Book Review: Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

Goodreads Summary: The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
When The Two Rivers is attacked by Trollocs—a savage tribe of half-men, half-beasts— five villagers flee that night into a world they barely imagined, with new dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light.
Goodreads Rating: 4.19 stars with over 350,000 ratings
Genre Listing: Fantasy, Fiction, Epic Fantasy, Adventure, Magic
Goodreads Challenge: 1/60
2020 Reading Challenge: #31 Read a book that is over 600 pages (Find the full challenge here)

Book Review:

Well, the first book is out of the way for 2020. Only 59 more to go. I may be setting myself up for failure with challenging myself to 60 books. I had actually intended for this book to be on the 2019 challenge, but it's a big book and I started it around Christmas. I essentially started reading The Eye of the World as a Christmas present to my friend and Challenge Co-creator, Tress. She's been after me for years to get into WOT. 

I was really apprehensive about starting this book, hence why it took Tress years to convince me. It's not so much that I didn't think I'd like it, but I just generally don't read huge 700+books often. I don't really feel like I have the attention span. I was worried I wouldn't be able to get into this one because of the length. I'm really glad I finally gave it a chance, however.

I will say that the Eye of the Wold doesn't read like a 700-page book. There is obviously a lot that goes on, but it doesn't really drag down or get bogged down with unnecessary details. It did switch between a handful of character's points of view, but it was easy to follow whose voice it is. There's a decent amount of details, but it wasn't really all that hard to keep track of. I think the biggest issue in keeping track of details or understanding the world for me was how the ages work. There are three ages and somewhere the world breaks. I got really caught up in trying to figure out how the time-structure worked and what determines a new age.

I feel like there was a lot of character growth for the main group of characters met. I felt like they each had their own personality that was easily identifiable. Moiraine and Nynaeve are probably my favorites. I tried to make predictions throughout the book, and I was wrong on most of them, so it's definitely not a predictable storyline. I didn't feel all that annoyed by any of the main characters, so that's always a plus.

I think more than anything I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Eye of the World. Usually, if I do read large books like this I need a break afterward to read something short and light. I jumped right into book two of the series though. One kind of interesting thing that I contributed to during my read was giving live thoughts to Tress. If I had to guess, this is her favorite series. I ended up making a lot of commentary on the books that she then tweeted with her own commentary. She's sent me the screenshots, which can be found after my rating of the book. If you'd like to see her commentary you can follow me out on Twitter at @LinzBassett or her at @Sonstress7az. I think she put everything under #TwitterofTime.  A little disclaimer about my commentary, I swear I was perfectly sober. I'm just really odd and get really random stuff in my head. There's a lot of references to non-WOT things. I'll try to keep them in order.