Spoiler
The story so far of the Wheel of Time is simply one of a man fulfilling prophecies that have been laid out since the beginning. In the hands of many professional writers, this would be boring. You know the prophecy, then you know the ending, you even may know some of the steps along the way. What Robert Jordan has accomplished here with the same set tools is nothing short of incredible.
First thing to understand is that The Wheel of Time is a seven spoked spinning wheel for weaving threads, with each spoke indicating an age. Each thread is a person’s life and they are woven together into The Pattern (essentially the event’s that play out). Some threads are stronger than others and can affect the pattern of the weave that is spun, pulling other threads in to be woven with them and directing the shape of the weave on behalf of The Pattern. The major antagonist seems to want to destroy The Wheel or cut the weave free from The Wheel entirely. It seems that there is some sort of cycle that occurs in the weaving - perhaps each age plays out with a similar pattern, or perhaps it is once seven ages have passed and The Wheel has made a full turn that the Pattern repeats itself. There is an indication of rebirth or reincarnation also.
Now, with that all out of the way, there are prophecies, and it appears that they are playing out over the course of the story. In short, a person is going to rise to prominence by fulfilling a collection of remarkable feats; such as conquering a fortress by holding a sword that cannot be touched that is protected in said fortress, before it is conquered; then they are going to fight against The Dark Lord and die to defeat him. It starts with the main characters fighting against the prophecies and against their role in the pattern, only to realise how futile it is and how dangerous, so they come to begrudgingly accept them. So things will play out as expected from then on right? WRONG. What is a prophecy? Who made them? How have they been told and changed through the years? Who has interpreted them and through what lens of looking at the world? These are all questions that get asked when you first hear one of the multitude of prophecies that are laid out early on. They are suitably vague and cryptic to begin with, so as to hide the clear outcomes to be expected when fulfilled, but then compound that with all of the doubt over the meaning and who’s meaning to trust and all the rest and really you begin to see that prophecies do not have to be quite so predictable.
Not only that, but there are several factions vying to have their voices heard when it comes to dealing with the prophecies, who they apply to, and how to achieve them. Some believe that they should be fulfilled by the right person, and then that person needs to be controlled and hidden away from the world - to protect them from the world and the world from them - while their faction gains power from that control. Some believe that the person may defeat the Dark Lord but also destroy the world once more in doing so, so they fear the prophecies and hide away from them. Some have their own prophecies that they need to see fulfilled first in order to follow, and do not care for the prophecies of other nations. Some find ways to convince themselves that the prophecies have not been fulfilled at all and that they are still waiting on the right person. Some people believe that the prophecies are false, and that it will be regular peoples’ efforts that defeat the Dark Lord in the end. And obviously some strive to see the prophecies never fulfilled. So not only is the destination not necessarily certain, but the journey there is rife with push and pull and conflict, making it not even certain that after one prophecy is complete then the next will even be achieved.
Now, it should be made clear that, while it is good to obfuscate determinism like Robert Jordan does here, it is also important to realise that this only makes it satisfying when the prophecies are actually fulfilled in a way that makes sense. The outcome should be 1. Actually eventually achieved and 2. Be a reasonable interpretation of the prophecy (and if the words have changed from the original, then it is best to lay the groundwork that elucidates some of that original prophecy first, a while before the outcome is decided). Bait and switches don’t feel good and nor do results that don’t make sense based on the information given.
Spoiler
If you have come to The Wheel of Time expecting intense action sequences, then you will be disappointed. At least in the first half of this series, there are barely more than two or three actual action scenes and, well, I’ll touch on those in a bit… In this first half of the series, most battles are experienced as aftermaths lamented by whichever character survived them, and... I’m not convinced that this is necessarily a bad thing. I do love a good fight scene in literature, and I think that there are plenty of opportunities through action sequences to display character development, learning even plot progression. But, just because the opportunities are there, doesn’t mean that it is an economical use of word count. A lot of fight scenes are just going through the motions, and, especially in novels, it’s really difficult to convey spectacle as well as in a visual medium. So rather than weave tiny pieces of development into a lengthy battle or combat, why not summarise the exact same character thoughts and pieces of narrative post-battle as the characters inevitably look back on what just transpired. This transitions things on in the story much more easily with natural follow up dialogue and characters appraise together, and doesn’t result in massive luls in the pacing right after an intense high-pace fight. I think this can be a really good pacing tool to use if the lessons stood to be gained from the conflict are few compared to the size of the conflict going to take place. That said, as in all things, there is a balance to be struck here so that not all action and conflict is presented in hindsight, and even in a visual medium, it is probably a good reminder that not all fight scenes have to be really mechanistically drawn out - just enough to convey major movements whilst thought and dialogue progresses characters and narrative.
