Prima di scrivere questa recensione, ho preso un respiro profondo perché sono consapevole del fatto che scontenterà gran parte dei/delle fan del genere fantastico, ma a me L’occhio del mondo, il primo volume della monumentale saga di Robert Jordan, è parso per lo più una gran palla e sto ancora cercando di capire perché tutt* lo consiglino. Migliorerà nei prossimi volumi?

Se fosse uscito oggi, probabilmente staremmo a dire che è una specie di fanfiction de Il Signore degli Anelli. Sì, sono fissata con Tolkien e se come me ricordate parecchi passaggi a memoria sappiate che ve li ritroverete pari pari anche ne L’occhio del mondo. Credo che tutti i momenti che ho apprezzato di più siano stati in realtà opera di Tolkien e questo non ha contribuito ad aumentare la mia simpatia nei confronti di Jordan.

Quando leggo un fantasy classico, infatti, sono consapevole di avere un’altissima probabilità di ritrovarmi con elementi di tolkieniana memoria (e sono davvero in grado di apprezzarli), ma mi piacerebbe anche veder emergere lo stile personale dell’autore, che qui secondo me manca. Ne L’occhio del mondo non ho trovato altro che una storia, intesa nella sua accezione più semplice, cioè una serie di eventi che cercano di reggere la baracca per settecento pagine.

Settecento. Pagine.

Parliamone.

Credo che avrei retto meglio la vacuità di Jordan per un numero più ragionevole di pagine. Sono una lettrice tenace e coriacea, ma sono comunque un essere umano dotato di un quantitativo di pazienza limitato: non puoi pretendere che mi interessi a una storia che rimane sempre allo stesso punto per pagine, pagine, pagine e ancora pagine. Alla fine non c’è nemmeno una vera e propria evoluzione dei personaggi: Rand ha le stesse paranoie di quando è partito, Mat è sempre il solito scemo, Perrin è sempre il solito tipo solido e via dicendo. Capisco che Jordan aveva bisogno di materiale per quattordici volumi, ma io non sono una fan della roba prolissa – e se vuoi scriverne, vedi di avere un buon motivo, maledizione.

Ho messo comunque il secondo nella LdLdL. Masochismo? È possibile, ma non vorrei perdermi qualcosa di bello qualora ci voglia un po’ di fatica a raggiungerlo… (quindi car* fan, spero che il vostro amore per Jordan si basi su solide fondamenta… mi seccherebbe leggere altre settecento pagine insipide…). ( )

2/9/2020 - Nearly 4 years later and my opinion has vastly changed. Maybe because I read in a book club slowly ocer a couple months with people I really like but I much more enjoyed myself with Eye of the World this time around then in 2016. I’m looking forward to the next one as well.




“The Wheel of Time is too daunting,” says Tolkienist. “Wait, what?” Everyone else asks.
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Got hooked on this series in my thirties - but I gave up somewhere around book six, I think? Rand was in a box being carried across the desert and I just decided he could stay in there for all cared. ( )

If you want an example of a bad way to start a series, here's an example. I didn't grow up with the "Wheel of Time" series; I'm reading it because it's well-known in the fantasy community and I keep running into it. And after two books (I read the prequel first) I still regret the decision.

After the generic Prophesied Male Hero introduction and about 75% of the story, we finally get to what the title is about. Or at least it's name-dropped. They don't actually get there until like the last 10% of the book. I still don't know why it mattered that they actually be there rather than somewhere else for the final battle in the story. What this means is that you spend the majority of the book wondering what the heck the title is referencing. Unless the 'Eye of the World' is a metaphorical reference to how all the world knows about The Chosen Male Hero Prophecy and so Rand is sort of like a celebrity because eyes around the world on his actions (or would be if they knew who he was). Still silly. Why's the actual place called the 'Eye of the World' anyway?

I have exactly zero interest in any of the three generic male heroes. It's actually hard to tell them apart for most of the book until they start collecting hero traits, even though these young men are in their late teens(?) and should have more personality by now. And the traits themselves are so weird. Perrin randomly gets the ability to talk to wolves after spending most of the book up until then being the silent guy hanging around with the hammer. Mat is The Prankster who's annoying and greedy and paranoid and Rand is a whiny baby who for some reason feels like he's responsible for Egwene and like he has more authority than she does even though he's, as he is so often to repeat, a Shepard's son and she was in training with one of the village leaders and he knows she can access the One Power. It doesn't help that he acts territorial over her actions. Back off, buddy. I do find it kind of amusing that Jordan apparently realized that you couldn't tell the three Chosen Males apart so he gave them different weapons. Oh yes. Truly imaginative. It would have been creative to have a Prophesied Hero use a bow for once (Katniss isn't prophesied; she's just in the right place at the right time, although it's a good step in the right direction; "Yona of the Dawn" kind of does what I'm talking about), but of course that doesn't happen because Heroes Prefer Swords even when they have zero training with one. Which is apparently going to get explained away in future books because past lives(?) and the world functions like a video game where you gain XP through combat and not because you spent years training with swordmasters.

There are way too many characters in this thing. We already have three poorly developed heroes, plus two more interesting female characters who become heroes apparently and a bodyguard plus a tag-along. And that's before getting to all the allies and the number of antagonists. Writing a world chock-full of POV characters doesn't a detailed world make. It's just confusing and frustrating. Make us care about any of these people first, THEN develop your world. Something like the "Honorverse" model, where Weber developed Honor's character and a few of her allies and antagonists before really developing all of the other protagonists in their own stories. The Honorverse is incredibly intricate and complicated, with politics spanning star systems. And while it can be hard to remember sometimes who's who, it's a whole lot easier than WoT, and I'm only on WoT book 1/2! Otherwise you get what we have in WoT, where Jordan finally develops one character only to introduce another four because... reasons?

