million miles away from it (Rand even gets a line almost as awful as "Get the hell out of our galaxy!").

On the prose side of things, it's pretty much the same set-up as The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight: acceptable, faster-paced and a bit less prone to unnecessary introspection. Where Sanderson comes undone (yet again) is his very occasional use of terminology and language that Jordan would never have used, particularly modern words and terms. Though relatively rare, they still jar a little bit when they appear. The book's centrepiece is a single chapter that is almost 200 pages (and 70,000 words) long in hardcover, with some 70 POV characters playing a role. Apparently both Sanderson and Jordan wrote parts of this chapter, and a few minor inconsistencies aside their writing styles mesh very well. The very last section of the epilogue, written by Robert Jordan himself before he passed (including, rather eerily, Jordan's epitaph from his own funeral), is indeed a fitting way to end the book.

Taking everything into account, A Memory of Light (****½) is a lot better than perhaps we had any right to expect. The book is a relentless steamroller of action, explosions, plot resolutions, deaths and philosophical (if somewhat confused) arguing. Some elements are under-resolved, or a little too convenient, or not fleshed out enough. But that's par for the course with any ending to a series this huge. The big questions are answered, the final scene is fitting and the story ends in a way that is true to itself, which is the most we can ask for. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

[The Curious Orange]

Come on, Mr Amazon, deliver it already...

[The Curious Orange]

Well, that was it. I’ve just finished A Memory of Light, the final book in Robert Jordan’s epic Wheel of Time. Twenty years and fourteen books later, and it’s finally over.
Has there ever been a fantasy series like the Wheel of Time? I’d argue not. I first read The Eye of the World back in 1992, when I was doing my master’s degree, and it was pretty earth-shattering back then. Epic, with a highly original and unusual magic system, a well-constructed and coherent world, and more importantly, unlike many of the epic fantasy books of the time, well written and highly readable. These were real, well rounded characters you could care about. The Wheel of Time represented a read paradigm shift in the landscape of fantasy fiction.
The second book, The Great Hunt, took the story in unexpected directions. The fourth, The Shadow Rising, opened the story up into something truly epic. There was a time there when Robert Jordan was the undisputed master of this genre.
But the Wheel turns and all things turn with it. The series has attracted some harsh criticism, not all of it undeserved. Characters were sent off on useless side-quests, and the action slowed to a crawl. Jordan’s descriptions of lace hemlines and embroidered bodices lengthened into the realms of parody. And other writers came to dominate, with a more morally ambiguous fantasy coming to dominate. Martin, Abercrombie and Erikson were painting their worlds in shades of grey, and Jordan’s black and white vision of good and evil seemed very old fashioned.
But there was always something comforting about the Wheel of Time. These were books to snuggle up under the duvet and lose yourself in. After twenty years, Rand, Matt, Perrin, Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne became old friends, and there was nothing better than catching up with them and enjoying their company. I cannot think of any other set of characters that I have come to know this well, and care about this much. And that’s because I’ve known them so long, over so many books. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Lannisters and the Starks, but they just don’t compare.
And then, in 2007, Jim Rigney died, while working on the final volume. Soon afterwards it was announced that Brandon Sanderson would be finishing the last book from Jordan’s notes and partials. At the end of Knife of Dreams there were a lot of storylines hanging, and it was difficult to see how these could all be tied off. Wheel of Time fandom held its breath…
I have to say, Sanderson has done a fantastic job, and I have to say I can’t see how anyone could have ended this better. The action ramped up, and longstanding plot-lines were brought to a satisfying conclusion. For the first time in a long time it felt like the Last Battle was well and truly coming.
And what a battle it turned out to be. A Memory of Light is an all out action fest from the start, and the truly spectacular ending that this series deserves. Yes, it’s not perfect, with one plot-line in particular left unresolved, but it’s still a fantastic achievement. We’ll be lucky if other ongoing fantasy sagas end this well.
But this ending comes with a bittersweet after-taste. That’s it, a final goodbye to those characters I’ve loved for so long that they have become friends. For the first time in twenty years, there won’t be a new Wheel of Time book to look forward to. But on the bright side, I can look forward to reading them all again…
I’ve never read anything quite like the Wheel of Time, and that’s because there’s never been anything quite like the Wheel of Time.

[Werthead]

Prediction: SFX will assign someone completely unfamiliar with the series to read it and it'll get one star (as they've done several times with the series, somewhat inexplicably).

[kahless]

Originally Posted by Werthead

Prediction: SFX will assign someone completely unfamiliar with the series to read it and it'll get one star (as they've done several times with the series, somewhat inexplicably).

4 stars