Jay Targaryen's Blog

The World of Robert Jordan’s: The Wheel of Time is a fantastic companion book to The Wheel of Time series which is filled with additional world-building, histories, lore and includes several illustrations of maps. I loved that this book was a sort of in-universe history book as it’s written from the perspective of multiple scholars from this world and they informed the reader that all the information in this book was compiled from the earliest available records starting from the Age of Legends all the way through to the current New Era. It adds an interesting dynamic because the scholars know a lot of secrets that we the reader don’t know, but at the same time, the scholar also doesn’t know certain information (such as information on the White Tower and Aes Sedai), which we the reader know because we learned them from Egwene or Siuan’s POV chapters in the main series. This will be a spoiler review (since this book was written around halfway through the main series) and i...

A Memory of Light (Book 14) is a masterpiece and it’s a fitting conclusion to this epic series. This book was packed with remarkable action, jaw-dropping surprises, emotional moments, several poetic call-backs to previous events throughout the series and an ending that left me speechless. I’ve never read a book with this much action/warfare and never cried more than reading this. The Wheel of Time is a very long series and there are some lower quality books throughout, but it was all worth it just to get to this masterpiece of a book. It was such an amazing experience. On a side note, Robert Jordan was such a master of foreshadowing but his blessing was also a curse because he set up so many mysteries and questions and waited until the last books to answer them, that it felt impossible to cover them all, but also because he couldn’t answer them all in time because of his unfortunate passing. It’s not Brandon Sanderson’s fault, but I was looking forward to some more answ...

Towers of Midnight (Book 13) continues the high bar that was set by Brandon Sanderson ever since he took over the series. This book is a slight step lower than The Gathering Storm (Book 12) in my rankings, but it’s still one of the top 5 books of the series. A reason for that small dip is the overdose of Perrin chapters and Rand not having as much of a presence as he usually does. This book also suffers a little from an odd structure. The timelines were confusing at first until I caught on to what Sanderson was doing with Mat and Perrin’s chapters being a little bit behind the timeline of Rand and Egwene’s chapters. It ended on a high note though and it had great overall pacing, suspenseful action scenes, and remarkable character moments throughout. This will be a non-spoiler review and it will be covered in 4 sections: Characters, Plot, Pacing, and my final thoughts along with a rating. Image: Perrin forging Mah’alleinir (A hammer made with the One Power). [Characters]...

The Gathering Storm (Book 12) is a fantastic debut for Brandon Sanderson in his transition to The Wheel of Time series. I think he did a great job of getting all the characters to feel true to Robert Jordan’s characterizations and he clearly knows this world since he maintains the same atmosphere, cultures, magic system, places, and overall tone that was in Jordan’s previous books. It’s easy to spot the differences in their prose but Sanderson seemed to be mimicking/paying homage to Jordan’s writing style a bit because of the descriptions of clothing/furniture and the spot-on character tendencies such as Nynaeve tugging her braid, Mat’s witty humor, Cadsuane’s regal aura, Siuan’s hilariously snappy attitude towards Gareth, and so on. If you told me this book was written by Robert Jordan, I would have believed it, other than the obvious differences in the vocabulary such as Sanderson’s repetitive use of the words “creature”, “bulwark”, etc. But the characters and the stor...

New Spring (Book 0)  is a fantastic companion prequel to  The Wheel of Time  series and it adds so much context and layers to the central plot that kicked off the main series, which is to find the Dragon Reborn because he’s the vital piece for a chance at winning the Last Battle against the Shadow. The book's structure is very similar to  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story  because it’s a fun backstory that links perfectly to the first installment of the series (A New Hope/The Eye of the World), it adds more context and depth to the series, it includes surprising character cameos, and has a similar sort of grim ending. This book had so much more details than I was expecting such as showing what Lan was doing during the Aiel War, why Moiraine didn’t want the Sun Throne, how Moiraine and Lan met, the ceremony of becoming an Aes Sedai, and much more. For anyone who has read  The Wheel of Time  series and is undecided on  New Spring , it’s definitely worth ...

Knife of Dreams (Book 11) is a triumphant return to form for the series after 3 middling books that were part of “The Slog”. Robert Jordan really flexes his action prowess in this book, so much so that even the first 20 pages of the prologue felt like it had more action than the entirety of Crossroads of Twilight (Book 10) . It’s not only packed with great action sequences, but also a lot of crazy plot twists, revelations, and tons of suspenseful moments. There’s also a ton of payoffs, as a lot of lingering questions are answered. This book also ties up a lot of loose plot threads and wraps up the story arcs that have started since The Path of Daggers (Book 8) . For those of you who might still be reading through “The Slog” and checking this review out, it’s all worth it if you just stick with it and get to this book. This is a non-spoiler review that will be covered in 5 sections: Characters, Plot, Setting/World-Building, Pacing, & my final t...

Crossroads of Twilight (Book 10) was not as bad as I expected it to be since my expectations were already set pretty low after hearing that this was the worst book in the series, but it’s still pretty mediocre. It’s intended to be a setup for big events to take place in Knife of Dreams (Book 11) and I don’t mind a book full of foreshadowing and build-up as long as the next book delivers, but the 2 previous books were also slow-moving and had a lot of loose plot threads so all of that plays a factor into how I view and rank this book. This will be a non-spoiler review and it will cover 5 sections: Characters, Plot, Setting/World-Building, Pacing, and my final thoughts along with a rating. Image: Perrin Aybara. [Characters]: While the books in “The Slog” (Books 7-10) have slowed down the story, they’ve done a great job with character development, and this book is the same as well. The main POV characters of this book (Elayne, Egwene, Perrin, & ...

Winter’s Heart (Book 9) is a nice improvement from the previous book, The Path of Daggers . The storylines are more interesting, the pacing is better, and there’s some unexpected twists and big moments that have a major impact on the series going forward. A good amount of lingering questions from previous books are also answered, and it ties up some loose plot threads regarding the Seanchan storylines of previous books as well. This will be a non-spoiler review and it will be covered in 5 sections: Characters, Plot, Setting/World-Building, Pacing, and my final thoughts along with a rating. Image: Logain Ablar. [Characters]: The main focus of this book is on Rand, Mat, and Elayne. Rand is becoming more stoic and emotionless and he’s now adopting certain skills of Lews Therin, possibly slowly turning into Lews Therin himself. Rand continues to be one of the most interesting protagonists I’ve read in the Fantasy genre. Mat finally shows up after bein...