Robert Jordan - The Eye of the World (Wheel of Time 1)

I am not entirely sure why I picked up Robert Jordan's The Eye of the World. I certainly have no need to start reading a series of fantasy books that have at least fourteen titles in the series. Even less do I need books that are around 800 pages long. Nonetheless we all find our own forms of escapism, and these difficult times, plus the endless publicity given to the new Wheel of Time television series meant I did pick up the book and I eventually plunged in.

For those who don't know the Wheel of Time is a massive fantasy series set in a world were magic is a power which is mainly controlled by a group of female magicians called the Aes Sedai. If you can't pronounce that, and want to, The Eye of the World has a helpful, and inevitably long, glossary. Magic, here known as the One Power and since some distant event called the Time of Madness, only women can use it. The Aes Sedai seem to be divided into hostile factions and their reputation is fearful.

Like all such fantasy the story begins in a tiny village on the periphery of a medieval type world. While feudal in structure - there are kings and queens, as well as a capital. Two Rivers, the village's location where our heroes come from seems charmingly (and unlikely) democratic in the midst of such feudalism. There doesn't appear to be a local lord and power is vested in an elected village council. The village knows little of outside events and is mostly excited by the prospect of the annual fayre that marks the spring and the corresponding arrival of storytellers and fireworks. Jordan clearly thinks that rural lives were dull, isolated and mind-numbing.

No-one in this village goes anywhere and few visit, until a disguised member of the Aes Sedai turns up, just before the village is attacked by Trollocs. The Trollocs (that's their real name by the way) target the homes of three young men, who together with a local wisdom (a sort of female healer) and another woman, all escape with the Aes Sedai and her armed guide/tracker/knight.

Much of the novel is then a series of episodes as the small band of characters flee through the countryside, rarely stopping to question why or what they are doing. Their few questions are dismissed by Moiraine (the Aes Sedai) who seems to have many ideas about what is going on, but is not willing to share them. The one clear instruction she gives them, warning of strange dreams and to inform her immediately, the three young men immediately ignore. In fact they consistently behave irrationally. Ignoring advice, behaving stupidly, touching things that clearly shouldn't be touched, acting with reckless abandon for the collective and seemingly refusing to take anything that Moiraine or her military companion tell them. It's all remarkably odd, and the only characters who don't appear to be idiots are the two women Egwene and Nynaeve. The latter of whom only seems concerned to take the other idiots home with her before they kill themselves or wear the One Ring or something.

The whole thing appears half baked, and the plot difficult to follow. In fact much of the problem is that the book is too long. It takes ages for anything to happen and despite (or maybe because of) Moiraine's reluctance to tell anyone anything, random characters appear to expose loads of background lore and history. Much of this can be skipped.

The other problem is that the book is just aping the structure and characters of The Lord of the Rings without adding anything to the genre. There's no attempt to make the world real - just copying feudal tropes from other fantasy, that have no real social relations in them which might ground them in known human behaviours. It's simplistic and silly.

So there's a hero, a quest object and various people helping our heroes, each with a skill (including playing the flute and juggling believe it or not). The destination is less clear and there aren't enough random strange creatures to keep up interest, though unfortunately Jordan did seem keen to include a copy of the one character that LOTR could easily have ditched (thank you Peter Jackson) Tom Bombadil. In the Eye of the World he is called the Green Man, who thankfully plays only a little role, doesn't sing, and dies in the last few pages. The is even a pedlar driven insane by the Dark Lord, very similar though much less interesting, than Gollum.

So basically its Lord of the Rings done up with some improvements - there are women who have central, leading roles and are quite strong (though I dread to think how TV will depict them), but too much of it seems like a direct emulation. But like LOTR the world is too superficial and there is too little clarity on what is going on. Why is the Shire/Two Rivers ignored by the rest of the world. Don't they have to pay taxes? Why doesn't Moiraine make everything easier (and the book 200 pages shorter) by just explaining things? Why does everyone behave so stupidly? The biggest question really is why is fantasy such a conservative genre? Feudalism? Really?

The worst thing is that its compelling enough for me to order book two. I really should learn.