Since mid-November, my reading has been rather light, there being nothing intellectually challenging about my last 13 books. (Well, Boys of Blur could be—I need to re-read Beowulf—but it was enjoyable enough without going into all that.) I had planned to continue that trend for a while, not from any particular desire for easy reading, but because I want to re-read all the existing Green Ember books before the new one is released.
My eldest grandson, and the library, changed all that.
His current all-time favorite book series is Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. With that kind of recommendation, I thought it would be good to check it out. Recently our libray sent notice that my hold for the first book in the series, The Eye of the World, had come through, so today I ventured out to pick it up.
The librarian didn't quite need a hand truck to bring it from the back room.
The book is 670 pages long.
I hope I like it, because 670 pages will be a long slog if I don't. But I'm more than half hoping that I don't like it too much, because there are 13 more books in the series, plus a prequel and a companion book.
Long gone (though only five years past) is the time when I could sample his taste in reading by whipping through half a dozen Animorphs books in a few days.
Tom liked the Wheel of Time series, too.
Thirteen chapters and 160 pages in, and I'm hooked. Suddenly 670 pages doesn't seem so long. Thirteen more books is still beyond my comprehension, however.
I read the whole series in about 6 months. It is *long*. I enjoyed it, but a well-done abridgement to say 5000 pages or less would be a big improvement.
It took ten days to finish the book without horribly neglecting the rest of my life. I did enjoy it very much; it's exciting, and complex, and interesting. I'm sure I could enjoy the rest of the series, but I'm not drawn to it sufficiently to rush back to the library for the sequel. Right now, that strikes me as too much time to invest in mere entertainment. Although in many ways there's a similarity to The Lord of the Rings, it's not on anywhere near the same level. There's a lot that's good in The Eye of the World, but it lacks something important. The warp and weft of Tolkien's work rings true, for all that it's a fantasy. Although there are truths in The Eye of the World, the foundation does not have the same quality. I do realize I'm judging the series solely by the first book. I might feel otherwise after I've read them all, but that's a mountain I'm not willing to climb at the moment.
For all that, I thank Jonathan for the suggestion. I feel richer for having had the experience.
If I recall correctly, the first book is a pretty good indicator of what to expect throughout.
