Whoa, I dropped off the face of the planet again!
Anyway, I have spent the last few weeks reading (or rather, RE-reading) the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I have just finished Book 5 (Fires of Heaven) and I will be starting on Book 6 (Lord of Chaos) tomorrow. So far, the series has reached its tenth book and the eleventh is rumored to be released in 2005. So I’m basically just keeping myself abreast of the story.
The last book that I read from this series was Book 8, Path of Daggers (back in 1998), and the book had been so awfully uneventful and dragging that I had to put it down, and I haven’t read the series again until now. Why did I suddenly regain the interest to read it at this time? I dunno … boredom maybe … or probably because I haven’t read a book that is not related to computing and web design for almost 4 years.
Back in high school, I used up about six library cards, because I kept taking home book after book and finishing it in one or two days. I consider myself a pretty fast reader, but I also devote a lot of time on the books, sometimes reading it for seven or eight hours straight. Back then, I considered sleeping and eating a distraction when I’m reading a pretty involving book – I could finish a 700-page book in one day if I’m not doing anything significant.
In college, I was obsessed with Stephen King. My bookshelf at home was full of paperbacks of all his novels, from Carrie to Rose Madder, and my college thesis was actually a content analysis of a few of his books. Joel Rosenberg’s “The Sleeping Dragon” introduced me to escapist fiction, which then led to my obsession with horror fiction, collecting books by King, Clive Barker, Dan Simmons, Dean Koontz and Brian Lumley. Fantasy fiction then came next – I never read Lord of the Rings until I was already in 3rd year college, and I have been aware of that series since grade school. I have always been a sucker for epic fantasy, and that’s where it led me to Robert Jordan.
I consider the Wheel of Time series an excellent epic, but there are times when I feel that Mr. Jordan does not know how to end the story arc. After ten books, Tarmon Gaidon (the final battle) is nowhere in sight, and I can’t blame some of his ardent readers for abandoning the series entirely because of impatience and frustration. The long, drawn-out descriptions in the latter books do not help, as well as the introduction of more new characters and the recycling of dead ones. I mean, it seemed that 80% of Book 8 was conversations, with just a bit of action thrown in as filler. This was what discouraged me from finishing it in the first place.
So why am I pursuing the series again. I’m not sure. Maybe I just want to regain the feeling of wonder and excitement back when I was still a rabid fantasy reader. Maybe I just want to be reminded of how much I loved reading these kinds of books. Or maybe because the world has become so cynic and depressing that reading books that transport me to a world where good and evil are clearly marked has helped in making the waking world more bearable.
Or maybe, as I said, I just got so fuckin’ bored 
Technorati: jordan, of, robert, time, wheel
