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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : J : Jordan, Robert
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Robert Jordan has created a rich and intricate tapestry of characters in his Wheel of Time series. In this seventh volume, Rand al'Thor--the Dragon Reborn--draws ever closer to the Last Battle as a stifling heat grips the world.
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The Eye of the World and its sequels in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series show the extent to which one can go with a traditional fantasy framework, with added gusto. Stock elements are abound: a reluctant hero--in fact five humble village folk--plucked from wholesome obscurity to fight dark powers; an eternal evil enemy who can be defeated but not destroyed, until the end of the world, which is fast approaching; a mysterious sisterhood with vast powers and who love to manipulate thrones and kingdoms from the shadows (think of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune series); a ferocious battle-hardened warrior race (echoes of the Fremen of Dune, or the Haruchai of the Thomas Covenant novels).Jordan didn't become a bestselling author merely by mixing up traditional ingredients; a master storyteller, he ingeniously gives unusual twists to these conventional fantasy elements. He also excels in the descriptive and narrative skills needed to create a detailed and coherent imaginary world. The many lands he portrays are vast in scope and contain amazingly varied countries and peoples, while retaining the inner coherence needed to make them satisfying places for a fantasy fan to roam around in. However, Jordan's writing never attains the subtlety or sophistication of, say, George RR Martin and there are some annoying stylistic tics: he seems unable to introduce a female character without commenting on her neckline and thereafter has them forever smoothing their dresses.
To his publisher's credit, Jordan's books are fortunate among fantasy novels in not having covers that look like an explosion of a teenager's bedroom. The absence of such lurid artwork is, perhaps, part of their appeal. --David Pickering
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Robert Jordan's bestselling Wheel of Time epic is one of the most popular fantasy series of all time for a reason. Jordan's world is rich and complex, and he's assembled an endearing and involving core of characters while mapping out an ambitious and engaging story arc.But with the previous book Crown of Swords and now with Path of Daggers, the series is in a bit of a holding pattern. Path continues the halting gait of the current plot line: Rand is still on the brink of losing it, all the while juggling the political machinations around him and again taking to the field against the Seanchan. The rest of the Two Rivers kids and company don't seem to be moving much faster. Egwene continues to slowly consolidate her hold as the "true" Amyrlin (finally getting closer to Tar Valon and the inevitable confrontation with Elaida), and Nynaeve and Elayne keep on wandering toward the Lion Throne--again on the run from the Seanchan. Mat Cauthon is barely mentioned and fellow ta'veren Perrin keeps busy with politics in Ghealdan. The ending does provide promise, though, that Book Nine might match the pace and passion of the previous books.
If you're already hooked,you could sooner overcome a Weave of Compulsion than avoid picking up a copy of Path of Daggers. But if you're new to the series, start at the beginning with the engrossing and much better paced Eye of the World. --Paul Hughes
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Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" sequence is one of the more ambitious current fantasy epics; its ninth volume Winter's Heart advances a conclusion by fundamentally changing the rules of its war between overwhelming evil and deeply crippled good. Rand Al-Thor, in some sense a doomed hero born again, continues to travel the world seeking allies--as before, he finds himself caught up disastrously in the local politics of small city states and has to sort them out at some cost to himself. His fellow villagers--now the paladins of his crusade--deal with their own local problems; the agents of evil are abroad everywhere and have started to take this coterie of magically gifted youths seriously as a threat to their power and the return of their Dark master. The well-intentioned but over-reaching Aes Sedai nuns have started at last to deal with the infiltrators in their midst, and the invading Seanchan start to pursue goals beyond their strange cultural games of dominance and submission. And now Rand finally does something drastic--he attempts to cleanse male magic of the taint of madness that has crippled his world. Jordan's many fans will be enthralled by this latest volume. --Roz Kaveney
