The Shadow Rising – Backstory
Here it is a year later, and I’ve finally read The Shadow Rising. This is the fourth book in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series. We pick up shortly where the third book left off, all our heroes in the city of Tear after Rand once and for all (we think) proves he’s the “messiah” and “doom” for whom everyone has waited. What next though?
- Perrin learns the White Cloaks have invaded his home village and wants to return there to save his family.
- Egwene, Elayne, and Nynaeve must find the Black Ajah
- Matt just wants to gamble, chase women and fill the holes in his head
- Rand – well what do you do when you know for sure you’re the man tasked with saving and destroying the world in one fell swoop?
And that’s sort of the problem with this book. They all have these different paths to follow yet it seems to take forever for them to get moving. I’m not kidding. We’re 250+ pages (about 25%) into the story before it starts to move forward!
Let’s put it in different terms – imagine if, in the Fellowship of the Ring, it took that long to get through the Council of Elrond?
The Shadow Rising – My Thoughts
I know once these series writers get some success and their mojo going, the books tend to get longer. After all, the first Harry Potter book, Sorcerer’s Stone was less than half the size of the last, The Deathly Hallows. But JK didn’t mince words, and we needed all of hers. Unfortunately, Mr. Jordan likes to paint pictures, often the same ones, over and over again. It’s as if the assumption isn’t there that the reader read the three previous books and we must start all over again with explanations.
Really? Come one, no one is going to start a 14-book fantasy series at book 4. Even if you allow for gaps of a year or two between publications, no one will forget the main principals of the Wheel of Time World. It just bogs everything down.
That said though, you have to give props to Mr. Jordan for the intricate world and story he’s created. Dozens of characters (I read somewhere there are over 2000 named characters in the series), a multitude of different countries, rulers, cultures, etc., and history too. If only he had a good editor too, I’d probably be giving these books 4-5 stars. Instead, I’m hovering around 2-3.