I really don't get the relationship between Lan and Nynaeve. I feel zero chemistry there until around the time you're already supposed to be convinced they have this tragic love story going on and they're just trying to sort of make it work. Sure, they might think the other is pretty hot, but that doesn't create a deep emotional bond like what is explained in the later story. And, like EgwenexRand, it keeps perpetuating this stupid Hollywood formula where women and men initially hate each other but those relationships always end up with them in love. I want to like these relationships because Nynaeve is going against the ridiculous traditions of her culture that are really restrictive of female sexuality and Egwene is being rather out there for a young woman in a stereotypical Eurocentric fantasy story in many ways. But I just don't like the relationships because they're portrayed in such a childish and nonsensical manner. It doesn't help that the relationship between Nynaeve and Lan was clearly the model for the relationship between Moiraine and Lan in "New Spring", so when you get to it in "Eye of the World" you're thinking NOT THIS AGAIN!

One of the major faults of the book is its length and how it doesn't use the length well. The prose is overly drawn out, repetitive, and most of it is inconsequential. Jordan gets bogged down in extraneous details, ridiculous similes, and metaphors that don't advance the plot and just make no sense. I don't need to know what it looks like every time a character twitches or moves around. They walked away. They smiled. They glared. THAT'S IT! THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH! NOW MOVE ON WITH THE PLOT! And why did we have to repeat the dream sequences so many times? The nightmares were bad. Okay. After one or two, couldn't we have just been told briefly about them and moved on with the plot? Nothing special actually happened in pretty much any of them. There's no reason Rand couldn't have briefly thought about them during the day or told one of the other two Chosen Male Heroes. And why couldn't they have told Moiraine? Over half of the book is basically WHY ARE YOU NOT TALKING TO MOIRAINE ABOUT THIS? I don't care that you're afraid of being labeled a Dark Friend. Moiraine and Lan's behavior indicates that this will not be the result. Thankfully Moiraine basically dresses them down for it when they finally do tell her but seriously. Pointless drama. It might mean something if this taught them ANYTHING about how to act in the future, but no. They don't confide in Moiraine or trust her. They don't realize that MAYBE she's not gonna kill them. They just keep suspecting her of various conspiracies because reasons. THAT is why it's extra pointless.

I really wish Egwene or Nynaeve were the sole focus character or perhaps the only pair of protagonists. I like their stories, particularly Nynaeve's, given the environment she came from and what she's doing in her life and her potential. And they're the POV characters for such a fractional portion of the book. Why couldn't one of THEM be the prophesied hero? Why does it, yet again, have to be a guy, particularly one who spends the majority of the first two books in denial?

It's a special kind of writer who creates a single all-female powerful group and decides they also need to create their own set of KKK/MRA lovechildren to off-set the 'balance' in an already patriarchal world. And by special I mean stupid and completely lacking in imagination, because we didn't apparently have enough groups run by and dominated by men. Every time the zealot despot misogynists showed up I was more irritated than pulled along by the story.

What was the point of the Prologue? We never visit Dragonmount and for all that he's mentioned, Lews Therin has practically zero import in the rest of the story, other than being the last incarnation of the Dragon. It seems like empty character development for the primary antagonist, since all the antagonist really does in the book is stalk the Three Heroes in their dreams and try to seduce them. Which makes me wonder what the antagonist's Endgame is. Does he just really want to dominate the Dragon or something cause other than wreaking random destruction on the world he's REALLY obsessed with seducing the three heroes. Which is further questionable for all the time Jordan spends on it. I get that Evil Incarnate just wants to sleep with the Ultimate Good already, now can we move on with the plot?

I don't actually know what was accomplished by this book, other than that we know who the Dragon is, which is obvious from the beginning because of how much more time is spent with Rand than Perrin or Mat. The end battle didn't seem all that important to the rest of the book (or apparently the series) and the next book seems to undo most of what happened in this book.

Overall this was an incredibly boring and uninteresting read. ( )

Dit boek heb ik ongeveer 15 jaar geleden voor het eerst gelezen. Dit is de tweede keer. Ik heb gemerkt dat ik wel de grote lijn van het verhaal nog weet, maar de details kwijt ben. Niet erg, want zo sta ik toch weer steeds voor verrassingen.

Hoewel ik snap waar het Tolkien gevoel vandaan komt, dat ik hoor bij sommige mensen die dit boek gelezen hebben, kan ik het er niet helemaal mee eens zijn. Naar mijn gevoel heeft Tolkien toch minder nodig om de sfeer en diepte van Middle Earth neer te zetten. Jordan speelt weer veel meer met de relaties tussen mensen. Daardoor voelen de boeken voor mij heel anders. Ze hebben beide dat uitgebreide, maar beide op een totaal andere manier.

Overigens denk ik dat dit eerste boek best wat dunner had gekund als er niet zoveel dingen steeds herhaald zouden worden. Begrijp me niet verkeerd, ik vind het een geweldig verhaal, maar al in dit eerste boek zitten de zaadjes van Het Grote Uitweiden waar zijn latere boeken echt last van hebben.
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