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With Crossroads of Twilight, Jordan's gargantuan fantasy sequence The Wheel of Time reaches its tenth huge volume and hits some of the consequences of its own sheer scale. Jordan is running so many story lines--the struggle with the covert agents of evil, the creation of a male magic that is not polluted, the war with magic-using dragon-riders from across the sea, the adventures of a travelling circus--that he has to spend almost all of this book just keeping us in touch with the movements of his characters and how they are getting on.This is a book with a fair amount of incident, but nothing you could really call a climax. One of Jordan's strengths has always been his ability to send things off at interesting and imaginative tangents, revealing that his is a stranger world than we have begun to know--there is not enough of that here, and rather too much in the way of confrontations and kidnappings and dilemmas of conscience that recapitulate things he has done before. His decent, lumbering "grey" style means that there are no moments when the writing thrills us either--this is a book for those who have committed to Jordan's sequence for the long haul rather than one for new readers to sample. --Roz Kaveney
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Best-selling fantasy series tend to spin off nonfiction books about their otherworld settings, such as The Atlas of Tolkien's Middle-Earth and The Discworld Companion. Robert Jordan's immense "Wheel of Time" sequence began with The Eye of the World (1990) and still continues, with eight fat novels published and more to come. This lavish companion volume first appeared in 1997 and has been repackaged at a bargain price--though not updated to cover the events of Jordan's 1998 instalment, The Path of Daggers. It goes into great detail about the saga's vast historical back-story, the interlocking systems of magic, the many countries, races, institutions, power-wielders and monsters, and much more. There are over seventy full-colour illustrations and maps. Fans of the series will appreciate this as an attractive coffee-table volume which, like Tolkien's detailed appendices in The Lord of the Rings, casts light on mysteries and trivia that didn't fit into the narrative. Newcomers may be less enchanted as Jordan's considerable talent is for storytelling and cumulative narrative power: this background material is ambitious in scope but not wildly original, featuring familiar fantasy landmarks like a Pit of Doom (and, for variety, Mountains of Doom). A must for Jordan addicts; others should try the novels first and see what the excitement's all about. --David Langford
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The Eye of the World and its sequels in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series show the extent to which one can go with a traditional fantasy framework, with added gusto. Stock elements are abound: a reluctant hero--in fact five humble village folk--plucked from wholesome obscurity to fight dark powers; an eternal evil enemy who can be defeated but not destroyed, until the end of the world, which is fast approaching; a mysterious sisterhood with vast powers and who love to manipulate thrones and kingdoms from the shadows (think of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune series); a ferocious battle-hardened warrior race (echoes of the Fremen of Dune, or the Haruchai of the Thomas Covenant novels).Jordan didn't become a bestselling author merely by mixing up traditional ingredients; a master storyteller, he ingeniously gives unusual twists to these conventional fantasy elements. He also excels in the descriptive and narrative skills needed to create a detailed and coherent imaginary world. The many lands he portrays are vast in scope and contain amazingly varied countries and peoples, while retaining the inner coherence needed to make them satisfying places for a fantasy fan to roam around in. However, Jordan's writing never attains the subtlety or sophistication of, say, George RR Martin and there are some annoying stylistic tics: he seems unable to introduce a female character without commenting on her neckline and thereafter has them forever smoothing their dresses.
To his publisher's credit, Jordan's books are fortunate among fantasy novels in not having covers that look like an explosion of a teenager's bedroom. The absence of such lurid artwork is, perhaps, part of their appeal. --David Pickering
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With Crossroads of Twilight, Jordan's gargantuan fantasy sequence The Wheel of Time reaches its tenth huge volume and hits some of the consequences of its own sheer scale. Jordan is running so many story lines--the struggle with the covert agents of evil, the creation of a male magic that is not polluted, the war with magic-using dragon-riders from across the sea, the adventures of a travelling circus--that he has to spend almost all of this book just keeping us in touch with the movements of his characters and how they are getting on.This is a book with a fair amount of incident, but nothing you could really call a climax. One of Jordan's strengths has always been his ability to send things off at interesting and imaginative tangents, revealing that his is a stranger world than we have begun to know--there is not enough of that here, and rather too much in the way of confrontations and kidnappings and dilemmas of conscience that recapitulate things he has done before. His decent, lumbering "grey" style means that there are no moments when the writing thrills us either--this is a book for those who have committed to Jordan's sequence for the long haul rather than one for new readers to sample. --Roz Kaveney
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The Eye of the World and its sequels in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series show the extent to which one can go with a traditional fantasy framework, with added gusto. Stock elements are abound: a reluctant hero--in fact five humble village folk--plucked from wholesome obscurity to fight dark powers; an eternal evil enemy who can be defeated but not destroyed, until the end of the world, which is fast approaching; a mysterious sisterhood with vast powers and who love to manipulate thrones and kingdoms from the shadows (think of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune series); a ferocious battle-hardened warrior race (echoes of the Fremen of Dune, or the Haruchai of the Thomas Covenant novels).Jordan didn't become a bestselling author merely by mixing up traditional ingredients; a master storyteller, he ingeniously gives unusual twists to these conventional fantasy elements. He also excels in the descriptive and narrative skills needed to create a detailed and coherent imaginary world. The many lands he portrays are vast in scope and contain amazingly varied countries and peoples, while retaining the inner coherence needed to make them satisfying places for a fantasy fan to roam around in. However, Jordan's writing never attains the subtlety or sophistication of, say, George RR Martin and there are some annoying stylistic tics: he seems unable to introduce a female character without commenting on her neckline and thereafter has them forever smoothing their dresses.
To his publisher's credit, Jordan's books are fortunate among fantasy novels in not having covers that look like an explosion of a teenager's bedroom. The absence of such lurid artwork is, perhaps, part of their appeal. --David Pickering
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Before achieving solo fame with his "Wheel of Time" series, Robert Jordan wrote seven 1980s fantasy potboilers about Canon the Cimmerian, that legendary barbarian hero created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s. Other hands have now written far more Conan fiction than Howard ever did. Jordan's first three are collected in The Conan Chronicles 1. This companion omnibus contains Conan the Magnificent, Conan the Triumphant and Conan the Destroyer (though not the final Conan the Victorious). An extra bonus item is "Conan the Indestructible", L. Sprague de Camp's 34-page essay explaining the Conan timeline--which de Camp and Lin Carter first created from Howard's disconnected stories--and how Jordan's novels fit into it. The tales themselves follow the routine formula of Conanesque sword and sorcery, with some new, flamboyant super-villain wheeled on for each episode and eventually defeated after a satisfying extravaganza of magical and/or military special effects. Here the successive baddies are a horde of religious fanatics whose charismatic leader is backed up by a dragon's firepower; a beautiful, uppity, power-hungry princess and priestess who uses human sacrifice to raise a formidably unpleasant god; and another, closely similar, wicked lady who initially confuses Conan by hiring him as a professional thief. Jordan reliably delivers the mixture as before, with the prescribed amount of colourful slaughter. --David Langford
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The bloodthirsty barbarian hero Conan the Cimmerian was created by Robert E. Howard in 17 stories written between 1932 and his suicide at age 30 in 1936. This influential saga of swords and sorcery has been rearranged and extended by other authors and Robert Jordan--now famous in fantasy for his Wheel of Time sequence--wrote seven new Conan novels in the early 1980s. The Conan Chronicles is an omnibus of the first three: Conan the Invincible, Conan the Defender and Conan the Unconquered. Though perhaps lacking that touch of inspired madness that shone through Howard's clumsy writing and made Conan immortal, these are competent, full-blooded fantasy thrillers. Conan clashes with typical Howard foes, such as Amanar the Necromancer, servant of that snaky god-demon the Eater of Souls; Albanus the intending royal usurper, who has assembled an armoury of magic weapons to take a throne which Conan finds himself defending; and Jhandar the chaos mage of the Cult of Doom, who unwisely decides to eliminate Conan as an obstacle to his planned empire. Throughout there are lashings of swordplay, blood, loot, sex, human sacrifice, supernatural nasties and battles against impossible odds. Conan always ends up footloose, underfunded and ready for fresh exploits. As in soap opera, the charm of sword-and-sorcery fantasy is that the adventures go on forever. --David Langford