The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan is my last giant novel for the year. I really wanted to do something complicated and serious like Gaddis’ JR, but it was getting kind of annoying to find a reasonable copy.
Anyway, I already covered the epic fantasy giant novel, so this will cover a lot of the same stuff.
Overview of The Eye of the World
I think I read at least part of Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World around fifteen years ago, but I recalled none of it at the time of starting it this time.
I’ll tread lightly because I know a lot of people really love this series, and despite how this post comes across, I didn’t hate the book.
I’d probably never recommend it, but I don’t regret reading it. There were a lot of “problems,” but none were major.
I’m going to tear into the details because that’s how we discover what works in our own styles. That’s how we get better at writing.
But these are mostly style things, and if I had read the book shifted by six months either direction, I might not have seen these as problems.
Structural Problems
The structure of the novel is pretty simple. The main character’s village is attacked. This causes a group of people to be on the run from these enemies.
They stop at villages on the way, and inevitably something always comes up to force them to run again.
Travel – village – travel – village – etc.
On the one hand, it’s a clear Hero’s Journey narrative, but it’s also a travel narrative. These are both perfectly fine choices in general, but something was off in the execution.
It took me a long time to figure it out: It lacked direction and positive motivation.
Motivation in the Classic Monomyth
In the Hero’s Journey, the hero is called to action to go defeat the evil. There is motivation. We understand his/her progress in terms of this motivation.
I didn’t see any of this in The Eye of the World. The hero was never called to action. In fact, it isn’t even clear who the hero is, because the bad guy can’t seem to figure out which is the chosen one.
All the heroes do is run away.
This is negative motivation.
They continually thwart the bad guys from achieving their goals, but they don’t seem to have independent goals of their own. This means the reader has no idea if they’re making progress.
Ah. I hear the retort already.
The Destination
The sense of progress in a travel narrative is if they’re getting closer to their destination. This also fails. Where are they headed? I have no idea. I don’t think I missed this, but it’s entirely possible I did.
At one point, I thought their goal was maybe Tar Valon so Egwene could start her Aes Sedai training, but then they arrived at Caemlyn and I started to think maybe their goal was to get to the false dragon there.
As it turns out, neither of these end up being their destination, and it’s not clear to me the characters even knew where they were headed.
This might seem like nitpicking, but without goals or positive motivation, I found the story stagnant. I had a hard time picking the book up to keep reading.
If the goal was to defeat the main villain, this could have been more clear. The main villain doesn’t even appear until the last 50 pages (out of 800+).
It came out of nowhere. I sort of assumed he would remain this mysterious background force for the next 10 books in the series.
Raising the Stakes
My next complaint has to do with stakes.
I never felt like the characters were in any real danger. This has to do with how the book opens. The Aes Sedai easily handles the Trolloc attack on the village.
So later, no matter how many times she says they are in danger, it’s hard to take her seriously. I kept thinking: Eh, if it came down to it, she could use those same powers to save them again.
Actions speak louder than words.
This is one of those things that’s mostly a product of its time. Fantasy has been worked out and studied a lot since 1990.
Writers now know that it’s more important for the reader to understand the limitations than the power of the magic system. Also, instead of continuing to be chased by Trollocs for 75% of the book, throwing something in to raise the stakes would have added the uncertainty needed for a real threat.
Obligatory Scenes
There are a lot of “obligatory” scenes that would have helped out here.
There’s a reason Gandalf “dies” in The Lord of the Rings. The stakes get raised when the most powerful person can’t keep bailing you out.
There’s also the “hero at the mercy of the villain” scene where the reader must fully believe it’s all over. The villain could end it all with no problem, and only then does the hero narrowly escape due to a surprising (yet believable) ingenuity.
Those are the two main flaws of the book: lack of positive motivation and the stakes didn’t continually rise to create tension.
Final Thoughts
As with most giant novels I’ve read this year, I think it’s too long. Trimming this by 10% might remove both of these problems.
When a book feels stagnant, increasing the pace by trimming the length can do a lot to help.
The real test is if I’ll keep reading the series. I think I’ll at least give the second book a chance because I have no idea how it will continue from here.
Check out my other articles on giant novels:
