El ojo del mundo

I absolutely adore the Wheel of Time. It's by far my favorite series.

But, book one has some problems. Originally, I've always heard, Jordan wasn't sure if he would get to write more than 3 books with his publisher, so he structured the first 2 very differently from the others. He also hadn't fully fleshed out the world yet, so there are some inconsistencies with how magic works in this book compared to the other books. Jordan described EOTW as his homage to the Lord of the Rings, and it very much shows- if you've read LOTR, you'll see a LOT of similarities here. That is not true of the other books after this one.

The best part about this book is the story, but it has some pacing issues IMO. Jordan improved enormously as a writer in book 2, and by book 3 he had really cemented the world, his style, and the characters. The start may be a bit rocky, but it gets so much better!

I started this book after I heard about its TV show, and learnt that this is one of the longest fantasy series. I haven't read much fantasy either. I enjoyed this first book, the adventures of a group of friends from a village that they need to escape their home town. Robert Jordan gives a very good detail of every thing that happens during their journey, and how the society are structured. I found that society structure quite puzzling. Women and men have different roles and duties on their everyday lives. They are not shown as one lower than the other, but it uses many stereotypes of our real society. The woman takes care of the kitchen while the man attends the business - this was a bit annoying (I suppose as our society). However, there done stats¹ that seems to indicate that the following books will get more gender balanced! [1] www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/statistical-analysis-wheel-time/