Something I had really high hopes for was Robert Jordans aesthetics for sword fighting in The Wheel of Time. Basically, master swordsmen fight with something called Sword Forms. I’m a big fan of abstraction in writing combat, and these do just that; instead of describing a series of steps and sword strokes, Robert Jordan instead simply tells which Sword Forms the character is flowing between. They all have suitably flowery names, such as “Apple Blossoms in the Wind”, “The Boar Rushed Downhill”, or “The River Undercuts the Bank”. Lets just say that overall, I have been… whelmed, by this style of combat description. The titles are abstract but, as long as the reader is able to somewhat picture what the form names describe, then you’d be surprised how much you can imprint that on to how someone may swordfight in a form named such a way. “Apple Blossoms in the Wind” evokes light, spreading strikes to make space, “The Boar…” evokes an overbearing frontal assault, “The River...” evokes a definitive slice that starts low and rises using the full length of the blade. I don’t know if any of those interpretations are actually correct, but it’s enough to imagine a full fight sequence with. I feel like a little bit of set up could have gone a long way however, for instance, why not describe the nature of some of the forms, and the strikes and steps involved during some of the training sessions the characters go through? Also, as action does not happen often in the front half of the series, there is not much actual interesting use of these sword forms - no real conflict with them that builds tension through them or shows them being used in an interesting way. I imagine they were more a literary tool to abstract away the need for Jordan to write any fighting at all and really cut down on the word count of those sequences. If a little more effort had been put in here, to pit forms against one another as natural counters and establish the exact purpose of each of the forms, more of a story could have been told through their actual use. I do really like the concept though.
Now on to a part of action that I was not such a fan of… The set piece magic fights… So let me start by saying that the “softened, hard magic system” in the Wheel of time is pretty well realised. There is a male side of magic and a female side of magic, and the male side has been tainted and causes those who use it to turn mad. The magic feels good to use though and dangerous if people draw on too much in themselves. Channelers seem to have reserves of the power like a mana pool that can run out if they use too much, and use of the power is physically exhausting. It is utilized by weaving together combinations of fire, air, earth, water and spirit (the five powers), generating various effects such as fireballs, healing, solidified air, calling down lightning, and creating gateways etc. It is a hard system because there are rules on inputs and what outputs they will result in, but it is softened in the story by there seemingly being no limits to what can be achieved with channeling, so long as someone can develop a weave to generate the desired effect. I have already spoken about how I think having the ability to teleport in a pre-renaissance setting such as this to be essentially game-changing, and poorly utilised within the world of The Wheel of Time in a possibly poorly contrived way... but, overall, when Robert Jordan is focusing solely on applications of the magic for problem solving purposes, usually he does a really good job of it throughout the books. The benefits of a hard magic system is that as the writer you know the rules (constraints and consequences) and base effects of the magic system, and so you can design really well conceived lock & key scenarios of the already established magic being used in creative ways to overcome problems, puzzles and conflicts - whereas poorly done soft magic systems can feel like pulling a solution out of thin air.
However, somehow, despite all of this work, when Robert Jordan came to writing some key set piece showdowns of magic, things became very difficult to follow - akin to the lights going dark, some multicoloured flashes exploding in said darkness, and then the fight being resolved somehow… The nature of The Dark One (the big bad) seems somewhat eldritch, causing some weird and crazy, evil effects on the world, and this seems to bleed through when their most powerful followers fight… but while I’m a huge fan of this kinda thing usually, I just found it really hard to read and follow in some what are some key moments in The Wheel of Time. When writing weird effects that are difficult for a reader to picture or imagine, sometimes it’s good to take things slowly and be more clear when pointing out what is weird. You don’t have to describe how it is weird explicitly, but great effort should be made so that this can be inferred from the perspective character’s senses (especially if the scene is shifting and changing). Although once a hard magic system has been established you can often afford to abstract the actions in the writing to improve the flow and pacing, in circumstances where the world is bending and weird sensory effects are happening, it can be best to be more explicit with the magic (or any combat) so that the reader's imagination does not have to split between too many things all at once.
Topic: So I read 7/14 books from "The Wheel of Time" in 3 weeks... (Read 566 times)
